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Apr182019
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Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Attenborough does climate
Apr 18, 2019 BBC This is an open thread for discussion of tonight's David Attenborough does climate thingy.
Apr 18, 2019 BBC 
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Reader Comments (168)
Should we speak up if White Supremacism cult had taken over the BBC
..and our streets ?
.. Well it certainly seems like the #GreenDreamSupremacism Cult has taken over the BBC and our streets
.. therefore we are right to speak up.
As soon as I switch on the radio today, the BBC agenda pushing starts
#GreenDreamSupremacism
6:25am Radio Humberside : The Paul Hudson Weather show is basically a GreenDream Religion show
#WhiteGuilt
Radio4 was supposed to be talking a place in the countryside
but no, they shoehorned in agenda, by choosing a place which is a memorial to the Amritsar massacre
\\ presenter Anita Anand has grown up knowing about this tragic event //
#GreenDream Supremacism
6:30am the Radio4 4 Farming prog comes on
topic "Farming and Climate Change : Agriculture is responsible for 10 per cent of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions - Charlotte Smith finds out what has been done to change that."
#LibSupremacism
So I switch to Radio5 where they report the death of Lyra McKee : Are the deaths/abuse of other treated equally ?
No first cos she is a journalist and one of media's own
and secondly cos she in a lesbian marriage with a child she gets much higher victimhood status from the Radio5 presenters than us normal people would.
etc. etc.
Stewgreen,
I just meant No, on this occasion my post was censored. It is reproduced above, I provided evidence that contradicts his 'rebuttals' on the temperature trends, the influence of climate change on forest fires and coral bleaching. I am not sure which of these is not 'sticking to the topic'.
M Courtney - Look at the Dessler paper that Stormfront Phil linked. It shows that the physics works as expected. And also that the magnitude is not a problem
Either you have not read the paper, or you are happy to misrepresent its conclusions, the main one being …
I now need a suitable nickname for you, Complacent Courtney? ;-)
Oh, and by the way, Arrhenius's estimate of climate sensitivity to CO2 was 4C per doubling, towards the top end of the modern range of estimates.
Any more info on how a 90 minute program got snipped down to 60 minutes?
I wonder if private previews happened (they must have ...) - and some folk not in the immediate production bubble scoped out 30 minutes of howlers? - 30 minutes (50% - ish ) is a simply enormous edit in TV land.
Given that it was apparently tedious as broadcast - one wonders if that 30 minutes rendered it terminally tedious or was it some now discredited or plainly wrong claims that were snipped?
@Ken Rice: I did look at the discussion thread which you supplied. I wonder if you have looked at Murry's maths if so perhaps you could show where it is wrong and by the way I mean each separate analysis leading to the same conclusion. When I first met him a number of years ago I pointed out another argument that further reduced the amount of increased CO2 that could be genuinely attributed to humans rather than argue his finding was too low. Actually it seemed to me that most people disagreed with you although that of course is not a measure of being correct. After all we have children on the streets spouting rubbish taught them by people who cannot separate fact from hypothesis or more appropriately in some cases fact from fantasy. Now much as I enjoy disagreeing with you I really must get on with work on our land and preparing for the arrival of family members tomorrow, one of whom is also an astrophysicist.
Peter,
Here are two examples of errors in his presentation. In one he suggests that we've warmed much less than expected given the rise in atmospheric CO2. However, he choose y-axis ranges that are rather deceptive. You can read about that here. Another problem is with his correlation calculation. He does indeed show a correlation between temperature variations and variations in atmospheric CO2 changes. However, such calculations are insensitive to constant offsets. Since he considers a relatively short time period, the average increase in atmospheric CO2 is essentially a constant offset. So, the correlation calculation does indeed show that the amount by which atmospheric CO2 changes each year does depend on surface temperatures. However, it doesn't show that the long-term increase (the offset) is due to these temperature variations. The long-term change is due to our emissions. You can read about that here.
Is this something you ever discuss with your astrophysicist relative?
The conception + gestation of "Climate-Change the Facts" from @CarbonBrief
Tomo could you get a FOI from the BBC and pull up CCt Facts their production notes.Especially the financial accounts.All the CC advocates must of put in expenses invoices that someone from the BBC budget department signed off.
Stormfront Phil, Yes. Dessler has "quantified" warming of "several degrees Celsius.".
He doesn't say over what time period though. He just says that the emissions so far would cause that if his estimate for feedback is right. two degrees over a century would be harmless. Three degrees over 150 years would not be noticed also. It's not something to prioritise.
We have had this discussion. I agreed with the IPCC that AGW was not a priority. You didn't care as acting now causes increased poverty and gives more dead black people. We disagreed. I said that that was not a good thing. So you insulted my father.
Reference, this Discussion thread: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/discussion/post/2729452
However, obviously Dessler's estimate of amplification has not been right so far. There is a delay - there was a Pause. So we have to consider the reality, not just the models.
Option 1: The effect of CO2 emissions is negligible as the wavelengths are already saturated. In which case the amplification won't happen. This fits with the observations of the last quarter century.
Option 2: The Oceans are absorbing the heat before the amplification occurs. And they don't count as negative feedback as they will kick the heat out later to be amplified. There is no known mechanism for this and no evidence either. But it could happen. If so we know nothing as to how much of anything is due to anthropogenic forcing and how much is mysterious ocean heat from ancient days. This fits with the observations of the last quarter century and everything else as it is fundamentally untestable. SKS like it.
Option 3: Well, you tell me why the amplification didn't happen and we had the Pause I can't think of another reason. Except the one Dessler says may exist. That a negative feedback (unmodeled) makes AGW moot. But like Option 2, there is no evidence for that. It might be clouds though. Maybe.
For the record, Arrhenius estimate was completely wrong and was debunked immediately. The scientific community accepted that and considered AGW to be negligible. See link.
https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm#Sk
Unusually, what changed the consensus was lots of politically-motivated funding rather than any new observations. This is why Climatology makes no progress and is considered controversial.
In answer to Phil Clarke’s rebuttal of the proof that the radiant heat absorption greenhouse effect is fake. It is also proved to be fake by the atmospheric mass/gravity/pressure Greenhouse effect of James Clark Maxwell, found in 1888, being proven correct. Therefore also proving that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is proven to be zero. Mensa members I know have pointed to Astronomers who have proven that Carbon Dioxide warming is as Donald Trump says “A Hoax”. Attempts by Astronomers to calibrate CO2 warming on Mars and Venus all failed until a finding that the temperature on Venus at the altitude that has identical pressure to that on the Earths surface, at 1.176 times the Earths average surface temperature, lead to working out the formula. This coinciding with a radiating temperature for Venus of 1.176 times that of the Earth, proving that a Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen Atmosphere have similar warming properties. This lead to the “Unified Theory of Climate” which shows that the average surface temperature divided by the grey body temperature gives you the magnitude of the Thermal inertia which resembles the response of the temperature/potential temperature ratio to the altitudinal changes of pressure described by the Poisson formula, with predictions matching evidence for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Europa, Titan, Triton and the Moon, to prove that the physical nature of the so-called Greenhouse Effect is in fact a Pressure-induced Thermal Enhancement or Thermal Inertia which is independent of the atmospheric chemical composition. Mercury and the Moon are used to prove that the Grey body temperature and the average surface temperature are equal when there is no Atmosphere. A fall in the Earths average surface temperature of 16 Kelvin in the last 50 million years correlates with a drop in the atmospheric pressure of almost one bar, or in other words a halving of the Earths atmospheric pressure at the surface due to half of the mass of the Earths atmosphere being lost to space. The only significant change to the temperature of the atmosphere of Venus is with altitude, the atmospheric temperature drops by an average of 100 Kelvin for every 11 miles, up to an altitude of 60 miles. From Venus the Sun appears 38 percent bigger than it does from the Earth, an atmosphere that is 96.5 percent CO2 and 93 times both the mass and the surface pressure of the Earths atmosphere, as well as having a quarter of a million times more CO2 than the Earth. This new formula not only explains the Greenhouse Effect on all known Planetary Atmospheres, but also explains the Greenhouse Effect on Earth at the time of the Dinosaurs, providing the solution to why the Earths average surface temperature was much higher, but Solar irradiance being weaker, thus correlating with higher atmospheric pressure. I have heard that the Atmospheric pressure must have been at least double, with air pressure inside the bubbles trapped in Amber reaching a high of 10 Bar, much of the Earths atmosphere being lost to space since this time. This also resolves two other anomalies, which are how a dinosaur’s heart could pump blood 23 feet upwards and how a giant flying Quetzalcoatlus had the energy to stay airborne, something that biology and aerodynamics says is not possible in today’s atmosphere.
Jamspid
tempting as it is to torment the BBC - I feel it's pointless and likely counterproductive without some spadework to recover a cudgel or several.
The TV guides are as far as I know dynamic in that they update and have no memory (often at the very last moment before a show airs).
If you spot anything put it in archive.org and drop a link here.
I suspect stewgreen has been looking around - if it was originally scheduled for 90 mins and went to 60 - something happened - and given what we know about BBC antics - the reasons for a big edit won't be improved clarity eh?
@Richard Pinder: Yes I wrote something to the same effect some three or four years ago. However the effective sensitivity of CO2 is only close to zero because the dry adiabatic lapse rate is given by dT/dh =g/Cp where T is temperature h is height above the Earth' surface and Cp the specific heat of air at constant pressure. The wet rate is far more complex. Anyway since Cp is made up of the weighted composition components mainly nitrogen, oxygen, argon etc clearly a change in carbon dioxide content whether or not it is accompanied by a change in oxygen content must change the lapse rate and the pressure distribution too. Consequently the sensitivity cannot be zero just small. Regards Peter
Sorry Richard I missed out the minus sign in my lapse rate formula. Another lapse of which I have many. Regards Peter
Stormfront Phil, Yes. Dessler has "quantified" warming of "several degrees Celsius.". He doesn't say over what time period though.
Which part of 'over the next century' is giving you the problem, Careless Courtney?
This lead to the “Unified Theory of Climate” which shows that the average surface temperature divided by the grey body temperature gives you the magnitude of the Thermal inertia which resembles the response of the temperature/potential temperature ratio to the altitudinal changes of pressure described by the Poisson formula, with predictions matching evidence for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Europa, Titan, Triton and the Moon, to prove that the physical nature of the so-called Greenhouse Effect is in fact a Pressure-induced Thermal Enhancement or Thermal Inertia which is independent of the atmospheric chemical composition. Mercury and the Moon are used to prove that the Grey body temperature and the average surface temperature are equal when there is no Atmosphere.
As laid out here (and other places) by Nikolov and Zeller.
The basic idea has been discredited so many times it is hard to choose which to link. Roy Spencer's version is one of the more readable.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/12/why-atmospheric-pressure-cannot-explain-the-elevated-surface-temperature-of-the-earth/
PS - ATTP also made a contribution
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/no-pressure-alone-does-not-define-surface-temperatures/
ATTP, why if you don't think that AGW will be catastrophic and obviously the Attenborough programme was very alarmist, did you come here to troll sceptics? Why not write an artcle of your own saying that the programme was both overblown and in places just wrong? Why not demand a little honesty into climate conversation?
Tiny,
I don't think it *will* be catastrophic, but I think it *could* be. There aren't simply two possible outcomes - "catastrophe" and "everything's fine". The impact of climate change will largely depend on what we do.
Good to see the Blog back in action - great deal of interest shown and some long missed faces return. long may it last.
Brilliant opinion section piece by Julie Birchill in today’s Telegragh. Well done babe.
So if we don't turn to nuclear, like the majority of environmentalists insist we don't, can we prevent catastrophe? Can people still fly like Emma Thompson and David Attenborough so long as they can afford the offsets? Will CO2 be another way to divide the haves and the have nots? Do you think that lying in a programme is the best way to get people on board?
If you think it matters what we do, then surely you'd put your time and energy into getting the most bang for our buck? It's not the science or the sceptics that are getting in the way of action. It's organisations like Greenpeace. People like Emma Thompson who want to harass governments into putting up more windmills and solar panels but not stop her enjoying all the goodies that fossil fuels provide. Surely as a logical man, you don't think we can run on renewables and batteries? You must know that our CO2 footprint has fallen because heavy industry has moved out but we still import the goods. Swapping coal for gas has cut a percentage but the savings can't be repeated. Even our youngest nuclear station has helped cut CO2 but several older stations are reaching the end of their life and replacements are uncertain. Sceptics are open to using sensible tools to cut CO2, regardless of whether we worry abot CO2 - the same can't be said about warmists.
So if you are worried, if you care, why are you faffing about with the science and not concentrating cutting CO2? What is it with warmists that you're so reluctant to commit to your cause? Why do you pin all your hopes on governments waving a magic wand?
Tiny,
It's possible for many things to be true at the same time. Some activists may well not practice what they preach. Reducing CO2 emissions may well be difficult, and some of the proposed solutions may well not work. We may well have cut our emissions mainly by off-shoring our heavy industry. All of this can be true and it still doesn't mean that continuing to dump CO2 into the atmosphere won't lead to severely negative impacts.
But those true things don't explain why you're here ATTP. It DOES point to AGW being something people like you engage with as a hobby.
"All of this can be true and it still doesn't mean that continuing to dump CO2 into the atmosphere won't lead to severely negative impacts"
Since neither you nor anybody else has ever provided any compelling evidence of such impacts, what exactly are you afraid of? Things that go bump in the night?
Tiny,
What does me being here have to do with anything? I write a blog. I sometimes comment on other blogs. I think it's an important topic.
ATTP, your being here proves that it's just a hobby. It proves that deep down you don't care about CO2 anymore than we do. Like a jet setting actress in 'I'm just a simple person' dungarees, telling people they have to pay more taxes than they do now and have much, much less of life's goodies than her. What wonderful people warmists are /sarc.
Until all the prophets of doom like Attenborough, XR, ATTP and Phil Clarke give up the benefits of fossil fuel in their lives then I regard their prohesies of impending doom as as a play for power. The tactic of creating fear to obtain power over the masses for a select few has worked well throughout human history. Using flaky disputed science and flaky modified data is just a new method of gaining power for a new elite.
When I see Attenborough presenting a programme, or people blocking streets in London wearing Hodden Grey and discarding their modern water containers for gourds and cups for coconut shells (can reccomend them as they are long lived and moss and mould don't grow on them) then it's nothing more than a hoax.
@Jamspid mentioned Julie Birchill. article
\\Tomorrow is “Earth Day” – but after the Extinction Rebellion shenanigans this week,
I would imagine that a good many harassed travellers feel like telling the Earth to stick it where the Sun doesn’t shine.
It makes sense that these narcissists in activists clothing would have picked a workers’ Bank Holiday for their antics
– I wonder how many of them have jobs?
It’s always been the privileged who’ve gone gaga for green issues;
they’re friends of the Earth because it’s been such a good friend to them. //
I can see it with my free account
Dessler refers to emissions over the next century. He does not say when the warming is expected to materialise.
That was why I referred to the Pause.
If you think Dessler expects the radiative effects of CO2 to be observed at the speed of light then you are acknowledging that the Pause debunks dangerous AGW.
But neither you, nor Dessler, seem to think that.
So there must be a delaying factor, in your minds. A view which I did take seriously. Because, I admit, it isn't debunked.
Yet.
Why the antagonism against ATTP?
I disagree with him and find his tag-name more patronising that amusing but he seems sincere. He argues honestly and reasonably logically (as much as any of us do). He just starts from a premise that I happen to disagree with.
He isn't a proven hypocrite like Stormfront Phil Clarke. Don't smear him with guilt by association.
They may be on the same side - they are - but that does not mean that their reasons are the same.
M Courtney, because his hobby costs us all a lot of money and won't even solve the problem.
A reading comprehension fail.
Quite.
M Courtney, why the hostility to aTTP?
Well, I've softened to him over the years, but I still can't work out what he's trying to achieve. He runs a blog committed to the science of AGW (which as I read it often borders on CAGW, though I'll take his word that he isn't committed to the CAGW hypothesis). The problem is that he can write things like this:
"It's possible for many things to be true at the same time. Some activists may well not practice what they preach. Reducing CO2 emissions may well be difficult, and some of the proposed solutions may well not work. We may well have cut our emissions mainly by off-shoring our heavy industry. All of this can be true and it still doesn't mean that continuing to dump CO2 into the atmosphere won't lead to severely negative impacts."
He cheer-leads for CO2 worrying (I'll be kind and won't use the word alarmism). So far as I'm aware, he'll never criticise the likes of globe-trotting climate warriors, XR, Emma Thompson, et al. Yet he seems, at times (as above), to accept that there's not a fat lot we can realistically do about it. Debates with him over at cliscep have pointed out that "we" can't mean just the UK, but must mean the whole of humanity on the planet, but I've never (to my knowledge) seen him acknowledge that UK emissions cuts are a waste of time, money and effort, so long as the rest of the world continues to increase their emissions. Ditto Phil Clarke.
I don't know what people like Phil Clarke and aTTP want us to do, or why? I would welcome a clear explanation of their goals, and why they're so active on the internet, in a few short, sharp, clear and concise paragraphs, avoiding all obfuscation. Who knows, I many even find I agree with them, if only I could work out what they're trying to say!
"I don't know what people like Phil Clarke and aTTP want us to do, or why?"
I've tried to work that out but we assume that there is a rational answer.
If someone isn't worried that most of the things being done are cosmetic, they aren't worried about CO2 either. So any residual activity must be for entertainment. AGW is their hobby.
aTTP question . If any of your unwashed yetti smug white middle classed privileged spliff head Air Miles Ski holidays ECO Warrior mates in Oxford Circus stood in the Upcoming May European Elections would Nigel Farage new Brexit Party wipe them our.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/what-david-attenboroughs-climate-change-show-didnt-tell-you/
Relevant article from the Spectator objecting to two of the falsehoods in the programme.
Relevant article from the Spectator
What a weird piece. It contests the link between climate change and tropical cyclones (the prediction is for an increase in the intensity rather than the frequency, and has already been observed) and in support links to the website of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, where we find this statement …
The Spectator also takes issue with the Attenborough programme's claim of 'a tripling in the extent of wildfires in the Western US' but at the same time concedes that 'in the case of Idaho, you could even say the acreage burned has trebled in the past 30 years'. It is not true, 'cos its true!
And the author is apparently ignorant of the well-documented link between forest fire and anthropogenic climate change in the Western US
https://www.pnas.org/content/113/42/11770
The Spectator - Every bit as accurate as Paul Homewood!
Caroline Lucas provides one answer to the puzzle...
One does have to wonder just who exactly is the real power behind the exploitation of Greta?
I remember the last time a certain elite tried to use children to achieve a certain goal. Most of those kids ended up as sex slaves for Muslims in the "former" holy lands.
ATTP, I have been away for a couple of days, but I see the argument still continues. I agree with Mark H. - what are you trying to achieve?
As a physicist I would like to discuss non-equilibrium thermodynamics - which subsumes Henry's law, the IGLs, etc. however, I think it would get lost in the noise. So I must (for the final time) ask for a reasoned response to my points that have previously been postulated, and remain unanswered:
There is no empirical evidence to support the CAGW hypothesis. Flawed computer models have no value whatsoever. Furthermore, the climate has been both colder (LIA, frozen Thames and Hudson) and hotter (MWP, dairy farming in Greenland) within human recorded history. These are facts - established centuries before the industrial revolution. The cycle extends further into the past - the dark ages and the Roman warm period. We are simply at the midway point between the highs and lows, thankfully warming!
Furthermore, there IS empirical evidence that CO2 has a negligible effect on the climate. The CAGW hypothesis relies on a narrow view of radiative physics, where IR radiation is absorbed in 3 narrow bands, whereas the effect of water in the atmosphere evidently dominates. Check the evidence - the climate of the arid deserts has not altered in recorded history, where the effect of water vapour is not present. If CO2 was the "control knob" of climate you would see the climate of deserts converge with that of the humid tropics - but this has not happened.
We do not need less CO2, we need more. It increases plant growth, which is essential for all animal life on Earth. CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere, if it was half of this plant life (and animal life) would die. 0.1% CO2 in the atmosphere would greatly help to feed to world's teeming billions (assuming we don't turn it into biofuel!). There is no reason whatsoever to suppose that such a concentration would cause harmful warming.
PC 'the prediction is for an increase in the intensity rather than the frequency, and has already been observed' Ha, it didn't used to be. It's only since the frequency of cat 3+ hurricanes dropped that they've changed their tune. And they're always changing their tune to suit the scariest thing that has happened recently. There is a lot of evidence that the forest fire problem is the result of stopping small burns that the American natives (in fact many countries' natives) used to use extensively.
Don't bother waving papers at me. They're little better than news articles and there are always alternate papers. Yawn. Get a better system than peer review to assess their quality and I might take them seriously.
Don't bother waving papers at me. ...Yawn.
Assertions without a shred of evidence .... Yawn. You seemingly prefer The Spectator to academic journals. Each to their own. Peer review is imperfect like most human endeavours, but if you know a better way of getting towards the truth I am sure a lot of people would be grateful to hear it. But I tell you what, you're unlikely to find it in the publication that was taken in by Nils Axel Morner.
Phill sorry but 31st of October ,Climate Change the idiot protesters kicked off the front Pages and back to boring old BREXIT..Well actually we got the European Union Elections coming in May. and then Mrs May leadership challenge.
And Phil in a media obsessed world where everybody and every organisation is chasing a headline including the biggest “firm” in Britain all chasing headline space don’t forget this also
https://www.ok.co.uk/royal/royal-news/1570521/meghan-markle-due-date-when-mum-doria-ragland-arrives-uk-royal-baby-sussex-prince-harry
So what would the great British public rather have a choice a feel bad end of the world story light show story unless we pay more green taxes or a feel good another we have to pay more taxes (but they do bring in the tourists) White ,Black ,Ginger ,Gender Neutral adorable Royal Baby we also have to keep story with both parents from two divorced devastated broken marriages.
Phill In the end it’s not about random dots on an urban heat island temperature graph but it’s about who gets the most viewers ,readers and clickers.
I guess we are have to get used to this...
- BBC News
Paul Homewood is at this moment writing a piece claiming that as no CET records were broken, it doesn't count.
@ATTP: Ken I have not had time to follow all of your hares but have had a look at some. On Murry's work I think that we are not comparing like with like. I have been considering his recent stuff. Your comments relate to presentations back in 2011/2012 I believe. It maybe that you would claim your comments are still valid. Let me know. On the question of the partial pressure balances in respect of Henry's Law I see in some of your stuff that you try to infer the anthropogenic footprint not only using C12/C13 ratios but also C14 on the basis that no C14 is released from burning fossil fuels. Whilst the latter is correct it suffers from two flaws. Firstly the same argument about fossil fuel emissions suppressing natural ones to maintain the correct partial pressure balance and in the short-term the more subtle one which is that the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen to C14 is a function of the solar cycle through changes in the interactions of the Earth and Solar magnetospheres letting in different amounts of charged cosmic particles. Actually I seem to recall showing this fingerprint argument to be incorrect decades ago.
Phil,
Most normal people look at those temperatures and rejoice! But not our climate catastrophiliacs! No...to them lovely weather is proof of the coming of the end of the world!!!!
Personally I cannot wait for a brilliant summer to come along! I hope its as hot as last years (BUT I hope its more evenly spaced through all of summer instead of only over a couple days interspersed through the summer months like last year.
Most normal people don't give a rats monkeys ass about "records"...especially those who are wary of how climate catastrophilacs have a tendency to reduce past historic temperatures to make current temps look even worse (or in this case worse means hotter).
Mailman
Mailman
The cult of Greta Thunberg
This young woman sounds increasingly like a millenarian weirdo.
Brendan O'Neill
BRENDAN O'NEILL
EDITOR
22nd April 2019
The cult of Greta Thunberg
Share
TopicsPOLITICS WORLD
Anyone who doubts that the green movement is morphing into a millenarian cult should take a close look at Greta Thunberg. This poor young woman increasingly looks and sounds like a cult member. The monotone voice. The look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes. The explicit talk of the coming great ‘fire’ that will punish us for our eco-sins. There is something chilling and positively pre-modern about Ms Thunberg. One can imagine her in a sparse wooden church in the Plymouth Colony in the 1600s warning parishioners of the hellfire that will rain upon them if they fail to give up their witches.
It actually makes sense that Ms Thunberg – a wildly celebrated 16-year-old Swede who founded the climate-strike movement for schoolkids – should sound cultish. Because climate-change alarmism is becoming ever stranger, borderline religious, obsessed with doomsday prophecies. Consider Extinction Rebellion, the latest manifestation of the upper-middle classes’ contempt for industrialisation and progress. It is at times indistinguishable from old fundamentalist movements that warned mankind of the coming End of Days. I followed Extinction Rebellion from Parliament Square to Marble Arch yesterday and what I witnessed was a public display of millenarian fear and bourgeois depression. People did dances of death and waved placards warning of the heat-death of the planet. It felt deeply unnerving.
It struck me that this was a march against people. Most radical protest and direct action is aimed at officialdom or government or people with power. This macabre schlep through London was aimed squarely at ordinary people. Banners and placards made no disguise of the marchers’ contempt for how the masses live. We were told that ‘Meat = heat’ (that is, if you carry on eating meat, you fat bastards, the planet will get even hotter) and that driving and flying are destroying Mother Earth. Of course, it’s okay for them to fly – Emma Thompson jetted first-class from LA to London to lecture us plebs about all our eco-destructive holidaymaking. It’s only a problem when we do it; it’s only bad when we take advantage of the miracle of mass food production and the expansion of flight to make our lives fuller and more pleasurable. They detest that. They detest mass society and its inhabitants.
In keeping with all millenarian movements, the extinction-obsessed green cult reserves its priestly fury for ordinary people. Even when it is putting pressure on the government, it is really asking it to punish us. It wants tighter controls on car-driving, restrictions on flying, green taxes on meat. That these things would severely hit the pockets of ordinary people – but not the deep pockets of Emma Thompson and the double-barrelled eco-snobs who run Extinction Rebellion – is immaterial to the angry bourgeoisie. So convinced are they of their own goodness, and of our wickedness, that they think it is utterly acceptable for officialdom to make our lives harder in order to strongarm us into being more ‘green’. People complaining about Extinction Rebellion disrupting people’s lives in London over the past few days are missing the point – the entire point of the green movement is to disrupt ordinary people’s lives, and even to immiserate them. All in the jumped-up name of ‘saving the planet’.
And now the green cult has pushed Ms Thunberg into the position of its global leader, its child-like saviour, the messiah of their miserabilist political creed. What they have done to Ms Thunberg is unforgivable. They have pumped her – and millions of other children – with the politics of fear. They have convinced the next generation that the planet is on the cusp of doom. They have injected dread into the youth. ‘I want you to panic’, said Ms Thunberg at Davos, and the billionaires and celebs and marauding NGOs that were in attendance all lapped it up. Because adult society loves nothing more than having its own fear and confusions obediently parroted back to it by teenagers. They celebrate Thunberg because she tells them how horrible they are: it is an entirely S&M relationship, speaking to the deep self-loathing of the 21st-century elites.
Young people, Ms Thunberg isn’t your leader. She’s a patsy for scared and elitist adults. Don’t do as she says. Instead, refuse to panic, mock the blather about hellfire, and appreciate that mankind’s transformation of the planet has been a glorious thing that has expanded life expectancy, allowed billions to live in cities, and made it possible for even the less well-off to travel the globe. Sin against St Greta.
Thanks Brendan Please dont have a little create over copyright .But that poor snotty nosed kid Greta I know she’s being exploited and we shouldn’t take piss it’s unfair but she is that creepy little girl Wednesday from the Adams Family or one of those weird alien kids from Village of the Damed She’s a Bit like Steve Irwin daughter who is really well fit now but she was a right little oddball when she was little.
This poor young woman increasingly looks and sounds like a cult member. The monotone voice. The look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes.
Or it could be down to her Asperger's syndrome. Mocking an autistic teenager. Nice.
Apr 22, 2019 at 8:21 PM | Jamspid I copied this from spiked
"Young people, Ms Thunberg isn’t your leader. She’s a patsy for scared and elitist adults"
She is a grooming victim of child abusers known as Greens and Climate Scientists.
Meanwhile, one of my childhood heroes is also spouting drivel.
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/04/attenboroughs-climate-facts-fell-off-a-cliff-with-the-walruses/