Farrago Line

Feverish

Gore doesn't practice what he preaches. That's a sidebar reason, but a strong one, for why I don't buy the "we're killing the earth" scenario. Why, in fact, I think it a scam, a transparent one at that.

But Gore buys special dispensation global warming credits. Doesn't that count for something?

Of course it does: it counts as evidence that Gore doesn't believe the scam either. If he did, he'd downsize his energy usage, buy dispensation for what little CO2 emissions were left, and so would all his over-energized followers. But they don't.

And why should they? It's a scam. They don't want to save the earth. They want to reorder its inhabitants. The global warming scam is a mere tactic, as some guy named Jonah Goldberg points out here.

Take two aspirins....

Two more unbelievers, here and here, ignore the fire alarms being pulled by Al Gore.

Who, by the way, appears to be off the meds again:

"The planet has a fever," Gore said. "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action."

Based on Gore's carbon footprint, is it fair to speculate that the action he would take is to throw gasoline on the burning crib?

Fear Factor III

Love Global Warming offers a take on climatic climaxes and the "New World Order". The site cites, among other things, the fear factor and comments on its political value. Could they possibly be on to something?

____________________________________________________________________________

Fear Factor II

James Taranto weighs in with a great point on the fear factor issue.

He notes this line in the article:

"Before this century is over, billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic," predicted James Lovelock, a renowned environmental scientist.

And points out that:

This is a bit like predicting that tomorrow the sun will rise and a comet will strike Europe. The first part of the prediction is safe, the second is wildly far-fetched.

Thanks Mr. Taranto.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Gored

Hello.

____________________________________________________________________________

Men cause global warming

Daniel Clark notices yet another cause of global warming: men.

______________________________________________________________________________

Fear Factor

Yet another float on the panic parade: We should be more afraid of climate change than nuclear warfare. And just because nuclear apocalypse never transpired doesn't mean the doomsayers aren't right this time.

Is it fitting the article begins by referencing fictional accounts of planetary doom?

Not everybody's caught climate fever.

Some don't buy any of this "climate porn", as a UK think tank recently described such talk. Al Gore's movie is "bullshit from beginning to end", according to Ray Evans, a former Western Mining executive and author of the Lavoisier Group's Nine Facts About Climate Change (2006). For Evans and many others, man-made climate change panic is a bugaboo, perhaps even a hoax.

Check out this next graf: The debate isn't about climate change (no debate, there: climates change) or the fantasy that humans cause catastrophic climate change. It's about something we can all yak about no end.

Either way, the debate over climate change is now about fear. How afraid should we be? It's a valid question, because a sensible reaction to any threat begins with fear. Fear can help propel us towards solutions, as it did in the case of ozone-depleting CFCs. But we don't want to respond to a threat with asymmetric alarm.

Is that a load of crap? "A sensible reaction to any threat (the existence of which in this case is entirely suspect if not patent nonsense) begins with fear?"

The article dismisses debate (whatever that is) on catastrophic climate change saying the "debate" (cough propaganda machine cough cough) has switched to how much fear and panic is needed to lead to proper solutions. And here's why we should be terrorized: "Just because it never happened before, doesn't mean it won't ever happen."

Very true. Utterly useless.

Here's the author's parting remarks, and yet another reason I don't buy the climate panicmongers.

What's really cheering about climate change anxiety is that it's about the deep future, a place the Bomb managed to obliterate without a single missile leaving its silo. This time, our fear means something because we can act on it.

Exactly what panicmongers love to see: people acting on their fear, which is always the only fear to fear.

____________________________________________________________________________

Esoterica Warning

In the spirit of openness, full disclosure, open sources, free ranges and what have you, this post, received the following comment:

An Inconvenient Truth - Sheikh Omran

Compare what media reported and what sheikh Omran said about Climate change
http://aswjblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/what-sheikh-omran-said-about-climate.html

First off, thanks to whomever at ASWJ for commenting.

Second, what's your point?

The "Clerical Error?" post does not defne or purport to know what the media reported ... about anything. It linked to a story in News.com.au. The post linked to that story so that Farrago Line readers (all both of them) could see for themselves the primary document from which I lifted two paragraphs to beef up my miserable post.

Furthermore, the ASWJ comment points to a partial transcript of a speech that, as far as I can tell, doesn't address one way or another anything in the "Clerical Errors" post.

All I can discern, from both the news.com.au story and the generous ASWJ comment is that at least one Islamic brother buys the Global Warming hype. He may disagree on who's to blame. Al Gore blames jet fuel burning, massive electric power using, big car driving Americans such as himself. And Sheik Omran blames, near as I can tell, secular scientists' experiments.

Maybe I'm missing something embarrassingly obvious?

The Green Conundrum

Human nature rears its ... rear, I guess.

Greens say that their message is getting out. We've all heard it. And we all want to save the earth ... just so we don't actually have to do anything about it.

An Australian TV network worked up a "2½ hour feast of practical advice on how (viewers) might save the planet."

But only about 600,000 actually tuned in. And it's not like nobody knew about the special.

"We had study guides in schools, we had the full support of the print media (italics added) , both editorially and with advertising, and an extensive [Ten Network] on-air campaign with a number of different creative treatments and different stances.

"We spent a fortune to get the audience there and it didn't work. We've talked about it quite a lot internally. We're disappointed."

The SydneyMorning Herald calls it "the green condundrum".

Despite the focus on climate change, the green conundrum is alive across myriad product categories, including toilet paper.

Australians spend $500 million a year on the stuff but just $20 million each year goes to brands using recycled paper. Since 2005 the category has been in decline, although it showed some promise in the latter part of last year.

Maybe it is a conundrum. Or perhaps it's hype overload?

Is it possible that decades of doomsayer prognostications -- all of which faded and were forgotten when the predicted troubles failed to materialize at the appointed time (the population bomb and attendant famine, overcrowding, even longer lines at the motor vehicle department, etc.; holes in the ozone; ice age; etc.) -- have inured us 'umble masses to the foam-flecked forecasting of panicmongers so that we no longer buy their incessant ballyhoo?

Maybe not.

Another explanation may be that we all know it's not nice to mock the Global Swarming theologians. "It's settled science!" "Debate Ended!" So we don't. When asked, we politely aver that we really do totally honest to gosh fully and wholeheartedly believe we're all gonna fry, drown, starve and go crazy in ten years if we don't use recycled toilet paper, carpool around in solar-powered coke cans and dwell in caves. But once left to ourselves, we resume our lives, heat our homes, drive to work, church, and soccer practice, and leave poor Mother Earth alone. Maybe we know instinctively that she's a tough old broad and can take anything we can dish out. Maybe we got the message about global warming. Maybe we don't need another two and half hours of media blast on earth-saving tips, especially not if it's up against CSI.

Or maybe we don't take the message any more seriously than Al Gore appears to.

And then, of course, there are those rebels who simply find GW's Kool-Aid too sweet.

____________________________________________________________________________

Chill Al

In a New York Times article today geology professor Don J. Easterbrook sprinkles ice water on Al Gore's global warming flames. According to the Times, Easterbrook is among a number of scientists who can't warm to Gore's global panic crusade.

But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

In a response, Gore makes a telling remark about the vaunted "consensu" on global warming in the scientific community.

Mr. Gore, in an e-mail exchange about the critics, said his work made “the most important and salient points” about climate change, if not “some nuances and distinctions” scientists might want. “The degree of scientific consensus on global warming has never been stronger,” he said, adding, “I am trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand.”

The "degree of consensus". Oh, I get it. It's a degree of concensus. And does anyone dispute consensus on global warming? Isn't the question: Does human activity that produces CO2 cause catastrophic climate change? And if that's the issue on which there's a degree of consensus, what is that degree?

In the article, one scientist backs Gore while conceding "minor inaccuracies", "imperfections", and "technical flaws" in the former V.P.'s science. Ah, but then, he's also "a top adviser to Mr. Gore".

Oh...Kay.

Mr. Gore added that he perceived no general backlash among scientists against his work.

Could death threats and ostracization maybe have something to do with that? Or maybe he ignores Robert Carter's blog:

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”