Death Knell: Part II - The Propaganda Machine

Climate change – a term which makes "global warming" indisputable because if it cools in some places and heats in others, or gets dryer in one place and wetter in another (supposedly), then IT MUST BE BECAUSE OF HUMAN CO2 EMMISIONS! from The Urban Dictionary.

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This installment and the next few following it address the never ending propaganda stream we're subjected to in an effort to convince a credulous populous that we're all doomed unless we take drastic measures to stop AGW.

There is more than the usual kind of boilerplate propaganda being employed to further the AGW agenda. There are the Hysterical Predictions. There is the Persecution of Non-believers. There are the Data Anomalies, Questionable Practices, and Bad Models (read: fraud). And lastly, there is the Governmental Full-court Press to force the issue.

I'm addressing each of these techniques separately, as their employment is crucial to the whole house of cards that is AGW propaganda. Today's technique: Hysterical Predictions.

Hysterical Predictions

In light of recent evidence that the planet is actually cooling, the True Believers have changed their focus and now refer to the "crisis" as Climate Change. Thus armed, ANY weather anomaly can be attributed to AGW!

Here are examples of hysterical predictions and, in some cases, an open mocking of those predictions that have come up short.

You'll be able to kayak to the North Pole!

Via the Canadian Free Press comes this little gem:

"You could potentially sail, kayak or even swim to the North Pole by the end of the summer. Climate scientists say that the Arctic ice . . . is currently on track to melt sometime in 2008." Ted Alvarez, Backpacker Magazine Blogs, June, 2008.

Soon after this prediction, a huge Russian icebreaker got trapped in the thick ice of the Northwest Passage for a full week.

The Russian icebreaker? Now THAT'S funny, I don't care who you are.

2009 will be the warmest year on record!

Next year is set to be one of the top-five warmest on record, British climate scientists said on Tuesday.

The average global temperature for 2009 is expected to be more than 0.4 degrees celsius above the long-term average, despite the continued cooling of huge areas of the Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Nina.

Yeah, about that. It's a pity all of these record low temperatures had to go and spoil that for you.

The E. coli outbreak was caused by global warming!

Hmmm. That's odd. Discover Magazine removed the article and comments from their site. Maybe it's because Mexican peppers were discovered to have caused the outbreak.

AGW is causing rampant disasters!

Global warming is destroying species, raising sea levels and threatening millions of poor people, the United Nations' top scientific panel will say today in a report that U.N. officials hope will help mobilize the world into taking tougher actions on climate change.

Funny thing. They don't bother to provide a single shred of evidence. Funny.

Obama only has 4 years to save the planet!

Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama's first administration, he added.

Soaring carbon emissions are already causing ice-cap melting and threaten to trigger global flooding.

This one is more than a little bit laughable, given the "kayak to the North Pole" item and the fact that ice around the poles hasn't changed in the past 30 years.

But there's one thing about this item that isn't funny in the least. Check the name of the "scientist". Jim Hansen is the numero uno NASA propagandist in chief. His agenda? He believes that climate change should be used as a vehicle for wealth distribution.

Excess carbon may result in an ice age!

Researchers at the University of Birmingham found that 630 million years ago the earth had a warm atmosphere full of carbon dioxide but was completely covered with ice.

The scientists studied limestone rocks and found evidence that large amounts of greenhouse gas coincided with a prolonged period of freezing temperatures.

Such glaciation could happen again if global warming is not curbed, the university's school of geography, earth and environmental sciences warned.

Pardon me for a second here - I'm going to wet myself laughing!

I mean, COME ON! Even at "high" levels of CO2, there is a gas that is much more plentiful and has a much bigger influence on planetary temperatures than CO2. You want to know that that dangerous gas is? It's effing WATER VAPOR!

Global warming causes extreme cold weather!

The recent cold wave sweeping across Mumbai and other parts of India could be attributed to global warming, experts said on Tuesday here at an environmental conference.

Yeah. They actually said it.

And, now...the coup de grace.

The top 10 dud predictions of 2008:

1. OUR CITIES WILL DIE OF THIRST
2. OUR [Great Barrier] REEF WILL DIE
3. GOODBYE, NORTH POLE
4. BEWARE HUGE WINDS
5. GIANT HAILSTONES WILL SMASH THROUGH YOUR ROOF
6. NO MORE SKIING
7. PERTH WILL BAKE DRY
8. ISLANDS WILL DROWN
9. BRITAIN WILL SWELTER
10. WE'LL BE HOTTER

Hysterical predictions may work short-term to generate public support for the fight to "beat" AGW. But as the public starts to wake up and see that these predictions are total crap, this could ultimately be the straw that breaks this straw man's back.

We can only hope.