Showing posts with label Bolt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bolt. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Bolt shoots, bolt scores

From time to time I like to highlight the work of my favorite bloggers and columnists, particularly when they've hit upon something important or administered a particularly good beatdown on some asshat who desperately needs one.

Andrew Bolt is Australia's preeminent libertarian columnist. In this column, Andrew takes on the shrill crowd of politically correct yentas doing their damnedest to take down Miss California for the "sin" (read: thought crime) of making an anti-gay marriage statement.

While he does his usual admirable job of applying the beatdown to the appropriate parties - particularly drama QUEEN Perez Hilton - he also hit upon something that I had missed in my prior assessment of this sort of Leftist elite feeding frenzy.

You see, defending the tribe counts more than defending a principle. That is why the people tearing into Prejean refuse to say that Obama, who shares her opinion on gay marriage, is also a bitch, boob and moron who has buttock fat for brains and needs a heart transplant, the dumb bastard.

(Actually, I suspect these people excuse Obama as a liar, just saying what he must. And a liar is good, but an opponent of gay marriage evil.)

So what is this tribe that's being defended so viciously, and with such hypocrisy? It's the tribe of the Left. Of privilege, too. And patriarchy.

It's also a class - the kind of people who'd look down on a Miss USA audience, and would use the weapons of power, sex and caste to crush them in precisely the ways the Left once claimed to oppose.

We've seen this phenomenon played out before, of course, and recently.

Last year it was the turn of Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, to be monstered for being a conservative woman from small-town, Christian USA.

Palin, although a successful and popular corruption-buster and Governor of Alaska, was pilloried by the largely Left media as some thick hick, with white-trash morals and ideas above her station.
Class! Of course. The snobbery of the Left knows no bounds. But Vulture! Bill Clinton was a small-town rube, and the Left LOVED him. Ah, grasshopper, but Bill Clinton also attended Georgetown, Yale, and even Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar! That's cachet, people. And Sarah Palin? A degree from the University of Idaho? And JUST a BA at that? What a rube!

Never mind that the UI educational experience is probably every bit as good as Georgetown's (I'm talking the actual classroom instruction; you don't think Georgetown's prestigious professors actually teach, do you?). It just goes to show you how shallow and petty the Left actually is. If you're (a) from money or (b) have attended one or more "prestige" universities, and you embrace the Leftist catechism, you're a member of the club; nothing you do is worthy of criticism, except, perhaps, the occasional rebuke to placate the rubes from time to time. If you do not embrace the Leftist catechism, but satisfy requirement (a) or (b), you will be criticized, perhaps even rudely, but you will not bear the full heat that those who satisfy neither (a) nor (b) will.

Oh, and don't think for one second that top-level Republicans and their spokesmonkeys in the neocon commentariate are any different. They are every bit as shallow and petty. After all, some of the most scathing criticisms of Sarah Palin came from the likes of Peggy Noonan! The Left-Center neocon wing of the GOP (you know, the group that is killing the party) is every bit as snobby as the Left.

Great catch, Andrew. And create article, as always.

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Sunday, April 26, 2009

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.


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.

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Sunday, April 19, 2009

Death Knell: Part I - Follow the Money

Global Swarming -- The clustering of GangGreed around a money/power hive.
from The Urban Dictionary.


Finally, after 4 months of promises and teasing, I'm starting my serious of posts on Global Warming, entitled "Death Knell". This first installment, "Follow the Money", intends to show who benefits on both the "pro" and the "con" side of the equation from their side coming out ahead in this debate.

We've been hearing for years how 'the science is settled', 'there is a scientific consensus', or 'people who reject global warming are like people who believe in a flat Earth or who deny the Holocaust'. Then there's my favorite: 'the only scientists denying global warming are those working for Big Energy'. Never mind that ALL of the scientists working for alternate energy companies, for the government, or on projects that are government-funded are part of the 'consensus'.

Never mind? Let me take that back. It DOES matter that the 'consensus' emanates from those sources. Why? Like they say in all of the detective shows: follow the money.

There once was a time when the only contrarian data on global warming DID come from those with much to lose from proposed efforts at curbing warming. Not anymore.

Nor is the public as easily duped now: over 40% believe that AGW is mostly hype.

Here is a breakdown of who has a dog in the fight, both Pro Warming as well as those of us who are "skeptics".

PRO:
Presidents:
George W. Bush
Barack Obama

Politicians:
Nancy Pelosi, who stands to profit handsomely from investments in "green" technology
Harry Reid
John McCommie
John Kerry
Team Donkey
Team Elephant Elite
Carol Browner, Nominated as Obama's Climate Czar

Governmental organizations:
The UN, who views warming as a vehicle for the formation of a new World economy
The World Health Organization
The European Union
NASA (Read this carefully - there are a number of outright lies in this "factbook")
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an organization that would have zero importance were AGW to disappear as a "threat".

Scientists:
Dr. James Hansen of NASA, who believes that warming should be used as a tool for wealth distribution (and who contradicts his pro-warming stance here)

Monetary beneficiaries of AGW hype:
Big Media - via propaganda (see here and here)
Multinational corporations
Al Gorebells, who has made millions from his fraud and stands to make millions more via cap-and-trade
Richard Branson, who stands to make billions from his "green" technologies
T. Boone Pickens, who stands to make billions from his "green" "solutions"
General Electric/NBC Universal, who stand to make billions from selling "green" technologies
British Banks, who seek to jump on the warming gravy train

In the interest of fairness, here is a list of those who will benefit if AGW is not addressed.

CON:
Pro-Business Groups (and other monetary beneficiaries):
Richard Mellon Scaife
Heartland Institute
The Science & Environmental Policy Project
The Cato Institute
World Climate Report
ExxonMobil
Competitive Enterprise Institute

Politicians:
Senator James Inhofe
Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic
Sammy Wilson, Environmental Minister, UK
Andrei Illarionov, Chief Economic Adviser to the President of the Russian Federation

Scientists/Meteorologists:
Joseph D'Aleo, meteorologist/Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS)
Fred Singer, Scientist/Professor
John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel
JunkScience.com
ICECAP (International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project)
International Geological Conference
Doctors for Disaster Preparedness
International Climate Science Coalition
The International Climate Science Center

Media:
John Stossel
Andrew Bolt (Herald Sun/Melbourne)

So I leave it to you, the reader, to discern which of these groups has the most to lose or gain based on the public's belief in AGW. You know which side I'm on; I have been an AGW denier since Kyoto, when this "emergency" was deemed to require the West to resort to draconian measures to "save the Earth" while completely exempting the Third World from action. A true "emergency" would require action by the entire globe. Am I right, or am I right?

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Thursday, July 10, 2008

"Fatal delusion" - an Aussie speaks on climate change

I think I found a new columnist to add to my collection of those I regularly read (you'll find links to their work in the right column, under "What I Read (you should too)"). This guy, Andrew Bolt, from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, is a frickin' genius.

I can't do this article justice - you just got to read the whole thing. The article begins by commenting on a young man, age 17, who suffers from mental problems due to an irrational fear of climate change.

"A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events."

(So have Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, Profit of Doom Al Gore and Sir Richard Brazen, but I digress.)
Zing! But he's just getting started.
And here is a senior Sydney Morning Herald journalist aghast at the horrors described in the report on global warming released on Friday by Rudd's guru, Professor Ross Garnaut: "Australians must pay more for petrol, food and energy or ultimately face a rising death toll . . ."

Wow. Pay more for food or die. Is that Rudd's next campaign slogan?

Of course, we can laugh at this -- and must -- but the price for such folly may soon be your job, or at least your cash.
Mr. Bolt goes on to describe why the Indians and Chinese have balked at implementing carbon standards (hint: because they're not stupid).
Their conclusion? They couldn't actually find anything bad in India that was caused by man-made warming: "No firm link between the documented (climate) changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established."

In fact, they couldn't find much change in the climate at all.
Nor can anyone else, for that matter, with the exception of Al Gorebells and his pack of fanatics.

It is a fun and informative article. I highly recommend that you check it out.

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