Hee, Hee, Hee, I like it.
Posted on 01/07/2007 4:40:54 AM PST by Clive
The new pornographers
Hyping the threat of global warming is now termed 'climate porn'
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Recently, a left-leaning think tank in Great Britain came up with a good way to describe the hysterical rhetoric used by many environmentalists, media and politicians to hype the threat of global warming.
After analyzing hundreds of media articles, news clips and television ads on the issue, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) dubbed it "climate porn." This means using apocalyptic language to describe the challenges posed by climate change.
Climate porn, the IPPR argued, amounts to a "counsel of despair," making the public feel helpless and insignificant.
In Canada, besides climate porn, I'd argue we suffer from pandemic porn, poverty porn, AIDS porn and unity porn, to name just a few.
But today, let's focus on climate porn.
In his book The Rough Guide to Climate Change, The Symptoms, The Science, The Solutions, Robert Henson, an advocate of taking serious action against global warming, describes the consequences of climate porn, although he doesn't call it that:
"(G)lobal warming hit it big just when many people were getting tired of fretting about the state of the world. From its earliest days, the environmental movement (has) relied on stark, pseudo-apocalyptic imagery to motivate people. In her 1962 book, Silent Spring, which set the template for environmental wake-up calls, Rachel Carson labelled pesticides and similar agents 'the last and greatest danger to our civilization.' In her footsteps came a series of similarly dire scenarios, from Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb to the notion of nuclear winter. Global warming lends itself especially well to this type of rhetoric. It's no exaggeration to talk about the risk of coastal settlements vanishing and the Arctic's summer ice pack disappearing. Yet when activists do dwell on these points, it sometimes brings to mind other predictions of environmental doomsday that didn't come to pass (partly, of course, because society did respond to these earlier threats.)"
Simply put, if everything is a crisis, then nothing is a crisis, even the genuine crises. On the Internet, a fierce battle has developed between those who use climate porn to argue global warming is "the last and greatest danger to our civilization" and skeptics who totally dismiss both the problem itself and the science behind it.
In Canada, a superficial debate has raged over whether Stephen Harper's Conservatives or Stephane Dion's Liberals take global warming more seriously, fuelled by ideologues on both sides. It's superficial because neither the Conservatives during their first year in power, nor the Liberals in their previous 12, took global warming seriously.
Instead, they both paid lip service to implementing the flawed Kyoto accord. (More on that in future columns.) Regardless of Kyoto, conserving the world's remaining supply of fossil fuels is vital, and not just for environmental reasons. One effective way to reduce the spread of Islamist terrorism in the West is for us to wean ourselves off our huge dependence on foreign oil. The less we need to rely on it, the less reason we will have to involve ourselves in the corrupt world of Mideast dictators and Islamo-fascists, other than out of genuine human rights and humanitarian concerns.
Canada, blessed with a good supply of the world's remaining fossil fuels, should be a world leader in this effort, but not by wrecking the Alberta tar sands or Ontario's auto sector, as environmental radicals want. Rather, this must come through unwavering political leadership, which neither the Conservatives nor Liberals have yet displayed, to ensure that those sectors, and all Canadians, do their part to conserve our scarce energy resources.
The task ahead is difficult, but not impossible. It's also the key to addressing global warming effectively, free from climate porn.
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Hee, Hee, Hee, I like it.
be interesting to see if it sticks
PING!
Exactly, kill those who disagree.
Before you implement that, let me just squeeze in another:
Williams Sonoma = Kitchen Porn
The problem for the doomsayers is a message which largely equates to...'Global warming is an immediate threat to civilization!...and the only way to stop it...is to dismantle our civilization!!!!'
If the problem is that bad and that urgent, then the only real answer is slam the brakes on the global economy, pronto. There are theorized solutions which would take decades to implement, or might trim lightly around the edges of CO2 emissions, but the real effect would be negligible, and the enforcement would necessarily be draconian.
Most people realize this implicitly, so the rational response is akin to 'screw it then, let's party like it's 1999'. In the absence of reasonable alternatives, one quickly arrives at the conclusion that society is going down in flames either way and most would prefer to take the ride to despair in an SUV, not riding a bicycle, huddling in the cold, eating raw food and basically acting as herd animals for political charlatans in a failed effort to stop the earth from warming. The Democrats have no workable solution, but they say, 'put us in charge - we'll figure it out later' but that's more trust than they've earned.
Extreme rhetoric causes folks to either tune out or lash back against an unconstructive chicken little attitude. Sane people are interested in listening constructive solutions to real, manageable problems, not accusations from politicians combined with a bunch of handwringing and fearmongering.
Just like real porn, envirowackos do get off on climate porn.
Climate porn, the IPPR argued, amounts to a "counsel of despair," making the public feel helpless and insignificant. In Canada, besides climate porn, I'd argue we suffer from pandemic porn, poverty porn, AIDS porn and unity porn, to name just a few.
Out of the box thinking -- and probably right...
This movie has "Al Gore Productions" beat by a Texas Mile. Weather Porn? ROTFLMAO.
Rush has done it again!
No one I know doubts that the climate is "changing". Any elementary school science education will cover ice ages and the continuous change in the weather over the history of the world.
The question is, "Are we (and by "we", of course, I mean white, Republican males!) causing the climate change and can (or should) we do anything about it?"
In a desperate attempt to slow the rise in temperature , which is undoubtedly being caused by increased solar activity, I have been loading up my shotgun with ice cubes, and launching them into an extraorbital intercept trajectory with the center of our solar system.
I calculate that I am at least neutralizing the effect of all the hot air and digestive methane being spewed forth by Al Gore and his Chicken Little Freaks.
Dedicated Freepers might consider joining me. If 100, 000 of us did this at exactly the same time each week, soon we would be able to reverse global warming and save our earth from having any climate change at all. Things would, for the first time in the earth's geological history, stay exactly the same.
Meanwhile I have accumulated a good selection of Ray Bans, copious amounts of sun screen, and significant resevoirs of Tequila based Tia Marias. Wifey insists that I install a life boat on the roof, where I can sun bath quietly, even though we live 680 feet above mean sea level. She is a fan of Noah and his Arc.
I am happy that I have made a greater contribution to global cooling than Al Gore and all of his silly running dog Chicken Little freaks have up to date, or ever will have in the future.
b t t t
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