I suppose my initial scepticism over man-made global warming wasn’t thoroughly won over until I watched the C4 documentary, ‘The Great Climate Change Swindle’ a couple of years ago. The deniers’ case was so dismal, the science so obviously distorted, it had to be nonsense.
In fact, the tone of the ‘experts’ was much more akin to lunatic conspiracy theorists - they argued climate change was, “an industry, created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists, supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding and propped up by complicit politicians and the media".
It may not be very scientific, politically speaking, to determine one’s view directly gauged by the opposition but looking at the denier's camp, I am confronted by an impressive array of prejudicial headbangers. In the U.S. it is Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Russ Limbaugh - it was the portly shock jock who pronounced this week, “there is no data to support global warming whatsoever.”
In the UK , we have Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail who describes the science as a, “total scam,” and contends perversely, “the earth’s climate is actually cooling.” Last week on BBC's Question Time, she was forced to listen to Comic and Campaigner, Marcus Brigstock relay his tales of his trips to the Arctic where learnt directly from the Inuits about the sudden melting of their ice-cap. Philips scoffed, laughing at this paltry ‘human’ evidence. Clearly Philips can discern all the knowledge she needs to know from her office in Southwark.
She still has some way to go to match the Grand Wizard of Conspiracy Theories, Nick Griffin who will be representing the EU at the Copenhagen Conference next week.. The potential for a BNP publicity stunt following this EU ballsup must be pretty high. On global warming Griffin opined, “The anti-western intellectual cranks of the left suffered a collective breakdown when communism collapsed. Climate change is their new theology…it is being used to impose an anti-human utopia as deadly as anything conceived by Stalin or Mao."
But the fallout from global warming is beginning to amount to more than just the rantings of a deranged minor politician. The political conflict in Australia is real enough. The National Liberal party was led, until last week, by Malcolm Turnbull, the charismatic lawyer from the 80s ‘Spycatcher’ case. Turnbull supported PM Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme Bill but that ‘treachery’ prompted an eruption of hostilities between the believers and deniers of the Liberal Party.
On Monday, Turnbull was replaced by John Abbott as leader after a narrow vote. Abbott, one of the country’s great Monarchists uses Aussie parlance freely and described global warming as “absolute crap.” It looks certainly possible Rudd’s inability to get his Bill through the Upper House may prompt a general election. It would be the first national poll where climate change is the main issue for debate, but certainly not the last.
It may not be very scientific, politically speaking, to determine one’s view directly gauged by the opposition but looking at the denier's camp, I am confronted by an impressive array of prejudicial headbangers. In the U.S. it is Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Russ Limbaugh - it was the portly shock jock who pronounced this week, “there is no data to support global warming whatsoever.”
In the UK , we have Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail who describes the science as a, “total scam,” and contends perversely, “the earth’s climate is actually cooling.” Last week on BBC's Question Time, she was forced to listen to Comic and Campaigner, Marcus Brigstock relay his tales of his trips to the Arctic where learnt directly from the Inuits about the sudden melting of their ice-cap. Philips scoffed, laughing at this paltry ‘human’ evidence. Clearly Philips can discern all the knowledge she needs to know from her office in Southwark.
She still has some way to go to match the Grand Wizard of Conspiracy Theories, Nick Griffin who will be representing the EU at the Copenhagen Conference next week.. The potential for a BNP publicity stunt following this EU ballsup must be pretty high. On global warming Griffin opined, “The anti-western intellectual cranks of the left suffered a collective breakdown when communism collapsed. Climate change is their new theology…it is being used to impose an anti-human utopia as deadly as anything conceived by Stalin or Mao."
But the fallout from global warming is beginning to amount to more than just the rantings of a deranged minor politician. The political conflict in Australia is real enough. The National Liberal party was led, until last week, by Malcolm Turnbull, the charismatic lawyer from the 80s ‘Spycatcher’ case. Turnbull supported PM Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme Bill but that ‘treachery’ prompted an eruption of hostilities between the believers and deniers of the Liberal Party.
On Monday, Turnbull was replaced by John Abbott as leader after a narrow vote. Abbott, one of the country’s great Monarchists uses Aussie parlance freely and described global warming as “absolute crap.” It looks certainly possible Rudd’s inability to get his Bill through the Upper House may prompt a general election. It would be the first national poll where climate change is the main issue for debate, but certainly not the last.
No comments:
Post a Comment