How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again! (Mark Twain)
¡Ay, caramba! WWF is one of the big greens pushing the climate change scare, along with outfits like Sierra and Greenpeace. This is from their recent catalogue. They are using penguins to sympathy troll, and kids are the target. No shame, they have. No shame.
I just finished with Michael Crichton’s 2004 State of Fear. It’s a page-turner, of course, but sloppy, in my opinion. It is a bit like Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, bad fiction used to espouse a point of view. His characters are paper-thin, one used to exaggerate climate change fanatics, and who is eaten by cannibals towards the end. No kidding. He has two women who are, almost as if required in our era, exceptionally strong, beautiful and intelligent, acting like men in combat and performing amazing feats of physical prowess. His major antagonist, a man named Drake, commits (using pawns) ghastly crimes, but is never apprehended, that whole matter left unresolved. Another major character, Morton, fakes his death early on, and this is painfully obvious throughout the book.
I was surprised to be done on page 715, as the book is 800 pages. Crichton added a section called “Author’s message” along with an two appendixes and a long bibliography. This makes the book a nice resource, even if dated. It is the Author’s message that I thought to be the best-written part of the book, and I am going to quote some passages, impressive in their clarity.
This little factoid hit me like a slap in the face, a face palm moment. Duh. It was that the Berlin Wall “fell” on November 9, 1989. 11/9, or 9/11 turned around. I don’t know why those numbers are important to our closeted leaders, but they, along with 33 and 8 turn up in almost every hoax.
By itself, that date was just another indication that the event was a façade, that other changes were in the works. The Soviet Union, the supposed Evil Empire, dissolved. There were no deaths or struggles. We are told that mere assembly of people in Prague, the so-called Velvet Revolution, for example, brought about regime change. This is utter nonsense. Large crowds have no direction, no arms, and cannot force change. They can put out a pretty good vibration during rock concerts if enough cocaine, pot and booze circulate, but are otherwise wasted energy.
Continue reading “A face palm moment or two”
I found this interesting, as it introduces human perspective into climate change. I only suggest that you watch between the preset at 25:43 (not my choice but the one given to me by YouTube) to 28:00 or so, and take note of the following:
Our commenters here tore into Michael Crichton and gave him a what-fer, the kind of stuff I love. It blew right by me, Crichton’s nonsense did, which is encouraging. I am not alone and can depend on others to pick up on what I miss. That in mind, I offer up the following tidbits from Al Gore’s Wikipedia page regarding his early life and career. The lines are set far apart, making it easy to read between them.
Gore was a privileged kid who attended St. Albans School, a feeder school for the Ivy League. Finishing 25th in a class of 51 paved the way to Harvard for him.
Here’s Wiki:
Gore was an avid reader who fell in love with scientific and mathematical theories,[19] but he did not do well in science classes and avoided taking math.[18] During his first two years, his grades placed him in the lower one-fifth of his class. During his sophomore year, he reportedly spent much of his time watching television, shooting pool, and occasionally smoking marijuana.[18][19] In his junior and senior years, he became more involved with his studies, earning As and Bs.[18] In his senior year, he took a class with oceanographer and global warming theorist Roger Revelle, who sparked Gore’s interest in global warming and other environmental issues.[19][29] Gore earned an A on his thesis, “The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency, 1947–1969”, and graduated with an A.B. cum laude in June 1969.[18][30]
I don’t often (or ever) say to readers that you should go read something that I read. I know how that works, as I am usually reluctant to take time from my planned day to indulge anyone. So my suggestion here is to simply take a glance at the opening words of Michael Crichton to the Commonwealth Club in 2003, and see if you have the same experience that I did. Crichton was such an engaging writer that he held readers rapt for decades. See if upon reading the beginning, you find yourself reading the end too. Maybe so, maybe not.
Here are the opening two paragraphs:
I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.
We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we’re told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.
Continue reading “Michael Crichton’s remarks to the Commonwealth Club, 2003”
I watched this “news” piece from ABC this morning at the gym, about how the glaciers are going to collapse on Mont Blanc. It caught my eye because I’ve been there on that platform they used for a backdrop. I don’t otherwise watch or read news. (I don’t know how to bring the video here. The above is a screen grab, not a video.)
Anyway, people of Europe, run for your lives! The glaciers are falling! The glaciers are falling!
This is so transparent that I don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes or Sven Svenson to see through it. We are told that Greta Thunberg crossed the Atlantic on a solar-powered vessel in order to lecture the diplomats during the UN climate summit.
I have seen this happen in my life, and described it but did not give it a name … police are sure they have identified the perpetrator of a crime, but do not have evidence that will stand up in court. So they manufacture it. They are justified in their minds in doing this because they are sure the person is guilty and belongs behind bars. The end justifies the means.
This is common not just in police work, but many other fields, including climate science.
The name given this behavior is “noble cause corruption“, and that phrase was coined by Professor of Philosophy Edwin Delattre in 1989. Wikipedia has a nice entry on it, using the movie Dirty Harry as an example. In that movie, Detective Harry Callahan uses intimidation, violence and murder to achieve justice.
Continue reading “The ‘Madhouse Effect’ caused by climate scientists”
I had to chuckle this morning as I turned to the MMG page for the latest output, a piece called “Who is Greta Thunberg“, written by “Sven Svenson.” Who, I wondered, is “Sven Svenson? Why do people who turn up there wish to remain anonymous? I ask that question knowing that in my one formal encounter with the group, the piece on the McCartney twins, which I had been led to discover by MMG, that I asked to remain anonymous. I became a “Friend in Colorado.”
Why did I do that? In my case, it was not a case of having something to hide, some career to protect. I have outed myself on this blog from the beginning. My theory was that I had nothing to hide, and that even if I did, people would discover me anyway. I had learned before becoming a blogger and using pseudonyms as a commenter that people could always identify my writing style. I do have a voice, such as it is.
Continue reading “Ramblings: Sven Svenson, Dr. Ross McKittrick, Jaws, birds and moral courage”
Piece of Mindful 