We begin another week with another look into the fascinating world of the global warming alarmists who, at this point, are merely incapable of using reason or logic to think things through. I have to admit that I admire the tenacity that these folks have. Despite massive amounts of counter-arguments, they still manage to move forward with the warning calls, completely ignoring all the things that simply render their argument moot. I think the thing that fascinates me the most about these carnival barkers is that they continually lambast opponents for using faulty logic or ill-conceived arguments, and then they go right ahead and do exactly what it is they just railed about. It boggles the mind. Global warming is something that I simply cannot ignore. The consequences of allowing the progressive movement to move forward with their plans are simply too devastating. At this point, I see the really loud voices in the debate as nearly as crack-pottish as Cesca is about racism. Therefore, I will continue to hammer them until the world shouts them down as the fruitballs that they are.
As a quick side note, it is amazing to me to watch the two sides of the political spectrum (GOP and DEM) continue to trounce each other, each accusing the other of using a campaign of fear to trick the American public. It isn’t surprising that they both use the same tactic. It is, after all, the best tactic they have found. And they are two different color shirts both on the same team. No, what is amazing to me is that each side is so quick to see through the fear the other side falsely uses, while simultaneously completely ignoring the fact that their side is doing to exact same thing. Progressives scream and holler about the right’s campaign of fear being used to take us to war or to pass something as dumbfoundingly unconstitutional as the Patriot Act or to oppose health care. Yet they somehow never seem to recognize, or at least refuse to acknowledge, the same bullshit coming out of their camp. They can’t seem to recognize the fear mongering around global warming and corporate bailouts and gun control or the urgency to pass health care. Just an observation. Mind-boggling at best how blind folks are to the tactics of the side they agree with.
Back to the topic of global warming. As an example of their tenacity, we have yet another article published this week over at the most popular far left think-tank, the Huffington Post. I have discussed Johann Hari and his madness around the global warming stuff before. But despite the insanity of what he says, he still gets published over there writing this stuff. I could say that he is hateful, but I don’t think he is. I leave that title to Bob Cesca, who is perhaps the most dishonest and hateful writer on HuffPo. No, Hari instead falls into the category of dishonest environmental alarmist. And you cannot ignore that he has written this piece. Hari was named one of the most influential people on the left in Britain by the Daily Telegraph. That he has influence with the nonsense that is below is downright scary. THAT is something to be alarmed about.
I have long disliked the environmental activists, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I find that they almost always have a passion for what they are doing that is so overriding that they simply don’t make any sense. Hari, for example, wants so badly to believe what he is spouting that he simply ignores logic and reason. I understand their hatred of corporations and of war (war activists and environmental activists tend to come from the same womb). But their belief that humans are somehow less important than some tree or bird is ridiculous. And their hubris as to the power of humans to do real damage to this planet is almost laughable, at least it would be if they weren’t so good at making small minded people agree with them.
I know that some folks think that global warming is not a topic worth discussing, but I disagree. I mentioned above that the potential for usurping our freedom and liberty under the guise of environmental activism is gigantic. Just the fact that Cap and Trade, which has failed miserably in every country or region foolish enough to attempt it, is still on the table is proof enough of how dangerous these global warming hangers on still are. And if you think Cap and Trade is bad based on its effectiveness, that is nothing compared to its impact on our freedom and our wallets. And as I mentioned, this article was posted in the last week over there at HuffPo. The environmental liars are still working hard to raise a false alarm, so we have to work just as hard to point out their lies and talk people off the proverbial ledge. So I will tonight point out the madness in his ridiculously misleading article (which for the record had a remarkable number of “right on” comments to it).
This Is the Hottest Year Ever, and the Climate Catastrophe Has Begun
by Johann Hari at the Huffington Post
Thank god man-made global warming was proven to be a hoax. Just imagine what the world might have looked like now if those conspiring scientists had been telling the truth. No doubt NASA would be telling us that this year is now, so far, the hottest since humans began keeping records.
Johann Hari
Interestingly, a partial year’s worth of temperatures is given as proof of something, right before he gets to the part of the article where he points out how stupid people are for thinking a snowy winter last year meant something. Very small length trends are only proof when it gets hotter, not colder. The other misleading statement here is “hottest since humans began keeping records.” Care to guess how long that time period is? Not thousands of years…. no, just 160 years with instruments and only about 60 years with any accuracy or global coverage. The truth is, the earth has been significantly warmer than this within the last 10,000 years. But it doesn’t sound as scary when you tell the truth, so Hari makes it sound as bad as possible.
The weather satellites would show that even when heat from the sun significantly dipped earlier this year, the world still got hotter. Russia’s vast forests would be burning to the ground in the fiercest drought they have ever seen, turning the air black in Moscow, killing 15,000 people, and forcing foreign embassies to evacuate.
Notice that he didn’t make use of other periods of drought, such as say the worst drought in history in China from 1876-79 (killed 9 million), or its second worst in 1942-43 (killed a million). In fact he ignores reality in even Russia. It isn’t the worst drought they have ever seen. Droughts are an inherent feature of the climatic conditions in the main agricultural zone of Russia. From 1891 to 1983 (92 years) Russia has spent a total of 27 years in moderate drought or above. Almost every article I could find on the Russian drought said that this drought is the worst in 50 years. A few speckled in with a hundred years. But no one but the environmental con-artists are claiming it as the worst in Russian history. And how about this for a whopper: “killing 15,000 people!” I could not find a single source anywhere that put the death toll from the Russian fires higher than 50. Hari’s ridiculous claim is 300 times higher than reality.
Because warm air holds more water vapor, the world’s storms would be hugely increasing in intensity and violence — drowning one fifth of Pakistan, and causing giant mudslides in China.
Again Hari attempts to distract by using false numbers presented in a way to scare the crap out of readers. The world’s storms are not reaching some unprecedented level of intensity or violence. A 1970 Cyclone in Bangledesh killed 500,000. One in 1737 in India killed 300,000. or even the worst storm in history, which was in 1287, part of a horrible storm year in Europe. The fact is that history is full of massive storms that did major damage and took hundreds of thousands of lives. And we find another misleading figure from Hari: “drowning one fifth of Pakistan.” The death toll in Pakistan is somewhere between 1,600-1,800. Pakistan is the world’s sixth highest population at over 170 million. One fifth of the population drowning would be 34 million people. Hari here implies that the death toll was 19,000 times higher than reality.
As for floods, there are far worse ones in recorded history. China had floods that killed a million people in 1887 and 300,000 in 1642. All this talk about the flooding that is happening is misdirection. It ignores the massive amount of data on past flooding that was worse, and attempts to baffle with bullshit, pointing to anything recent as unprecedented.
The world’s ice sheets would be sloughing off massive melting chunks four times the size of Manhattan. The cost of bread would be soaring across the world as heat shriveled the wheat crops. The increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be fizzing into the oceans, making them more acidic and so killing 40 percent of the phytoplankton that make up the irreplaceable base of the oceanic food chain. The denialists would be conceding at last that everything the climate scientists said would happen — with their pesky graphs and studies and computers — came to pass.
Has Hari ever looked at a map? First of all, I have read all the hype that a ice shelf three times the size of Manhattan sloughed off (see, they can’t even do a single thing without at least a little number manipulation), or is about to, I can’t remember which. I look at a big old world map, though, and can plainly see that Manhattan, despite it’s gigantic ego, isn’t really that big of an area. Even putting something three times that in the world’s interconnected water surface is like dropping an ice cube into a swimming pool. The claims of massive flooding or rising sea levels due to this are borderline insanity. But what Hari really misses in this whole thing is that THIS IS NOT A NEW PHENOMENON. That ice has melted, sloughed off, and reformed time after time in history. But it sure sounds like a dire emergency when he says it, doesn’t it. I am only surprised that he didn’t tell us about how millions of polar bears made their homes in that shelf.
