Circling The Wagons
By Mitch Berg
So while the uncovering of the East Anglia CRU Email scandal is into its third week with scarcely a peep of direct coverage, it seems the usual suspects are hard at work trying to shore up the thesis, on a public relations and political front (although certainly not a scientific one).
I flipped on MPR twice this weekend, more or less at complete random.
The first time, I turned the show on to Speaking of Faith – the normally-excellent Minnesota-based production that explores religion and faith in all its many flavors, to normally-fascinating depth. The show is one of MPR’s few regular programs whose podcasts I listen to punctiliously. But today…:
A conversation about climate change and moral imagination with environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben. He’s been ahead of the curve on this fantastically complex issue since he wrote The End of Nature in 1989. We explore his evolving perspective on human responsibility in a changing natural world.
Not a word of controversy or skepticism to be heard, naturally – and this from a show that gives intellectually-ravenous credibility to every variety of lack of belief as well as all of the world’s manifestations of it – just the blithe acceptance that man-made global warming is a fact, and that collectivizing our society is our only real hope.
Still, it was better than On The Media – a program for whom leftist apologetics seems to be an unstated given.
For years, George Monbiot has written for the British newspaper The Guardian about the dangers of man-made climate change and how the denial industry sows confusion. But when he wrote recently “we’re losing,” it seemed a surprising admission. He explains why, despite scientific consensus, much of the public remains unswayed.
Quote of the day: Brooke Gladstone asked Monbiot about Copenhagen. “I’ve heard many people who wish we just had a huge Communist world government, so we could just do what needed to be done”.
Runner-up quote of the day? Monbiot on the East Anglia scandal (!): “This was a disaster – we have to make sure our science is absolutely foolproof”.
Sorry, George – that train left the station.





December 14th, 2009 at 7:27 am
The Gladstone quote is on the money. Virtually everything you do has a ‘carbon footprint’. Every detail of your housing and transportation, where and what you do to make a living, how many kids you have, how long you live.
Giving the government the right to monitor and regulate your ‘carbon footprint’ means that the government will have influence over every aspect of your life. There will be no escape from it, no activity that is not free of the influence of the political state.
The word for this is ‘totalitarianism’.
December 14th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Thou shalt not question AGW.
December 14th, 2009 at 11:16 am
“This was a disaster – we have to make sure our science is absolutely foolproof”.
Oh, it’s foolproof alright. Just look at the fools who support AGW – RatioRinkyDink is proof positive.
December 14th, 2009 at 11:43 am
“I’ve heard many people who wish we just had a huge Communist world government, so we could just do what needed to be done”.
Yeah the Constitution and Magna Carta just need to be torn to shreds, for the good of humanity of course. Don’t forget to only have one kid otherwise you hate Mother Earth.
December 14th, 2009 at 11:45 am
I wonder how many people they want killed. I dip into consipracy theories every now and then and supposedly the “global elites” (see: Bilderburg, Council on Foreign Relations, the Stonecutters I mean Masons, Illuminati, etc, etc) want to reduce to world population to 500 million because us humans are a virus on the planet that needs to be eradicated. Maybe there is something to this one after all…