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Climate Change Media Social Change Vote Loser

The Brian Haw Effect

Image Credit : Haris Artemis

Whenever I am in the Westminster area of London, I try to make time to go and sit awhile with Brian Haw at his Peace Camp opposite the Houses of Parliament.

The juxtaposition of ragged ad hoc unspun protest shrine facing the ornate Gothic seat of power carries an enormous significance, not only for me, but thousands of activists and tourists and peaceloving citizens.

Brian must be the most photographed and sought-after person in London. He is an icon, alongside Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace.

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Climate Change Media Non-Science

Letter to The Spectator

Re : Rod Liddle’s science education
To : letters@spectator.co.uk

Dear The Spectator,

I read with chagrin the following statement from Rod Liddle in a piece entitled “Moonbat” :-

Categories
Climate Change Media Non-Science

Letter to James Delingpole

James Delingpole writes a web log for the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

I find his pronouncements about Global Warming contentious, and littered with sceptical myths and denier legends.

It seemed like a good moment to enquire about his education, to check whether his ideological background can lend weight to his commentary, or in contrast, set him up to be a lightweight.

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Climate Change Media Non-Science

The Spectator : Playground Bullies ?

Virtually all the world’s nations, a very significant proportion of the world’s science bodies, countless universities, research establishments, and even major oil companies accept the facts of man-made Global Warming.

But that doesn’t stop commentators at The Spectator magazine from not only attacking Climate Change science, but also scientists and writers who are experts in the field. Some could say it makes them look foolish. Or illiterate.

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Bait & Switch Behaviour Changeling Big Picture Climate Change Contraction & Convergence Geogingerneering Media Meltdown Pet Peeves Political Nightmare Renewable Resource Social Change Technological Sideshow The Data

Everybody Dance Now !

Dancing with Bicycles

Whenever you hear government ministers or public figures telling the people that technology will save us, remember this : the word “technology” is synonymous with the word “business”.

“Technology” is Big Engineering, and this is what is done by large companies and corporations. Large organisations that make profit by selling manufactured products and Energy always have a surplus set aside for their communications budgets, and that includes persuading government people that their business is invaluable and needs promoting.

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Climate Change Media Social Change

Dead Kennedy

Pipped to the news post by other events of global import, social action on Climate Change got completely wiped off the map today.

The necessary Media footage of violence featuring the Police, intended to diffuse tension built up by the BBC and others over the week, was nicely provided by football hooligans, saving anyone having to trump up some charge about the Climate Campers.

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Climate Change Media Non-Science

Sceptics In My Neighbourhood

I wrote to various people in my neighbourhood about a Transition Towns project plan for the local Public Library.

One person wrote back to say he was already in Transition, but that he was a Climate Change sceptic (read “denier”) and he quoted all sorts of current “denier” arguments and sources.

I honestly thought about not bothering to reply at all. I’ve replied to so many Climate Change sceptics (read “deniers”) over the last couple of years. They trot out the same stuff again and again and again, never bothering to update themselves or check the real truth of the matter.

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Big Picture Carbon Capture Climate Change Energy Revival Growth Paradigm Low Carbon Life Media Nuclear Nuisance Nuclear Shambles Pet Peeves Political Nightmare Technological Sideshow

Pouncing on the Pussycat Parade

He may prowl like a cat and purr like a cat, and make out he’s soft and sweet in interviews, but Peter Mandelson’s ideological positioning gives him the impression of him more resembling a pawn, an eel or a rat, and gives me a shudder of disgust; and I’m glad to hear the Climate Rush non-Pussycat Dolls have seen fit to pounce on him :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/10/mandelson-climate-protest-vestas

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Big Picture Climate Change Media

Stick to the Acting, Love

Keisha Castle-Hughes has been patronised for her work on Climate Change. I think she’s doing quite well, myself.

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Carbon Capture China Syndrome Climate Change Media Non-Science Pet Peeves

New Scientist : China Propaganda

Am disappointed and a touch surprised to find Government propaganda in the New Scientist magazine.

The thread of the official answer to “what to do about China ?” is “sell them Carbon Capture and Storage”. The way it’s packaged is : “we need to help China reduce their emissions”. As if “we” had a right or responsibility to correct China !

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Big Picture Climate Change Emissions Impossible Energy Revival Media Meltdown Methane Madness Methane Management Peak Energy Peak Oil Pet Peeves

Deep Gas : Russia Dives

A cursory Western reader of news about Russia would find curious snippets with little context or explanation. “Russia plants flag on Arctic floor” from 2007 or “Vladimir Putin dives to bottom of world’s deepest lake” from 1st August 2009.

With the new streamlined Russian openness strategy, the information is not withheld, just dumbed-down, it seems. When reported in the Western press, it’s easy for further meaning to erode at this extra remove. But there is a story here. What are they up to ? Staking claims in the Arctic and mining for unconventional Hydrocarbon fuels underwater, that’s what.

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Bait & Switch Big Picture Burning Money Energy Revival Media Nuclear Nuisance Nuclear Shambles Peak Energy Peak Oil Pet Peeves Technological Sideshow

Nuclear Drive : Barbecue Country

A number of media outlets have been skewered and grilled one more time in the last fortnight by the Nuclear industry and it’s paid-up or paid-to fans. It feels like the poor lamb hacks have been gambolling and frolicking too close to the fire.

Just getting a Press Release in the papers is not equivalent to convincing a critical mass of people to support your energy technology of choice. It’s like roasting and toasting a very dodgy piece of carcase/carcass and adding hot pepper sauce to hide the bacterial slime.

Even recruiting a senior former British Government Minister to the radioactive cause is not sufficiently influential for a good portion of the electorate. That’s like pulling some Amazon-killing soya-fed dead cow out of the freezer and finding it’s several years too old to eat.

Nuclear Power has a bad track record, and the last couple of years have been near-on laughable.

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Big Picture Climate Change Media Utter Futility

Kenya, Africa, Runs Dry

Where can all our politicians and corporate executive officers from the Big Energy and Engineering companies be found ? At Quibbles Bar where altercation over subsidies and bailouts can be earwigged on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, China and India are still slugging it out with the international community in the Recompense Diner-Restaurant, insisting someone else pays the bill for dealing with Carbon Emissions.

Meanwhile, the pampered and neutered citizen consumers of “The West” are basking in the the Full-Body Entertainment Lounge, with heaps of gadgets and streaming and TV, with nary a care for stories so scary.

Meanwhile, Africa is drying out. I mean, really drying out. Africa is in the Last Chance Saloon.

https://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=3605

“Drought threatens future of Kenya’s Maasai people : Posted: 05 Aug 2009 : For the last four years, Kenya has seen far less rain than the long-term average, and today there is total failure. It is a drought that has left the Maasai people with no traditional grassland left to graze their herds. Some of the only remaining alternatives for these pastoralists have been to travel to the far reaches of Kenya in search of proper grassland, or to move illegally into protected areas. While these options may temporarily provide grazing for livestock, the people have experienced starvation and conflict…”

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Big Picture Climate Change Emissions Impossible Energy Revival Low Carbon Life Media Pet Peeves Social Change

Climate Camps Pitch Up

The Climate Camping season has begun in earnest today, 3rd August 2009.

Here’s a few of the links below. If you’r bored, curious or otherwise ungainfully unemployed, why not come and pitch your canvas alongside the radical Carbon-free thinkers and doers of the future ?

https://climatecampscotland.org.uk/

Categories
Climate Change Low Carbon Life Media Social Change

Roaring White Coat Men

The basic stereotype of a research scientist is pretty accurate, actually. Somebody male, with an introspective demeanour and poor communication skills, maybe a little on the Asperger’s spectrum.

What these white coats cannot do is roar. They cannot cause an organisation to jump to attention, scurry to find solutions, demand definitive decision-making emergency conferences, in fact, these guys (because it is mostly chaps, after all) have got “humble entitlement culture” all worked out : they don’t create problems and their employers keep them in the job. Mostly.

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Bait & Switch Big Picture Climate Change Emissions Impossible Media

Damage Limitation

Despite the fact that there are only about five (and dropping) Climate Change “sceptics” in the British Parliament; and despite the fact that all major scientific and academic bodies, institutions and societies all declare their support for cuts in Global Warming pollution; the Media are still galumphing about in the murky mud of the 1980s in terms of public psychology.

It is essential that there is meaningful debate in the public realm about what Climate Change is doing to our world, and how we can control emissions and work to protect against damaging outcomes.

The evidence is all around us. And gradually, increasing numbers of people are adjusting their mental aerials to tune into the greater ideas and the bigger picture. What we don’t need just now are obfuscation and turbulence and gleeful mischievous wreckers.

Categories
Climate Change Media

Spoof Goof

This last year has seen a fine crop of fake Climate Change activist newspapers.

First it was the turn of the Yes Men (and others) with their 4th July 2009 New York Times newspaper circulated on 12th November 2008 in New York City.

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Big Picture Climate Change Media

The Guardian Stops Guarding The Environment

I always thought it was a bit strange that the The Guardian’s Environment pages were confined to the Wednesday Society section of the “print edition” of this national newspaper.

Did that mean that the cranky, obsessive, possibly mentally unhinged eco-hippies should be shovelled in with the Social Workers, Educationalists, Housing Associations and Trades Unionists ?

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Climate Change Media

Climate Change : Live Aid & African Drought

The notion that the industrialised countries were somehow responsible for the awful drought which desiccated the Horn of Africa in 1984/1985, through Global Warming pollution, has been dealt a blow, and some support, all in the same week, from the same research paper, but through different media channels.

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Big Picture Climate Change Media

The Time is Now – Al Gore’s Mission to the UK

For those of you who missed it, Al Gore’s Climate Project hit the hallowed halls of Cambridge, England, in March 2007 :-

https://www.cpi.cam.ac.uk/gore

It was a whirlwind love affair, and I recall hearing about a couple of the more fringe people who attended the training. They were wowed.

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Big Picture Climate Change Media Social Change

One Dead Man

Good Friday. The start of the special Christian weekend when we remember brutal, inhuman torture and a completely unnecessary death.

With the emergence of the social movement around Climate Change and Energy policy, it was to be expected that campaigners and protesters would come up against the ruling systems of the day.

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Climate Change Media Meltdown

Antarctic Meltdown – Where’s The Panic ?

I can’t see global panic taking hold. Well, I never expected mass hysteria actually, but I would have thought that news of accelerating Antarctic meltdown would have brought out the doom-mongering commentators in droves. But I don’t see much sign of that.

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Climate Change Media

The Rain in Spain Today

The Times newspaper confuses the present with the future in an otherwise useful article today :-

https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6025056.ece

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Bait & Switch Climate Change Media Social Change

G20 Climate Camp – Splash Update

I’m getting reports of people with an outline plan to take a skinny dip in the fountains in Trafalgar Square.

Apparently, to raise the profile of Carbon Trading, they’re going to paint themselves with some kind of black paint, or black marker pen, and splash about shouting something like “Carbon Trading doesn’t wash !”

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Climate Change Media Social Change

G20 Climate Camp – The Positive People

The London Press today have been thumbscrewing public opinion down against the G20 demonstrations – with fear-laden messaging and nasty tagging of protestors as “violent”.

I’ve overheard several conversations today between various casually dressed office workers moaning about tomorrow’s happenings.