The Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has shown remarkably little interest in Global Warming. Sensible chap. But this doesn't please a journalist writing on Vancouver news-site Straight.com. Charlie Smith writes ...
Recently, I came across a neurological and psychological explanation why seemingly intelligent people like the prime minister don't want to wrap their minds around climate change. Keep in mind that Harper is the son of an accountant who worked for Imperial Oil. He probably grew up in a home with a high regard for the fossil-fuel industry.
Author William Marsden explains in his recent book Fools Rule: Inside the failed politics of climate change (Alfred A. Knopf Canada) that when the brain is confronted with tiny changes to familiar patterns, it "quickly emits fear signals that can disrupt attempts at rational thought".
Quoting McGill University neurologist Lesley Fellows, Marsden notes that there are parts of the brain that enjoy learning new things, but other areas summon anxiety when familiar habits are disrupted.
"Climate change poses a complexity of stressful challenges with which few people know how to deal," Marsden writes. Fellows explained to Marsden that "nebulous" threats, such as climate change, are not handled nearly as well by the brain as are immediate threats.
It's a great argument. We think it should be applied to lots of other things besides Global Warming. Perhaps if our darn brains weren't such pesky wimps, we'd all have the courage to believe in fairies. We'd accept that Kennedy was murdered by the CIA. We'd sign up to David Icke's theory that the Queen is actually a green-skinned alien lizard. We'd be convinced that man never landed on the moon, but that aliens are stalking us and snatching people in isolated places for obscene sexual experiments.
What a marvellous theory. It sets us free from the tyranny of intelligence, from the heavy rule of common sense, and gives us leave to believe in any ridiculous fancy we damn well like. Even Global Warming, if we want.
But it's all very well making fun. Global Warming is a serious matter – in fact, it's killing people the world over, according to Alan Caruba who runs a blog called Fact Snot Fantasy ... that's a funny name ... oh, I get it! Facts, Not Fantasy! Silly me!
Alan writes ...
By Friday, February 10th, an estimated 500 Europeans had died from the freezing weather gripping the continent. This is the price they and British citizens are paying for embracing the global warming hoax, spending billions for wind power when they should have been building coal-fired and other sources of energy to heat their homes and businesses.
As the British daily, The Telegraph, reported on Friday, “Serbia has started implementing power cuts in a desperate bid to stave off the collapse of its national grid as the country suffers the effects of days of freezing temperatures.”
I and others have been warning for years that the Earth has been cooling since 1998 and that the planet is on the cusp of a new ice age because the average length of an interglacial period of warmth between such ages is now coming to an end after the passage of some 11,500 years. All aspects of global warming legislation and spending programs must be utterly reversed if we are not going to see huge losses of life and the disruption of entire economies.
The Ottowa Citizen published an article from Agence France Presse on Friday reporting that “Thick ice closed vast swaths of the Danube on Thursday, crippling shipping on Europe’s busiest waterway, as the death toll from bitter cold across the continent rose … as it has every day for nearly two weeks.” The report noted that “Navigation was impossible or restricted in Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria, as ice covered the river or formed dangerous floes in shipping lanes.”
No shipping means no delivery of coal and oil, food and other necessities. Europe is freezing over as the United States has been experiencing an unusually mild winter thus far. That, too, is likely to yield to the increased cooling of the planet and then, maybe, Americans will realize the threat to their lives that the closing of coal-fired plants, instigated by the Environmental Protection Agency, really means.
In England, the Mail reported on Sunday, February 12th, that large numbers of its elderly citizens are being “frozen to death as fuel bills soar: hypothermia cases among the elderly double in five years.” England, now gripped by foolish green notions of renewable energy, has covered itself with wind turbines, despoiling its countryside and coasts while proving unreliable and incapable of meeting its energy needs.
Figures showed that “1,876 patients were treated in hospital for hypothermia in 2010-2011, up from 950 in 2006-2007” reported the Mail. “Three-quarters of victims were pensioners, with cases soaring among the over-60s more than any other age group.”
In Europe, other news organizations reported that “Many of the dead were homeless people, who literally froze to death as the temperatures dropped to minus 50 degrees in some parts of the continent. Their bodies were found in the streets buried under snow, in rivers, and in doorways. Dozens of people were also killed in weather-related accidents.”
Writing in a Turkish newspaper, the Hurriyet Daily News, Sophie Quintin Adali, an analyst for a project of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, said, “As if the debt crisis weren’t bad enough news, the climate freeze sweeping across Europe is wreaking havoc by severely disrupting travel, business and people’s lives. Local authorities, indeed whole countries, are caught poorly prepared.” Turkey is experiencing record snowfall and low temperatures.
“The lack of readiness should come as no surprise because for decades the sensationalist message of global warming has dominated the public area,” said Ms. Adali.
“Politicians and decades of political environmentalism have a lot to answer for,” said Ms. Adali. “The man-made climate theory … is still supported by a mighty European Union bureaucracy and a green network addicted to public funds.” Even now, the Green Climate Fund “through which millions of taxpayer’s money will still be disbursed” is threatening the lives and the economy of people worldwide.
The current freeze is not just affecting Europe, but reaching across the Mediterranean to North African nations. And at some point America will feel it too.
We have not built a single new nuclear plant in America since 1978. EPA rules are forcing the closure of coal-fired plants throughout the nation. The national grid for the distribution of electricity is in need of upgrades.
The nation’s policies are controlled by the most environmentally insane administration in its history, wasting billions on so-called green energy. Its new budget raises taxes and proposes a trillion-dollar deficit without any significant effort to cut the spending that has left this and future generations in debt while the price of gas soars to new heights.
America and the rest of the world have been horribly deceived by the United Nations Intergovernmental Climate Change Panel that continues to drive the global warming hoax. The lying scientists who got on the global warming gravy train, the politicians that embraced it, and the media that misled millions are all culpable, all responsible.
They should be driven from office, defunded, and chased through the streets like villagers in pursuit of Frankenstein.
People are freezing to death in their homes and in the streets. What will it take to drive a stake into the heart of the global warming monster?
The GOS says: I don't know about chasing them through the streets as though we were in some picturesque Transylvanian Hammer film. Personally I think we ought to treat them more appropriately. Say, by taking them in a boat to Greenland and marooning them there. If they're right, it'll warm up by the time their rations run out, and they'll be able to eat grass.
I have to say to Alan Caruba that he's taking the whole thing a little too literally, and selecting his facts from some fairly hysterical sources. I mean, who takes the Daily Mail seriously? It spends most of its time trying to (a) frighten us, (b) outrage us and (c) cause our brains to deliquesce and gently trickle down our noses.
Still, the gist of his article is right enough, and what a good thing that more and more people are speaking out about this outrageous fraud. All we have to do now is convinced our own government (you know, the people most of us didn't vote for who are supposed to reflect our wishes and not spend their few brief years in power feathering their own nests, winning seats on the boards of windfarm companies, allowing their friends to make millions from carbon trading, subsidising companies selling solar panels that will offer no appreciable benefit if you live anywhere north of Madrid, and so on).
What the government and the environmental lobby ought to be spending their time on is working out something to improve our collection, storage and use of water. Did you know that the UK is only the 48th wettest country in the world, that we are officially classed as “arid”, and that we get less annual rainfall than Portugal, Italy and Mexico? They could start by building a bloody great pipeline down from Scotland. Scotland has thousands of lochs perpetually full of water, often miles long and many hundreds of feet deep – we could solve England's water shortages at a stroke, the Scots could make a few bob out of it, and it'd cost a damn sight less than the bloody high-speed rail link.
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