It was good to see Joe Romm denounce the 10:10 film for the creepy propaganda piece that it is. But in his explanation, he inadvertently explains exactly the mindset that creates such disasters. He writes in part (emphasis added)
None of this excuses that disgusting video. But the difference is that those who are trying to preserve a livable climate and hence the health and well-being of our children and billions of people this century quickly denounce the few offensive over-reaches of those who claim to share our goals — but those trying to destroy a livable climate, well, for them lies and hate speech are the modus operandi, so such behavior is not only tolerated, but encouraged.
Note the statement — “for those trying to destroy a livable climate.” Does he really think anyone, including skeptics like myself or Anthony Watt (who he specifically calls out) is trying to destroy a livable climate? By using the word “trying,” he is assigning a motivation. Skeptics, to him, are not working from different assumptions or readings of the science. They say what they say because they are motivated to destroy the climate.
I suppose I could play the same game, and say that through CO2 controls Romm is trying to impoverish billions of poor people in lesser developed countries by halting development, but I don’t think that is really his motive, and it would be grossly unfair for me to write. I think poverty is an outcome of what he advocates, just as he thinks an unlivable climate is an outcome of what I advocate, but I can distinguish between motives and assumptions, but he apparently cannot.
This attitude is EXACTLY what causes unfortunate actions like the making of the 10:10 video — it is only a small step from believing, as Romm says he does, that skeptics are “trying to destroy a liveable climate” to making a movie that jokes about killing them all (or, to be frank, to feeling justified in acts of eco-terrorism). Is anyone else getting tired of this working definition that “hate speech” is any speech by people who disagree with me, because I have the best interest of humanity in mind so clearly those who oppose me hate the human race?
I encourage you to watch my climate video and decide if folks like me are trying to thoughtfully decipher nature or are engaging in hate speech.
I guess it is unsurprising that Joe Romm goes to the kindergarten argument of “he started it,” arguing that the video is just the flip side of the stuff skeptics are doing all the time. I am not sure exactly what comparable films skeptics have produced that are similar, and the only example he can cite is Anthony Watt’s blog post comments on the shooting of an eco-terrorist. I did not even go back and look at Watt’s comments, but I generally think that lots of people are too gleeful when suspected criminals, who are innocent before the law, are gunned down by police.
Never-the-less, its seems a stretch to equate the offhand comments in real time of an independent blogger with a film involving probably a hundred people (including those who commissioned it in the 10:10 organization), commissioned in an official and thoughtful act (after all this had to be months in the works), and funded in part by the British government. I say stupid things in real time that I later wish I had moderated or not said at all. That kind of communications mistake is very very different order of magnitude from a two month project involving scores of people and presumably multiple reviews by a prominent organization. (Update: Iowahawk makes this latter point about the number of people who were involved in this movie and reviewed it without a peep of protest here).
Surprise !
I have children and I care about the world that we pass on to them. I don’t want to pass on one with ten’s of trillions of dollars worth of effort diverted to a non-problem. That translates into millions of man years of effort.
Our best and brightest diverted from worthwhile efforts like curing cancer and improving the standard of health care for the poor, even in other countries.
The amounts involved will be significant in our efforts to fight for real needs of humanity.
Assuming that I wish to damage the environment is insulting as it is intended to be.
As far as “green jobs” unless they are addressing a real need it is like paying 100,000 people to dig holes and 100,000 to fill them in. We could give a PhD in hole theory and pay them more.
I believe firmly in free speech, the duty of citizens to question authority, and the right to hold opinions that diverge from the majority view.
While I concede that other responses to the “No Pressure” film are possible (I’ve read hundreds of reactions in the past 48 hours), from my perspective as a former vice president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the film treats the things I mention in the above paragraph with contempt.
To me, the film says that those who question the prevailing orthodoxy deserve (should expect?) to be
liquidated. If humanity didn’t have the deaths committed by Mao, Stalin & Hitler against people who
were seen as threatening to the orthodoxy on its conscience I might be more less concerned. But real people died. In the tens of millions. And if those deaths are not to be in vain, we can’t afford to be sanguine about the possibility of that sort of ugliness returning. What begins as contempt and caricature can lead to some dark places.
More of my thoughts on this film are here
Donna,
“While I concede that other responses to the “No Pressure” film are possible (I’ve read hundreds of reactions in the past 48 hours), from my perspective as a former vice president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the film treats the things I mention in the above paragraph with contempt.”
Quite true. While my initial reaction to that short movie was that it intentionally or not condoned violence or at least silencing of the perceived “bad” view point, the thing I dislike most about it now is its attack on liberty and free speech. The repeating of “its your choice” and then blowing people up that made the “wrong” choice is simply discusting, especially when its a couple of 10 year old kids.
Certainly someone must of told those producing this movie that it would not go over well, right?
Four words: heretics, kulaks, wreckers, skeptics.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global
WarmingClimate ChangeClimate Disruption is a religion.One of the actresses (as a meaning for the word “actress”, the dictionary should include “ditzy, neurotic, self-centered, analytically challenged fool.”) cited 300,000 as the current, ongoing, toll of climate change.
Sourced from International Organizations In Charge of Making Up Stuff, aka International Organizations for the Advancement of International Organizations.
I prefer 4:20 over 10:10.
I may have a small insight into the mindset of Romm and the others.
I recently deliberately spent some time in a Warmist forum, arguing a specific topic, and I found the people there to be downright creepy. They were well-informed (better than me) and extremely capable of constructing arguments.
They also seemed to be more concerned with not being proved wrong, and defending their position, than with uncovering the truth; they displayed enormous moral self-righteousness and certitude (though as I say, some of that is a facade to protect their inner fear); they displayed a concerted level of groupthink and combined action. Imagine being an invader into an ant’s nest and being assailed by a defensive swarm of soldier ants – it was rather like that.
They underestimated me, and I caught them in what to me, was a clear error. They wouldn’t have it, and cast around in all directions for an exit from the trap I had laid. Ad homs, circular arguments, smug condescension, whatever they could use to evade the direct issue.
In short, it was how I imagine religious cults behave. Like all cults, it is based on groupthink and fear, disdain and demonization of outsiders, and above all the desperate desire not to allow a single one of their tenets to be challenged – because if one goes, the whole house of cards goes.
That is why their language is often so vile (Romm, step forward) and their rhetoric so bilious, and why they urgently want to say ‘the debate is over’.
I’m glad I did the experiment, I learnt a lot about these people, but it left me feeling as though somebody had poured slime all over me, and I won’t be going back in a hurry….
in contrary to Cults like Christianity Judaism or Islam etc, is Global Warming a fact. first families have already fled the rising sea-levels, and that will increase from now on every year. Unless we finally wake up and change our destructive way of handling nature and the climate.
Me,
Please show us the first families fleeing sea level changes due to CO2.