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Reader Comments (42)
Watch the channel 4 doco here
Very good. I must admit, as a bit of an ex-greenie, - in the distant past, I hasten to add - it really is hard to think of anything 'we got right'. Not the recycling, because it is so often wasteful, inefficient, or simply not done, or made redundant by better design. Not the DDT, because in fact it is overwhelmingly more beneficial than harmful. Not the nuclear, because it is in fact a marvellous way to generate useable heat. Not the organic farming, because inorganic needs much less land, much less wretched toil, and allows the poor to eat well. Not the acid rain alarm, because it was mostly a false one. Not the ozone layer alarm, because ditto. Not the attack on capitalism, because therein in lies our best hope. Not the Year 2000 alarm (subtext on technology dependence), because it was phony too. Not the famine alarm, not the overpopulation alarm, not the global cooling alarm, not the air pollution alarm, not the GM alarm, and of course, not the global warming alarm. Indeed we greenies have given alarmism a bad name. Perhaps that is the one thing we got right.
Fascinating doco - no-one at the BBC has the balls to ask these kind of questions.
One more question they should have asked: do these 'reformed' enviros have no insight or self-awareness at all? They freely admit they were wrong several times in the past - but seem to ignore the possibility they could be wrong again this time round.
I posted it elsewhere, see the James Delingpole article and responses at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100062459/why-being-green-means-never-having-to-say-youre-sorry/#disqus_thread
LOL.
Will the remaining greenies have to rename themselves the Real Environmetalists? Which group gets to talk to Huhne?
It's the bare faced hypocracy (sp) of the Whole Earth Catalogue Chappie that bemused me. He flew from California for the post programme debate. Wonder what his carbon footprint was for that essential flight. Oh no can't use technology like nuclear...or video conferencing ffs......his arrogance was just stunning. A perfect 'don't do what I do, do what I say' delingpole style performance
Nope, link doesn't work here in Sweden. That's a shame. I'd love to show it to my international students in their Critical Thinking about Science in The Media classes. YouTube has taken it down as well. Any other suggestions?
did I say delinpole...profuse apologies .I meant of course the manbigot
Brady
Try a UK proxy?
John Shade:
Good list. Yes, you got those things wrong. Except the "Year 2000 alarm" - that was certainly not "phony". But don't worry about it.
Josh you are getting seriously funny!
Dellers has recycled my (already recycled) line
I almost felt sorry for Mark Lynas in the debate afterwards, he and Brand looked pretty lonely while Greenpeace, FOE, Monbiot etc, laid into them for even thinking about these topics.
For us poor b******s who can't the TV show, here is some consolation from Minnesota:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx-t9k7epIk&feature=player_embedded#!
They made a really big mistake attacking carbon, it is the fundamental basis of life, and CO2 its lifeblood. If they had had a basic Victorian elementary education, they would have known that.
'Carbon forms more compounds than any other element, with almost ten million pure organic compounds described to date, which in turn are a tiny fraction of such compounds that are theoretically possible under standard conditions. Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. It is present in all known lifeforms, and in the human body carbon is the second most abundant element by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen.[14] This abundance, together with the unique diversity of organic compounds and their unusual polymer-forming ability at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, make this element the chemical basis of all known life.' (Wiki)
Delingpole is kicking ass right now.
Brady
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But all those "ex greenies" still think that global warming is happening and is caused by man's CO2 emissions!
WTF!
Religion has never taken kindly to apostates and that was very clearly demonstrated at the C4 discussion if nothing else was.
@Shub Delingpole is kicking ass right now.
Yes, laughed out loud at this expression of his: Komment Macht Frei
I managed to sit through it lieve until half-way into the studio debate. Here's what I took from the GreenPeace/FOE position.
GP/FOE seemed to be claiming the credit for any bits of environmentalism which met their agenda. When the issue of nuclear vs. coal creating more greenhouse gases than would otherwise be so was rasied, GP/FOE seemed to take the position that they couldn't possibly be powerful enough to influence government policy.
I think it is impossible to compromise with the green establishment - they just make things up as they go along and are wholly unaccountable to anyone but their quasi-socialist ideology. I think the green movement is an affectation of wealthy nations who have too much time on their hands - rather like homeopathy or colonic irrigation.
Peoples lives are improved by the creation of wealth not by fruitless environmental restrictions. This is particularly true in the developing world. Our own economy would be better served by eliminating prohibitive green (and other) restrictions to development - unfortunatly we don't seem to have any will anymore to generate wealth.
No no no! The cartoonist are wrong:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHREDKZLfII
Message: Let's have a real debate about what's solving the climate and save mankind in the future. (Let's starrt with refusing the reality, kind of...)
(Correction: are -> is.)
@John Silver
I can't get the channel 4 doco here in Oz either, but that utoob clip is a ripper! Thanx :-)
There is a famous physicist (whose name I can't remember) who observed that upon reading a newspaper an expert in a particular field will notice the hopeless inaccuracies in a story about his own field and dismiss the journalism as incompetent and untruthful. However, the same reader will then turn the page over, carry on reading, and believe every word.
I couldn't help watching last night's Channel 4 documentary with this thought in mind.
These individuals, who had made decisions affecting possibly millions of people and trillions of dollars, whose thinking had been systematically and repeatedly proven to be flawed (even to the point where they could recognise their mistakes themselves) still thought their current decision-making abilities were unimpaired.
But I had had to stop watching the discussion programme after the moment George Monbiot repeated the hysterical lie that the green movement, specifically the climate change one, was being outspent in propaganda terms by ‘deniers’. ‘They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars’, he wailed. Neatly forgetting the fact that the alarmists have access to funds and media sources worth billions. And more importantly have trillions of dollars invested by big business in the success of their venture.
Appalling idiots.
One more thing. Watch the discussion programme again and look at the body language. The green lobby presents itself as rebels, insurgents, outsiders, an oppressed minority. Watch that group of individuals. Look at the sense of entitlement and outrage. You are watching the establishment. Supercilious and arrogant. Like a bunch of high priests.
@timheyes
Can the Greens really believe they can't influence the government? They are trying pretty hard to do so..... See Bishop's post on parliamentary lobbying.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/10/29/ministerial-meetings.html
stuck record
That thing about noticing heopless inaccuracies in your own field in a newspaper, but blithely going on to read the rest assuming it is accurate is called the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
First coined by Michael Crichton I believe, his essay isn't on his site anymore but here's an extract:
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
Thanks Steve2
Re Stuck-record and Steve2 - the Murray-Gellman amnesia effect
Richard Courtney wrote an excellent piece that is on John Daly's still-wonderful website. He noted how Maggie Thatcher in her war against the miners chose to play her unusual card - a degree in science. Now Thatcher not only created the Hadley centre, she also crucially altered the funding of research - and I think this action of hers has had an effect out of all proportion larger than the original action - like the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
Basically, if I have understood correctly, she cut down research funding in all disciplines - except for research, in any discipline, that supported manmade global warming. Funny thing is, she herself eventually realized that AGW was not an issue. But by then, the Sorcerer's Apprentice had fashioned his automated broomstick, made of cross-disciplinary grant money for research supporting AGW.
Divide And Rule, I think.
Lucy Skywalker
Excellent analogy.
Not the peak oil scare (well scares since it has been repeated every couple of years since "Limits to Growth"), not the limits to growth,(Moore's law is purring away), not all the other resources running out as per LtG, not global cooling, not deaths of hundreds of millions from famine, not the need to evacuate coastal regions because of the smell of the death of all sea life (Ehrlich), not extinction of most animal species, not massive pollution, not US life expectancy dropping to a very precise 42 because of pollution caused cancers (Ehrlich), not rising sea levels, not the no lower threshold claim of radiation damage (in fact at low rates it is beneficial),not slowing of the Gulf Stream, not the expansion of the Sahara, not net world deforestation, & I am willing to bet the recently claimed slowing of the world's winds due to more forests &/or climate change will prove a chimera too.
On the other hand the DDT ban alone has killed 70 million people so the Green scarers have far more blood on their hands than Hitler. I think the cartoon is overly generous.
The latest from Minnesotans for Global Warming. They are real Diamond Geezers!
http://www.minnesotansforglobalwarming.com/m4gw/
Once the Great Cause becomes a victim of such satire as from Josh and M4GW, it cannot last long.
JFI Has there ever been a greenie/warmist crusader with a sense of humour? Or is the lack of one a prerequisite? Maybe their Calvinist preaching about our need to change our evil sinning ways is a consequence of their relentless cheerless and downbeat approach to life. The New Puritans?
Can't get "What The Green Movement Got Wrong" on youtube and Pirate Bay either.
If you have a bittorrent program you can get episode 1 and the first debate by signing up here:
http://www.uknova.com/ (search for 'green')
Oops, sorry there are no more episodes...mybad...
Oh, that is his best ever (so far). Absolutely superb!
Having watched the documentary and the discussion it was notable that nobody in either asked the obvious question: since all your previous alarms and campaigns were wrong isn't it likely that you are also wrong about Climate Change?
Never forget that what is 'right' today, may well be 'wrong' tomorrow and vice versa. Although some might be saying 'we got it wrong before, THIS is what is right now', it is quite likely that THIS will also appear 'wrong' when viewed from some other point in time! This is the fundemental problem, we can never know what the future is! I am pleased that some uncertainty has manifested itself in the green movement, because utter conviction that one is 'right' about anything at all is always dangerous.
Am I the only one who picked up the fact that the 'Reformed Greenies' Lynas and Brand STILL believe climate change is man-made?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/nov/05/stewart-brand-pesticide?showallcomments=true&msg=a#end-of-comments
You know youre winning ..when they start deleting you : ) Komment Macht Frei ..as JD put it ...
I often think that if greenies weren't so militant, they'd have a point. One thing which pretty much all conservative blogs don't mention, is that there are limits to industrializing, populating and earning a dollar at the expense of people and the environment. I strongly dislike the hard left but I also despise the world of consumerism and corporatism, and therefore can understand to some degree, why the left hate capitalism so much. The problem invariably leads to partisan politics. Conservative politics is not compassionate enough and liberalism is much too idealistic and theoretical. There simply is no balance. The corporate marketing lifestyle reigns.
'of' lifestyle.....