Thursday 13 December 2007

Sense and non-sense from would-be world leaders

Two comments from two sources this morning for your comparison, one from a politician more braindead than normal, and the other from a very unlikely source showing more sense on the global warming charade than from many so called science writers -- and certainly more sense than is coming out of Bali at present.

Here's the first comment, from Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee who, when asked whether the global warming threat was "overblown" gave an audience his ambitious energy plan:

I think we ought to be out there talking about ways to reduce energy consumption and waste. And we ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is.

Free of energy consumption!  As someone said, that's like "chemical free food."  It's a pledge to repeal the Laws of Thermodynamics. It's not "bold," it's physically impossible.  Huckabee is now positioning himself as "the entropy candidate!"

Much more sense from ... the Pope.  Yes, the Pope.  He might have some unusual friends (including an imaginary one who he says is omnipotent), but he clearly has some good advisors:

The Pope condemns the climate change prophets of doom.
Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology. The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering. [Read on here.]

Perhaps the (German) Pope has been listening to Czech president Vaclav Klaus, who reminded reporters at the launch of the German translation of his new book recently that "freedom, not climate, is under threat":

"Also (threatened) is the prevailing social and economic order, contemporary civilisation, the current prosperity of developed countries and the chances of developing countries to achieve a similar level of prosperity." He said the climate change movement was not based on science and that theories about man-made global warming could not be proven. "It has become a new religion or new ideology and in that sense I think it's justified to compare it with other ideologies," Klaus said.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

More sense is coming from those at this conference who are considered apostates by the IPCC cheer leaders and their fellow travellers who have created this new faith and like the ROP would like to see them disappear. More prominence should be given in the NZ media to the UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports since its inception going back to 1990 who has said at the conference:

“There is no evidence that carbon dioxide increases are having any affects whatsoever on the climate,"

Gray, who shares in the Nobel Prize awarded to the UN IPCC, explained.

"All the science of the IPCC is unsound. I have come to this conclusion after a very long time. If you examine every single proposition of the IPCC thoroughly, you find that the science somewhere fails,"

Gray, who wrote the book "The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001," said.

"It fails not only from the data, but it fails in the statistics, and the mathematics," he added.

The Nobel Prize awarded to the IPCC is for Peace (and notably not for science) but if the implementations of those measures that the IPCC are pushing succeed then only conflict will reign supreme.

Anonymous said...

PC, I just read your friend the Pope's full statement, and it really does seem that the reporter was trying extra-hard to spin the statement in a denialist-friendly manner.

Read the whole thing if you are so inclined (the important bits have been italicised, by internet-savvy bishops, one presumes), and tell me you don't agree. I came away with the unshakeable impression that His Holiness cleaves to the IPCC 'consensus' view - 'on the side of the angels' so to speak, haha. Yeah, OK, it's Friday...

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20071208_xli-world-day-peace_en.html

DenMT

Peter Cresswell said...

Yeah, I think you're right Den.

It's not often I wade through speeches posted at TheHolySee.Com, but when you do see the whole speech in the flesh, then phrases like "a prudent use of resources," "stewardship of the earth's energy resources," and an "equitable distribution of wealth" do rather leap out, don't they, and are as sickening as they are frequent, and all too horribly representative.

So that's it then, the Pope's back off my Christmas card list, and back on to yours. He can go back to his funny hats and stay there.

However, there is still this:
"Human beings, obviously, are of supreme worth vis-à-vis creation as a whole. Respecting the environment does not mean considering material or animal nature more important than man."

Take out the concept of "creation," and that's more than many would be willing to say. You, for instance?

And then there's this:

"It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions..."

Which is very good. Or would be if it didn't lead to this question-begging conclusion: "... to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development..."

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

I've been conned by the MSM once again.

Brendan said...

pc: “I've been conned by the MSM once again.”

No, I rather think you’re conned yourself, pc, by your too-ready acceptance of views that tickle your prejudices.

Didn’t Ayn Rand say something about the value of correcting one’s own mistakes? Unfortunately, in this case, you have lost that opportunity.

Perhaps next time.

Anonymous said...

Brendan

"No, I rather think you’re conned yourself, pc, by your too-ready acceptance of views that tickle your prejudices."

You should apply that to yourself. It's exactly what YOU do. You're the one who is the intrincisist here. PC is not. I understand our host to be an Objectivist.

LGM