Image Source: Creative Commons: unsplash.com
Once upon a time there was a Weatherman. He was a friendly fellow, unimposing but trustworthy. People listened to his words with respect and planned their future accordingly.
Like warmth in winter or a cool breeze in summer he was always a welcome part of any day. His persona reached out to people as part of a traditional way of life. His was a trusted voice of the seasons.
Then suddenly things changed. In the twinkling of a bloodshot eye this scion of a reputable family all at once lost his reputation. He became a blackguard, a villain, a malefactor, a gangster without a gun.
With frightening speed respect turned into disdain. Savage words molested him.
Lies were said to leave his mouth like fleas in a medieval plague. His judgement was seen as contaminated by myth and non sequiturs. He was anti social, confirmed by the masses as a destroyer of jobs.
Who were the Weatherman’s assassins?
You may be wondering about the precise causes of this sweeping change in the Weatherman’s destiny. Well, that change has a lot to do with shadowy forces dedicated to maligning science. Look – I’ll show you.
They cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not.
United States Senator Jim Inhoffe,
I’ve instinctively known this from the get-go, from 20 years ago! The whole thing is made up, and the reason I know it is because liberals are behind it! When they’re pushing something, folks, it’s always bogus.
Ah the poor Weatherman! Such a dutiful soul he was. Intent on service. Careful in his ways. Meticulous. Always pleased to be an active source of information.
How sad the tempest of scorn has made him! Self harm is in his mind. Reputations can be so vulnerable, especially when they interfere with large scale business planning. Words can be takeover bids. Here are some more examples.
Nobody can argue that there isn’t climate change. The climate’s been changing since time immemorial.
Do I believe there is global warming? No, I believe it’s all a load of bullshit. But it’s amazing the way the whole fucking eco-warriors and the media have changed. It used to be global warming, but now, when global temperatures haven’t risen in the past 12 years, they say ‘climate change’.
Well, hang on, we’ve had an ice age. We’ve also had a couple of very hot spells during the Middle Ages, so nobody can deny climate change. But there’s absolutely no link between man-made carbon, which contributes less than 2% of total carbon emissions [and climate change].
Michael O’Leary, Boss of Ryanair in 2010
“Listen to me,” says another seer with language queer, “climate change science is absolute crap.”
Reference: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-10/tony-abbott-climate-claims-dont-add-up/9034204 9/10/19
Another dignitary flaunts a lump of coal didactically in a very public place – a devious alliance.
Image Source: https://10daily.com.au/news/politics/a180903atv/scott-morrison-on-that-time-he-carted-coal-into-parliament-20180903 22/10/19
Then there is a voice from on high – very high – piercing the air with such nonsense a brain seems missing:
I believe that there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways…Don’t forget it used to be called global warming. That wasn’t working. Then it was called climate change. Now it’s actually called extreme weather, because with extreme weather, you can’t miss.
History is not spared by some as a tool of scepticism.
Carbon pricing harkens back to the idea, you know, that Massachusetts had to deal with, the witchcraft trials. The idea that witches change the weather. Now they’re claiming SUVs and our coal plants are changing the weather…
Marc Morano
Source: https://www.desmogblog.com/marc-morano 22/10/19
The efficient market hypothesis underlies much climate scepticism.
When economies get richer they not only make people wealthier, they generally provide immense environmental benefits. And so if you actually believe, if someone actually believes that global warming is a crisis that must be addressed…I think it would be much better to free up the economy and get rid of the EPA rules and a lot of the Department of Energy programs and let the economy boom forward.
Myron Ebell
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/trump-epa-climate-science-myron-ebell-2016-11?r=US&IR=T 22/10/19
What are these people whose words I quote, these sellers of doubt?
Why, they are intruders consciously maligning reality with a purpose. They have a mission statement to retain and promote destructive, established industries.. They tempt lawmakers with the profits from self interest.
What do they do to me?
They shake me. They conjure outbursts from me. They revive words I have found in my past, and they cause me to implode mentally.
Like this, with George Orwell and 1984:
The heresy of heresies was common sense.
war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is strength
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
They re-link me to the Worldly Goods of the Everyman I once studied at university …
Everyman: Yet in my mind a thing there is;
All my life I have loved riches;
If that my good now help me might,
He would make my heart full light.
I will speak to him in this distress. –
Where art thou, my Goods and riches?
Goods: Who calleth me? Everyman? What hast thou hast!
I lie here in corners, trussed and piled so high,
And in chest I am locked so fast,
Also sacked in bags, thou mayst see with thine eye,
I cannot stir; in packs low I lie.
What would ye have, lightly me say?
Everyman: Come hither, Goods, in all the hast thou may,
For of counsel I must desire thee.
Goods: Sir, and ye in the world have trouble or adversity,
That can I help you to remedy shortly.
Everyman: It is another disease that grieveth me;
In this world it is not, I tell thee so.
I am sent for another way to go,
To give a straight account general
Before the highest Jupiter of all;
And all my life I have had joy and pleasure in thee.
Therefore I pray thee go with me,
For, peradventure, thou mayst before God Almighty
My reckoning help to clean and purify;
For it is said ever among,
That money maketh all right that is wrong.
Goods: Nay, Everyman, I sing another song,
I follow no man in such voyages;
For and I went with thee
Thou shouldst fare much the worse for me;
For because on me thou did set thy hand,
Thy reckoning I have made blotted and blind,
That thine account thou cannot make truly;
And that hast thou for the love of me.
Everyman: That would grieve me full sore,
When I should come to that fearful answer.
Up, let us go thither together.
Goods: Nay, not so, I am, to brittle, I may not endure;
I will follow no man one foot, be ye sure.
Everyman: Alas, I have thee loved, and had great pleasure
All my life-days on good and treasure.
Goods: That is to thy damnation without lesing,
For my love is contrary to the love everlasting.
But if thou had loved moderately during,
As, to the poor give part of me,
Then shouldst thou not in this dolour be,
Nor in this great sorrow care.
Everyman: Lo, now was I deceived or was I ware,
And all may wyte* my spending time. *blame
Goods: What, weenest thou that I am thine?
Everyman: I had wend so.
Goods: Nay, Everyman, say no;
As for a while I was lent thee,
A season thou hast had me in prosperity;
My condition is man’s soul to kill;
If I save one, a thousand I do spill;
Weenest thou that I will follow thee?
Nay, from this world, not verrily.
Everyman: I had wend otherwise.
Goods: Therefore to thy soul Good is a thief;
For when thou art dead, this is my guise
Another to deceive in the same wise
As I have done thee, and all to his soul’s reprief.
Everyman: O false Good, cursed thou be!
Thou traitor to God, that hast deceived me,
And caught me in thy snare.
Goods: Marry, thou brought thyself in care,
Whereof I am glad,
I must needs laugh, I cannot be sad.
Everyman: Ah, Good, thou hast had long my heartly love;
I gave thee that which should be the Lord’s above.
But wilt thou not go with me in deed?
I pray thee truth to say.
Goods: No, so God me speed,
Therefore farewell, and have good day.
Do you get what I mean? The speakers I criticise, like Everyman, are obsessed with worldly goods! We must not let crass loyalty to what we own destroy the world.
The effect on me of those climate deniers is cataclysmic. So the brilliant Edgar Allan Poe’s words come back and haunt me thus…
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zig-zag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened –there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind –the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight –my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder –there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters –and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the “HOUSE OF USHER.”
The sceptics can also make me visit Creative Commons…
Source: Creative Commons https://glacierhub.org/author/kristin-hogue/ 18/10/19
Or cause me to seek out better opinions…
The Margaret Thatcher speech at the Second World Climate Conference on Tuesday November 6, 1990 comes to mind here. It is a view so nobly different from her later stand. No iron from her. Maybe irony.
But the threat to our world comes not only from tyrants and their tanks. It can be more insidious though less visible. The danger of global warming is as yet unseen, but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices, so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.
Our ability to come together to stop or limit damage to the world’s environment will be perhaps the greatest test of how far we can act as a world community. No-one should under-estimate the imagination that will be required, nor the scientific effort, nor the unprecedented co-operation we shall have to show. We shall need statesmanship of a rare order. It’s because we know that, that we are here today.
[MAN AND NATURE: OUT OF BALANCE]
For two centuries, since the Age of the Enlightenment, we assumed that whatever the advance of science, whatever the economic development, whatever the increase in human numbers, the world would go on much the same. That was progress. And that was what we wanted.
Now we know that this is no longer true.
We have become more and more aware of the growing imbalance between our species and other species, between population and resources, between humankind and the natural order of which we are part.
In recent years, we have been playing with the conditions of the life we know on the surface of our planet. We have cared too little for our seas, our forests and our land. We have treated the air and the oceans like a dustbin. We have come to realise that man’s activities and numbers threaten to upset the biological balance which we have taken for granted and on which human life depends.
We must remember our duty to Nature before it is too late. That duty is constant. It is never completed. It lives on as we breathe. It endures as we eat and sleep, work and rest, as we are born and as we pass away. The duty to Nature will remain long after our own endeavours have brought peace to the Middle East. It will weigh on our shoulders for as long as we wish to dwell on a living and thriving planet, and hand it on to our children and theirs.
Source: https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108237 9/10/19
Now here is Margaret Thatcher with a different voice:
So in a speech to scientists in 1990 I observed: whatever international action we agree upon to deal with environmental problems, we must enable all our economies to grow and develop because without growth you cannot generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment.
Wow! What a reversal by the Baroness. Why was this so?
Consequences?
Source: Creative Commons https://glacierhub.org/author/kristin-hogue/ 18/10/19
Forgive my ramblings though if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. But to end, I must try to be compos mentis.
Here’s To The Weatherman
Poor lad. The jumbo jet pilot trusts him with his life. The coal baron mangles him with contempt.
Closing Words
An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There’s a punishment for it, and it’s usually crucifixion.
John Steinbeck, East of Eden
As to the weather – just relax. Everything’s fine.
Image: Creative Commons Jeff Atwood June 4, 2009
royciebaby
Royce Levi Australian Teacher and Author 