On Picking the Right Emergency In Order to Instal a Dictatorship

It is, of course, the Right who are normally accused by the Left of engineering emergencies for the sole purpose of seizing our cherished liberties, or at any rate, those few still remaining.  Such suspicions, kept within the sort of moderation that is beyond the capability of the rabid Left, are probably rather sensible but it is worth reminding ourselves that this sort of sly insinuation of Dictatorship for the Greater Good by the Great and Good is not confined to neo-Nazis of the Right.  Their comrades (and they are comrades, believe me!) in the Fascist Left are equally adept at the tactic.

Read, especially if you are not sleeping well, Ed Rooksby's post entitled "Doom, Downturn and Doubt".  Ed Rooksby is a rarity for a member of the 'Trot-lot' creche in that he lacks that nasty, brutish, snarling face of hatred that is all too apparent with the likes of 'lenin', 'Meaders, 'BionOc' and the rest of the species.  He tries from time to time but it never quite works, and every so often a tiny gleam of doubt shines through his witterings so that you just know that 'come the revolution', poor old Ed will collect the bullet in the back of the head even before old re-actionaries like me.  Ed's problem is that he is rather dim despite (or because of) the fact that he is studying for a Ph.D.  (Regular readers will know at first-hand from this blog's comments that being a Ph.D. is no bar to the ability to spout nonsense!) 

Anyway, Ed, in the innocent way of so many academics, has swallowed whole the lying propoganda (I use the words deliberately) of the 'Hot Air Fanatics' (HAFs), such as 'Greenwar' and 'Enemies of the Earth', who tell us continually that 'The End of the World is Nigh'.  I call them Hot Air Fanatics because not a little of the reason for the earth warming is due to the hot air they expel from every orifice on a non-stop basis.  Before sundry Doctors Emeritus chip in to prove definitely and unanswerably and usually at great length that indeed the earth is warming, let me state clearly that I am absolutely convinced that the temperature is changing for the simple reason that it has always changed since it was created.  Whether it is warming or cooling, I know not, and there has to be some doubt because I can still remember the time - 40-years ago? - when the experts told us to expect a new ice-age.  The fact that a 180-degree discrepancy has already occurred within my lifetime leads me to doubt the efficacy of all these mad ideas intended to curb warming just as we might be about to go into a deep freeze!

However, let us suppose that the HAFs are right and that the global temperature is increasing.  Two questions arise immediately; what should we do about it and, more to the point, should we do anything about it at all?  I must asume that, dim or not, Ed Rooksby is conversant with what passes for thinking in HAF circles and that in his resume he is regurgitating their ideas which seem to me to be the stuff of nightmares.  What Rooksby suggests is dictatorship, no more, no less.  A command state that will enable and empower legions of un-civil masters to boss even the smallest items in our lives.  (If, dear reader, like me, you live under a council regime that has just issued pages of edicts in relation to the correct use of the multiple waste bins they have issued, and dire threats if they are mis-used and you find this intolerable then, to quote the greatest president of the 20th c., "You ain't seen nuthin' yet" if Rooksby and the HAFs get their way.

If that is the cure then I can only say that it is worse than the imagined disease.  I would rather go out in a blaze of conspicuous consumption than live a minute under the HAF autocracy.  It is yet another indication of Rooksby's peurility that despite all the evidence that hits the headlines on an almost daily basis demonstrating the incompetence and the complete incapacity of our un-civil servants to organise anything from a Dome to a terrorist disaster, he wishes to put his trust for the future of our planet in their hands.  One is entitled to ask what on earth they actually teach at York University?

But of course, whilst Rooksby and his ilk are the "useful idiots" of the movement, behind them are some very clever people indeed.  They will use this earth-warming scare to introduce the sort of Marxist state planning that they dream of.  One of the reasons why George Bush is such a good president is that he blew that criminal Kyoto treaty out of the water.  Let us hope his successor has similar strength of purpose.

Comments

[Hank]

David

A long time ago I commented on the http://eclecticmeanderings.blogspot.com/2005/07/recycle-now.html>?correct use of the multiple waste bins.”

Now, let’s not accuse George Bush of things he did not do.

The Kyoto (AKA Enron solvency) treaty ratification was dead in the US Senate before the ink was dry. Bush did not kill it, he announced the corpse was beginning to stink and should be put in the ground.

[David Duff]

You're quite right, Hank, and I should have been more careful with my phrasing because I often berate HAFs for blaming Bush when it was the Congress who inflicted the mortal wound. Even so, at least Bush didn't try and give it the kiss of life!

[barry bananas]

Point of information, David: a new ice age is not at all inconsistent with an increasing rise in global temperatures. In fact, the latter is pretty much exactly the mechanism by which the former scenario is predicted to arise. Therefore, the supposed contradiction which "leads [you] to doubt the efficacy of all these mad ideas" is in fact non-existent.

[David Duff]

Thank you, Barry, I think!

You appear to be saying, with me, that earth temperatures go up and down, or, if you like, down and up. Unfortunately that doesn't help me decide which set of 'lying liars' to believe. Not does it help decide what if anything we should do - except, given the Marxist leanings of the HAF leadership, the opposite of anything they suggest.

(Isn't about time that 'NIB' put in his nit-picking tanner's worth? Where is he?)

[barry bananas]

"You appear to be saying, with me, that earth temperatures go up and down"

Well no, not quite. I'm saying that the hypothesised ice age would have as its direct cause the rise in global temperatures. Roughly speaking, as the planet heats up, the glaciers melt, introducing fresh water into the Gulf Stream, disrupting the oceanic and atmospheric currents that give Europe its relatively temperate climate (i.e. relative to other parts of the globe that lie on the same latitude). It's not quite the same as cyclical fluxuations.

Essentially, the ice age that was predicted 40 years ago is still very much on the cards according to climate change theory. There is no contradiction, and no "180-degree discrepancy".

[David Duff]

Barry, you will sense beneath my huffing and puffing an uneasy awareness of my lack of scientific knowledge but I did take the trouble to look at this:

http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm#Greenland,%20Iceland,%20northern%20Norway,%20and%20the%20Arctic%20Ocean

These graphs provide (mostly non-urban)temperature data and the ones situated in the Arctic are of particular interest. They show, if you will excuse an old army saying, that the temperatures are up and down like a whore's drawers! My quick scan seemed to show what a very good thing it was the HAFs were not around in the 1930s when temperatures reached record heights. I am also, unlike most HAFs, uneasily aware that records from, say, the 1880s up to now are infinitesimally minute set against the huge span of earth time.

Hamlet's words seem appropriate: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy".

[barry bananas]

Well, you certainly seem to have your own philosophy all tied up, anyway: temperatures go up and down, end of story.

I don't think Hamlet would have been too impressed with that.

[David Duff]

Are you suggesting they don't?

[barry bananas]

I certainly am not.

[David Duff]

Thank God for that! We're agreed.

[barry bananas]

Only if you are unable to concentrate on reading for more than half a sentence before the narcolepsy sinks in. Maybe when the nurses bring you round in the morning to change your colostomy bag you can have another go.

[David Duff]

And there was me thinking that we could enjoy a sensible discussion. Oh well ...

[barry bananas]

How can I have a sensible discussion with someone who so so horribly misapprehends my comments? It's amazing that you have reduced this conversation to an imbecilic discussion of whether or not temperatures "go up and down". Nowhere did I suggest that temperatures only increased or decreased, but that is because I am not a moron.

I did suggest, however, that your own insightful analysis (namely, that temperatures -- for crying out loud -- go "up and down") might be a tad simplistic. You seem to be entirely happy with this groundbreaking conclusion, and not even remotely open to all those other things that might be out there in heaven and earth. Like ice ages caused by increasing global temperatures, for example.

You've also completely failed to give due consideration to my point that rising global temperatures can theoretically be possible for the onset of an ice age, and that therefore your talk of a 180-degree turnaround is yet more Duff and nonsense. But then to do so would require you to admit error, I suppose.

I think this is one of those points that come up frequently on your blog where you would be better just admitting that you have no idea what you are talking about, and that you are simply devolving into ludicrous diversions and moral grandstanding in order to hide this plainly obvious fact.

But alas, from experience I predict that your embarrassing responses will continue along this downward spiral.

[David Duff]

Feel better now, do you?

If, as we agree, temperatures fluctuate then talking of hot spells *causing* ice ages is hardly useful. You might as well say that ice-ages *cause* hot spells since both appear to follow each other. Similarly, even to talk of *causes* rings alarm bells in my admitted (see above) non-scientific brain. I suspect that cause and effect in climate fluctuation is exceedingly complicated. I hardly dare mention the mathematics of dynamic non-linear equations. But one thing is fairly certain, the politicised theories of the HAFs should be firmly ignored.

And talking of a failure "to give due consideration" to your points, you have yet to comment on the link *I* provided which is as scientific as you could wish for. Perhaps you were too embarrassed!

[Hank]

Barry

I did take meteorology in Collage. My main field of study is politics.

The primary culprit here is the “net solar energy absorption” at any given time and place. In the articles I have seen, given what is known about solar energy absorption and associated patterns, I have yet to see one that makes even a halfway decent argument that man is having more than trivial effect on global temperatures. The best ones have a lot of scintific terms but even if the facts are correct they ancedotal details in a much larger system. The articles rejecting the thesis usually have the sense to ask the right questions.

I eye-balled the charts on David’s link. I do not feel like making a full blown study but they appear to show stable patterns. (The whores’ trousers may go up and down, that’s no surprise, but they do so on a regular pattern. The establishment is going to stay in business but do not build a new wing.)

On the other hand I know a well run political propaganda campaign when I see one and the HEF (David I like that I might steal it some time) campaign is well run, and does a good job of hiding a lack of substance, but that does change the fact there is a lack of substance.

[David Duff]

Help yourself, Hank, but get the spelling right - HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) not HEFs!

[Barry Bananas]

David, I'll assume you are deliberately missing my point.

It is quite simply this: the 180-degree turnaround - the one that leads you to "doubt the efficacy of all these mad ideas" - simply does not exist. The posited ice age is still a possibility under current climate change theory; any such event would have as its direct and proximate cause the rise in global temperatures.

Again: there is no theoretical conflict between the ice age theory and the global warming theory. They are one and the same. You are wrong in suggesting that there has been a 180-degree turnaround - that is my point here. I'm not sure if I can make this any clearer.

Now here's where it might get really tricky for you: my point above is true regardless of whether or not temperatures are _in fact_ increasing. My point is about the _theory_. Your links are therefore completely irrelevant. Maybe the temperatures increasing, maybe they aren't. Whatever, it makes no difference to my argument: you are still wrong in saying there has been 180-degree turnaround. There hasn't.

Okay? Let me know if you have any questions.

[David Duff]

I have responded in the blog above "HAFs and HAFs not".