Over the past two weeks I've commented on conservative white males' violent reaction to climate change, the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests and teen activist Greta Thunberg.
On October 14 IRR fellow John Kane-Berman (JKB), who also contributes to the right-wing site Politicsweb (disclosure: I contributed to PW until our paths diverged), wrote on their site The Daily Friend that the international media's "Covering Climate Now" campaign is "propaganda, not journalism". I commented, but the site was revised this week and comments have been removed, an odd decision for a group that claims to defend- "the true champions" - liberal values.
I said the overwhelming consensus is human-caused climate change is known with empirical certainty. NASA (JKB and IRR have heard of them, right?) states "97% of actively published climate scientists agree humans are causing global warming and climate change. Most of the leading science organizations around the world have issued public statements expressing this."
The "some", i.e. the few who contest the science, JKB refers to are the negligible 3% of scientists who have doubts. Then there's the kooks, denialists-out-of-principle, environmental exploiters on the left and right, self-published bloggers and vloggers. And the economic opportunists who've vested interests in the carbon status quo: banks, fund managers, carbon-producing energy conglomerates and their shareholders.
The IRR believes its research output in its speciality - politics - is credible and expects the public should believe it, but that reputable scientific bodies like US Academy of Sciences, American Medical Association, American Meteorological Society, UN, and world media are publishing false research and 'propaganda'. It's funny, and sad.
It's predictable and unsurprising IRR, its members and sympathisers throw in their lot with the three percenters as the the world leaves them behind. I guess they know something the rest of us don't. Please tell us the secret path to enlightenment.
The IRR's credibility is impacted when its writers - most of them who frequently opine without checking the facts - make statements like JKB's. But it's clear that's the IRR's position too.
In BizNews on October 17 London-based contributor and financial analyst Simon Lincoln Reader disparagingly spoke of the extinction rebellion (XR) march in London and "if the ranting of [mayor] Sadiq Khan and Diane Abbott is anything to go by, criticising Extinction Rebellion (XR) will soon be made illegal [sic]". As he's done before, he attacked Thunberg. Follows is my response:
"People believe what they believe. White is black and up is down" (novelist James Lee Burke, 2019). "HIV does not cause AIDS. The world was created in 4004 BCE. Smoking does not cause cancer. And if climate change is happening, it is nothing to do with man-made CO2 emissions" (Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee, 2009, in Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?.
They proceed: "The consequences of policies based on views such as these can be fatal. Thabo Mbeki's denial that that HIV caused AIDS prevented thousands of HIV positive mothers in South Africa receiving anti-retrovirals so that they, unnecessarily, transmitted the disease to their children ..."
Few people today dispute smoking causes cancer, HIV AIDS or that apartheid was evil. Certainly not climate change dissenters like Reader and an example of the local right-of-centre, the IRR's John Kane-Berman who called the international media's statements "propaganda", and falsely and ignorantly claimed the science is "contested". It's not, except by this marginal group who benefit from the status quo or do so for ideological reasons.
NASA states 97% of all actively published scientists and numerous reputable organisations including US Academy of Sciences believe man is causing climate change. It's one of today's key issues, what AIDS, apartheid, civil rights and smoking to name a few was to their periods. The intensity of worldwide concern is reaching the point those movements did in the moment before change for the good occurred even if it was too late for many.
I guess Reader and his ilk couldn't be bothered to be disturbed from their cocoon - making money, immersed in their holy texts or doing whatever their kind do - to care. I bet they said 'humbug' to apartheid and AIDS activists and protests too, and called those leaders "terrorist", etc like they're vilifying Greta Thunberg now. But you can be damn sure that in time they shall never admit they once denied what the majority of people today accept, just as today one can never find a white South African who supported apartheid.
What is it about Thunberg that scares middle age white males so? She even provoked the ire of Jeremy Clarkson, whom I shall never view the same again. The prat.
Reader strangely replied, "Flattered, but why do I get all the incels? Oh go on then beautiful - lube up a bit if you don't mind [sic]".
I didn't get his allusion but he does seem obsessed with sexual proclivities, not the first time he's elliptically replied to me with a sexual double entendre. Unless he's saying the world's problems is an indicator of psycho-sexual disassociation and can be cured by mass promiscuity and unprotected sex rather than mass action by humanity. "Lie in", which XR protesters did, has a new meaning in his ilk's twisted minds. Lube without protection? And a smoke/vape after? But of course, HIV doesn't cause AIDS and smoking cancer.
Who knows what goes on in Readers' and his ilk's circles. I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me, so I don't know who they might meet. (Curiously, another commentator critic of me, also a conservative white male who typically frequent these sites, asked why I'm fixated on sex.)
However, in his article this week, JKB backtracked a bit from the adamant position he took the previous week listing the UN's "sensible" climate change proposals. He concedes (grudgingly) to the fact of man-made climate change after previously dismissing it based on the "some" (three percent of published climate change scientists) who contest it and the alleged "propaganda" of the majority's position, which the international media condones, who urge immediate significant action to avoid the catastrophic tipping point the UN says is near and might be too late.
On October 14 IRR fellow John Kane-Berman (JKB), who also contributes to the right-wing site Politicsweb (disclosure: I contributed to PW until our paths diverged), wrote on their site The Daily Friend that the international media's "Covering Climate Now" campaign is "propaganda, not journalism". I commented, but the site was revised this week and comments have been removed, an odd decision for a group that claims to defend- "the true champions" - liberal values.
I said the overwhelming consensus is human-caused climate change is known with empirical certainty. NASA (JKB and IRR have heard of them, right?) states "97% of actively published climate scientists agree humans are causing global warming and climate change. Most of the leading science organizations around the world have issued public statements expressing this."
The "some", i.e. the few who contest the science, JKB refers to are the negligible 3% of scientists who have doubts. Then there's the kooks, denialists-out-of-principle, environmental exploiters on the left and right, self-published bloggers and vloggers. And the economic opportunists who've vested interests in the carbon status quo: banks, fund managers, carbon-producing energy conglomerates and their shareholders.
The IRR believes its research output in its speciality - politics - is credible and expects the public should believe it, but that reputable scientific bodies like US Academy of Sciences, American Medical Association, American Meteorological Society, UN, and world media are publishing false research and 'propaganda'. It's funny, and sad.
It's predictable and unsurprising IRR, its members and sympathisers throw in their lot with the three percenters as the the world leaves them behind. I guess they know something the rest of us don't. Please tell us the secret path to enlightenment.
The IRR's credibility is impacted when its writers - most of them who frequently opine without checking the facts - make statements like JKB's. But it's clear that's the IRR's position too.
In BizNews on October 17 London-based contributor and financial analyst Simon Lincoln Reader disparagingly spoke of the extinction rebellion (XR) march in London and "if the ranting of [mayor] Sadiq Khan and Diane Abbott is anything to go by, criticising Extinction Rebellion (XR) will soon be made illegal [sic]". As he's done before, he attacked Thunberg. Follows is my response:
"People believe what they believe. White is black and up is down" (novelist James Lee Burke, 2019). "HIV does not cause AIDS. The world was created in 4004 BCE. Smoking does not cause cancer. And if climate change is happening, it is nothing to do with man-made CO2 emissions" (Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee, 2009, in Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?.
They proceed: "The consequences of policies based on views such as these can be fatal. Thabo Mbeki's denial that that HIV caused AIDS prevented thousands of HIV positive mothers in South Africa receiving anti-retrovirals so that they, unnecessarily, transmitted the disease to their children ..."
Few people today dispute smoking causes cancer, HIV AIDS or that apartheid was evil. Certainly not climate change dissenters like Reader and an example of the local right-of-centre, the IRR's John Kane-Berman who called the international media's statements "propaganda", and falsely and ignorantly claimed the science is "contested". It's not, except by this marginal group who benefit from the status quo or do so for ideological reasons.
NASA states 97% of all actively published scientists and numerous reputable organisations including US Academy of Sciences believe man is causing climate change. It's one of today's key issues, what AIDS, apartheid, civil rights and smoking to name a few was to their periods. The intensity of worldwide concern is reaching the point those movements did in the moment before change for the good occurred even if it was too late for many.
I guess Reader and his ilk couldn't be bothered to be disturbed from their cocoon - making money, immersed in their holy texts or doing whatever their kind do - to care. I bet they said 'humbug' to apartheid and AIDS activists and protests too, and called those leaders "terrorist", etc like they're vilifying Greta Thunberg now. But you can be damn sure that in time they shall never admit they once denied what the majority of people today accept, just as today one can never find a white South African who supported apartheid.
What is it about Thunberg that scares middle age white males so? She even provoked the ire of Jeremy Clarkson, whom I shall never view the same again. The prat.
Reader strangely replied, "Flattered, but why do I get all the incels? Oh go on then beautiful - lube up a bit if you don't mind [sic]".
I didn't get his allusion but he does seem obsessed with sexual proclivities, not the first time he's elliptically replied to me with a sexual double entendre. Unless he's saying the world's problems is an indicator of psycho-sexual disassociation and can be cured by mass promiscuity and unprotected sex rather than mass action by humanity. "Lie in", which XR protesters did, has a new meaning in his ilk's twisted minds. Lube without protection? And a smoke/vape after? But of course, HIV doesn't cause AIDS and smoking cancer.
Who knows what goes on in Readers' and his ilk's circles. I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me, so I don't know who they might meet. (Curiously, another commentator critic of me, also a conservative white male who typically frequent these sites, asked why I'm fixated on sex.)
However, in his article this week, JKB backtracked a bit from the adamant position he took the previous week listing the UN's "sensible" climate change proposals. He concedes (grudgingly) to the fact of man-made climate change after previously dismissing it based on the "some" (three percent of published climate change scientists) who contest it and the alleged "propaganda" of the majority's position, which the international media condones, who urge immediate significant action to avoid the catastrophic tipping point the UN says is near and might be too late.
Perhaps he read my criticism of his previous article and realised denialism in the face of the scientific certainty of man-made climate change is irrational and does his and IRR's, which from its tiny corner proclaims its expertise in the social sciences, credibility no good.
Since JKB speaks for the IRR - he is a fellow - one would think they have greater insight into the problem and the reasons for and circumstances of the worldwide (except South Africa where temperatures are 2% above global average) climate change protests. Greta Thunberg, whose name he contemptuously disdains to utter, is the latest publically well-known figure but by no means the first nor shall be the last. (NB she's not the leader of the climate change movement, for want of a better word, as JKB falsely implies.)
Since JKB speaks for the IRR - he is a fellow - one would think they have greater insight into the problem and the reasons for and circumstances of the worldwide (except South Africa where temperatures are 2% above global average) climate change protests. Greta Thunberg, whose name he contemptuously disdains to utter, is the latest publically well-known figure but by no means the first nor shall be the last. (NB she's not the leader of the climate change movement, for want of a better word, as JKB falsely implies.)
To general bemusement, conservative white males strangely fear and loathe her, most likely due to Freudian patriarchy, and like motormouth Jeremy Clarkson, tell her "be a good girl" and "shut up" and call her a "spoilt brat" and "mentally ill". Woman and children - worse, a woman child - must know their place.
Children have the most to lose after adults mess up the world. It's fairly common for young people and students to lead protests. Does JKB/IRR believe the black school children who led protests that started on 16 June 1976 that spread countrywide and marked the beginning of the end of apartheid were 'mouthpieces' of the ANC, PAC and other 'communist' organisations?
Children have the most to lose after adults mess up the world. It's fairly common for young people and students to lead protests. Does JKB/IRR believe the black school children who led protests that started on 16 June 1976 that spread countrywide and marked the beginning of the end of apartheid were 'mouthpieces' of the ANC, PAC and other 'communist' organisations?
Similarly, are the young people who're part of the Hong Kong protests also mouthpieces for anti-China organisations? Or does his rationalisation not apply to those circumstances but only to something close to his, IRR's and the conservative agenda of the denialist, big business anti-climate change agenda?
But as I say of the right and all ideology, they're sealed in their self-affirming cocoon. As such, they've apparently not heard of sustainable development's key principle of 'meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'. I guess to them Thunberg and the billions of young people - the future generations - don't have a say in what's happening now.
But as I say of the right and all ideology, they're sealed in their self-affirming cocoon. As such, they've apparently not heard of sustainable development's key principle of 'meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'. I guess to them Thunberg and the billions of young people - the future generations - don't have a say in what's happening now.
My comment was immediately removed after posting as spam. So much for the IRR being defenders of liberal values. The site now has a different format for posting comments no doubt the better to monitor and excludes those they deem critical.
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