Alexander Cockburn: I am an intellectual blasphemer (red anthropogenic global warming denier!)

spiked-online.com ^ | 25 January 2008 | Alexander Cockburn

[neverdem]

The author is one of the few commies who didn't fall for the man-made global warming fear mongering.

[skimask]

You can’t call it “Global Warming” anymore. It’s now called “Climate Change”. This way if it gets warmer it’s mans fault, if it gets colder it’s mans fault. Just go out and buy lots of carbon credits from Algore. But in reality, weather it gets colder or warmer, we all know it’s Bush’s fault because he stole the 2000 election from Algore.

[rogue yam]

Cockburn is redder than a monkey’s ass but he has been calling b.s. on what he terms “neo-Malthusianism” for a long time.

[eclecticEel]

“The nuclear industry is benefiting immeasurably from the current catastrophism.”

If one good thing can come out of the hysteria, this would be it.

[DISCO]

Right on bro. And a big bump for those of you who are asleep right now.

[Rudder]

Excellent essay on the lunacy and risk of the anthropogenic global-warming movement. It's worth sending to e-mail friends., etc.

Peer review is frequently a way of controlling debate, even curtailing it. Many people who fall back on peer-reviewed science seem afraid to have out the intellectual argument.

Having been at both ends (reviewer and reviewee) of the peer review process of life science articles, my experiences don't support this statement, however. To date, I have never seen an instance of its use in stifling debate.

[eclecticEel]

Well, of course. The dominant meme has been that the world is getting hotter and will one of these days spike up to some hellish temperature, the poles will melt, and we’ll all die. Alongside it there’s always been the rather opposite scenario that says that man-caused CO2 emissions will lead to a new ice -age. It’s received considerably less traction, and seems to completely contradict the dominant strain of alarmism; yet the global warming crowd doesn’t want to discount it because it has all the necessary elements for any good climate scare: it’s all our fault, and socialism is the only solution.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks nd.

[2ndDivisionVet]

“When The Coin In The Coffer Rings, A Soul From Purgatory Springs!” — Dominican Friar Johann Tetzel

[woofer]

But in reality, weather it gets colder or warmer,

Pretty clever, Ski.

Me, being an ordinary, uneducated farm boy from Illinois, would have settled to use the word "whether".

[snowsislander]

Here in the West, the so-called ‘war on global warming’ is reminiscent of medieval madness. You can now buy Indulgences to offset your carbon guilt. If you fly, you give an extra 10 quid to British Airways; BA hands it on to some non-profit carbon-offsetting company which sticks the money in its pocket and goes off for lunch. This kind of behaviour is demented.

That description seems all too true, except that Mr. Cockburn's summary leaves out that the U.N. also seems determined to tax this silliness along the way.

[Fred Nerks]

There was a shocking intensity to their self-righteous fury, as if I had transgressed a moral as well as an intellectual boundary and committed blasphemy. I sometimes think to myself, ‘Boy, I’m glad I didn’t live in the 1450s’, because I would be out in the main square with a pile of wood around my ankles...

...in the twentyfirst century, you might find yourself confined to a 'climate-change' re-education camp, perhaps.

[carumba]

the necessary elements for any good climate scare: it’s all our fault, and socialism is the only solution.

Get an inner tube and paddle, Havana or bust. Castro I never knew ya. /sarcasm

[Jimmy Valentine]

"The author is one of the few commies who didn't fall for the man-made global warming fear mongering."

However he is a hard core Commie who does not believe in free speech for anyone but himself.

The left is beginning to remind me of Russia in the early thirties when purges and murders of the loyal Bolsheviks went on wholesale under Stalin.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Interesting that his advertisement (buy my book) attacks the classic boogyman of corporations as much as politicians and enviro’ extremists....

[xcamel]

FReepmail me to get on or off
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH

---

Bit of an oxymoron going on here..

[steelyourfaith]

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[Beckwith]

Cockburn is to the left of Karl Marx and crazier than Dennis Kucinich.

[alwaysconservative]

Thanks for the ping! I have always been amused to read Cockburn, since he usually comes up with these hilarious ideas, like how Kyoto-like efforts will “hurt” small third-world farmers. (Hello? China and India, anyone? Can any rational person argue that Kyoto will hurt anyone as much as the US?)

But, it is instructive, and illustrative, to have him chronicle his own experience (from the left, no less) of being treated as a heretic for the “sin” of not worshipping the climate-change diety. Note how he defends the catastrophists as corporate dupes, but having the pure motives of seeking social justice, not admitting (aloud) that they are just stone cold stupid. ROFL!

Interesting perspective, however. He fails to note how nuclear power is so bad/objectionable, when Europe, and especially France, are much “greener” than we are and rely much more heavily on nuclear than fossil fuel technology. That must be one of those little “cognitive dissonances”, LOLOL!

[Albion Wilde]

The author is one of the few commies who didn't fall for the man-made global warming fear mongering.

Another incisive and funny! explanation of ludicrous celebrity fear-mongering, academic grant-seeking and corporate exploitation of environmental fears is the 2004 book State of Fear by Michael Crichton, Harvard-educated doctor and author of many blockbusters, including Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain, and the TV show "ER."

Wikipedia says, "Crichton warns both sides of the global warming debate against the politicization of science. He provides an example of the disastrous combination of pseudo-science and good intentions, in the early 20th-century idea of eugenics. He finishes by endorsing the management of wilderness and the continuation of research into all aspects of the Earth's environment." [emphases mine.]