We know it’s a cult because apostates must be exiled

One side of politics maintains its support through fear, but it’s an invisible wall until you touch it. Most people within the bubble think they got there through persuasion and reason. They think they are free to leave, they “just don’t want to”. But once an errant thought occurs, or they ask an unpermitted question, the wall of fear appears — it’s the unexpected poison barb, the mockery a reasonable question provokes. It quickly escalates to full blown “primal rejection”.

Leil Leibovitz lived within the bubble, and writes about The Turn — the moments he realized that he was afraid to ask, to speak his mind.

I sense a phase change coming as more and more people reach The Turn.

The Turn

By Leil Leibovitz

You might be living through The Turn if you ever found yourself feeling like free speech should stay free even if it offended some group or individual but now can’t admit it at dinner with friends because you are afraid of being thought a bigot. You are living through The Turn if you have questions about public health policies—including the effects of lockdowns and school closures on the poor and […]

Half of America doesn’t even want to spend $1 a month extra on green electricity or fuel

Everyone knows what they are supposed to say, but one in four Americans won’t even say it.

The CEI has done a new poll of 1,200 regular US voters. Supposedly 71% of Americans claim they are very or somewhat concerned, but it’s just a fashion statement for half of them.

Click to enlarge.

When it comes to spending their own money to change the global climate, they don’t want to.

Americans can’t be too worried about “climate change” if they don’t want to fork out more cash on gasoline and electricity to save the world. Fossil fuels might be destroying life on Earth, but 4 out of 10 Americans don’t want to spend an extra red cent on gas and electricity. That’s annually — a whole year of power and fuel bills.

And remember, it’s only a theoretical question. Anyone can say they’ll spend a lot.

Click to enlarge.

When will politicians realize that they are being gamed by all the inadequate meaningless surveys that only ask “do you believe”? Those surveys are apparently not designed to find out what the punters think about climate change. For all the world, their main purpose looks like being […]

Glorious Gods! Writers at The Guardian think they rule the world

The Guardian is a study in delusional arrogance. Consider this weeks headline pronouncement from the anonymous “Guardian Staff”:

“The climate emergency is here. The media needs to act like it”

..

Wrapped in so few words — ponder the vainglorious conceit embodied in such a headline. One, that Guardian “staff” are the judge and jury of a complex science, that they can prophesy the future climate, choose which experts are right, and feel that they know more than the Nobel Prize winning physicists, atmospheric chemists and professors of climate who disagree. Two, that “the media” are supposed to save the world from their own decreed emergency by making policy pronouncements, silencing opponents, and overriding elected officials. Three, that they unfailingly know what’s best for the stupid voting masses.

What the media needs is to eat humble pie and start doing their jobs.

If they were only smart enough to recognize their own failings they might start investigating the issues of the day with an open mind, serious questions, and report the smartest arguments made by the most informed commentators on all sides of the issues that matter.

These are our Upperclass wannabee rulers

How stupid […]

Climate Distress? ABC offers therapy and forgiveness to failed Ecowarriors who still use plastic nappies and styrofoam cups

It’s all a bit much for snowflakes

The ABC is just a Lifestyle Magazine for the Upperclass, paid for by everyone else.

For twenty years the media EcoRulers told people they will destroy the Earth if they use disposable coffee cups and nappies. Their whole identity as a Good Person depended on doing the right thing. And “every little bit matters” — etcetera, and ad nauseum.

Who would have guessed that asking people to save the Planet with every purchase would cause anxiety, a perpetual sense of failure, and long term stress?

And it never mattered anyway — the point was not the environment, but the political power. So now that hapless fans are being struck down with “Climate Distress” — it’s time to forgive them.

Here’s the ABC Agony Aunt column letting all of them off the hook:

Climate distress is real and it’s rational. Here’s how to manage it

Edwina Seselja

While researching how to reduce her carbon footprint a few years back, Brisbane woman Zara Monteith quickly fell down an anxiety-inducing rabbit hole, with each search opening her eyes to a different environmental problem to try to solve.

“It feels overwhelming — […]

A vasectomy as a fashion statement

Look who wanted an excuse to justify what he never felt motivated to do anyhow:

When I got engaged, my fiancée, Virginia, and I started planning for the future. It wasn’t just my dog Wiley and me against the world anymore. All of a sudden, I started thinking ten to 20 or more years ahead.

People who want kids don’t mention US presidents, forest management, or generic family pets in their decision-making:

Children are an obvious thing to plan. With a sudden focus on responsible decision-making, it no longer made sense to leave hypothetical future offspring up to chance. When should we have them? What did our careers look like on that timeline? Who’d be responsible for staying home and raising them? Couldn’t we just have one of the dogs do that?

We got engaged in June 2018, a couple months before a wildfire destroyed an entire town in California and another one wiped out sections of Malibu. Shortly after that, most of the Mississippi River basin flooded, something that might be the new normal, virtually eliminating the future for industrial agriculture throughout a region that produces much of this nation’s food. And, of […]

In grand attention-getting fashion statement Coldplay band says it won’t fly to Australia

Quick, who has a yacht to offer these poor celebrities?

Following Greta’s marketing example, Coldplay are getting headlines by refusing to fly to Australia. Climate-compassion-marketing is a good way to promote their next tour, especially among the young delusionals:

Coldplay won’t tour its new album until the band’s concerts can be environmentally ‘beneficial’

Paul Donoughue, ABC “News”

Singer Chris Martin says the band will not be touring new record, Everyday Life, until it can find a way to tour that is not harmful to the environment.

“We’re taking time over the next year or two to work out how our tour can not only be sustainable [but] how can it be actively beneficial,” Martin told BBC News.

He said that rather than just be sustainable, he wanted to the tours to have a positive impact, but that flights for the band, crew and gear represented the biggest hurdle to that.

These fashionistas are just not good with numbers. Flights for the band and crew are probably nothing compared to flights and car travel for 10,000 people in the audience. Look, even the ABC (not good with numbers either) can find quotes to […]

Skeptics get 49% more media, and other fairy fantasy stories from Nature Gossip Mag

Skeptics get banned, rejected, blocked and sacked from the mainstream media yet somehow Nature has a paper on Skeptics getting too much media. Believers don’t have to be an expert to control the news agenda, just a Greenpeace activist, or a teenage girl. Skeptics on the other hand, can be Nobel Prize winners, but the BBC won’t even phone them.

Nature, the former science giant, just launched the tenets of science over the event horizon. This paper is Argument from Authority rolled into false equivalence, and powered with cherry-picked errors in both category and in categorization. Nonsense on a rocket. It’s not what science is, and it’s not what journalism should be either. And Nature is supposed to be both. Judith Curry calls it The latest travesty in ‘consensus enforcement’ and the worst paper she has ever seen in a reputable journal.

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Both David Evans and I get a mention on what is effectively Nature‘s blacklist. What an honour! No really — there are 386 great names. Even more of an honour is a mention on Judith Curry’s site “blogs she’s learnt something from”. (By some freak, my name comes right after Freeman Dyson and Ivar […]