Observations From the Back Row, 3-30-11

By Rich Kozlovich

Earth Hour may be losing steam as novelty wears off
More Canadian municipalities are pledging to power down Saturday for Earth Hour, but an expert says interest in the event may already be fizzling. Earth Hour has "done a great job of capturing the imagination of an awful lot of people around the world" to raise awareness of climate change issues, said Mark . But "just more of the same gets old fast," he said Friday, noting most marketing campaigns will fade after a few years without something new to draw the public's attention…..The challenge now, he said, "is going to be how to sustain, deepen and broaden the momentum of support for climate change-related policies, practices and behaviours."

My Take - Is it possible that people finally realize that this whole thing is a load of horsepucky? True, it captured everyone’s imagination and tickled the fancy of the general public….but did it really do anything worthwhile. Yes, it did! It made people who really are interested, in this and other issues, look to see what the facts really are and they weren’t impressed. That is why it is waning. Once all that warm and fuzzy stuff wears off, the part of society that is fickle, easily led, misinformed and uninformed simply stops paying attention. As for his statement that; The challenge now, he said, "is going to be how to sustain, deepen and broaden the momentum of support for climate change-related policies, practices and behaviours’. The real challenge for these people is to keep some of the people who promoted this stuff (at taxpayer expense) from going to jail. Oh, I’m sure they will find another gimmick to cloud the public’s minds, but as time goes by it may not be as easy as it was a few years ago.

Clean energy’s junk economics
The oxymoron-ish nature of a “left-wing think tank” is on display in the Center for American Progress’ latest pitch for a so-called “clean energy standard”….. What we do know — and this is undisputed — is that electricity from wind and solar sources is so expensive that without government subsidies, it would not exist, let alone compete with fossil fuels. At a Senate hearing last week, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) asked a “clean energy” venture capitalist: “If it wasn’t for the credits you’re receiving, would you be in business?” The answer was no, according to Climatewire. CAP admits as much in its report, citing the success of several “clean energy” welfare programs.

Society has been lied to for so long on this issue that they haven’t been able to connect the dots until now….thanks to the internet. If some economic plan was worth exploring it wouldn’t need government grants to become reality. Businessmen would already be doing it, competing with it, making themselves a bunch money and hiring employees who would in turn get their share of the pie that is commonly known as wages and benefits. And if they wished to invest in the companies they could then become owners. And that is the system they wish to overturn?

Global Warming’s Hockey Schtick! There He Goes Again: Mann Claims His Hockey Stick was Affirmed by the NAS
Spinmeister Michael Mann has fired off a reply to the editor of a newspaper which published an article critical of his work, again claiming his hockey stick graph, one of the most thoroughly discredited papers of the modern age, was affirmed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS): "...the National Academy of Sciences, affirmed my research findings in an exhaustive independent review published in June 2006 .."

The NAS report did nothing of the sort, and in fact validated all of the significant criticisms of McIntyre & McKitrick (M&M) and the Wegman Report:……..Mann uses the 5 rules of propaganda in his defense, including the rule of orchestration: endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.

Here are five basic rules of propaganda, courtesy of Norman Davies in his extraordinary book "Europe: A History":

• The rule of simplification: reducing all data to a simple confrontation between 'Good and Bad', 'Friend and Foe'.
• The rule of disfiguration: discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies.
• The rule of transfusion: manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one's own ends.
• The rule of unanimity: presenting one's viewpoint as if it were the unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people: draining the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star-performers, by social pressure, and by 'psychological contagion'.
• The rule of orchestration: endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.

My Take - In a previous post dealing with Mann’s lawsuit against a scientist who criticized his work (interesting action for a guy who says his work shouldn’t be dragged into the courts by the Attorney General of Virginia) I asked if he really believed in his discredited work. Apparently this is the answer. This kind of reminds me of Clinton who said that it depended on how you defined the word “it” if he lied under oath. This really is the day of Orwellian “newspeak”.

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