Brace yourselves, here’s the document that proves climate change is a global conspiracy

Is this the proof they have been looking for?

Denialist and conspiracy blogs are starting to light up with excitement: they’ve discovered another “smoking gun” that proves climate change is a massive global conspiracy designed to usher in the New World Order.The UK’s Guardian seems to be the paper that first brought attention to the document:     

A document accidentally left on a European hotel computer and passed to the Guardian reveals the US government’s increasingly controversial strategy in the global UN climate talks.    

Titled Strategic communications objectives and dated 11 March 2010, it outlines the key messages that the Obama administration wants to convey to its critics and to the world media in the run-up to the vital UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico in November.   

…Top of the list of objectives is to: “Reinforce the perception that the US is constructively engaged in UN negotiations in an effort to produce a global regime to combat climate change.” It also talks of “managing expectations” of the outcome of the Cancun meeting and bypassing traditional media outlets by using podcasts and “intimate meetings” with the chief US negotiator to disarm the US’s harsher critics.      

I won’t spend time analysing the position of the US (there are better qualified people than me who can do that). For me what is interesting is how the denial movement is going to spin this.      

From Steve Watson, the paranoid crank at Prison Planet;         

“Globalists are persistent and they will continue hammering away until they get what they want, not because the environment is on the verge of collapse, but because their agenda for world government is stalling as more people find out the true agenda behind the global warming scam.    

Meanwhile, anyone who suggests global governance is on the agenda is derided as a conspiracy theorist, despite such open announcements of this very intention…”      

Look out guys, Al Gore and the UN are after “your freedoms”.   Doom Daily re-posts Watson’s article (same text repeated):        

“Globalists are persistent and they will continue hammering away until they get what they want, not because the environment is on the verge of collapse, but because their agenda for world government is stalling as more people find out the true agenda behind the global warming scam.  

Meanwhile, anyone who suggests global governance is on the agenda is derided as a conspiracy theorist, despite such open announcements of this very intention…”      

The denial movement is going to work very hard to syndicate this story.  A new “meme” has entered the debate.     

The document is about the United States bargaining position in the upcoming Cancun talks.  

Anyone familiar with the basics of diplomacy and geopolitics will recognise what it this document is: an example of how nations seek to preserve their own self interests (full text here).     

Watch over the coming weeks how this story mushrooms as the denial movement spins this one into proof of “da conspiracy”.

The Herald Sun’s War on Science #3: Boilerplate Propaganda

Boilerplate climate change denial: watch it spread

  

The HUN continues it’s fine tradition of allowing journalists with no expertise or understanding of science to wage war against it. Apart from misrepresenting the science, they also help circulate denialist propaganda by importing it from the major denialist blogs and web sites and injecting into our own media.    

Let’s look at a recent example from the HUN’s business writer, Terry McCrann    

McCrann is not a name you would normally associate with climate denialism. Alongside Andrew Bolt, he wages a personal war on science. Indeed, the two often tag-team, with Bolt frequently tipping his hat to McCrann. McCrann also writes for The Australian, another Murdoch owned publication also known for it’s continuing war on science.    

Earth Hour feeding frenzy    

In the lead up to Earth Hour, both Bolt and McCrann worked themselves up into a frenzy. What was notable was McCrann’s use of what can only be described as “boilerplate” denier propaganda: the satellite image of the Korean peninsula, showing the North in darkness and the South illuminated (Putting North Korea’s name up in lights, The Herald Sun. March 25 2010);    

“…The land where the lights are permanently out, as the famous satellite photograph shows of the stunning difference between the northern and southern ends of the Korean peninsula.    

Indeed, to be more exact, the North Korean lights aren’t just out – they’ve never literally been turned on. As the country bypassed the 20th century, going from the 19th back to the 19th, picking up only nuclear weapons on the journey.    

Nothing better captures the utter inanity of the cult of global warming and its characterisation of carbon dioxide as an even greater Satan than George W. Bush’s America than Earth Hour. Insufferably smarmy, quite pointless, contradictory, utterly inchoate…”    

McCrann then works himself up with greater gusto:    

“…The ABA and its member banks are participating because Earth Hour raises awareness – not Gaia-consciousness? – of the “simple steps we can all take to reduce our carbon footprint”.    

That has beautifully twisted echoes of George Orwell’s image in 1984 of the future … “imagine a boot stamping on a human face … forever”.    

For now, as even the bankers recognise and faithfully chant, the far more horrifying image is of a “carbon footprint on the face of Gaia … forever”.    

This is the link the denial machine wants’ people to make: between climate science and totalitarianism. Yes, those nasty “greens” are wanting to stomp on our faces! This isn’t an opinion, it’s a paranoid fantasy.    

What authority McCrann has in regards to science is anyone’s guess, however the “North Korea = Earth Hour” meme is not of McCrann’s invention. It’s boiler plate denialist propaganda that was circulated in the lead up to Earth Hour.    

Don’t believe me?    

Let’s look at some of the more prominent denialist sites.    

Have boiler plate, will publish propaganda    

Nothing demonstrates just how much of an echo chamber the denial movement is then when they publish the same material over the space of a few days.    

From the paranoid US site, Prison Planet:    

Say haven't we...

  

From Watts up with that?    

...seen that image...

  

And from Andrew Bolt himself:    

...before?

  

Yes, Orwell would weep. But not for the reasons McCrann would imagine.    

(Note: I wonder what Media Watch would make of this?)