Give yourself a laugh and listen to this classic piece of environmental lobbyism masquerading as a news story on the BBC this morning. Also, listen in to Thought for the Day for another dose of climate change drivel.
THE END OF THE WORLD
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I heard Thought for The Day. What a pillock.
So, future generations will wonder how we knew about climate change but did nothing out of selfishness? Did it ever occur to him that we do nothing because we can see the science is more bent than Rowan Atkinson’s expensive car?
Also, future generations will wonder how we let people starve when we had the means to feed them. That would involve wading into these countries and disarming the militia (at great cost to our servicemen) who use starvation as a weapon. But wait a minute! He just said we wonder at earlier generations who thought they had a right to wade into other countries.
Do these people never think through what they say and just parrot phrases which they thin will meet with approval at the BBC?
This statement ‘let people starve’ is a red herring.
As you say Roland, intervention would be described as ‘imperialism’. Interfering in sovereign nations affairs under the pretext that they had failed.
The ‘hunger’ in parts of the World are not the result of bad luck.
These populations are thriving (in terms of numbers) but have not evolved the cultural mechanisms to cope.
All humanity (including us) has had to evolve social (cultural) mechanisms to surmount the problems nature throws at us.
The solution is in the hands of those people themselves.
It is not merely food aid that will help them.
They must sort themselves out.
Wow – what a huge steaming pile of crap:
“4 species lost since the start of this programme”. “..we’re significantly undermining the ecosystem services: oxygen to breath, water to drink and grow crops, that we need to survive…. and that’s why most Biologists believe this biodiversity crisis is an even more profound threat to our future than global warming.”
There’s one species which is definately multiplying out of all control: Idiotic, humanity-loathing, Beeboid eco-alarmists.
Peter, if this really was a “huge steaming pile of crap” it would at least be useful. This stuff gives crap a bad name. The fool admits that we know nothing concrete about the subject yet is willing to spout a theory that results in the end of life as we know it – a state of affairs that has existed on the Today program for several decades.
The presenter talked to the REPORTER for most of the item. The “interview” with the “expert” was brief. I deduce that this was one of those occassions when the editor says, “We’ve got this press handout, go and see if there’s anything in it and come back with 5 minutes”. If there had been anything worth saying the reporter would have produced a longer interview with the expert. Most of this was padding from the press handout.
However I sense we have the beginnings of a new environmental cause to take the place of the global warming/climate change theory. Bring it on!
Indeed – the point where they switched from the ‘expert’ activist-scientist back to the activist-reporter was almost seamless. I was thinking “Hang-on, who am I listening to here and why does he sound so enthusiastic about all this doom and gloom”. Aren’t reporters supposed to critically question experts? – not enthusiastically expand, elaborate and extrapolate their claims?
Then I thought maybe the presenter (Sopel?) would question the activist reporter critically? Nope – he just expanded the alarm further by claiming these extinctions were “not necessarily linked to global warming” but presumerably related to all the other evil ways man is undermining the ecosystem.
So we have a totally unsceptical eco-activist presenter, interviewing an eco-activist reporter, interviewing an eco-activist ‘expert’. Ironically the ‘expert’ sounds like the least hysterical of the three.
Peter, FYI: while interviewees are usualy never told the questions they are about to be asked (only the areas of questioning), it is common practice for a REPORTER who is being interviewed to write the questions the PRESENTER is to ask him. That way the expert reporter is never at a loss for an “informed” answer and itmis also the reason no challenging questions are ever asked. In short it is a lazy way of not writing a script.
I know I was losing the will to live
It is quite interesting if you step back and consider the Group Think dynamic going on here. Every little story normalises their position whereby quite soon “the evidence” becomes “irrefutable”. There is no alternative. I am right – you are wrong – based on a masive Ponzi like scheme of misinformation. As ever, if you follow the money you start to get to the truth. Once you understand that there are people and organisations in whose financial interest it is to exaggerate the dangers the alarm bells should start ringing. The greatest sale tool ever is fear and doubt and its being used to great effect with Climate Change. The anti Climate Change movement will fail because their is no jeapordy in saying “nothing is going to happen” – no downside – so if you are a world leader you have to be pretty brave to say that you will ignore it and get it wrong – particularly when everyone else around you is doing it. Even China and India agree with it in principle – its the targets they have difficulty with.
But what about Science’s sword of Truth, the evidence? Well, in my experience scientists are whores in white coats. Pay them enough and they will tell you and do anything you want. The moment you hear the phrase “Its a scientific fact…” you need to run to your nearest religious leader for some more facts about the corruption of man.
And yet we have been here before. Every once in a while we need a “potential” global tradegy to get people spending. As NASA warns us about the dangers of meteors and vaccine companies earn billions from antidotes to non-existant pandemics we can rest easy that that was a close one. My favorite was the Millenium Bug – remember – planes would fall out of the sky!!. The amount of money invested by UK companies was enormous – in Italy they did virtually nothing. It was a close thing !! but both countries got through unscathed. What did we learn? well apart from the fact that Italians can’t sell – we learnt that the greatest sale tool ever is FEAR AND DOUBT.
… Can you really afford not to belief it??
And that is called “science”! Not by me it isn’t, unadulterated b/s. And how much was the grant and what will the next one be?
The Baptist Church gave us Spurgeon, Billy Graham and MLK didn`t it?
Now we get Rob Chalk and Roy Jenkins…reincarnated!
I heard that “environmentalist…selfishness bit”
For Gods sake-where`s Jonathan Sacks!
Maybe Roy will commend the Romans for always reusing the nails that were used to crucify their criminals.
Maybe that`s why it`s called “Good Friday” eh Jenko?
Still-Evan liked it and gave us the namecheck for the Yurt whence this latest Lily of the Valleys emerged!
What Welsh revival?….Roy`lll put a turbine on it
In reality we have no means of knowing how many species live on the planet, a rough guestimate at best could be made.
If you have no idea how many species there are then how can you devise a mechanism to estimate how many species the planet might be losing? In truth you simply cannot.
The fossil record, what we know to have existed? The entire stock of ancient humans, from the billions that lived and died and have beqeathed their bones to posterity could be loaded onto a pick up truck. The odds of an organism leaving its mark in the fossil record at all are billions to one, the simple fact is that the vast majority of sepcies that have lived and died over the last half a billion years has left no record of its passng.
In total we have have a mere handful of bones from some human ancestors and none from most, of the billions upon billions upon billions of organsims and of all the species that have ever existed we know almost nothing.
Now given that we have so little actual fossil evidence of anything how is it that these alarmists can know from an almost non existent record that the present extinction rate is a 1000 times higher now than for 500.000.000yrs?
These scaremongering alarmists are making up lies, pure and simple. Spreading fear and guilt with no real evidence with which to back up their case. And here is the key folks, they have to present this trash mumbo jumbo in isolation because any sceptic would blow their lies apart with ridiculous ease. These scumbags have no right to call themselves scientists at all.
“four species gone extinct in a few minutes”? And how do they know this then do you think? They dont, they made it up because it sounds impressive and in the specially designed intelectual vacuum they have created nobody can refute or challenge these lies, the listener either knows the truth through basic research or they are forced to believe the liars.
There will be many who trust what they are told because they think who would lie like that? So the lies are passed on and become a kind of perverted reality similar to Nazi Germany where lies were made real by the lack of direct challenge.The lies prevailed in a vacuum that exclude the truth for a while.
Lies and falsehoods become a parody of the truth because the actual truth is frozen out. Its pure Goebbels and its pure evil and its how evil spreads itself and it is happening right here right now yet again. Will we ever learn?
I’ve just listened to the Toady clip, but saw the same item reported on B-BBC1 this morning.
The reporter there at least had the honesty to say that ‘precise estimates’ of the number of species couldn’t be made, and also didn’t dwell on the rate of species extinctions.
I simply can’t listen to Today – it’s a continuous source of left wing spin and frustration.