7 Ways To A Dictatorship

Mr. Viv Forbes of the Carbon Sense Coalition lists 7 common traits to a dictatorship.

We quote Mr. Forbes, (bold highlights mine)

"1. Start the Scare

It can be the Yellow Horde, Inflation, Drugs, Pollution, Terrorism, Bird Flu, Peak Oil, Unemployment or Global Warming — get the people anxious and demanding protection from some terror.

2. Lay the Bait

The Utopian Vision — freedom from want, stable prices, fair trading, equality, Lebensraum, racial purity, saving the polar bears/koalas/Great Barrier Reef, balmy weather, return to a simple life, job security, world status.

3. Trumpet the Call to Arms

"Together we can beat this peril/achieve Nirvana.

4. Grab Power and Resources

"We need extra powers, more people and extra taxes to save you from this threat.

5. Spread Propaganda

Use ministerial PR offices to create "The Big Lie. Follow up with supporting half truths and subliminal messages and pictures. Use suasion and the lure of grant money to create a supportive "research industry. Then make sure the government media is well stacked with fellow travellers.

6. Divert the Masses

Arrange massive public activities that create feelings of pride, solidarity and excitement —Roman circuses, Nazi rallies, Soviet military parades, heroes, adventures, football, rock concerts and endless games and nationalistic contests. Enlist the young in exciting things like the Hitler Youth or Mao's Red Brigades.

7. Eliminate the Opposition

Start with pretending they don't exist ("we have consensus — the science is settled). If that fails, follow up with denigration, defamation, vilification, questioning of motives and intimidation. Then, for the diehards, the final solution. The hidden agenda is always the same — more power and money for central controllers and their business mates, higher taxes and less freedom and property rights for the peons."

This reminds me of F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (comic version, video)

Mr. Forbes cites historical examples,

``Let's recall the world of the 1920s:

• The League of Nations had just been set up "to prevent war.

• After years of civil war, Lenin's Bolsheviks controlled Russia and starving peasants were eating a mixture of grain, clay and twigs. When Lenin died, Stalin seized power, murdered Trotsky, turned farms into communes and announced the first of Russia's "Five Year Plans. Millions more died.

• Mussolini, leader of the National Fascists (the Black Shirts) and former editor of the Milan Socialist Party Newspaper, declared himself "Il Duce of Italy.

• Mao Tse-tung formed the Communist Party in China, and commenced setting up communes and Five Year Plans that no one believed in. Millions died in man-made famines.

• French troops occupied the Ruhr to extract reparations from Germany for World War I. The German currency and German savings were destroyed by runaway inflation caused by excessive spending financed by printing paper money.

• Adolph Hitler reorganized the National Socialist German Workers Party and his Brown Shirts attempted to seize power in Bavaria. He also published "Mein Kampf, another grand plan to remake society by force.

• The Conservation Movement was established in Germany and embraced the Nazi party. (see: Green and Brown)

• The Ku Klux Klan claimed one million members in USA.

• The British imposed a Salt Tax in India, thus provoking Ghandi to peaceful revolution. The first Hindu-Muslim riots occurred.

• In Australia there were long strikes in the coal mines, at Broken Hill and on the waterfront.

Read the rest here

As H. L. Mencken once wrote, ``The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Global Warming: Politics versus Science

What has been advocated by politicians...

According to Seattlepi.com, ``Al Gore said Tuesday the world must act quickly to slow the melting of the world's polar ice packs and glaciers before it reaches a critical rate for global warming."

``"We have to act and we have to act quickly because we don't want to cross this tipping point," the Nobel peace laureate and former U.S. vice president told a meeting of foreign ministers, experts and scientists from the most affected countries.

``The meeting, called "Melting Ice Regional Dramas, Global Wake-Up Call" was held the day before a meeting of the Arctic Council of foreign ministers. The council members are the United States, Russia, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway.

Hasn't been validated by evidence...

From Canada Free Press: North Pole Sea Ice twice as thick as expected

``The research aircraft “Polar 5” today concluded its Arctic expedition in Canada. During the flight, researchers measured the current ice thickness at the North Pole and in areas that have never before been surveyed. The result: The sea-ice in the surveyed areas is apparently thicker than scientists had suspected.

``Normally, newly formed ice measures some two meters in thickness after two years. “Here, we measured ice thickness up to four meters,” said a spokesperson for Bremerhaven’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. At present, this result contradicts the warming of the sea water, according to the scientists.

Apart from measuring ice thickness, the composition of arctic air was also investigated. With the help of a laser, the researchers studied the level of pollution of the atmosphere by emissions from industrialized countries. In the next few weeks the results will be evaluated. Some 20 scientists from the U.S., Canada, Italy and Germany took part in the expedition.

From National Post: Lawrence Solomon: Thick Arctic ice surprises scientific expedition

``Ice in the Arctic is often twice as thick as expected, report surprised scientists who returned last week from a major scientific expedition. The scientists - a 20-member contingent from Canada, the U.S., Germany, and Italy - spent one month exploring the North Pole as well as never-before measured regions of the Arctic. Among their findings: Rather than finding newly formed ice to be two metres thick, "we measured ice thickness up to four metres," stated a spokesperson for the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research of the Helmholtz Association, Germany's largest scientific organization.

``The Alfred Wegener Institute is one of the six research organizations involved in the month-long expedition, called Pan-Arctic Measurements and Arctic Climate Model Inter Comparison Project. The other five include three from Canada (Environment Canada, University of Alberta, York University) one from the U.S. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and one from Italy (Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate.

``The path-breaking project broke new ground by employing the Polar 5, a fixed-wing aircraft, rather than a helicopter with its more limited range. The Polar 5 not only landed in the Arctic ice, it towed a device called EM-Bird on an 80 metre-long rope 20 metres above the ice surface. The EM-Bird conducts electromagnetic (EM) induction sounding for ice thickness measurements.

The thickest ice that the expedition found was at Ellesmere Iceland, where thicknesses often exceeded 15 metres.

Nonetheless green house effect global warming dissenters seem to be getting mainstream coverage, which implies of a growing crowd of supporters.

From the New York Times, ``Marc Morano does not think global warming is anything to worry about, and he brags about his confrontations with those who do...

``As a spokesman for Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Mr. Morano was for years a ceaseless purveyor of the dissenting view on climate change, sending out a blizzard of e-mail to journalists covering the issue. Now, with Congress debating legislation to curb carbon dioxide emissions, Mr. Morano is hoping to have an even greater impact. He has left his job with Mr. Inhofe to start his own Web site, ClimateDepot.com.

``The site, scheduled to debut this week, will be a “one-stop shop” for anyone following climate change, Mr. Morano says. He will post research he thinks the public should see, as well as reported video segments and ratings of environmental journalists.

``Supporters see Mr. Morano as a crucial organizing force who has taken diffuse pieces of scientific research and fused them into a political battering ram.

“Before Marc, efforts to debunk global warming were scattered and disorganized,” said John Coleman, a weather broadcaster who helped found the Weather Channel and who has called global warming “a scam.”

``And environmentalists and mainstream climate scientists, however much they disagree with Mr. Morano’s views, still pay attention to what he does.

And why AL Gore's persistence to promote the global warming theory?

From Investor's Business Daily's editorial, ``When Gore left office in January 2001, he was said to have a net worth in the neighborhood of $2 million. A mere eight years later, estimates are that he is now worth about $100 million. It seems it's easy being green, at least for some.

``Gore has his lectures and speeches, his books, a hit movie and Oscar, and a Nobel Prize. But Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., was curious about how a man dedicated to saving the planet could get so wealthy so quickly. She sought out investment advice we all could use in a shaky economy.

``Last May, we noted that Big Al had joined the venture capital group Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers the previous September. On May 1, 2008, the firm announced a $500 million investment in maturing green technology firms called the Green Growth Fund.

``Last Friday, Gore was the star witness at the hearings on cap-and- trade legislation before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Blackburn asked Gore about Kleiner-Perkins, noting that at last count they "have invested about a billion dollars invested in 40 companies that are going to benefit from cap-and-trade legislation that we are discussing here today."

``Blackburn then asked the $100 million question: "Is that something that you are going to personally benefit from?" Gore gave the stock answer that "the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us, and I have invested in it but every penny that I have made I have put right into a nonprofit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge."

``Last May, we also noted that on March 1, Gore, while speaking at a conference in Monterey, Calif., admitted to having "a stake" in a number of green investments that he recommended attendees put money in rather than "subprime carbon assets" such as tar sands and shale oil.

``He also is co-founder of Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offsets that allow rich polluters to continue with a clear conscience. It's a scheme that will make traders of this new commodity rich and Bernie Madoff look like a pickpocket. The other founder is former Goldman Sachs partner David Blood."

Hmmmm...

Hat Tip Mark Perry

Environmental Politics Dottiness: Taxing Cow Farts! Human Farts Next?

The "Green" theme has evolved from science to patent religious zealotry or wanton absurdity...

Take this news from the timesonline.com "What do cars and cows have in common? No, not horns"

Excerpts from the article with all bold highlights mine...

``Proposals to tax the flatulence of cows and other livestock have been denounced by farming groups in the Irish Republic and Denmark.

``A cow tax of €13 per animal has been mooted in Ireland, while Denmark is discussing a levy as high as €80 per cow to offset the potential penalties each country faces from European Union legislation aimed at combating global warming."

``The proposed levies are opposed vigorously by farming groups. The Irish Farmers' Association said that the cattle industry would move to South America to avoid EU taxes.

``Livestock contribute 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases believed to cause global warming, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The Danish Tax Commission estimates that a cow will emit four tonnes of methane a year in burps and flatulence, compared with 2.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide for an average car.

``Agriculture, transport and housing are not included in the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which enables industrial companies to buy and sell permits to emit carbon dioxide. Instead, EU member states are obliged to cut the emissions from non-ETS sectors by 10 per cent overall by 2020.

``While Romania and Bulgaria will be allowed to increase emissions, Ireland and Denmark are each faced with cuts of 20 per cent in farming sector emissions.

``The cow tax proposals would raise funds to buy allowances from other member states or to invest in technology that might reduce emissions. Denmark is believed to be further advanced with housing for pigs that captures and stores methane emitted from the animals. The gas can be used as a fuel for power generation."

My comment:

What the article didn't say?

If you want more of a 'thing' you reduce its costs, if you want less of the same 'thing' you raise its cost.

Alternatively, by taxing livestock farming which means raising the cost of meat production, governments in essence wants people to reduce meat intake...unless of course you are willing to pay for it with higher prices.

On the other hand, a shift in production and consumption patterns due to such taxes, essentially leads to higher prices across the board for food items, i.e. production of livestock will be reduced or moved overseas (causing shortages of supplies), while demand will likely shift to non-meat products (raising the cost of seafoods,vegetables and etc.).

The other unseen cost is that the demand substitution as a consequence to such obtuseness will equally strain environments, i.e. overfishing, overcropping etc... will translate to other unintended consequences (drought, desertification, fish depletion, pollution, etc.).

In a choice between human and environment, these taxes are skewed towards preserving environment than people. How sensible can this be?

In short, governments have implicitly been promoting HUNGER out of the ridiculous notion that cow farts have been causing greenhouse gases.

What's next, tax human fart?

Polls: Signs of Increasing Skepticism on Global Warming in the US?

This from Gallup's latest article "Increased Number Think Global Warming Is Exaggerated"

All charts from Gallup.

In the US, while Global Warming adherents remain a significant majority, although recent signs suggests of declining interests by the public over such concerns.

There seems to be a mounting sentiment over "exaggerated" accounts of global warming.

And most of the shift in sentiment seem to emanate from the middle age to the elderly or from the age group of 30-65 or older. In other words, signs of skepticism have grown in most age groups except for the youth.

In addition, relative to other environmental issues, global warming seems to be losing ground in terms of priority.

According to Gallup, "the solitary drop in concern this year about global warming, among the eight specific environmental issues Gallup tested, suggests that something unique may be happening with the issue."(bold highlight mine)

Yet, the article can't seem to ascertain the reasons behind the sagging trend, "It is not clear whether the troubled economy has drawn attention away from the global warming message or whether other factors are at work. It will be important to see whether the 2009 findings hold up in next year's update of the annual environmental survey."

No problem. Experts realizing this have been quick to work on the arrest of the ebbing flow of interests with recent environmental disclosures by claiming sea levels have been rising twice as fast than originally thought of.

Unknown to most the issue of global warming is MORE than just about science or environment but mostly about political ideology (socialism) and dogmatism, money (funding grants, business or economic or financial interest groups & etc..), political power and control (limit civil liberties, suppression of economic growth). Thus some vested interest groups have been fighting strenuously to assert control by influencing public sentiment.

To aptly quote Jeff Jacoby at the Boston.com,

``There is no shame in conceding that science still has a long way to go before it fully understands the immense complexity of the Earth's ever-changing climate(s). It would be shameful not to concede it. The climate models on which so much global-warming alarmism rests "do not begin to describe the real world that we live in," says Freeman Dyson, the eminent physicist and futurist. "The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand."

``But for many people, the science of climate change is not nearly as important as the religion of climate change. When Al Gore insisted yet again at a conference last Thursday that there can be no debate about global warming, he was speaking not with the authority of a man of science, but with the closed-minded dogmatism of a religious zealot. Dogma and zealotry have their virtues, no doubt. But if we want to understand where global warming has gone, those aren't the tools we need."

Remember failed math models [see earlier post How Math Models Can Lead To Disaster] played a big role for the mess that brought into this financial crisis.

And importantly math models have essentially less variables to deal with than nature itself.

So, caveat emptor.

Has Global Warming Phased Into The Return of The ICE Age?

We have been told that by mainstream that global warming is the new reality.

In fact, policymarkers worldwide have been instituting global warming as part of the economic equation (carbon taxes, cap and trade, etc…)

Yet, evidence seems to be turning otherwise as the weather seems to be abnormally cold today. (Even in the Philippines)

This from USA Today’s article “Arctic cold grips much of nation”…

``The cold wave that stunned the nation's midsection expanded into the Northeast on Wednesday with subzero temperatures and biting wind that kept even some winter sports fans at home. The wind chill hit 33 below zero during the night at Massena, N.Y., and the National Weather Service predicted actual temperatures nearly that low in parts of the region by Thursday night.”

And there have been claims that we could be transitioning into a new ice age…

See video…



(Hat Tip: Mark Perry)

Will the faddish "liberal" trends be eventually unmasked? Will the “new religion” eventually lose its tarnish?

Stay tuned

Hysteria That Goes Poof! Global Warming Turns Into Global Cooling

The number of climate change skeptics is said to be growing rapidly. That’s according to Lorne Gunter of the National Post.

Why?

“Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures -- they're going down, not up,” says Mr. Gunter.

Further excerpts from the article.

“On the same day (Sept. 5) that areas of southern Brazil were recording one of their latest winter snowfalls ever and entering what turned out to be their coldest September in a century, Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart explained that extreme cold or snowfall events in his country have always been tied to "a negative PDO" or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Positive PDOs -- El Ninos -- produce above-average temperatures in South America while negative ones -- La Ninas -- produce below average ones.

“Dr. Hackbart also pointed out that periods of solar inactivity known as "solar minimums" magnify cold spells on his continent. So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded -- none -- and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. "This is no coincidence," he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate…

“Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, "It's practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling," as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an "almost exact correlation" between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost "no correlation at all with CO2."

If Mr. Gunter's assertions are correct, then could we be bidding goodbye to the ‘Green’ fanaticism?

LHC Particle Collider/Black Hole Machine: Doomsday Deferred or Fears Unwarranted?

Mission Accomplished. Large Hadron Collider (LHC) successfully launched.

From BBC,

``Three decades after it was conceived, the world's most powerful physics experiment has sent the first beam around its 27km-long tunnel.

 

``Engineers cheered as the proton particles completed their first circuit of the underground ring which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)...

``On Wednesday, they sent a proton beam around the full circumference of the LHC tunnel.

 

``Technicians had to be on the lookout for potential problems: "There are on the order of 2,000 magnetic circuits in the machine. This means there are 2,000 power supplies which generate the current which flows in the coils of the magnets," Steve Myers, head of the accelerator and beam department, told BBC News.

 

``If there was a fault with any of these, he said, it would have stopped the beam. They were also wary of obstacles in the beam pipe which could prevent the protons from completing their first circuit."

Has the fears been exaggerated? Or has doomsday simply been deferred?

The LHC controversy seems to me like a page taken out of the debate over "Global Warming".

Global Warming Debate: Oops…WMO says First Half of 2008-COOLEST in 5 Years!

From yahoo-Reuters (highlight mine),

``The first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least five years, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Wednesday.

``The whole year will almost certainly be cooler than recent years, although temperatures remain above the historical average.

``Global temperatures vary annually according to natural cycles. For example, they are driven by shifting ocean currents, and dips do not undermine the case that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing long-term global warming, climate scientists say.

``Chillier weather this year is partly because of a global weather pattern called La Nina that follows a periodic warming effect called El Nino.

"We can expect with high probability this year will be cooler than the previous five years," said Omar Baddour, responsible for climate data and monitoring at the WMO.

"Definitely the La Nina should have had an effect, how much we cannot say."

Read the rest here.

My comment:

Yeah sure…if La Nina’s impact to global warming/cooling seems unclear even to the experts, how can we be confident that those advocating for a “man-caused” global warming climate can be said with certainty?

Yet, if mathematical models or the basis for the climate gloom and doom, have not predicted with efficiency the markets (1987 stock market crash-portfolio insurance programs and today’s quant "strategies") or even economic trends or aggregate human (social) behavior…why should I entrust the same to “professionals” whom are likewise susceptible to “cognitive biases” which may/can be influenced by ideology (socialism in green robes) or by power politics or by money (e.g. grants on research funds)?

As Dr. Patrick Moore, Co-founder of Greenpeace, Chairman and Chief Scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. in Vancouver, Canada recently said (highlight mine),

``Environmentalism has turned into anti-globalisation and anti-industry. Activists have abandoned science in favour of sensationalism. Their zero-tolerance, fear-mongering campaigns would ultimately prevent a cure for Vitamin A deficiency blindness, increase pesticide use, increase heart disease, deplete wild salmon stocks, raise the cost and reduce the safety of health care, raise construction costs, deprive developing nations of clean electricity, stop renewable wind energy, block a solution to global warming, and contribute to deforestation. How sick is that?”

Already too much of our mundane problems have been due to the unintended effects of "self-righteous- omnipotent-elixirs" based politics or by so-called populist political correctness.

Eventually delusions will be envisaged with harsh reality.