Bishop Hill A new low
Oct 25, 2014 Greens Competition among environmentalists to reach new lows of taste and decorum is always intense. A few years ago we had the 10:10 campaign's executions of schoolchildren. A couple of weeks back Lord Deben was comparing climate sceptics to Jehovah's witnesses. It's an battle of witlessness that seems to have no end.
Today's entry in the competition will be right up Lord D's street, with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition trying to insinuate that coal miners are akin to paedophiles.
A climate change action group has canned a suggested billboard image after critics accused it of comparing coal mining to 'paedophilia'.
The Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC) is hosting a billboard competition on its Facebook page for a sign to be displayed at Brisbane Airport when G20 leaders arrive next month.
One proposed billboard featured the slogan, 'Don't let the coal lobby get their dirty hands on our future' and a picture of a child with large, wrinkly hands covering her mouth.
Reader Comments (55)
Was it possibly the 10:10 campaign?
[Thanks - fixed]
We need an annual award for the top slimebaggiest campaign, and I know just the guy to do it.
Anthony: Or the top scumbaggiest campaign.
Did you miss the recent "Kill Santa for the climate" graphic novel? Another entry in the competition.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/10/kill-santa-for-the-climate-is-that-isis-or-nobel-peace-scientists/
Note that the thing that caused them to pull back was "social media" or something. It never occurred to them that there was anything wrong. What a bunch of moral voids.
Does anyone have a picture of it? It is important to preserve the history of these cretins.
Also, they got public funding for many years (not sure if it is current.)
Climate sceptics are like Jehovah's witnesses? Where do I sign up to get my free climate sceptic comic books?
I wonder what the hardworking Australian coalminers think of the Australian climate youth.
I can think of another famous youth movement, from the 1930's. Foolishness. It'll end in tears before bedtime.
On a related note, I see that the BBC editors' blog announced this week the re-vamp of their Australia page. Quick as a flash, they got a global-warming story in: "Will coal exports kill the Great Barrier Reef?" They make the claim that
I call bollocks. Again. Owners of coral in aquariums often add CO2 to their tanks.
And:
Yes, it's always "worse thane we thought", isn't it? If they did a bit more thinking, maybe they'd find it wasn't so worse.
It would do most of the greenies a lot of good to actually go down a coal mine to find out what it takes to keep them alive and comfortable.
The history of the AYCC is too long to recount here, but until recently it has been a government (i.e. taxpayer)-funded springboard for Green politicians, their staff, friends and relatives.
While living comfortable, middle-class lifestyles which include a lot of air travel, they are dead against people in poor countries using fossil fuels. IOW, the usual loathsome hypocrites.
This is consistent-wth™ all 3 laws of climate...
1) It's worse than we thought [check]
2) Think of the children [check]
3) Big Oil! Denier! Koch Brothers! Ranty-stuff!
Of course Debden is a money grabbing idiot: but at least we have been promoted, or perhaps demoted from deniers to dismissers.
Warwick Hughes tells us of a this gem.
"Ottawa under attack by gunmen yet in Canberra the ACT Govt sponsors a drama production "Kill Climate Deniers" specifically portraying an armed siege of the Australian Parliament
As Ottawa is experiencing shootings – you have to pinch yourself that this idiotic arts grant from the Canberra Soviet has not been nipped in the bud. I have previously posted
It gets worse – the "Kill Climate Deniers" play funded by the ACT Govt is specifically portraying an armed siege of the Australian Parliament
and –
'Kill Climate Deniers' – upcoming new theatre funded by the ACT Govt (Canberra)
How long will it take the GreenLabor ACT Govt to rescind this disgraceful "Kill Climate Deniers" arts grant?
Remember yesterdays news from Canada re soldier killed – Canadian soldiers were run down by 'radicalized' man, officials say"
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=3343
Nort so. Alarmists are the true Jehova's Witnesses: making false prophecies and continuously shifting the year of the end of the world.
@Michael Hart: "I can think of another famous youth movement, from the 1930's. Foolishness. It'll end in tears before bedtime."
Blast! You beat me to it, Michael! I tend to think of them as Grüne Jugend - in schwarze Hemden.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australian-youth-climate-coalition-removes-anticoal-poster-after-backlash-20141024-11axsw.html
This is the advertisement - the Daily Mail link in the post above shows only blank rectangles when I opened it.
"New Low", I disagree I think people are dramaqueening here, & the victim card is being overplayed, which is a pity cos that's the alarmists normal behaviour
.. come on, it doesn't compare coal mining to 'paedophilia. It seems like one of those cases of people bending over backwards to find offence.. The hands are large, the face is female, it's only when I see the tag A Youth CC that I think it could be a child. Secondly the phrase it uses is "coal lobby" (not coal mining)- The messages seems "the coal lobby, has dirty hands, and stops the youth's freedom of speech" (projection again)
So yes it is offensive, (on a lower level) to the coal lobby who have a perfect right to do their job. It is also defamatory & libellous, cos if the AYCC ran with it they'd pretty quickly have to show in court evidence that the coal lobby engages in dirty tricks or stops the youth's freedom of speech. And of course they'd lose.
Australia is a free country AYCC are free to put their case, the coal lobby are entitled to do their job and be paid properly for it. Neither should be using underhand tactics like being defamatory or using the "play the victim" card.
- DM pic is clear here in the UK and it is from DMAustralia
Stewgreen: A remarkably balanced, well-thought-out and thought-provoking comment. [clap].
(But my previous comment about the Green Youth still stands - IMHO)
Thanks stewgreen!
It wasn't miners who were being compared to paedophiles, it was us.
The headline 'Don't let the coal lobby get their dirty hands on our future' clearly refers to climate sceptics, who, as everyone knows, are financed by fossil fuel interests.
This is the core lie. The rest is just rudeness.
@HP thanks : People are too quick to jump to black & white certainties, when the real world is actually full colour complex. And it is that very kind of rush, that leads to climate alarmism.
UKYCC is on the same campaign trail, but their message “make coal history” is more daft than offensive.
http://ukycc.org/coal-is-history/
Clearly they're too young to remember that slogan from a past era “make poverty history”.
@Geoff Yes they are unable to resist the human drive to take 2+2 to come up with 5 or 6 , but that doesn't mean WE should do the same overextrapolation.
- One thing with offence is that it is the actual intention that is important..and yes I can see when the green lobby comment on opposers there is usually an intention to be offensive. And that contrasts with how the Australian green/left play the victim at every opportunity, seeking to find offensive in every comment made by their opposers. (ie somehow being offensive about Thatcher's death is OK, but they found offence in anyone less than lionising G Whitlam on his death )
Stew, Henry, Geoff, well done. It is the mark of a true and honourable sceptic that he/she is always ready for a rethink, even of (especially of?) his/her own position. It's actually no surprise that this mini-debate cropped up here on BH.
It's a pity that the word "sceptic" has negative overtones; the lifelong activity of constantly checking and calibrating and learning is entirely positive. In opposition to us are a bunch of dogmatists: people driven by an idee fixe ready to bend the facts to it, hypocrites who take the benefits of a modern industrial economy whilst undermining it, many of them in taxpayer funded jobs or enjoying charitable tax breaks.
What two labels best nail that dichotomy?
They need services of Jeeves urgently. At a quintuple of his rate.
My base counter attack when encountering Greenies is to note to them that our modern comforts, which they clearly enjoy as much as anybody else, are down to two things - Capitalism & Fossil fuels. Yet to be rebutted. They don't like it - but they have to go along with it*
Nicked from The Day Today, & reporter Patrick O'Hanrahanrahanrahan...)
what did lord deven (lord hahaha) have against jehova that he would not hold against Islam??
Speaking of scumbags, a few years ago David Suzuki ran a fundraising campaign directed at relieving children of their cash.
Using Arctic sea ice melting as a 'hook' Suzuki's basic theme was: "Send me your money or Santa gets it!"
Seldom Glummer aka Deben is very capable of going much lower that his current achievements. I know from experience.
His boy is now an MP in Suffolk as well.
Brent Hargreaves
Sceptic is a label that all true scientists are proud to carry. It is fundamental to their work and their science.
johanna
It is important to preserve the history of these cretins.
Also, they got public funding for many years (not sure if it is current.)
Johanna, I prefer morons to crétins. A Chrétien is a christian. Quite close and very accurate in the old sense but I like MORONS. It's lss gentle.
While I agree that it’s wrong to be melodramatic about this, the poster does suggest physical violence of some sort towards someone vulnerable. It is meant to be offensive towards the coal industry. Not just the lobbyists because if you shut down the coal mines you put coal miners (and many connected people) out of a job. In any other political fight there would be a level playing field but fossil fuel industries are supposed to be ashamed and let the other side walk all over them. It would be wrong to counter with a similar tactic (eg little old lady about to fall down the stairs with an extinguished candle and a logo ‘don’t let renewables lobbyists knock my lights out’) not because it would be moral blackmail but because it would be naff.
Turning the other cheek never works. It just gives the other side confidence they’ll get away with their behaviour. So yes, if being a bit melodramatic makes this campaign look bad then we shouldn’t be too honourable to engage in a bit of oneupmanship.
Huh?
Let me simplify your statement:
You claim people are drama queening?
By your own statement, the image was/is clear and in several ways, powerful.
You have your own personal interpretation. Are not others allowed to feel emotion and interpret for themselves what they see?
Large dirty hands repressing a young innocent?
Add in the words 'coal lobby' and of course everyone should immediately read into those words that these are people different from 'coal miners'? I suppose in your mental imagery that coal lobbyists naturally have large dirty hands? They would in my mind since I would expect coal lobbyists to include genuine coal mining experts with long experience around coal mines.
Images are meant to convey graphic information direct to observers. When those images are public relations custom tailored to convey emotionally wrenching messages meant to shock viewers into action, do not doubt that people will apply the darkest message that image brings them.
Drama Queening...
@ATheoK: What??? (Or was it html tag failure? Not that I even managed to work that out)
Tiny CO2/ATheoK;
I agree, unfortunately there seems to be a new genre of 'smug sceptics' evolving, who although they largely oppose the alarmist views on AGW/CC, they can't avoid having a dig at other sceptics when they get a chance. The 'moral highground' is a vision, not a reality.
Salopian, Stewgreen has a point, maybe bluntly put with ‘dramaqueening’. We’re not really outraged by this advert because we’re all big boys and girls but despite that we shouldn’t ignore the fact the advert was meant to be offensive. I wasn’t upset by the 10:10 campaign either if only because it was deliciously crass and monumentally self defeating but the makers needed to have their noses rubbed in the stink they had created.
With any campaign like this, more people will be influenced by the message the longer it is allowed to stand uncontested.
They are determined to offend every demographic.
The poster is meant to shock. That's obvious.
The point of the poster is to create an emotional response in the viewer, and when you read the text, the target of your offense is meant to be directed at "The Coal Lobby", whoever that is.
In it's pure form it's unspecific. But I would call it, "a not so indirect reference to child molestation".
if jehova managed to modify earlier versions of the bible to their taste: good for them
would lord/hahaha) deben prefer a more fundamental approach a la Quran?? maybe he can point out to us now why the jehovas need to be targetted
Didn't the great Monbot equate flying with child abuse?
Monbiot......I'm tired.
Didn't the great Monbot equate flying with child abuse?
Oct 26, 2014 at 12:06 AM | Unregistered Commenterjones
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For that and further unrestrained alarmist verbage:
"Meltdown
July 29, 1999
Global warming means that flying across the Atlantic is now as unacceptable as child abuse
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 29th July 1999.
The global meltdown has begun. Long predicted and long denied, the effects of climate change are arriving faster than even the gloomiest prophets expected.
This week we learnt that the Arctic ecosystem is collapsing. The ice is melting, wiping out the feeding grounds of whales and walruses. Polar bear and seal populations appear to have halved. Three weeks ago, marine biologists reported that almost all the world's coral reefs could be dead by the end of the coming century. Last year scientists found that between 70 and 90 per cent of the reefs they surveyed in the Indian Ocean had already expired, largely as a result of increasing water temperatures.
One month ago, the Red Cross reported that natural disasters uprooted more people in 1998 than all the wars and conflicts on earth combined. Climate change, it warned, is about to precipitate a series of "super-disasters", a "new scale of catastrophe". The demographer Dr Norman Myers calculates that 25 million people have already been displaced by environmental change, and this will rise to 200 million within 50 years. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine reports that nine of the ten most dangerous diseases carried by insects and other vectors are likely to spread as a result of global warming. The British Government's chief scientist has warned that climate change could cause the Gulf Stream to grind to a halt."
More at http://www.monbiot.com/1999/07/29/meltdown/
Alll the things that people should be annoyed at...............
I truly worry about where humanity is going, for so long from about 10,000 BC to circa 1960's humanity wanted to better itself, go higher, faster, further. Then somehow, mainly for political reasons and Marxists
infiltratingrunning western academia. The brave new world coming out of the apocalyptic beginning of the C20th - it all collapsed in on itself, from conquering manned space flight and journeying to our very own satellite. Now pure science has flown out of the window, to be replaced by hearsay with computational wizardry and algorithms, we are regressing and perversely - they call it "progressive".Now all they do is shout puerile insults and threaten violence, children - spoilt brats is how they behave and we must act accordingly. With an understated, a fine contempt.
Don Blankenship, is, of course, the salt of the Earth
and the coal companies really care for their miners
A ferret has flushed Eli Unicorn from her burrow.
Sunny luxurious Brisbane Australia nice.
So how many thousand Carbon air miles will this latest stop on the Climate Conference traveling circus generate.
They must be running out of Exotic destinations left to visit.
Not quite the same as multi video conferencing on Skype is it.But probably more Eco friendly.
The poster was crass and dumb but I also can see a case that some possibly looking for outrage and found it ! but given the heaters leaders have their hands on the controls of almost all media/ goverment and money in this non debate then I am fine for some to be oversensitive as any pushing back at the 'end of days lobby' is better then smug silence !
Didn't Oreskes, Dessler and Deban comapre sceptics with the tobacco industry? Ad Hominem attacks are the normal strategy of these alarmists.
Where is the outcry from the main stream climate "scientists"? Silence as usual! Sums them up really!
Eli has the illusion that Munich Re will pay out when a climate insurance claim will be made. Not so, also insurance companies will fight payments. I grew up in a coal mining district and my uncle was a coal miner.
Wow, Rabett trolls really lurk around.
Look at the behaviors of the cliamte obsessed in Australia compared to skeptical behavior.
Skeptics pointed out the problems of the issues: that climate driven policies were costly, hurting the economy, offered no actual cliamte mitigation, were based on political leaders breaking their word, etc.
The climate obsessed depend on ad hom completely.
Could it be because they have no objective facts with which to support their positions?