It’s been my impression in recent years that if there’s a “consensus” view on anything, it’ll be the mainstream media who’ll be pushing it, and pretty much all the dissent will be found on the internet, which is the only place where there’s any real debate these days.
This is particularly true of AGW alarmism, which was taken up by the MSM more or less everywhere, leaving sceptics like Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts in the wilds of the internet – where both have prospered.
So it seems to me to be news if some large MSM outfit turns sceptical about AGW, as seems to have happened with Germany’s Bild (circulation 4 million):
“THE CO2 LIES … pure fear-mongering … should we blindly trust the experts?”
That’s what Germany’s leading daily Bild (see photo) wrote in its print and online editions today, on the very day that renowned publisher Hoffmann & Campe officially released a skeptic book – one written by a prominent socialist and environmental figure.
This is huge. More than I ever could have possibly imagined. And more is coming in the days ahead! The Bild piece was just the first of a series.
Mark this as the date that Germany’s global warming movement took a massive body blow.
Today, not one, but two of Germany’s most widely read news media published comprehensive skeptical climate science articles in their print and online editions, coinciding with the release of a major climate skeptical book, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun).
If AGW scepticism has been on the rise in recent years, it’s been entirely thanks to the internet, and no thanks at all to the MSM (and in the UK, no thanks to the BBC in particular). So does the conversion of Bild to AGW scepticism signal the beginning of the collapse of the climate “consensus” in the MSM? My German readers probably have a better idea than I do.
I don’t know how the “consensus” gets created in the first place, but I suspect that MSM outlets all watch each other, and keep an eye on the way opinion is moving. It’s got nothing to do with climate science, and everything to do with the climate of international opinion. It’s a matter of keeping up with the prevailing fashion. Are skirts going up or down this year? Is climate alarmism in or out? The one thing you don’t want to be is the last person to catch onto the changing tide of opinion, because it makes you look, well, …totally uncool.
And somehow or other, Bild seems to have decided that AGW alarmism is becoming uncool, and want to be ahead of the pack on the way out of the door. In this respect they appear to be following the internet-driven rise in public scepticism.
The question Bild asks – should we blindly trust the experts? – is in many ways the key question. A sceptic is almost by definition someone who doesn’t blindly trust experts, and doesn’t follow the prevailing fashion.
But if the MSM climate consensus is showing signs of breaking down, and they’re starting to question the experts, how about ceasing to trust a few other experts? Like f’rinstance, antismoking “experts”.
Climate science, after all, is actually pretty good science. They may disagree about cause and effect, but they actually do measure stuff like temperatures with things called “thermometers” in units called “degrees”. In antismoking science, nothing is measured at all. All the numbers are guesses, and the units they use are things called “cigarettes”, some of which are twice as long as other ones. That’s like having rulers marked out in inches, with the inches on some rulers being twice as long as the inches on others.
Climate science is hard to criticise. But antismoking science is an open goal waiting for someone, anyone – even a five year old who can’t kick a ball properly – to fire in about 25 goals in rapid succession. Make that 100 goals. Before half time.
A lot of people say that AGW alarmism is the biggest scam in human history. It isn’t. There’s at least one far bigger one in plain view. If nobody much has ever questioned it, it’s probably because for most of its life people didn’t have the internet to question it with, and so had to blindly trust the “experts”. Those days are over.
Frank Davis 
O/T (sort of)
The most recent on “The Mechanic”, Stan Glantz. He has a PhD in mechanical engineering. He was given a professorship in cardiology (no formal training/qualifications) by the University of California, San Francisco, to add medical legitimacy to his rabid antismoking drivel. In this latest USCF press release, he is referred to as a “professor of medicine” and highlights his latest study, an economic study for which he has no advanced qualifications. His “study” advises more extortionate taxes on tobacco in California to pay for a variety of things. And, you guessed it, it advises that a cut of the tax (involving many tens of millions of dollars) should go to antismoking fanatics like him to further “educate” the public.
“The primary impact to the California economy, besides the effect on health care, is that people will smoke less and send less money out of state,’’ said study author Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, a professor of medicine at UCSF and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education based at UCSF.
Add www. to ucsf.edu/news/2012/02/11465/state-economy-get-big-jolt-proposed-new-tax-cigarettes-study-finds
Ya californias borrowing 40 million a day just to pay unemployment benefits! Stanton thinks his tax scheme will work and give him a tax break,,,,,,lmao Jerry Browns in charge of further destructtion of california what Id call the final solution to californias demise.
Thanks so much Magnetic for mentioning this. I assume you’re talking about the California Cancer Research Act which goes up for vote on the June ballot here. There’s not much time to defeat it yet. California’s smokers, which I estimate to be around 4 million cannot, I repeat cannot, sit back on their asses and let this one succeed. It takes around 4 million votes to defeat one of these horrid ballot measures.
We beat back the last one (Prop 86) in 2005 by 52%-48% and I errantly assumed we’d put the son of a bitch back in his cuckoo box for good, but he’s baaaack!
I know deservedly there’s not much sympathy for Californians but listen, I’m a native who has lived in the North and the South and am a keen observer of the state and I’m here to tell ya’, 40% of us are A-OK people who detest the grouchy hippie assholes who’ve invaded the place (mainly to go to college and ‘find themselves’) and ruined it.
Please help me get the word out. We cannot sit this one out. Glantz must be stopped. If he loses this one he’ll probably die before another one sees the light of day, he’s pushing 70. Anything, anything to ruin his day. He’s the most vile creature on earth.
It might help to find out which pro-smoking website has the largest traffic and plead with them to post a permanent reminder until June.
Any ideas would be appreciated. Glantz must be put back in his ugly little box.
There are are several amendments I need to make to my original comments here.
This is a primary election as opposed to a November general election and the turnout is usually about half, therefore I estimate it’ll take about 2.2 million votes to defeat it. It will mainly be a Republican turnout, too, so that’s more good news. Obama is a shoe-in for the anti-smoking Democrats (I guarantee, Glantz is one) so a lot of them might stay home.
Nonetheless, we need to turnout in full force and get the word out. I just remembered that last time there were pamphlets in the tobacco shops, likely placed there by the tobacco companies, urging NO votes on 86. I haven’t seen any yet this time. I’ll talk to the proprietor of my local shop and remind them. Hell, I’ll make my own if necessary.
Maybe I should just put the URL of a big pro-smoking site (as yet to be determined) on a business card sized piece of paper.
Sorry for thinking aloud on your site Frank but I’m salivating at the thought of raining on Stanton Glantz’s parade.
Frank, might be of interest to some of your readers:
The idea of “passive smoking” (which originated with the Nazis, by the way) is just another baseless inflammatory term. There have even been jokes and comments made in films, for example, that a nonsmoker has “passive smoked” a pack a day.
The term “secondhand smoke” (highly diluted) is OK, but SH smokING or passive smokING are not. There are some nonsmokers who believe that when they are exposed to SHS they are being forced to smoke, that they are effectively smokING. Being exposed to SHS, which is breathing air with highly dilute remnants of smoke, is nothing like smoking. Those who believe they are passively “smoking” have obviously never smoked a cigarette. Having never smoked, and therefore unable to tell the difference, they have been manipulated into the deranged belief that SHS exposure is equivalent to smoking. The quickest way to resolve the issue is to borrow a cigarette, light it, take a drag and inhale (drawback) the concentrated “packet” of smoke. That’s smoking. It should be noticed immediately the incredible difference between smoking and simply being exposed to ETS which cannot be equated in any way with smokING. There is no active and passive smoking. There is only smoking which involves inhaling a concentrated packet of smoke.
For those not prepared to test the hypothesis, it should dawn that if smoking was simply being exposed to SHS, then why don’t smokers just leave their cigarette lit and breathe the ambient air? No. They actually take a drag on the cigarette – a concentrated packet of smoke – and inhale. That’s smokING.
For gullible nonsmokers, when you are sitting by an open fire, do you believe you’re “smoking” then? If you’re close-by to lit candles, do you believe you’re “smoking” then? If you’re close to cooking or BBQ smoke, are you “smoking” then? Etc. See the point?
The only term that has a modicum of meaning with little/no application is “involuntary smoking”. This would refer to the situation where a person is forced (e.g., at gunpoint) to take a drag on a cigarette and inhale the concentrated packet of smoke.
Referring to SHS exposure as a “fraction” or a “degree” of smoking for statistical/causal extrapolation has no meaning. SHS exposure and smoking are two entirely different phenomena.
For many years now, I’ve trained myself to think automatically of the opposite of whatever the powers-that-be, the media or anyone cited as an “expert” in anything says. So when they started talking about the “problems with British binge-drinking culture” I knew that it would turn out that the British were generally drinking less now than in previous years – and so it has turned out. When Tony Blair promised that he wouldn’t take Britain into any more wars I knew that active service would be on the cards for British forces in the next few years – and so it turned out. When Gordon Brown uttered the fateful words “British jobs for British workers,” I knew that any decent jobs in the UK would be up for grabs by any non-British workers who wanted them – and so it has turned out. When NuLabour talked about “education, education, education,” I knew that the rates of literacy and numeracy amongst our young people would plummet thenceforce – and so it has. And, of course, when we were promised an NHS service awash with money as a result of all those massive health benefits of the new smoke-free pubs, clubs, restaurants and workplaces, I knew that the NHS’s finances would – at just about the time when the benefits might realistically be expected to be seen – be declared to be in dire straits, and so it now has been.
So, it doesn’t surprise me at all to hear that the latest claims are that, far from heating up, it seems that the planet is actually in rather more danger of cooling down – although even that claim is, I suspect, yet another fabricated “fact” from a similarly-minded bunch of “experts.” The truth is probably that the climate is changing, just as it has always done and just as it always will, but that that change is at such a slow rate that the human race will do, very successfully, what it’s always done – adapt.
Such is the level of “spin,” exaggerated stories and pure lies from all of our politicians these days that once you get into the habit of this “opposite thinking” (which is actually very easy) you almost seem to gain the gift of foresight. I confess that the latest headline-grabbing “crackdown” on gangs and gang-related violence makes me shudder, because I know, without a shadow of a doubt that the problems of gangs and gang-related crime within a few short years will make today’s look like minor playground squabbles by comparison.
Watch this space …
Skip to comments.
LA County OKs $1,000 Fine For Throwing Football, Frisbee On Beaches
CBS) ^ | February 8, 2012 2:27 PM
Posted on Wednesday, February 08, 2012 5:37:17 PM by BenLurkin
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — When you head down to the beach for a little fun this summer, county officials want you to leave the pigskin at home.
The Board of Supervisors this week agreed to raise fines to up to $1,000 for anyone who throws a football or a Frisbee on any beach in Los Angeles County.
In passing the 37-page ordinance on Tuesday, officials sought to outline responsibilities for law enforcement and other public agencies while also providing clarification on beach-goer activities that could potentially disrupt or even injure the public.
The updated rules now prohibit “any person to cast, toss, throw, kick or roll” any object other than a beach ball or volleyball “upon or over any beach” between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Exceptions allow for ball-throwing in predesignated areas, when a person obtains a permit, or playing water polo “in or over the Pacific Ocean”.
However, during the winter off-season, the new rules will be relaxed.
Officials warned that any activities that could potentially “any person or property on or near the beach” should not be allowed during the peak summer season.
Your kids could also end up costing you big bucks: the ordinance also prohibits digging any hole deeper than 18 inches into the sand except where permission is granted for film and TV production services only.
——————————————————————————–
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/02/08/la-county-oks-1000-fine-for-throwing-football-frisbee-on-beaches/#comment-263884
Oh jeez…..
Great post Frank, the BBC is the absolute pits when it comes to climate change propaganda.
They are so transparent I would be amazed if people are not starting to see through the veneer.
Another thing that makes me sick coming from the BBC is the current coverage of what is going on in Syria, where they are reporting the shelling as negative and showing pictures of badly wounded civilians, where was the same negative reporting and pictures of innocent civilians when the Gaza massacre was going on a couple of years ago? Or even Libya last year? It’s all part of demonizing Syria because they are the next on the list. Some of the injuries caused by the NATO bombing of Libya were particularly harrowing yet the MSM just chose to ignore it.
Anyway I digress. Suffice to say the BBC is a sham organization, only good for sport.
Frank maybe next years will appear like this:
This is particularly true of SHS alarmism, which was taken up by the MSM more or less everywhere, leaving sceptics like Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts in the wilds of the internet – where both have prospered.
So it seems to me to be news if some large MSM outfit turns sceptical about SHS, as seems to have happened with Germany’s Bild (circulation 4 million):
“THE SHS/ETS LIES … pure fear-mongering … should we blindly trust the experts?”
That’s what Germany’s leading daily Bild (see photo) wrote in its print and online editions today, on the very day that renowned publisher Hoffmann & Campe officially released a JUNK SCIENCE book – one written by a prominent socialist and TOBACCO CONTROL figure Dr Micheal Siegel.
Never know when,but we do know it will happen. WHY because look at todays story headline!
A lot of people say that AGW alarmism is the biggest scam in human history. It isn’t. There’s at least one far bigger one in plain view. If nobody much has ever questioned it, it’s probably because for most of its life people didn’t have the internet to question it with, and so had to blindly trust the “experts”. Those days are over.
Ya even a 5 year old could kick 55 field goals. Thats what happened today in biloxi mississippi when I was fighting the nazis there over a proposed indoor ban in city council. The Newspaper wiped out 55 comments after it became apparent they werent going to win the debate! The sun sentinel.
http://www.sunherald.com/2012/02/08/3738681/biloxi-council-considers-smoking.html
It seems to me to be extremely odd that a person such as Milton MP can be appointed to be a Deputy Minister of Health without being sceptical about the machinations of the Health Dept. Surely she must know that any weakness on her part will be exploited by ASH ET AL. Her weakness is her gullibility. Odd, is it not, that in recent times no Health Minister has been realistic.
Russ Lemmon: Smoking inside apartment puts woman, 97, in jeopardy of eviction
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2012/feb/08/russ-lemmon-smoking-inside-apartment-puts-woman/?partner=RSS
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html
Solar science and real climate science, (not alarmist money making pseudo politicised climate science) do tend to be more transparent than the anti smoking quack variety.
The NASA SOHO images in the top link show very few spots ,very few spots means “minimum”.
Very few spots are associated with minimums ,of course it has to do so for longer than a few days.
Hopefully the sun’s furnace will fire up again soon.
I can see the advantage of saying I told you so when the Thames freezes over ,but I don’t fancy freezing every winter and food prices going through the roof.
1816 the year without a summer ,they had hard frosts in JULY ,brrrrrrrrr!
http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/32_03/summer.html
One of the few newspapers in Scotland that questioned the smoking ban before and after its introduction was the Daily Record. They did an excellent critique on the 4th anniversary that Forest as well as other blogs linked to (essentially…quit throwing money at folk who don’t want or need it and spend it on those who do).
Last year, a couple of months befor the 5th anniversary, they started to carry four page smoking cessation adverts and since then…… virtually nothing critical of the ban; if anything they’ve pretty well joined the herd.
Paid advertising is a very powerful tool; one that works very well in Scotland and is being exploited vis “independence or max devolution”. (For your non-Scottish readers, Cameron wants one question – full independence or not. SNP want a 2nd question – everything but foreign policy and defence (so we get the fishing and the oil but not the expensive bits)).
A curious thing that appeared on the Times in 2010.
So curious that I made a note of it.
If climate change had stuck, this is what they were planning.
Climate change report sets out an apocalyptic vision of Britain
“Mass migration northwards to new towns in Scotland, Wales and northeast England may be needed to cope with climate change and water shortages in the South East, according to an apocalyptic vision set out by the Government Office for Science.
Heathrow would be converted into a giant reservoir by 2035, there could be severe restrictions on flying and driving and farmers would be forced to sell their land to giant agricultural businesses. Greenhouse gas emissions would be controlled by carbon rationing for individuals, which would lead to “significant shifts in lifestyle as everyone tries to stay within budget”.
The Government would ease pressure on the South East by planning to “disperse citizens to three new towns in Dumfries and Galloway, Northumberland and Powys”.
The vision is published today in a report entitled Land Use Futures: Making the Most of Land in the 21st Century.
John Beddington, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, who directed the research, said that climate change and the growing population would present Britain with difficult choices about how it used its land.”
“Business as usual is not an option over the longer term. The effects of climate change and new pressures on land could escalate, seriously eroding quality of life,” he said.
The report says that the projected population increase of nine million by 2031 and an increase in the number of single-person households would result in unprecedented demand for land for development and put pressure on natural resources such as water. By 2050, hotter, drier summers could reduce river flows by 80 per cent.
The report, compiled by 300 scientists, economists and planners, includes three scenarios to “stimulate thought” and “highlight difficult policy dilemmas that government and other actors may need to consider in the future”.
All the scenarios involve dramatic changes in lifestyles and landscapes in response to climate change. In the most extreme scenario, world leaders hold an emergency summit in 2014 when it becomes clear that the impacts of climate change are going to be far worse and happen much sooner than previously envisaged.
The Government responds by taking control of vast tracts of land and using it to grow wood and crops for biomass power stations. An agricultural productivity Bill requires farmers to increase yields per hectare but most have to sell up because they lack the resources to comply. “The average farm size in the UK increases from 57 hectares to 500 hectares; farms in the East and South East of England increase to 5,000 hectares.”
The report says that satellite images in 2060 would reveal dramatic changes in the countryside. “The landscape is mottled with wind turbines; the patches in the patchwork are bigger; there are more forests and fewer animals; there are fewer vehicles moving along the roads.”
In another scenario, the Government redefines land as a national resource and the rights of landowners are balanced with “society’s rights to public benefits from the services produced by it”.
Home ownership falls as people begin to embrace the idea of “stewardship” of shared natural resources.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7041857.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=3392178
Might be worthwhile to watch to see if they try to implement any elements of this.
Apparently it was started in 2008, but I wonder when it was first commissioned. As we’ve seen from the FCTC, if they have a plan they’ll stick to it, no matter how catastrophic the unforeseen consequences as it’s rolled out..
State to help elderly downsize as Government tackles housing crisis
“Elderly homeowners will be encouraged to downsize to smaller properties and allow councils to rent their homes to local families under Coalition plans to ease the nation’s housing crisis.”
“Research released last year estimated that 25million bedrooms in England were empty, largely because elderly couples do not move out of family homes to smaller properties.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9019124/State-to-help-elderly-downsize-as-Government-tackles-housing-crisis.html
Also in the Telegraph, 9 Feb 2012:
Elderly told: go back to work and downsize
David Halpern, a senior No.10 aide, said loneliness was a “more powerful predictor” of whether a pensioner would be alive for more than a decade than whether they smoked.
He also suggested that elderly people who did not move to smaller homes were contributing to the shortage of housing in England.
And also Telegraph 10 Feb 2012:
Government accused of ‘social engineering’ over plan to make elderly move out of their homes
The Government has been accused of “outrageous social engineering” after a key adviser to David Cameron suggested that elderly people should be encouraged to go back to work and move into smaller homes.
HOT OFF THE PRESS
More Spaniards are smoking now than before the anti-smoking legislation
Read more: http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_33671.shtml#ixzz1ltcS6Bd3
Dissent only on the internet?
Watch our Audrey here: http://metropolistv.nl/nl/bekijk/recent/audrey-de-anti-anti-rookster. This was on Dutch prime time TV tonight!
You’d never see something like than on the BBC.
Pingback: No Ball Games Or Sandcastles | Frank Davis
Did you know the Antismokers have their own “Hockey Stick Graph”? Yep. I forget what study did it, but the handle graphs smoking and heart disease studies and then, all of a sudden, you get this hockey stick blade where they crowd up all the secondhand smoke and heart disease studies.
Absolute hokum!
– MJM