Global Warming Jumps the Shark: the Week in Climate Stupid

by James Delingpole 

This was the week when global warming jumped the shark. Just like it did last week. And the one before...

1. Soon children will have forgotten what outdoors looks like, claims HuffPo
Doctors at a Washington, D.C. paediatric clinic are increasingly prescribing sunshine and outdoors - "nature time" - for their young clients, reports Lynne Peeples for HuffPo.
But the story isn't as heartwarming as you might think from the first paragraphs. That's because stalking this charming scene like a ravening, blood-crazed, razor-fanged death creature with a sinister cowl kind of like a wicked evil monk's probably concealing a grinning death's head face and an evil as old as time, is climate change.



Yes, Peeples has managed to find at least two eco campaigners so shameless and utterly desperate that they have been prepared to put their names to quotes suggesting that "climate change" is threatening to make outdoors a no-go zone.

"Nature is critical to health," says Martha Berger, a children's health officer with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Climate change, she added, could "further alienate kids from nature."
"One of the things contributing to [kids not getting enough play outdoors], along with many societal factors, is that some of the conditions are becoming more difficult to deal with," said Collin O'Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, during a media call last month for the group's report, "Ticked Off: America's Outdoor Experience and Climate Change."

2. Climate Change will kill your fluffy bunnies
Speaking on Australian national radio climate campaigner Naomi Oreskes warns ABC presenter Robyn Williams of the terrible future the world can expect as a result of climate change. Quoting from her new book The Collapse of Western Civilisation, she prophesies:

“The loss of pet cats and dogs garnered particular attention among wealthy Westerners, but what was anomalous in 2023 soon became the new normal. A shadow of ignorance and denial had fallen over people who considered themselves children of the Enlightenment.”…

Williams, himself an ardent warmist, chips in with some deep insights of his own:

“Yes, not only because it’s an animal but it’s local. You see, one criticism of the scientists is they’re always talking about global things…And so if you are looking at your village, your animals, your fields, your park, your kids, and the scientists are talking about a small world that you know, than it makes a greater impact, doesn’t it…”

Note to future historians trying to write the definitive book on The Decline And Fall Of Western Civilization:
Robyn Williams is one of Australia's most prominent broadcasters.
Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, where she writes books, teaches impressionable undergraduates, and gets taken seriously.
3. Australian academic argues: only communist-style revolution or death can save us from climate change
Peter Burdon - currently visiting professor at UC Berkeley - admiringly quotes environmentalists who argue that the authoritarian Chinese model offers our best hope in combating climate change.

For example, in an interview about her new book The Collapse of Western Civilization, Naomi Oreskes argued: "If anyone will weather this storm it seems likely that it will be the Chinese."
In the book, Oreskes and co-author Erik Conway imagine a future world in which the predictions of the International Panel on Climate Change have come to pass.
With respect to China, the authors predict: China's ability to weather disastrous climate change vindicated the necessity of centralised government ... inspiring similar structures in other, reformulated nations.

Warming to his authoritarian theme, Burdon concludes:

However, the conditions of survival (let alone flourishing) require rational social planning that takes seriously the needs of the entire community.At this period of history, either one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take back control of its own destiny and concern itself with community interests, guided by values such as community, solidarity and concern for others (both human and non human) or alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control.

4. John Kerry says U.S. has Biblically-endorsed responsibility to protect Muslims from Climate Change
No, really. Kerry actually said this. We reported this at Breitbart earlier in the week but you may well have thought it a joke because John Kerry is really quite a senior member of the Obama administration and you probably thought that when people achieve that high a level of public office they'd have speech writers and researchers and flak-catchers and spin-doctors to prevent them ever saying something so egregiously stupid.
5. Ex-Marxist student agitator turned Nobel-Prizewinning President of the Royal Society Sir Paul Nurse channels Krushchev. Disbelievers in man-made climate change, he says, should be "crushed and buried."

"Today we have those who like to mix science up with ideology and politics, where opinion, rhetoric and tradition hold more sway than adherence to evidence and adherence to logical argument."

This is what he tells the Guardian newspaper (H/T Bishop Hill), apparently unaware that the person in the world to which this criticism more than anyone applies is the geneticist turned environmental activist who is currently President of the Royal Society.