Age of Hysteria

 

Is there a limit to how long the global warming / climate change scam can be kept alive? Is there certainly a point at which predictions of global climate catastrophe must be admitted incorrect?

Honestly, I thought the fear mongering would have lost some traction by now. But every other day I read about some new marketing tie-in.

I wonder how the fashion will be regarded in histories a century or two from now.

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  1. DonG Coolidge
    DonG
    @DonG

    Aaron Miller: Honestly, I thought the fear mongering would have lost some traction by now. But every other day I read about some new marketing tie-in. 

    I have thought about this a lot for the last decade.  What is the end-game, when reality refuses to cooperate?  I used to think, perhaps hopefully, that there would be a great awakening.  But, I am starting to think the whole thing is a cult and there will be no red-pill moment.  It is a doomsday cult fed by a captive industry, an exuberant media, and lots and lots and lots of tax dollars.  The mania doesn’t have to end.  Lysenkoism lasted nearly 40 years and this could go on another 40 years before another hysteria displaces it.

    • #1
  2. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Aaron Miller: I wonder how the fashion will be regarded in histories a century or two from now.

    It could still be going by then. I mean, overpopulation theories? Pre-1798 and holding. Marxism? 1848 and holding.

    • #2
  3. Paul Erickson Inactive
    Paul Erickson
    @PaulErickson

    The OP title immediately made me think of the hit song, “Age of Hysteria” from the new revival hit musical, “Hair (On Fire).”

    • #3
  4. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    A Maunder Minimum will end it quickly.  We may well be in the early stages of one.  Even the LA Times noticed early snow in the Sierras.

    • #4
  5. CB Toder aka Mama Toad Member
    CB Toder aka Mama Toad
    @CBToderakaMamaToad

    Poor Greta Thunberg weeping at the UN in anger at having her childhood stolen. She’s right to feel angry, because she is being used as a tool and being lied to. 

    “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood,” she raged. Poor child, she’s right about that at least. 

    • #5
  6. Jager Coolidge
    Jager
    @Jager

    Since the 60s and 70s there have been stories saying we have 10 years to do something to avoid catastrophe. Since we are in our 5th end of the world , and yet the world has yet to end. 

    • #6
  7. tigerlily Member
    tigerlily
    @tigerlily

    CB Toder aka Mama Toad (View Comment):

    Poor Greta Thunberg weeping at the UN in anger at having her childhood stolen. She’s right to feel angry, because she is being used as a tool and being lied to.

    “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood,” she raged. Poor child, she’s right about that at least.

    Yep, although she’s blaming the wrong people.

    • #7
  8. She Member
    She
    @She

    CB Toder aka Mama Toad (View Comment):

    Poor Greta Thunberg weeping at the UN in anger at having her childhood stolen. She’s right to feel angry, because she is being used as a tool and being lied to.

    “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood,” she raged. Poor child, she’s right about that at least.

    I could not agree more.  I am alternately (tri-partly?) appalled, horrified, and frightened by, and for, Greta.

    What on earth is she going to do, in five, or six, or ten years, when the world is still turning, and we’re still here, just like we were after all the other hysterical outbursts of the last fifty or sixty years.

    She’s going to fail.  Not through any fault of her own, but because her parents, and the adults who are encouraging her in her obsession, have set her up to fail.  Then what?

    Her facial expressions, in the photos and the videos in the above links are very troubling.  Or so I think.  (I know that everyone takes a bad photo every so often (boy howdy, do I know that), but this is an angry, angry child.  A child/girl/adolescent/young woman of doubtful emotional stability, who freely admits to suicidal thoughts, until she found her “mission” and the only thing that has made her life worth living for the last year or two, as she travels all over the world escaping from her circumstances and working out her hostility on strangers.)

    That adults have encouraged her in her apocalyptic vision (because they know that using a child as a shield for their radical notions is a sure way to insulate themselves from criticism and actual debate), rather than nurturing her, letting her live her girlhood, making her feel loved and safe, and showing her how to help change the world starting at home is unforgivable.

    • #8
  9. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):

    A Maunder Minimum will end it quickly. We may well be in the early stages of one. Even the LA Times noticed early snow in the Sierras.

    The shift from “global warming” to “climate change” was clever, though detestable.

    • #9
  10. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    She needs to hook up with David Hogg. Maybe together they can finally figure this crazy ol’ world out. Preach it, kids!

     

    • #10
  11. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    Aaron Miller (View Comment):

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):

    A Maunder Minimum will end it quickly. We may well be in the early stages of one. Even the LA Times noticed early snow in the Sierras.

    The shift from “global warming” to “climate change” was clever, though detestable.

    And now from “climate change” to “climate catastrophy”.  Where to go next, other than to maybe finally cut to the chase with “I hate you”?

    • #11
  12. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Jager (View Comment):

    Since the 60s and 70s there have been stories saying we have 10 years to do something to avoid catastrophe. Since we are in our 5th end of the world , and yet the world has yet to end.

    More like 41.

    • #12
  13. Misthiocracy grudgingly Member
    Misthiocracy grudgingly
    @Misthiocracy

    Cinsider that we’re still supposed to call it “Darwinism” even though the science of genetics has progressed FAR beyond what Darwin ever imagined.

    In the same way,  something akin to “Climate Change” will continue to be the preferred buzzword regardless of how actual climate science progresses over the decades.

    • #13
  14. Misthiocracy grudgingly Member
    Misthiocracy grudgingly
    @Misthiocracy

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Jager (View Comment):

    Since the 60s and 70s there have been stories saying we have 10 years to do something to avoid catastrophe. Since we are in our 5th end of the world , and yet the world has yet to end.

    More like 41.

    I remember as a kid being told that the Earth would end up like Venus.  

    • #14
  15. DonG Coolidge
    DonG
    @DonG

    Misthiocracy grudgingly (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Jager (View Comment):

    Since the 60s and 70s there have been stories saying we have 10 years to do something to avoid catastrophe. Since we are in our 5th end of the world , and yet the world has yet to end.

    More like 41.

    I remember as a kid being told that the Earth would end up like Venus.

    When I was a kid it was an ice age coming.  That was unsettling.  Not as much as nuclear war, but still unsettling.  That was also coincident with the first energy embargo.    Tough times.

    • #15
  16. DonG Coolidge
    DonG
    @DonG

    She (View Comment):
    She’s going to fail. Not through any fault of her own, but because her parents, and the adults who are encouraging her in her obsession, have set her up to fail. Then what?

    We had the eco-terrorist incidents in Christchurch and El Paso.  I can imagine that as we get closer to the 2030 magic date, the nutjobs in the Climate Crisis Cult will engage in more crazy attacks.  We need to put *those* people on the terrorist watch list. 

    • #16
  17. Songwriter Inactive
    Songwriter
    @user_19450

    Everybody sing: This is the dawning of the Age of Hysteria, the Age of His-ter-i-aaaa! Hysteria!

    • #17
  18. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    The problem with climate change is its price tag for self-satisfaction.  You can express “solidarity” for oppressed people somewhere else in the world at no cost (unless there is a chance that American soldiers will be dispatched to help them).  You can boycott grapes, Hobby Lobby, Chick-fil-A at little or no personal cost.  You can donate enough to get a tote bag from NPR or Greenpeace or buy a pride flag for trivial amounts.

    But climate change is a very demanding god.  And it cannot be appeased with gestures.

    Tribes subjugated by the Aztecs probably figured that it’s one thing to be forced to donate a duck or turkey to be offered as sacrifice for whatever one is requesting from the gods but when the temple priests start grabbing your teen children for sacrifice, then it became time to suit up and join Cortez and the weird strangers to kick some Aztec butt.

    The climate god wants your lifestyle, your personal wealth, your mobility, and control over every device that requires energy. It wants the future, it wants to devour freedom, progress, and innovation.

    If we could fight climate change with a 7.5 cent tax hike on gasoline, politicians calling Exxon bad names and a few mickey mouse green initiatives, nobody would expend much energy to oppose this approach. (Go ahead, take the damn duck or turkey for appeasing Quetzalcoatl).

    But these zealous alarmist morons insist on telling us the true price: trillions of tax dollars, the elimination of reliable energy, the new and awesome power of the central government to allocate suddenly rare energy to favored recipients.  The more they push the Green Deal, the more the average American is a Tlaxcaltecan or Totonac who knows that it’s time for Montezuma to go down.

    • #18
  19. Randy Weivoda Moderator
    Randy Weivoda
    @RandyWeivoda

    She (View Comment):

    CB Toder aka Mama Toad (View Comment):

    Poor Greta Thunberg weeping at the UN in anger at having her childhood stolen. She’s right to feel angry, because she is being used as a tool and being lied to.

    “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood,” she raged. Poor child, she’s right about that at least.

    I could not agree more. I am alternately (tri-partly?) appalled, horrified, and frightened by, and for, Greta.

    What on earth is she going to do, in five, or six, or ten years, when the world is still turning, and we’re still here, just like we were after all the other hysterical outbursts of the last fifty or sixty years.

    She’s going to fail. Not through any fault of her own, but because her parents, and the adults who are encouraging her in her obsession, have set her up to fail. Then what?

    Her facial expressions, in the photos and the videos in the above links are very troubling. Or so I think. (I know that everyone takes a bad photo every so often (boy howdy, do I know that), but this is an angry, angry child. A child/girl/adolescent/young woman of doubtful emotional stability, who freely admits to suicidal thoughts, until she found her “mission” and the only thing that has made her life worth living for the last year or two, as she travels all over the world escaping from her circumstances and working out her hostility on strangers.)

    That adults have encouraged her in her apocalyptic vision (because they know that using a child as a shield for their radical notions is a sure way to insulate themselves from criticism and actual debate), rather than nurturing her, letting her live her girlhood, making her feel loved and safe, and showing her how to help change the world starting at home is unforgivable.

    Does anyone else wonder if Thunberg has been extensively coached by a drama teacher?  I’m not saying she doesn’t believe what she’s saying, but the video of her that is making the rounds shows a performance that couldn’t have been more dramatic if it were performed by Meryl Streep.

    • #19
  20. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):

    Aaron Miller (View Comment):

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):

    A Maunder Minimum will end it quickly. We may well be in the early stages of one. Even the LA Times noticed early snow in the Sierras.

    The shift from “global warming” to “climate change” was clever, though detestable.

    And now from “climate change” to “climate catastrophy”. Where to go next, other than to maybe finally cut to the chase with “I hate you”?

    And before “global warming” was “coming ice age” as noted by @dong . So, to answer your introductory question, “No there is no end date when they have to admit they were wrong.” They will just adjust their rhetoric and slogans. Remember, the end game is not actually solving the claimed problem, it is controlling people. Generating hysteria about the climate change is merely one vehicle to carry such people control.

    • #20
  21. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Aaron Miller: Is there a limit to how long the global warming / climate change scam can be kept alive? Is there certainly a point at which predictions of global climate catastrophe must be admitted incorrect? 

    No, and no. Original sin, that is the human need to believe something that either elevates one’s self image or denigrates others, is bounded only by the number of people on the planet. The limit will be imposed by reality in the end, but our comfortable world is easily maintained by the ten percent or so of us who are mentally oriented to produce. We can, perhaps unfortunately, carry the other 90% indefinitely.

    • #21
  22. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):

    A Maunder Minimum will end it quickly. We may well be in the early stages of one. Even the LA Times noticed early snow in the Sierras.

    Maybe, just maybe. A solar catastrophe wouldn’t persuade them to any degree at all – they’d blame it on us.

    What might work, however, is the destruction of the power grid and communication networks. That would wipe away the internet and social media along with it. Scams like global whining can only flourish in hothouses. Of course, we’d lose food distribution along the way and billions would die. But that’d be a small price to pay to wipe the smug look off the face of that pigtailed little pig.

    More coffee ….

    • #22
  23. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    Full Size Tabby (View Comment):
    And before “global warming” was “coming ice age”

    I remember back to “Nuclear Winter.”

    • #23
  24. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    MichaelKennedy (View Comment):
    I remember back to “Nuclear Winter.”

    Remember it? I’ve been advocating it. If they think Global Warming is so bad, counter it.

    • #24
  25. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    Songwriter (View Comment):

    Everybody sing: This is the dawning of the Age of Hysteria, the Age of His-ter-i-aaaa! Hysteria!

    I know the cure for this!

    • #25
  26. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Stina (View Comment):

    Songwriter (View Comment):

    Everybody sing: This is the dawning of the Age of Hysteria, the Age of His-ter-i-aaaa! Hysteria!

    I know the cure for this!

    • #26
  27. Eb Snider Member
    Eb Snider
    @EbSnider

    Aaron Miller: Is there a limit to how long the global warming / climate change scam can be kept alive? Is there certainly a point at which predictions of global climate catastrophe must be admitted incorrect?

    To honestly address your question I believe this hysteria can be extended for another generation or two. I heard an excellent term that never really caught on: “Provincialism of the Present“. Young people are brought up with little reference or handed down knowledge of the past (and by past even recent history like 20 yours ago).  So their reference is very limited. Every 15 years or so a new generation has to be re-trained. There is current commitment to Climate Hysteria by the people in influential positions and the youth being brought up in it will likely take years to have enough life experience get wise to it. Years from now they will world is not going to end the way they think as life goes on.  Plus we live in an unpredictable world where there is always something going wrong that can pointed as a “sign”.

    The historian Will Durant had a good observation: “Civilization is taught, not inherited”.  In this case I think it applies that for the youth they don’t automatically gain the perspective and knowledge of you or me or some other Ricochet member who is old enough to remember back when dooms day predications were made in the late 90s or beyond. They have to be taught and educated on that perspective, yet they are being taught something else. 

    Though for key members pushing the Climate Hysteria I don’t think accurate weather predications as vindication is really their issue.  Rather it’s political actions. 

    • #27
  28. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    Misthiocracy grudgingly (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Jager (View Comment):

    Since the 60s and 70s there have been stories saying we have 10 years to do something to avoid catastrophe. Since we are in our 5th end of the world , and yet the world has yet to end.

    More like 41.

    I remember as a kid being told that the Earth would end up like Venus.

    Yeah, me too.  That was when they were all talking about “runaway greenhouse effect”.  That at least made sense as a motivator – there’s a point of no return we will reach if we don’t change our ways (always roughly ten years).  We will then unstoppably heat up until we are 900 degrees, like Venus.

    But that was quietly dropped when “runaway greenhouse effect” turned out to be another eye-roller. Now all they’ve got is “possible changing coastlines, and more great weather”.  Not nearly as scary for everyone.

    • #28
  29. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy grudgingly (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Jager (View Comment):

    Since the 60s and 70s there have been stories saying we have 10 years to do something to avoid catastrophe. Since we are in our 5th end of the world , and yet the world has yet to end.

    More like 41.

    I remember as a kid being told that the Earth would end up like Venus.

    Yeah, me too. That was when they were all talking about “runaway greenhouse effect”. That at least made sense as a motivator – there’s a point of no return we will reach if we don’t change our ways (always roughly ten years). We will then unstoppably heat up until we are 900 degrees, like Venus.

    But that was quietly dropped when “runaway greenhouse effect” turned out to be another eye-roller. Now all they’ve got is “possible changing coastlines, and more great weather”. Not nearly as scary for everyone.

    I have to admire the way they insinuated “runaway” into the conversation. Usually when I hear “runaway” I think of something wildly dynamic, like a runaway truck.

    I don’t think I recall which science talker first put “runaway” and Venus together in the public conversation. It might have been Saint Sagan. I do recall thinking it to be an odd term to describe Venus’ climate, or even how it came to be so hot.

    Look, Venus has a recently if not currently vulcanized surface and rotates backwards. It sure looks to me like the poor thing got smacked by a big rock and became volcanic, planetwide. That lava belched a planetary amount of gas. The lighter gases get stripped by the occasional Carrington event.

    Or it looks like that to this layman, anyway. You’d think popular science would say as much, but no. They emphasize the carbon dioxide and insinuate, if not imply, that Venus got hot as a self-reinforcing greenhouse gas cycle. Which, I think, is manifestly false. 

    It’s way more likely the CO2 concentration went up all at once, not as a process-with-positive-feedback.

    The term “runaway” is an artful piece of propaganda. I’d like to pinpoint the first place that usage went public in regard to Venus. 

    • #29
  30. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Stina (View Comment):

    Songwriter (View Comment):

    Everybody sing: This is the dawning of the Age of Hysteria, the Age of His-ter-i-aaaa! Hysteria!

    I know the cure for this!

    I was thinking more along the lines of archaic “scientific” and debunked means, but this works, too.

    • #30
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