Americans beware: French ex-President wants to take away your guns! Oh noes!

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. Americans beware: French ex-President wants to take away your guns! Oh noes!
Intl. J. Inact., 2:76

British nobleman Christopher Monckton has a dire warning this June for all freedom-loving Americans: French ex-President Jacques Chirac wants to take away your guns by promoting the cruel hoax of ‘global warming’! Oh noes!

As Maurice Strong, Jacques Chirac and their ilk had always intended, the IPCC will emerge after [the UN Climate Change Conference at] Copenhagen as the prototype and nucleus of a world government. We have already seen this in the EU.

This is the same Monckton who claimed back in March that American President “Osamabamarama” has a

stated ambition of shutting down nine-tenths of the economies of the West and flinging us back to the Stone Age without even the right to light fires in our caves.

Bwahahahahaha.

(And with this, I’d like to announce that there’s now another update to the genealogy of climate conspiracy theories.)

Internet Goracularities: Deus Reginam salvet

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. Internet Goracularities: Deus Reginam salvet. Intl. J. Inact., 2:56–62

The Internet Goracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

And in response, thus spake the Goracle:

I am not a wingnut, but…

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. I am not a wingnut, but… Intl. J. Inact., 2:47–49

A novice monk once asked the High Priest of the Goracle, “Great Master, does the global warming skeptic movement have the Wingnut Nature?”

The High Priest let him listen to an audio mash-up of Christopher Monckton’s speech at the Heartland conference.

Upon this, the novice was enlightened.

* * *

Still, the raving wingnuts are still trying to convince, well, some people, that they’re not actually raving wingnuts, but merely reasonable-minded defenders of the Plain Truth or something. How? By using euphemisms, that’s how. Witness an essay by Susan Easton in Human Events about the Heartland climate ’science’ conference:

More fun with the “2009 International Conference on Climate Change”

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. More fun with the “2009 International Conference on Climate Change”. Intl. J. Inact., 2:46

Listen to a quick-and-dirty remix of Monckton’s speech (256KB, 1′ 4″ MP3). Background music source: played by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).

Update 2009-03-26: An improved version.

Nominations for ‘conference’ take-home message are now open!

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. Nominations for ‘conference’ take-home message are now open! Intl. J. Inact., 2:28–29

Yes, it’s less than 2 weeks before the Heartland Institute’s “2009 International Conference on Climate Change”, during which a few talking heads will prattle on and on about how this ‘global warming crisis’ thing is really a huge hoax perpetrated by crypto-Marxists to implement totalitarian rule or something, and 1,000+ people who can’t care less about the whole global warming ‘debate’ will be there just to enjoy the free catered food while pretending to listen to the speakers. DeSmogBlog has informed us that they’ll be going. :)

Now, if last year’s any guide, the ‘conference’ proper will be pretty boring, and the fun stuff will come in the form of media stunts and what not that occur outside of the presentations. Indeed, during last year’s gathering the right-wing blogosphere made a lot of noise over weatherman John Coleman’s appearance on the media, and the take-home message of the ‘conference’ practically became this:

JOHN COLEMAN IS GOING TO SUE AL GORE!!!!!!

So I guess we can expect there to be a similar take-home message for this year’s ‘conference’. But what will it be? Here are a few possibilities I came up with after, well, storming my brain a bit:

We are really, really suing Al Gore really, and here is a silly graph

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. We are really, really suing Al Gore really, and here is a silly graph. Intl. J. Inact., 2:14–16

The inactivist New Zealand Climate ‘Science’ Coalition just made a grand announcement, with lots of pomp and fanfare, about the upcoming lawsuit against Al Gore or something. In Viscount Christopher Monckton’s own words:

There are now serious discussions afoot to lodge complaints against Gore to the federal financial and legal authorities, in that he fraudulently talks up the imagined “climate crisis” in the hope that he and his “green” investment corporation can profit by the baseless alarm that his falsehoods generate.

There are “serious discussions”… “now”? I wonder if this means that the “discussions” in the last 10 months or so about suing Al Gore were, in fact, not “serious”? (That sounds about right, since I can see no trace of the “notable attorneys” discussing this supposed case who Coleman claimed exist. In the meantime, you can sign the “Sue Us” Petition to get them to sue Al Gore for real.)

Also, here’s another gem from Monckton’s missive:

Ownerific quote II

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. Ownerific quote II. Intl. J. Inact., 1:178

Source of Christopher Monckton photo: Deltoid; Source of caption idea: also Deltoid

Mark Hoofnagle, writing about how climate inactivists claim that the word “denier” is a Nazi comparison:

If a doctor confronts an alcoholic about their denial of their alcoholism, they’re not suggesting they hate Jewish people too. When a psychiatrist tells their patient they’re in denial, that’s hardly comparing them to the Nazis. When we say a public figure has issued a denial of some scandal, we’re not suggesting they advocate a new holocaust. [...] It should [...] be clear that holocaust denial has not ruined the word deny or denial or denier for any number of other applications — this is just another example of denialists claiming persecution after being called on their BS.

(Via Brian D.)

The Shadow Sock technique

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. The Shadow Sock technique. Intl. J. Inact., 1:130–132

Announcement: Sign the “Sue Us” Petition and urge Monckton and others
to sue Gore and Hansen as repeatedly threatened! 51 signatures so far!

To begin…

I’ve uploaded a short segment of the Littlemore vs. Monckton global warming debate (17′ to 20′ 30″), in which Monckton, Green, and Littlemore talked about the Medieval Warm Period and Bangladesh, and Green tried to steer the debate in the direction of Jupiter:

• Ogg Speex format (1MB);
• MP3 format (3MB).

And…

Well, it turns out that the prognostications of the Great Internet Goracle regarding the Littlemore vs. Monckton global warming debate was pretty on target — in a way.

With the debate now over, my guess was that the High Respectable Inactionosphere’s foremost duty would be to create the impression of a mass exodus over to the inactivist ‘camp’… and being lovers of freedom, they weren’t going to (horrors!) leave that to the actual public! And indeed, there are now two shiny new comments at DeSmogBlog. There’s this:

brothersmartmouth: Dear Richard, Please explain your comment “was registered in YOUR country… because it woudn’t have been legal if it was registered in the United States.”
Your lack of knowledge about “a lot of this”, can be solved via the internet (wikapedia is not resourse material).
The CBC has no problem talking about global warming science on the radio? Why do you?
I think the next time, the David Suzuki Foundation,won’t have a blogger debating science.
Thank you, Honestly, I give you a gold medal for being the first AGW advocate to use the freedom to debate!

So, it looks like our commenter has Studied the Science Thoroughly by using the Internet (which, well, is quite distinct from Wikipedia). And he knows so much about global warming that he’s now just curious about Littlemore’s connections to the online gambling industry. Ooh.

Then there’s this:

Roy Green ‘referees’ debate by talking a lot

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. Roy Green ‘referees’ debate by talking a lot. Intl. J. Inact., 1:129

Announcement: Sign the “Sue Us” Petition and urge Monckton and others
to sue Gore and Hansen as repeatedly threatened! 51 signatures so far!

Ever watched a high school debate where the judges keep asking long questions, or a parliament session where the Speaker talks a lot? Yet somehow Roy Green decided this was a good way to ‘referee’ the Littlemore vs. Monckton debate.¹ It’s quite revealing that Green thought he had to force his own viewpoint through relentlessly.

Not that it’s all Roy Green’s fault, though. I got the impression that Littlemore was engaging in the debate totally unprepared. For whatever reason, he seemed to have forgotten the tried-and-proven advice that people have given — over the years, and in recent days — on what to do in debates such as these: for instance, emphasize on a few salient points, and beware of the Gish Gallop.

Anyway, though the debate’s over, yet the real struggle has probably just begun: there’s still the hordes of mysterious characters who will very likely appear on the Internets Tubes pretty soon now…

Footnotes

1. By the way, I have a recording of the debate proper, but I’m not sure about uploading the whole thing due to copyright issues. It’s about 36′ and weighs in at 12MB when converted to Ogg Speex format.

Update 2008-08-18: Well, a few mysterious characters have appeared, but they’re arguably a bit different from what was predicted…

“32 degrees is the expected high”

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. “32 degrees is the expected high”. Intl. J. Inact., 1:128

I’ve found that you can listen online to the channel hosting the Littlemore vs. Monckton global warming debate, by surfing to the 630 CHED page and clicking on “NEWS Talk — LISTEN LIVE”.

(Users of Linux with ALSA can record parts of the streamed audio by following Karthik’s instructions — remember to change the parameters 27 and 4 to amixer appropriately.)