Well, that was interesting…
On Fox there is an odd show called “Red Eye”. It’s odd as it’s a sort of a conservative show but has a ‘kinky’ bent to it that is somewhere between metrosexual and veiled Gay with attempts at cool. Not all that explicit, but just on the edge. Yet they discuss current issues that matter in a clear and direct way.
OK, for those who’ve never seen it, here’s a sample:
Then after that kind of humor bit, they will do some story that has real news value, but with a humor twist on it.
So why this post?
The host is Greg Gutfeld. He does a daily monolog on a news item called the “Gregalogue”. The one tonight was on Global Warming and the way that warmers have recently deciding that over hyping the horrors isn’t working. It was delivered a bit more seriously than usual. Here are some text quotes (maybe it will eventually show up on U-tube…) and there is more at the other end of the link
From: http://www.dailygut.com/ the current topic:
MONDAY’S GREGALOGUE: THE CONSEQUENCES OF DOOM
So climate change experts having finally got the message. And the message is: their message sucks. In fact, their “Scare the hell out of us” screed was so awful, researchers claim, that it actually undermined their mission.Which, I always thought, was to scare the hell out of us.
Yep, according to Cal-Berkeley shrinks, dire predictions about global warming can “backfire if presented too negatively.” Of course that raises one question: how do you present dire predictions, positively?
“Hey, were all gunna die. LOL.”
Which leads me to a theory: these Berkeley researchers are dopes.
You may have noticed they don’t pull a lot of punches on this show… That’s part of why I like it.
Look the fact is, people like me questioned global warming evidence because we’d seen this hysteria before – with emotional warnings about the coming ice age, the dangers of nuclear power, artificial sweeteners and DDT.
And this caused us to grow cold to such crap, and overlook real threats like terrorism, the resurgence of malaria, and of course, the rise of Ed Hardy t-shirts.
Worse, with global warming, we saw that anyone who dare to question the hysteria would be labeled a “skeptic,” and treated like a “leper.”
And never get “laid.”
But the climategate scandal proved that inevitably, these cocky GW experts would overstep the science, get humbled, retreat into therapy. (Have you seen Gore lately?)
So at this point, I’m starting to giggle uncontrollably while wanting to grab a Scotch / Rocks at the same time. If you can find the live version, the delivery alone is worth it for the added effort. The discussion afterward was fun too.
So now, finally, shrinks are saying these experts should rethink their messaging.
Of course, this is still not tackling the real problem. Note that the shrinks aren’t telling experts to stop exaggerating consequences – instead, they say, “present solutions to global warming.”
Meaning: just assume your lies were right all along and push the curly light bulbs.
That ain’t gunna work either.
And if you disagree with me you’re a racist homophobic globalphobe.
There is no way I can improve on that. Best I can do is suggest reading it twice. Maybe three times. And pouring another beverage and reading it again. And then telling a friend or two…
Somehow I think “Global Warming” has definitely reached the “Jump The Shark” stage…
Musings from the Chiefio 
You convinced me to grab a glass of wine, thnx :)
We don’t get shows like this in Oz
“And if you disagree with me you’re a racist homophobic globalphobe” Guffaw! “Globalphobe” is great new epithet to throw back in mockery at the one-worlder-let’s-save-the-world types. Nope, you can’t get much better than that. Thanks for the new show. I am having a hard time watching any mainstream media these days, including Fox. I feel sadly lonely and deeply deprived of what I used to enjoy. Maybe my eyes are more open today than the once were. I don’t like what I see except fo the new investigative journalism — blogs like yours. Thanks.
That would be Greg Gutfeld.
[ REPLY: Fixed, thanks. Too many times watching Casablanca… E.M.Smith ]
Stumbled onto your blog from J Curry’s, where your post on small tyrannies was reference, IMO very thoughtful and beautifully done.
Ran to the home page and saw a mention of Red Eye. That has been my fave for months. I make sure I am awake and next to a TV I can control Sat midnights to watch it. Allows me to bask in my small tyranny (great minds etc. etc.)
Thanks for the funniest blog I’ve read for a while.
“And if you disagree with me you’re a racist homophobic globalphobe.” lol! :)
I hope you’re wrong about “reached the “Jump The Shark” stage…” as there’s plenty more laughs in there from all those pious AGW devotees.
LOL ‘globalphobe’ that’s a good description of some of the catastrophists I know.
“Worse, with global warming, we saw that anyone who dare to question the hysteria would be labeled a “skeptic,” and treated like a “leper.”
And never get “laid.”
Well if you’re afraid to speak your scepticism for any reason, I’m asking the question Are you a closet skeptic?
@Baa Humbug,
I think you’re being unfair to Oz, Clarke and Dawe can do quite well at times…
@Verity: I voted in your poll… hope being a blogger doesn’t skew your statistics as by definition I’m “out of the closet”… though I do remember the initial tentative steps of telling some close friends and getting a half dozen fuzzy looks, one flat out rejection, and a couple of shy “me too”s… but that was a couple of years back.
@Chuckles: That is hilarious AND accurate! Love it!
At it’s core, the European Crisis is just as they put it: too much debt owed by the PIIGS to the rest of Euro land. And it does point up a bit of the conundrum of central banking. What it doesn’t say (and I’m not sure it could be wedged in without making the piece less effective) is that the central bank can create the money out of nothing to fund the “bail out”. That eventually shows up as inflation of the currency, but some years later, so most folks don’t notice right off…
The process of cleaning up those kinds of cross loans is called an ‘un-wind’, and it’s tricky to do (and harder to do well …)
OT – Pielke, Jr. has a map of Africa with China, US, India and others tucked within its borders. A commenter notes that it’s a lot of land, with few thermometers.
It might be interesting to show the number of official thermometers in the overlaid countries, compared to the number within Africa.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/11/africa-is-big.html
(I left a similar comment at Steven Goddard’s site, but remembered you are a thermometer guy.)
Reality check:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tiny_houses
@E.M. – absolutely fine. Good response so far.
@Adolfo Guirfa:
I’ve sporadically wanted to do that over the years (but only as a ‘2nd home’). Somehow it never quite happens. Right now the fantasy is a cast off RV (as folks don’t want to pay $4/gallon for gasoline for the monsters getting 5 MPG…) parked on a ‘mini-farm’ somewhere in the Sun Belt. Fly in for the good weather, leave for the bad. If a hurricane threatens, just ‘up anchor’ and motor it inland a ways.
A “mini home” second home.
Instead I just visit my friend in Florida and stay in the guest room (he has about 3000 sq feet with a pool and giant kitchen for all of 3 people… hard to talk myself into a 200 sq ft motor home with a patch of sandy mud given that … )
Maybe next year…
I’d buy a chunk of dirt for a garden somewhere and visit it with the station wagon / car camping, except I know that I’d need to be ‘near the garden’ every week, and that tends to not be ‘visiting’…
But yes, ‘reality’ just is. (And for a lot of folks in California, that’s a sad statement about reality…)
FWIW, I once lived in my car for about 6 months. I needed to be out of the dorms (as I was participating in a NASA project for 4 months and would miss a quarter, and they don’t let you stay in the dorms if you are not an active student…) but needed to be near the campus until the official start of the project (when I’d be ‘housed’ by NASA…).
So it was about 2+ months “in the car” then the NASA project, then when we got out, 2 of us ‘toured the nation’ for a couple of more months in a 1967 VW Fastback (living via ‘car camping’ along the way). Oddly, one of the more memorably parts of my life. Prepared me well for life “on the road” as a computer consultant living in hotels. (I’ve spent 1/2 year or so living in Florida hotels on a contract a couple of years back).
At this point I can live an indefinite period of time with one backpack (padded laptop type), one ‘travel suitcase’ (carry on size) and if “car camping” one “camping box” with things like a sleeping bag and cooking supplies. I don’t really need anything beyond that. I figure that having done it for the better part of a year more than once (and one of them with two of us in a VW …) I’ve pretty well got an ‘existence proof’…
Don’t think the spouse could handle it, though, unless it was top end hotels. She doesn’t “do camping”… ;-)
I did get her to go camping once, and admit that it wasn’t TOO awful… Took a 1 ton crew cab pickup truck full of stuff, though. A “cabin tent” of about 12 x 12 feet with an inflatable Queen Size Bed along with chairs and full (camping) propane stove and a giant ice chest of food. Oh, and we had to set up in a space right next to the showers / bathrooms so she didn’t have more than 20 feet to walk to them (and had a small yard light on the path…). And we had a ‘screen room’ on the outside of the tent in addition to the 12 x 12 interior IIRC… So as long as I’m willing to pack that much stuff, SMBO thinks it’s only a “bad idea” instead of “horrible” ;-)
I’d just like to clear up a point made in the video. Ireland do not owe anything like $895bn.
The IMF bailout is a contingency loan whose main aim is to bring up the Irish banks’ capital ratios to 12%, where most banks in the world are at 8%. So far, $14bn of cuts and taxes have been implemented with another $22bn in the pipeline over the next four years. All political parties have signed up to it.
Including the IMF bailout, and assuming we use all of it, Ireland’s sovereign debt will grow to $220bn, or about a quarter of what the video assumed. In the cases of all the other EU countries they quoted sovereign debt. This $220bn represents about 100% of GDP.
What scares me is that if the current pressure on the Eurozone remains, the Euro will not be able to survive in its current form, with the likelihood that the core countries will band together and cut the smaller countries out. Whatever currency Ireland and others adopt will devalue against the core Euro, but the debt will still be in those Euros.
E.M.
One of the advantages of being retired is being able to stay up late enough to watch Red Eye (it comes on a midnight here. Greg and his wacky ensemble regularly keep me up until they go off the air at 1a.m. It is rather like listening to a shock-jock with the shock replaced with bawdy, edgy humor. They walk a fine line. I can agree with your scotch, but still prefer the Irish.
@Paul Hanlon: A sovereign nation is only one renegotiation away from restating their debt in their own currency. (And the renegotiation can be very one sided…)
Unfortunately, it looks like the goal of the EUrocrats is to eliminate sovereign nations in Europe…
@Mike Patrick: I could never develop a preference for Irish vs Scotch in either direction. Like ’em both about equally. Mostly just use the word “scotch” in writing as it is clearly different from Scots where irish and Irish are too similar and wordpress spell checker complains about irish whiskey (though it likes Irish whiskey) but if you say you like a 16 year old Irish from time to time it could be misconstrued… ;-)
Yeah, Red Eye keeps me up too …
E.M. says: “Right now the fantasy is a cast off RV (as folks don’t want to pay $4/gallon for gasoline for the monsters getting 5 MPG…) parked on a ‘mini-farm’ somewhere in the Sun Belt.”
As someone who has actually built an off-grid cabin in the woods, I can tell you how I would do it if I were doing it again…
First, land that is off the paved roads, off the power lines and off the water and sewer lines is still cheap. Buy some that has at least a few acres of woods and a few acres of potential meadow or garden. Get it far enough in the boonies that regulations and permits are “optional.” Buy your RV and make a parking area. Get a well drilled and dig a cess-pit (to dump your holding tank in) a reasonable distance away. Later, build a roof over the parking area — just a pole shed structure. Later, put some walls and windows on two sides. Later, put some walls and doors on the other two sides. Park outside. Add a floor and doors. Add basic electrical wiring and outside generator. Add basic plumbing and run it to the cess-pit. Add a porch or two. Add some interior insulation and walls. Add some battery power storage and an inverter. Add a septic field. Add a wood burning stove.
None of these steps (other than the initial property)costs more than a couple of thousand dollars at a time. Since the RV allows you cramped but pre-packaged living quarters, none of these steps is critical at any specific point. Do business locally as much as possible. maybe one of your neighbors has a saw mill, or a back hoe.