And just like that we’ve entered a new epoch. ‘The era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived’, decreed UN chief António Guterres last week. It’s hard to know what’s worse: the hubris and arrogance of this globalist official who imagines he has the right to declare the start of an entire new age, or the servile compliance of the media elites who lapped up his deranged edict about the coming heat death of Earth. ‘Era of global boiling has arrived and it is terrifying’, said the front page of the Guardian, as if Guterres’s word was gospel, his every utterance a divine truth. We urgently need to throw the waters of reason on this delirious talk of a ‘boiling’ planet.
Guterres issued his neo-papal bull about the boiling of our world in response to the heatwaves that have hit some countries over the past two weeks. ‘Climate change is here [and] it is terrifying’, he said. We see ‘families running from the flames [and] workers collapsing in scorching heat’ and ‘it is just the beginning’, he said, doing his best impersonation of a 1st-century millenarian crackpot. In fact, forget ‘climate change’, he said. Forget ‘global warming’, too. What we’re witnessing is a boiling. It all brings to mind the Book of Job which warned that the serpent Leviathan would cause the seas to ‘boil like a cauldron’. Leviathan’s back, only we call him climate change now.
The obsequious speed with which the media turned Guterres’s commandment into frontpage news was extraordinary. They behaved less like reporters than like the slavish scribes of this secular god and his delusional visions. ‘World entering “era of global boiling”’, cried the Independent, and we ‘know who is responsible’. No prizes for guessing who that is. It’s you, me and the rest of our pesky species. It always is. ‘Planet is boiling’, one headline breezily declared, confirming that Guterres’s fearful phrase, his propagandistic line no doubt drawn up with the aid of spin doctors in some UN backroom, is already being christened as fact.
Almost instantly, media outlets started lecturing readers on how they might help to put a halt to the coming evaporation of our planet. SBS in Australia advised us to ‘Reduce meat intake’, ‘Stop driving cars’ and ‘Cut down on flights’. In short, stop all the fun stuff; make sacrifices to appease nature’s angry gods. Even self-styled radicals made themselves mouthpieces of the UN’s medieval sermonising. Novara Media instantly embraced ‘global boiling’ as an apt metaphor for the arsonist impact humanity has had on Earth. Scratch a Marxist these days, find a Malthusian.
Can’t we have just a little critical thinking on the idea of ‘global boiling’? The first thing a rational mind ought to note is that boiling is when liquid turns into vapour. Sorry to be pedantic, but I think the meaning of words is important. Does anyone really believe our planet is now so fantastically hot that lakes and rivers and seas will shortly start to evaporate? If you don’t – and you shouldn’t, because it’s baloney – then you should not use a phrase like ‘global boiling’. Indeed, one professor of climate physics rebuked Guterres, mildly, of course, for starting to ‘depart from the underlying scientific evidence’. Indeed. Earth is not boiling, and we shouldn’t say that it is.
There are other reasons to be sceptical of the boiling hysteria. Yes, the weather is hot in parts of Europe, but there have been heatwaves throughout history, long before the dawn of industry. What’s more, the Greek government says that most of the 667 fires it has experienced over the sweaty past fortnight were started ‘by human hand’. So those ferocious flames gleefully described by our green elites as Mother Nature’s punishment of mankind were mainly the handiwork of arsonists. Then there’s the fact that cold weather kills far more people than hot weather. Will the chilly winter months, in which numerous old people will perish, be described by Guterres and his apostles as a global freezing, a New Ice Age? Of course not. There are no propaganda points, no opportunities for modernity-bashing, in fearmongering over cold weather.
Let’s be clear: ‘global boiling’ is not a factual or scientific phrase. Rather, it represents yet another ramping up of the green politics of fear. It’s the latest addition to the already fat dictionary of eco-dread. Economic inflation isn’t the only problem we face today – there’s threat inflation, too. The catastrophism of climate change in particular is puffed up on pretty much a weekly basis. This is why we’ve gone from climate change to climate crisis to climate emergency. And it’s why we’re now going from global warming to global boiling. Language is used to terrorise the masses, to snap us out of our supposed apathetic coolness on the issue of climate change and force us to agree with the cranky elites that the end really is nigh, and it’s our fault.
As the Washington Post said in its coverage of the ‘global boiling’ edict, apocalyptic superlatives can be ‘useful in underlining the importance of [this] issue’. This is a familiar tactic of eco-propagandists. A few years ago, Extinction Rebellion protested outside the offices of the New York Times to put pressure on it to dump the passive phrase ‘climate change’ in preference for the panic-inducing ‘climate emergency’. ‘Linguistic experts’ have cheered the media’s embrace of catastrophic language because apparently fretful terminology can help to ‘convey to the public an increasingly urgent threat’. They’re trying to manipulate us. They are using the grammar of Armageddon to cajole us into compliance with the green narrative and its demands for sacrifice in everyday life. As I argue in my new book, A Heretic’s Manifesto, they want to ‘coerce us into the realm of doom by making us think less about “climate change” and more about climate chaos, climate disaster, even climate apocalypse’.
It is imperative that we resist this linguistic authoritarianism. ‘Global boiling’ isn’t only a ridiculous phrase – it is also an insult to truth, reason and us. That such a fact-lite, post-scientific, hysterical phrase has been used by the UN, the activist set and the media elites is a reminder that they see the rest of us, the little people, as malleable creatures to be marched this way and that by scary words and warnings of a hellish future. It’s boiling anger we should feel, for this arrogant crusade of emotional manipulation.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer. This article was first published HERE
The obsequious speed with which the media turned Guterres’s commandment into frontpage news was extraordinary. They behaved less like reporters than like the slavish scribes of this secular god and his delusional visions. ‘World entering “era of global boiling”’, cried the Independent, and we ‘know who is responsible’. No prizes for guessing who that is. It’s you, me and the rest of our pesky species. It always is. ‘Planet is boiling’, one headline breezily declared, confirming that Guterres’s fearful phrase, his propagandistic line no doubt drawn up with the aid of spin doctors in some UN backroom, is already being christened as fact.
Almost instantly, media outlets started lecturing readers on how they might help to put a halt to the coming evaporation of our planet. SBS in Australia advised us to ‘Reduce meat intake’, ‘Stop driving cars’ and ‘Cut down on flights’. In short, stop all the fun stuff; make sacrifices to appease nature’s angry gods. Even self-styled radicals made themselves mouthpieces of the UN’s medieval sermonising. Novara Media instantly embraced ‘global boiling’ as an apt metaphor for the arsonist impact humanity has had on Earth. Scratch a Marxist these days, find a Malthusian.
Can’t we have just a little critical thinking on the idea of ‘global boiling’? The first thing a rational mind ought to note is that boiling is when liquid turns into vapour. Sorry to be pedantic, but I think the meaning of words is important. Does anyone really believe our planet is now so fantastically hot that lakes and rivers and seas will shortly start to evaporate? If you don’t – and you shouldn’t, because it’s baloney – then you should not use a phrase like ‘global boiling’. Indeed, one professor of climate physics rebuked Guterres, mildly, of course, for starting to ‘depart from the underlying scientific evidence’. Indeed. Earth is not boiling, and we shouldn’t say that it is.
There are other reasons to be sceptical of the boiling hysteria. Yes, the weather is hot in parts of Europe, but there have been heatwaves throughout history, long before the dawn of industry. What’s more, the Greek government says that most of the 667 fires it has experienced over the sweaty past fortnight were started ‘by human hand’. So those ferocious flames gleefully described by our green elites as Mother Nature’s punishment of mankind were mainly the handiwork of arsonists. Then there’s the fact that cold weather kills far more people than hot weather. Will the chilly winter months, in which numerous old people will perish, be described by Guterres and his apostles as a global freezing, a New Ice Age? Of course not. There are no propaganda points, no opportunities for modernity-bashing, in fearmongering over cold weather.
Let’s be clear: ‘global boiling’ is not a factual or scientific phrase. Rather, it represents yet another ramping up of the green politics of fear. It’s the latest addition to the already fat dictionary of eco-dread. Economic inflation isn’t the only problem we face today – there’s threat inflation, too. The catastrophism of climate change in particular is puffed up on pretty much a weekly basis. This is why we’ve gone from climate change to climate crisis to climate emergency. And it’s why we’re now going from global warming to global boiling. Language is used to terrorise the masses, to snap us out of our supposed apathetic coolness on the issue of climate change and force us to agree with the cranky elites that the end really is nigh, and it’s our fault.
As the Washington Post said in its coverage of the ‘global boiling’ edict, apocalyptic superlatives can be ‘useful in underlining the importance of [this] issue’. This is a familiar tactic of eco-propagandists. A few years ago, Extinction Rebellion protested outside the offices of the New York Times to put pressure on it to dump the passive phrase ‘climate change’ in preference for the panic-inducing ‘climate emergency’. ‘Linguistic experts’ have cheered the media’s embrace of catastrophic language because apparently fretful terminology can help to ‘convey to the public an increasingly urgent threat’. They’re trying to manipulate us. They are using the grammar of Armageddon to cajole us into compliance with the green narrative and its demands for sacrifice in everyday life. As I argue in my new book, A Heretic’s Manifesto, they want to ‘coerce us into the realm of doom by making us think less about “climate change” and more about climate chaos, climate disaster, even climate apocalypse’.
It is imperative that we resist this linguistic authoritarianism. ‘Global boiling’ isn’t only a ridiculous phrase – it is also an insult to truth, reason and us. That such a fact-lite, post-scientific, hysterical phrase has been used by the UN, the activist set and the media elites is a reminder that they see the rest of us, the little people, as malleable creatures to be marched this way and that by scary words and warnings of a hellish future. It’s boiling anger we should feel, for this arrogant crusade of emotional manipulation.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer. This article was first published HERE
6 comments:
And we push back by getting educated on the geoengineering weapons/systems that the globalists have at their disposal to manipulate and weaponise the weather. They are currently creating 'unusual' weather events over food producing areas around the world. Control the food and you control the people.
Geoengineeringwatch.org is a good starting point.
New Zealand environmentalist, Dame Anne Salmond, also quotes Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, in a recent comment. She sees it rather differently. He has issued this warning, she says: “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has begun. According to the data released today, July has already seen the hottest three-week period ever recorded, the three hottest days on record; and the highest-ever ocean temperatures for this time of the year. "For the entire planet, it is a disaster. As for scientists, it is unequivocal – humans are to blame. We need dramatic, immediate action. Accelerating temperatures demand accelerated action.”
It is true that the term ‘boiling’ is hyperbolic; it is not literally ‘boiling’, but undeniably heating alarmingly. We ignore it at our peril, and what a peril it is!
A useful display to demonstrate the "catastrophe" we and the planet are facing might be to fly Antonio to Greece....on his gas-guzzling private jet. Sit him down by a river or lake - his choice - then put one of his hands in the "boiling" water...and his other hand in a pot of REALLY boiling water.
He can then tell us how he can hardly tell the difference...after he's stopped screaming and been treated at the burns unit in Athens.
Or he could just cut to the chase and go boil his head.
Well as a Thermodynamics engineer i can truely say that we are many billions of kilojoules away from boiling the plant.
It’s an enormous number, more zeros than you could imagine.
You can google it if you’re interested.
You would then get some idea of how much nonsense the climate alarmists / UN are pushing.
They really are a bunch of no hopers who need to go back to school and learn more maths and physics.
The last paragraph of the article is correct. UN treating “ the little people” as malleable creatures whom we can fill with language of dread and distress to get them to comply.
I think we have just been down that path and it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
I place climate alarmism into the same brain dead category as those poor souls we observe everyday, the single occupant drivers still wearing face masks. It confirms how some people are so compliant and naive that they respond without question. Pure gun fodder for the manipulators. The sun drenched Greek Isles will continue to be a drawcard to those wishing to escape the winter climes like we poor Kiwis have this year. I’m reminded by NIWAs dishonesty claiming that cyclone Gabrielle was the greatest storm ever recorded in NZ until Ian Wishart’s research proved them total liars. There is no climate emergency just hot air from the alarmists.
We’ve all heard nonsense about cows presenting a danger to the continuance of life on earth – that methane gas from cow flatulence will bring on climate change faster than John Kerry’s jet.
Any thinking person would agree that the notion that an animal that’s existed in harmony with nature for over two million years could destroy the earth within fourteen years if they’re not exterminated is truly absurd.
And yet those whose ability to reason is on the decline are inclined to believe the claim. Presumably, these individuals are the same ones beginning to believe that men can have babies and that an individual can become something he or she is not simply by “identifying” as such.
But those of us who see the absurdity in such clearly nonsensical beliefs are disinclined to laugh as we observe that these concepts are being disseminated by globalist governments through a compliant media… and, worse, are being accepted by more than a few people.
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