Deck Knight
Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
The brown-shirts may not be dead after all, they have merely changed clothes. Witness the newest police force in the United Kingdom, the "green-jackets."
"Saving the planet" is apparently the biggest issue in Britain right now. Not people losing jobs left and right in an economic downturn, not slashing wasteful government programs (this would in fact be creating one. A big one. With police powers.), and not creating an economic climate in which businesses can prosper.
No, serving the Altar of Gaia is the top priority for the Brits. They're just granting police powers to Enviro-cultists for your own good, you see. Anglicanism isn't the UK's main belief system anymore, Global Warming is.
I'm alarmist?
They are inventing a police force of whole cloth.
During an economic downturn.
Prefaced entirely on "saving the planet."
By levying fines on the CO2 emissions of businesses located on an island nation smaller than Texas.
This would be an absurd plot basis for a Monty Python sketch, nevermind an actual government program. The Ministry of Silly Walks (an actual Monty Python sketch, not a British agency) would be a less wasteful proposal.
It's not much different here in America, we have a cap-and-trade bill that just passed the House, and God help us if it passes the Senate. It's essentially an everything tax. When you raise the price of energy, the price of everything raises. Barack Obama himself said on the campaign trail that supporting his cap-and-trade system would make electricity rates "necessarily skyrocket." Here's a catchy visual aid for cap-and-trade.
Finally, just ask yourself this using the new Global Warming verbiage, "Climate Change": How is fighting Climate Change any different than fighting ocean tides? No matter how often or how hard you kick the water at the beach, the tide will still flow in and ebb out. So why is it considered remotely sensible to make it a government action (a proto-fascist one at that) to prevent the planet's entire climate from changing?
Would you believe it if someone told you they could make the ocean tides recede twelve inches if only you drastically cut back your lifestyle so the government could spend trillions of dollars to fight "Anthropogenic Excessive Tide Height?" They can't prove the tides are actually excessive, or that humans are causing it. Not a single one of their doomsaying models has come to pass or even been remotely accurate. They have been caught red-handed publishing fraudulent tide heights, and they've banned picnic lunches on the beach because the food crumbs might fall into the ocean and displace enough water to effect tide height negatively. Nor can they prove that higher tides are a categorically bad thing in and of themselves in exchange for all this wasted time, money, and liberty lost.
Global Warming is a cult. This is the only logical conclusion after seeing the effects of attacking its tenets. I have been threatened to be kicked for calling it alarmism, for Gaia Fanatics seem to believe that We Are All Doomed and Something Must Be Done. With SMBD usually being fascistic measures like the EnviroCops or some other onerous act of congress. It goes beyond a policy position to actively silencing critics and threatening dissenters.
Their fallback excuse for each incremental loss of freedom is that it's only one small step. One small step for incremental statism is one giant leap for statism proper. Their response to your suggestion they are full of nonsense is to talk about a (ever-dwindling) consensus among public grant recipients who agree with the government's foregone ACC conclusion or else they don't receive funding. Or just a simple "Shut Up." Or they try and obfuscate by asserting you oppose the premise "the Climate is Changing" when your actual argument is "Proto-Fascism is not justified just because you blame humanity for the climactic changes of the planet." They will always assert that the science is settled and the conclusions are foolproof. Then you go and ask an actual climatologist, not an Energy Agency hack, and they'll say the topic is still under rigorous (the comments, the OP is obviously in the tank) discussion.
I can tolerate that people believe in something as stupid, unfounded, and fraudulent as Anthropogenic Climate Change (of the kind that requires massive intrusion into daily life because otherwise WAAD and SMBD.). When that idiocy translates into expensive freedom-destroying measures like the EnviroCops, that's where I draw the line from polite tolerance to vehement opposition. I should not be forced to pay massive taxes and be told what I can and cannot buy, sell, or do by a bureaucratic nanny just because someone, somewhere has an irrational hangup about humanity's role in the environment. Have these genius ministers ever considered the carbon footprint of their new bureaucracy making house calls in armor-plated lowest-bidder SUVs? Of course not. That would require the foresight that ACC adherents lack in their haste to save the planet at all costs (to the consumer).
The only kind of people who claim they can save the planet are deities, con-men, and lunatics. Either the warmists believe they are gods, or they are easily duped suckers (taken in by a platitude of saving the planet on their behalf, no less), or they are just batshit insane. In either case, their unrelenting support of any program that would curb liberty, destroy economic prosperity, and install an Orwellian agency designed around saving you from yourself is an indication that they are a cult. Legitimate religions do not demand that you slit your wrists to save the earth. The EnviroCops are no different from The Spanish Inquisition, and unlike most totalitarians who will occasionally take a day off from absolute control over your every move, warmists truly believe they are altruists limiting you for your own protection. Thus they are the most menacing of all totalitarians. If you do not trust yourself to lead a responsible heart-healthy, planet-friendly, killing-spree devoid life, I do not trust you or anyone you elect to run mine.
The EnviroCops will be staying across the pond if I have anything to say about it.
First it was the Fat Police, then the Smoking Nannies, now the EnviroCops.TimesOnline said:The boys in green are coming as the Environment Agency sets up a squad to police companies generating excessive CO2 emissions.
The agency is creating a unit of about 50 auditors and inspectors, complete with warrant cards and the power to search company premises to enforce the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), which comes into effect next year.
Decked out in green jackets, the enforcers will be able to demand access to company property, view power meters, call up electricity and gas bills and examine carbon-trading records for an estimated 6,000 British businesses. Ed Mitchell, head of business performance and regulation at the Environment Agency, said the squad would help to bring emissions under control. “Climate change and CO2 are the world’s biggest issues right now. The Carbon Reduction Commitment is one of the ways in which Britain is responding.”
The formation of the green police overcomes a psychological hurdle in the battle against climate change. Ministers have long recognised the need to have new categories of taxes and criminal offences for CO2 emissions, but fear a repetition of the fuel tax protests in 2000 when lorry drivers blockaded refineries.
"Saving the planet" is apparently the biggest issue in Britain right now. Not people losing jobs left and right in an economic downturn, not slashing wasteful government programs (this would in fact be creating one. A big one. With police powers.), and not creating an economic climate in which businesses can prosper.
No, serving the Altar of Gaia is the top priority for the Brits. They're just granting police powers to Enviro-cultists for your own good, you see. Anglicanism isn't the UK's main belief system anymore, Global Warming is.
I'm alarmist?
They are inventing a police force of whole cloth.
During an economic downturn.
Prefaced entirely on "saving the planet."
By levying fines on the CO2 emissions of businesses located on an island nation smaller than Texas.
This would be an absurd plot basis for a Monty Python sketch, nevermind an actual government program. The Ministry of Silly Walks (an actual Monty Python sketch, not a British agency) would be a less wasteful proposal.
It's not much different here in America, we have a cap-and-trade bill that just passed the House, and God help us if it passes the Senate. It's essentially an everything tax. When you raise the price of energy, the price of everything raises. Barack Obama himself said on the campaign trail that supporting his cap-and-trade system would make electricity rates "necessarily skyrocket." Here's a catchy visual aid for cap-and-trade.
Finally, just ask yourself this using the new Global Warming verbiage, "Climate Change": How is fighting Climate Change any different than fighting ocean tides? No matter how often or how hard you kick the water at the beach, the tide will still flow in and ebb out. So why is it considered remotely sensible to make it a government action (a proto-fascist one at that) to prevent the planet's entire climate from changing?
Would you believe it if someone told you they could make the ocean tides recede twelve inches if only you drastically cut back your lifestyle so the government could spend trillions of dollars to fight "Anthropogenic Excessive Tide Height?" They can't prove the tides are actually excessive, or that humans are causing it. Not a single one of their doomsaying models has come to pass or even been remotely accurate. They have been caught red-handed publishing fraudulent tide heights, and they've banned picnic lunches on the beach because the food crumbs might fall into the ocean and displace enough water to effect tide height negatively. Nor can they prove that higher tides are a categorically bad thing in and of themselves in exchange for all this wasted time, money, and liberty lost.
Global Warming is a cult. This is the only logical conclusion after seeing the effects of attacking its tenets. I have been threatened to be kicked for calling it alarmism, for Gaia Fanatics seem to believe that We Are All Doomed and Something Must Be Done. With SMBD usually being fascistic measures like the EnviroCops or some other onerous act of congress. It goes beyond a policy position to actively silencing critics and threatening dissenters.
Their fallback excuse for each incremental loss of freedom is that it's only one small step. One small step for incremental statism is one giant leap for statism proper. Their response to your suggestion they are full of nonsense is to talk about a (ever-dwindling) consensus among public grant recipients who agree with the government's foregone ACC conclusion or else they don't receive funding. Or just a simple "Shut Up." Or they try and obfuscate by asserting you oppose the premise "the Climate is Changing" when your actual argument is "Proto-Fascism is not justified just because you blame humanity for the climactic changes of the planet." They will always assert that the science is settled and the conclusions are foolproof. Then you go and ask an actual climatologist, not an Energy Agency hack, and they'll say the topic is still under rigorous (the comments, the OP is obviously in the tank) discussion.
I can tolerate that people believe in something as stupid, unfounded, and fraudulent as Anthropogenic Climate Change (of the kind that requires massive intrusion into daily life because otherwise WAAD and SMBD.). When that idiocy translates into expensive freedom-destroying measures like the EnviroCops, that's where I draw the line from polite tolerance to vehement opposition. I should not be forced to pay massive taxes and be told what I can and cannot buy, sell, or do by a bureaucratic nanny just because someone, somewhere has an irrational hangup about humanity's role in the environment. Have these genius ministers ever considered the carbon footprint of their new bureaucracy making house calls in armor-plated lowest-bidder SUVs? Of course not. That would require the foresight that ACC adherents lack in their haste to save the planet at all costs (to the consumer).
The only kind of people who claim they can save the planet are deities, con-men, and lunatics. Either the warmists believe they are gods, or they are easily duped suckers (taken in by a platitude of saving the planet on their behalf, no less), or they are just batshit insane. In either case, their unrelenting support of any program that would curb liberty, destroy economic prosperity, and install an Orwellian agency designed around saving you from yourself is an indication that they are a cult. Legitimate religions do not demand that you slit your wrists to save the earth. The EnviroCops are no different from The Spanish Inquisition, and unlike most totalitarians who will occasionally take a day off from absolute control over your every move, warmists truly believe they are altruists limiting you for your own protection. Thus they are the most menacing of all totalitarians. If you do not trust yourself to lead a responsible heart-healthy, planet-friendly, killing-spree devoid life, I do not trust you or anyone you elect to run mine.
The EnviroCops will be staying across the pond if I have anything to say about it.