Wednesday, December 16, 2015

 

The True Horror of 1984

I liked Brave New World a lot more than 1984, but I really haven't read either of them since I was a teenager oh so many years ago. I didn't buy that technology (two way TV screens in the main) would bring about a long dark night of fascism, at least in America. But the ideas behind newspeak; well, that was terrifying. Devalue the language to the point where you can't hold or communicate revolutionary ideas (or any ideas of value). I kept getting glimpses of that through the past decades. But here is why I'm writing this. I saw this quote reading David Harsanyi today:


“At this point, if you deny climate change, you are a traitor to your species.”


A little chilling thought from the liberal fascists but what's triggering my response is the use of the phrase "climate change." Those words as used in the sentence are a form of newspeak. I believe in climate change. 30,000 years ago Manhattan was under a mile of ice. Nearly the whole of the Mesozoic Era (Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous) was on average 11 degrees C warmer than it is now. What simpleton does not believe in climate change?

But the words 'climate change' now means 'catastrophic anthropogenic global warming' and there are plenty of reasons not to believe that. There are plenty of reasons to reject the idea that nonbelief in that theory (the reality is not fitting the hypothesis) is a basis for being called traitor to our species. In fact, real scientific minds would not believe it.

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