Wednesday, February 07, 2007

THE SANITY SQUAD: Chicken LIttle Has Left the Barnyard

THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING !

Coming soon to an environmentally correct movie theater near you! The Sanity Squad at Pajamas Media takes on the chicken littles of the radical environmental movement and their latest imminent overreaction!

The IPCC report on climate change calls for drastic cuts in CO2 emissions. How do we figure out if such measures are necessary—and what would be the costs of making an error in either direction? Has “Chicken Little left the barnyard?” This hot topic, and the efforts in the MSM and Congress to rein Bush in on Iran in this week’s Sanity Squad..

Just a few short weeks ago the Squad debunked a Psychology Today article asserting that conservatives are motivated by fear, while the liberal left has cornered the market on rationality and reason. Obviously, the author of that "scientific" article didn't take into account the left's preaching about the coming environmental apocolypse.

If you want to observe the abandonment of reason and the manipulation of fear, simply cconsider the incredible histrionics being exhibited by the left about global warming. Their fear-filled predictions of imminent doom and catastrophe have been going on for five decades now.

First we were going to be wiped out by Erlich's population explosion ; then the planet was definitely doomed by nuclear winter; and--was it only a few short years ago?--they were going on about global....cooling.

And how could we forget to the inevitable end of civilization as we knew it from Y2K (at least according to the United Nations Report on the matter) ?

Each of these "imminent" doomsday scenarios were described in their time as the "greatest threat that human civilization has ever known." Each amounted to absolutely nothing of consequence. Zip, Zilch, Nada.

Thankfully, none of the proposed draconian measures suggested to prevent these disasters were ever implemented. See here for a fascinating look back on the hysteria; plus a discussion about what happens when you mess around with complex systems--systems like the earth's climate, for example.

In all of these instances, the proposed solutions were always the same: BIG--really really big--GOVERNMENT. Government would rescue us! New laws would save the day and keep all of us pathetic human beings and our environmentally destructive behavior in check. Unbelievably harsh measures were always suggested--up to and including the deliberate elimination of large numbers of humans in order to accommodate the agenda of the eco-tyrants.

As Mark Twain once said, “I’ve seen a heap of trouble in my life, and most of it never came to pass.”

The Squad concludes that human ingenuity and science are what is needed to address the environmental catastrophe du jour--and definitely, positively NOT the usual reflexive dictatorial impulse to empower useless politicians and demand more government control.

Join Shrinkwrapped, Neo-neocon, Siggy , and me as we expose the hysteria and fearmongering; the blatant grab for power and the totalitarian agenda of the histrionic manipulators of the left.

Global warming may indeed be a real phenomenon; but the solutions being promoted by the radical environmentalists is the stuff of a dictator's fantasy.

All podcasts of The Sanity Squad can be found here; and you can also download them from iTunes. (search for Pajamas Media)

(The Sanity Squad cartoon at the right is drawn by Eric Allie, whose collection of political cartoons can be found here and here).

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