Sunday, June 14, 2009

Scared silly about global warming: Lomborg
But the worst cost of exaggeration, I believe, is the unnecessary alarm that it causes — particularly among children. Recently, I discussed climate change with a group of Danish teenagers. One of them worried that global warming would cause the planet to “explode” — and all the others had similar fears.

In the US, the ABC TV network recently reported that psychologists were starting to see more neuroses in people anxious about climate change. An article in the Washington Post cited nine-year-old Alyssa, who cries about the possibility of mass animal extinctions from global warming.

In her words: “I don’t like global warming because it kills animals, and I like animals.”

From a child who is yet to lose all her baby teeth: “I worry about [global warming] because I don’t want to die.”
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Another nine-year old showed the Washington Post his drawing of a global warming timeline.

“That’s the Earth now,” Alex says, pointing to a dark shape at the bottom. “And then it’s just starting to fade away.”

Looking up to make sure his mother was following along, he tapped the end of the drawing: “In 20 years, there’s no oxygen.”

Then, to dramatize the point, he collapsed, “dead,” to the floor.

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And let us be honest. This scare was intended. Children believe that global warming will destroy the planet before they grow up because adults are telling them that .
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Nowhere is this deliberate fearmongering more obvious than in Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, a film that was marketed as “by far the most terrifying film you will ever see.”

Take a look at the trailer for this movie on YouTube. Notice the imagery of chilling, larger-than-life forces evaporating our future. The commentary tells us that this film has “shocked audiences everywhere,” and that “nothing is scarier” than what Gore is about to tell us. Notice how the trailer even includes a nuclear explosion.
Flashback: Al Gore on George Bush
He betrayed this country! He played on our fears!"

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