Myth-Making and the Eternal Quest for Higher Taxes from the New York Times.

Abstract: The NYT cranks out another phony propaganda piece that couples global warming with security issues. This is a crude, but useful, example of modern propaganda and has only the unique feature that two unknowns are now concatenated in a new bidentate format to be fearfully self-emphasizing and to heighten worries in little minds. Lysenkoism has been elevated to new levels. This is hack work but illustrative.

The use of propaganda[1] is essential in politics and no tabloid-grade screed sheet excels in this technique better than the New York Times, aka the Walter Duranty Papers.^[2] This paper, struggling to survive in the shadow of bankruptcy, employs a rack of dedicated single-issue persons, some actually accused of being legitimate journalists, along with some rank stooges and a harem of assorted hokum honkers to pursue the ultimate goal of the left: bigger government through higher taxes.  This is a never-ending theme for the left and the NYT effectively distorts facts and creates myths niftily outfitted with soggy maudlin supplications imparted by standard rote propaganda rules[3] and thus bestows a leftist ‘intellectual’ basis for use by elected officials and other interested parties to attack the tax base of honest citizens and grunt and grab as much wealth as they can. This works all too well and trillions of our dollars are wasted by efforts like this, But, it could get much worse.

Today, for our current lesson in the compilation of propaganda pieces,[4][5][6][7][8], we select a typical turn-of-the-crank[9] cant from their huge inventory, although this one is a bit crude and perhaps a little arrogantly blunt while lacking the finesse and mystical essence to broaden their victimic readership—but useful for illustrative purposes--where we are restroked and inundated with the current trendy bidentate[10] tax pitch: Climate change disasters concatenated with security problems.

Dissection piece #1

“One would think that by now most people would have figured out that climate change represents a grave threat to the planet. One would also have expected from Congress a plausible strategy for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that lie at the root of the problem.”[11]-- The Climate and National Security By the NYT Editorial staff, Published: August 17, 2009 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

There are two salient political vectors to consider here, proffered, obviously, as fact by the editorial staff.  If climate change were to happen there is no reason to believe that it would be a threat—it might be an improvement in the earth’s wondrous diversity and the ability to grow more crops. The unsubstantiated threat here is that change is ominous and deadly and we need to rush and fix with up with bigger government and higher taxes, of course. There are no data that indicate global warming extant and as the sun spots, probably responsible for variations in enthalpy on the planet’s surface, usually run in cycles and induce the changes in the earth’s temperatures. They are not mentioned here but they do induce change. This piece is thus a crude lie by omission of pertinent facts.

The second vector is a gratuitous bolt-on where some change must be associated with other bad happenings thus making the original vector more important and implying that we are in distress and need to hurry along and fix this monster.  Is this like algebraic squaring? This appears too sophomoric to continue but such pieces work wonders with fragile emotions and the preprogrammed victims of the left. Is the sky falling yet? We should study this thing as a potential and useful addition to doom’s day literature.[12]

A disaster, predicted to occur in the future, has the benefit of using fear and not science or evidence to propel the myth[13] that our climate is changing. To this, we can add more side-effects such as saying that rising temperatures[the temperature are actually falling thus making those ‘scientists’ who support this myth look like fools] would increase racism, pestilence, food production, the quality of folk music, AIDs or a host of other evils. The fact that the association of a non-provable event with some undesirable increase in the metrics of social evils has no logical basis does not detract from the propaganda process and its success. This stuff works on little minds.

What is the temperature doing-- not rising?

“Now there is word that all four major global temperature tracking outlets have released data showing that temperatures have dropped significantly over the last year. California meteorologist Anthony Watts says the amount of cooling ranges from 65-hundredths of a degree Centigrade to 75-hundreds of a degree.”[14] [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Notice that the NYT propaganda piece does not mention cooling. The fact that their cited computer ‘models’  and ‘studies’ worked backward is not a concern to them. Climate ‘change’ is now replaced with ‘warming.’

So, up is down or hot is cold or tax is tax or sleaze is sleaze?!

Are the oceans rising?

“Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.”[15]-- Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979 Michael Asher (Blog) - January 1, 2009 11:31 AM [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

“The data is[sic] being reported by the University of Illinois's Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions.”

Bunko.

Dissection piece #2: But, the quest for your taxes continues:

“The problem, when it comes to motivating politicians, is that the dangers from global warming — drought, famine, rising seas — appear to be decades off. But the only way to prevent them is with sacrifices in the here and now: with smaller cars, bigger investments [read TAXes ed] in new energy sources, higher electricity bills that will inevitably result once we put a price on carbon.” -- The Climate and National Security

A cabalistic howl. Just think about this: their phony ‘scientific’ predictions went into the dumpster and now they use time as a crutch serving as an  impact feature to urge that we rush off and do frantically something like tax carbon and joyfully pursue higher energy costs—all based on fear. We are running out of time to be taxed!!

A climate profit arises to sound the urgent alarm:

“That is why Rajendra Pachauri [He leads  the eat less meat syndicate[16]], the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change —no alarmist— has warned that “what we do in the next two or three years will determine our future.” And he said that two years ago.” -- The Climate and National Security

Can’t we toss in the nostrum that cows [or their poop gases] enable Nazism? Or those higher temperatures will produce more warts or AIDS viruses or cause windmills to fail? We have less than a year left to save ourselves through higher taxes! Double my taxes—please save me!!

The second vector is now slipped in:

“Proponents of climate change legislation have now settled on a new strategy: warning that global warming [you were advised to use the replacement phony term ‘climate change’[17]—please try to keep up. Ed] poses a serious threat to national security. Climate- induced crises like drought, starvation, disease and mass migration, they argue, could unleash regional conflicts and draw in America’s armed forces, either to help keep the peace or to defend allies or supply routes.” --The Climate and National Security

They sum up by restating part of their premise as part of the conclusion:

“National security is hardly the only reason to address global warming, but at this point anything that advances the cause is welcome.” -- The Climate and National Security

Circular logic based on fear and projections without any convincing data is what they are doing. And, the small minds and True Believers are scared by this fluff and want to be saved from several disasters. How about the idea that climate change might increase wrinkles or could hasten liberal male menopause or senility?

This is Lysenkoism[18] at its finest. Another ‘first’ from the New York Times.

rycK

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