Gareth Renowden of Hot Topic, famed as much for truffle hunting as end-of-the-world prophecy, has just celebrated his 25th wedding anniversary.
Congratulations. It cannot have been easy.
His latest post reports that while celebrating that significant marriage milestone in Sydney the other day he found this little poem addressed to insensitive climate deniers everywhere and thoughtfully shares it with us:
An Open Letter to Climate Sceptics
Among your loved ones choose
– when the sweet airs fail,
when the rivers run dry –
the hand of whom to hold
until the last breath,
until the last cry.
That’s beautiful. How sad, how compelling, how utterly chilling.
**sniff**
He’s convinced of the end of the world. This poem doesn’t paint a picture just of hardship, it tells us that we are going to die.
Notice how he disavows all knowledge of people with genuine questions and concerns about the science of so-called dangerous anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and just lumps everybody who disagrees with him into the “deniers” box.
But he doesn’t tell us why the world will end. Why will it happen? What is the evidence?
Facts will make my mind up for me, and for most people. What are the facts that will persuade me to accept that the world is coming to an end?
You may notice (I’m sure Gareth will notice) that this response carries no factual rebuttal, no exhaustive list of arguments and papers proving, or rather disproving, er, um, something.
You see, it’s quite impossible to refute a poem. It’s impossible to refute something that is undescribed. It’s impossible to refute something that doesn’t exist. It is therefore up to Gareth, or one of his mates, to describe what will destroy the earth. Then we can have a conversation.
Let us consider this an open letter to Climate Know-it-alls.
I challenge him to describe the facts of earth-end, briefly, in his own words, giving references as he desires, but not letting those references do all his talking. We have heard that the evidence is “compelling”, it is “accumulating” and even that it is “overwhelming”. That being the case, Gareth has probably by now memorised it and is able to describe it without looking up even a single reference. If he can’t, he will be incredible.
So, what is the evidence, Gareth?
He ends his post with the pithy comment:
Sometimes balance is not measured by the number of words.
Which is easy to agree with, whatever it means. However, considering the topic (end of the you-know-what) one feels duty-bound to make some kind of riposte to the stupid notion that all this climate alarm is settled, when it clearly isn’t, and that the world is going to end, which it isn’t.
Remember: For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow the sane ones, while those of us who say it is not are now the lunatics. (Now where have I seen that?)
Perhaps we could remind ourselves that a fact is not determined by the number of times it is asserted, that a feature of the climate is not established by the number of committees set up to “solve” it and that the true history of the world is not established by deception.
Gareth’s lovely piece of verse has no more relation to the truth than any other emotive commotion; it is facts that will bring it to life, observations that will put a sting in its tail and predictions coming true that will engrave it in the heart of everyone who loves the truth.
Until those things are discovered this poem may cause some imaginative people to be briefly overcome, but the person rooted in reason is overcome only by facts.
The poem contains none; does dear Gareth?
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