Doomed Planet

Global Warming’s Zombie Beat

boris pickettA most unlikely climate-charge alarmist, Bobby “Boris” Pickett (left), responsible for the novelty hit Monster Mash, died from leukaemia on April 25, 2007, at the age of 69, in Los Angeles. And now, to mark both the recent anniversary of his death and contribution to climate science, it seems Bill Shorten & Co., have picked up on the idea that there are policy zombies that, since they refuse to die, deserve to stumble on forever. Determined to reverse declining public interest in what has become the political equivalent of a ‘graveyard smash’, the grand scheme is to re-animate enthusiasm with ghoulish new taxes. Bobby Picket would have approved.

Expectations are especially high among the coffin-banging progressive class. But will a climate-change version of Pickett’s Climate Mash — released during Halloween, 2005, when he became fretful about the zeitgeist — reverse declining public interest in what has become the political equivalent of a ‘graveyard smash’?

Following signing, sermonising and solemnising of the UN’s 2015 Paris Agreement in New York on  April 22, a new mood has emerged in Turtle Bay and on Capital Hill. After 25 years of developed/developing world argy-bargy, the Age of Dithering has ended, at least according to ABC environment reporter, Sara Phillips.

So there is now more than a snowball’s chance in the hell of a plus-2C world that release of an antipodean Climate Mash will coincide with ‘scrutiny’ of the Agreement by Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (and truth in mashes climatic). Expect more gnashing of teeth and blowing of renewable wind as the political class – like characters in an episode of Midsomer Murders — discovers that one seldom disposes of the truth by burying it. Semantic shadow-boxing and promoting junk-science careerists doesn’t work either. See Don Aitkin’s recent blog posts for more on that.

Fortunately, the truth is still alive and kicking. You can hear its heartbeat here (5 minute video) from Richard Lindzen, distinguished MIT atmospheric physicist; here  from Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever in a 25-minute speech from mid-2015 to a Nobel laureates’ meeting, and elsewhere. But hurry. US ‘anti-denialist’ witch-hunters are keen to get the judiciary to criminalise scepticism about anthropogenic climate change. Consider, for example, a US judge’s ruling that small children can sue Uncle Sam for failing to control the planet’s temperature, thereby ruining their future

“The debate about climate change and its impact has been before various political bodies for some time now…..But the intractability of the debates before Congress and state legislatures and the alleged valuing of short term economic interest despite the cost to human life, necessitates a need for the courts to evaluate the constitutional parameters of the action or inaction taken by the government…..To reiterate, at this stage of the proceedings the court must accept the allegations of concrete particularized harm or imminent threat of such harm as true.” — Case 6:15-cv-01517-TC Document 68 Filed 04/08/16, US District Court for the District of Oregon)

The UN also failed to mention the challenges of ‘carbon trading’ in a ‘market’ lacking genuine independent regulation and tainted by corruption. According to the Morgan Foundation here, for example, the NZ government has put:

“$200 million in the hands of foreign criminals for no environmental benefit…One type of Kyoto carbon credit (the Emission Reduction Unit) was overcome by fraud and corruption in Ukraine and Russia. Virtually all of the credits issued by these countries are ‘hot air’ – they do not represent true emissions reductions.”

No surprise, then, to learn that Australia seems determined to head down the same path. Under the latest CCCCC plan — approved by Shorten and his climate crypt-kickers last Tuesday – “an emitter can buy low-cost international permits to offset its excess.” Perhaps these permits are “currently cheaper than $1 per tonne” for a good reason. Could it be that they are the inevitable outcome of a corrupt system?

But back to Robert George Pickett. Born in Somerville, Massachusetts, on February 11, 1938, his 1962 wonder, Monster Mash, is for some the USA’s unofficial national anthem. Pickett’s father was a theatre manager, so he saw many horror films as a child. Linda Alexander tells the story of its genesis in her 1991 interview with him on the bank of the Mississippi late one night in Trempealeau, Wisconsin.

PICKETT: I started doing impressions, a five-minute sketch on monster movies, in the Fifties. On my way back from Korea on a troop transport ship, I sang with a group. There was a guy who did this thing to horror movies. He did Boris Karloff, and I thought I did Boris Karloff so much better.

When he left the Army, he went to Hollywood in search of fame and fortune. But a serious acting career eluded him.  He ended up as a stand-up comedian doing horror film impersonations and playing in a doo-wop group, The Cordials.

PICKETT: One night after a gig, the band leader said we should do a novelty record with my Karloff voice, something like Purple People Eaters. We wrote Monster Mash in about three hours in May of 1962. We only knew one person in the music business, Gary Paxton, and took it to him. He wanted to produce it and, later in May, we did it. In less than two hours, tracks were down. In two days, it was done.

I didn’t think it would go anywhere. I had no idea it would catch on. I just thought it was something to do. But within eight weeks it was Number One. My dad once said I’d become the Guy Lombardo of Halloween.

But something happened to Pickett in October, 2005, when he released — yes, seriously — Climate Mash. It made ‘global warming’ a scary Halloween event, at least for its sponsor, Clear the Air. Was it a senior moment, a canny move to cash in on climate catastrophism, or a quasi-religious conversion 18 months before his death? Whatever the case, he was no fan of George W Bush.

“Global warming is a huge problem, and Congress is acting like a bunch of zombies, just sleepwalking through it,” he said. “President Bush is even worse. We are feeling the effects of global warming now, but even as these become more obvious, Bush just keeps fiddling while the earth heats up.”

Moral of this story, if there is one: a little climate-horror and apple pie, blood and Gore, greenbacks, chutzpah, hot air and powdered bone from a Palmersaurus rex carbonophilia coolumi skeleton – can get a savvy chap, chick, and even an international agency, a long way in this mad world.

Time to suspend disbelief, sit back and sing-a-long with the Canberra Crypters:

“We were hiking past Capital Hill late one night…
      When our eyes beheld an eerie sight…

     The Prime Minister appeared, with folks very strange
     The zombies and vampires of global climate change.

     ‘It’s CO2 warming,’ said his drooling disciples
     But all we see are natural climate cycles.

     For without CO2 we’d be worse than living-dead
     Hey, that’s the reason we can eat our daily bread.

     (the climate mash)
     they’re doing the climate mash
    (the climate mash)
    a junk science smash
    (the climate mash)
    their solutions are trash
    (the climate mash)
    and all for the cash

     The creatures were having such fun
     That our parliament was soon overrun
    We couldn’t tell a mindless zombie
    From an elected one.

     Now we do know how to stop this,
    According to the Pope we have the theology
    But first we have to get with green ideology.

    We need your help, let me show you how;
    Tell the crypt-kickers in Canberra to come clean now.”

 

21 thoughts on “Global Warming’s Zombie Beat

  • ian.macdougall says:

    Michael Kile:
    You clearly fancy yourself as a satirist and comedian. My advice: don’t quit your day job, whatever it is.

    But will a climate-change version of Pickett’s Climate Mash — released during Halloween, 2005, when he became fretful about the zeitgeist — reverse declining public interest in what has become the political equivalent of a ‘graveyard smash’?

    Public interest can do what it wishes: rise, fall or swing on a flying trapeze for that matter. It will have no effect on climate reality.
    Only concerted international political action can do that.

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Like the international political action in Copenhagen?

  • ian.macdougall says:

    Bill:

    …in the defence of the done-to-death, bogus notion of ACGW.

    PROVE to me that the science is wrong, and I will agree with you.

    • bemartin39@bigpond.com says:

      I am in no way qualified to prove that CAGW is bogus but fortunately more than a few eminently qualified scientists have already done that over and over again. All you need to do, Ian, is to take notice of them. As a clue, they are the ones not living off government grants.

      • ian.macdougall says:

        Bill:
        Out of curiosity, I googled ‘climate scientists not living off government grants’, and what came up at the top of the page was
        the (splutter, choke, hawk! spit!) ABC: ie
        http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-29/glikson-the-dilemma-of-a-climate-scientist/7123246
        There we read:

        An analogy comes to mind of a medical team advising distressed relatives of the prognosis of a cancer patient, indicating a possible remission should the patient cease smoking. Some of the relatives plunge into depression but some criticise and attack the doctors, aided and abetted by the tobacco industry.
        It is not uncommon to hear people criticising climate scientists for not telling them more about the climate, although when they are told, many recoil.
        By contrast, in private conversations many climate scientists express far greater concern at the progression of global warming and its consequences than they do in public.

        But when you are speaking of grants, you have to tweak and fine tune your definition so that it includes climatologists but leaves out other scientists on the public payroll whose work you might approve of, like say medical researchers doing work on cancer at the John Curtin Centre in Canberra; the CSIRO plant researchers working on new varieties of crop plants, etc, etc.
        BUT most importantly, the definition has to exclude the mining barons, whose government ‘grants’ have been worth billions to themselves and their immediate heirs apparent, and will be for years and possibly centuries to come.
        Joe Hockey was wrong. The Age of Entitlement is not over by any means.

        • bemartin39@bigpond.com says:

          No wonder you are such a staunch defender of the “faith” of CAGW Ian. You seem to accept the authority of the Fairfax Press and of “their” ABC. You ought to consult less partisan sources of information besides Quadrant more often.

          • ian.macdougall says:

            Murdoch calls the tune at Murdoch, and he is a ‘climate sceptic’, as are M. Devine and the rest on his staff. But I avoid ‘faiths’ of all kinds. And on climate change, the only authority I accept the changing level of the world’s one ocean.
            The ABC has the best news and weather service (generally agreed up here in the bush in NW NSW where I live) and it and Fairfax are less ‘sceptical’ of what is increasingly shaping up as climate reality.
            Consider the planet Venus, Bill. It has an atmosphere close to 100% carbon dioxide, and a surface temperature higher than that of Mercury: closest planet to the sun.
            As far as I am concerned, the politics and business interests of the ‘sceptics’ is what decides their position on the science. We believe what we incline to believe.

  • denandsel@optusnet.com.au says:

    I prefer my song on the AGW hoax as put on the Quadrant website for Copenhagen https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2010/01/the-king-has-got-no-clothes/
    Unfortunately there’s no graphics, but the message is clear.
    Dennis

  • mgkile@bigpond.com says:

    “But they won’t hold the ocean level constant.”

    “From the sacred shore I stand on, I command thee to retreat;
    Venture not, thou stormy rebel, to approach thy master’s seat:
    Ocean, be thou still! I bid thee come not nearer to my feet!”

    But the sullen ocean answered with a louder, deeper roar,
    And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling sounding on the shore;
    Back the Keeper and the Bishop, back the king and courtiers bore.

    And he sternly bade them never more to kneel to human clay,
    But alone to praise and worship That which earth and seas obey:
    And his golden crown of empire never wore he from that day.
    King Canute is dead and gone: Parasites exist alway.

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