by NordicStorm
Thu Jun 28th, 2007 at 06:41:24 AM EST
This morning I was reading my newspaper, the Swedish-language Finnish newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet, when I noticed an interesting letter to the editor on global warming, written by Folke Stenman, a Professor Emeritus of Physics at Helsinki University and apparent global warming denier. The letter to the editor in question is critical of Oras Tynkkynen, the recently appointed expert on climate issues to the Finnish government. Stenman's letter to the editor is interesting primarily for the following passage:
From the diaries (with title edit) ~ whataboutbob
Tillsätt ett neutralt organ
...
Han påstår att klimatförändringen inte längre kan stoppas och att det handlar om att bromsa den, förebygga katastrofer och försöka hålla skadorna på sådan nivå att vi kan leva med dem.
Påståendet är typiskt för klimathysterin, felaktigt och baserat antingen på okunskap eller på medvetet förvrängande av fakta. Ärliga forskare världen över avslöjar fortlöpande fundamentala fel i de dokument våra makthavande använder som stöd för sina domedagsprofetior, i första hand IPCC:s rapporter, den odugliga Stern-rapporten samt Al Gores "dokumentärfilm". Hos oss fortsätter man bara att gå på i samma spår och hotar med inbillade katastrofer. | |
Appoint a neutral body
...
[Tynkkynen] claims that climate change can no longer be stopped and we should concern ourselves with slowing it down, preventing disasters and trying to keep the destruction at a level we can live with.
The statement is typical of climate hysteria, erroneous and based either on ignorance or deliberate distortion of facts. Honest scientists the world over continuously reveal fundamental flaws in the documents our people in power use as basis for their doomsday prophecies, primarily the IPCC's reports, the useless Stern report and Al Gore's "documentary". We continue to walk the same path and threaten with imaginary catastrophies. |
(From Hufvudstadbladet, June 27 2007. Registration required to access article)
The passage in question is interesting primarily for the second-to-last sentence (bolded above). Why is that particular sentence so interesting? Because as I read it, it seemed oddly familiar. I could have sworn I had read something similar not too long ago. And sure enough, the European Tribune's favourite President of the Czech republic, Václav Klaus, had written something eerily similar in a June 13
op-ed in the Financial Times:
Freedom, not climate, is at risk
...
In the past year, Al Gore's so-called "documentary" film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain's - more or less Tony Blair's - Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. |
(See also Jérôme ā Paris' Unbelievable, nanne's Václav & Me and kcurie's Science and Klaus)
Stenman's wording wasn't verbatim what Klaus wrote (for one thing, it was in Swedish), but it's pretty close. Both even managed to include the quotation marks around "documentary". Klaus and Stenman attack global warming from somewhat different angles (Klaus argues that global warming doesn't exist, and if it does, doing anything about it is Communism, while Stenman argues that global warming might exist, but any reports purporting to demonstrate the existence of it is hysteria and doomsday prophecies), but both start off with similar wordings. Neither of the two ever gets around to telling us what exactly is so horrible about the referenced works, other than that they're wrong in some unspecified manner.
Granted, of course, that the mentioned reports and Gore's movie are frequently mentioned and cited works when discussing global warming.
Still, I'm curious whether the particular one-sentence dismissal both men employ is some sort of standard catch phrase in the global warming denial community, or if Stenman just happens to read the Financial Times. At any rate, the similarity between the two phrases struck me as more than mere coincidence.
