Beltway, Whitehall, the Hill, the Triangle : home of the DENIER think tanks

Their air-brushed world of magical thinking

Every national capitol soon develops a widely use nickname for its tight little world of national politicians with their staffers and bureaucrats,  married up to lobbyists and think tankers and topped off by the capitol's political journalist elite.

In Washington they call it working "within" The Beltway, in London it is known as being "within" in the corridors of  Whitehall.

Lesser known, Ottawa has its political elite centred "on" The Hill and in Canberra the elite is found "within" The Triangle.

Now I realize that claiming that Nature is changing under humanity's influence is probably a moot point inside the Beltway,Whitehall,the Hill or The Triangle.

For in each of them , it might be more accurately said that Nature is long dead and replaced by a concrete jungle.

True these four relatively small areas are among the prettiest green areas in the entire world - a virtually artificial simulacra of Nature - the finest fake that lots of taxpayers' money can buy.

But here, the real human activity all takes place inside concrete and glass towers and inside that glassed-in world, few signs of a changing-for-the-worse Nature are visible.

Here is the true home of the world's biggest and most influential think tanks, the brains and the money behind global climate change DENIAL efforts.

By contrast, most believers in climate change are like me - and maybe you - living in smaller communities much closer to Nature and hence much more sensitive to its new reality.

My garden of joy is in a nearby rural seaside village, a place where I like to say I grew up in, though as always it is a bit more complicated than that.

In the 57 years that I have "lived" there, (well all right, off and on, annually) its summer weather in particular has permanently changed from reliably cold and foggy to very hot and very muggy.

I find it too hard to lift a shovel from June to September these days - its just too damned humid.

And I resent being told by some snotty-voiced ideologue in a Yale tie sitting in an air-conditioned inside The Beltway (or inside The Triangle) that my climate hasn't changed - it has, you bastard, it has.

So if you too are a nobody blogger from nowhere who sees the signs of climate change occurring right before your eyes - don't just despair about it - blog about it.

Let those guys in those big city glass and concrete towers that there is a real world out there in trouble - a real world outside The Beltway....

Why the fighters of Climate Denial are sometimes their own worst enemy

No politician sets themself up as Goliath and their opponent as David, but scientists *ALWAYS* do

If we are ever to defeat the evil forces of Climate Denial, we need to take a page out of their book and keep our Boffins "on tap, not on top".

Nice guys, but no political smarts.

I cringe every time I see another denier fighter start off with the claim that 97% of our smartest, best educated , best paid, best pensioned scientists at all the big universities back East know a lot more about climate change than some unknown with a BA from Hamburger U, operating out of Dubuque, in little old tennis shoes and a blog.

Oh yes, and doesn't he believe in Creationism and a Flat Earth as well ?

(All this is what football fans call The New Yorker Magazine Defense ---- a play that they say very rarely works.)

True it might knock 'em dead in the Faculty Lounge, but outside - in the real world - it is just setting yourself up for a political fall.

 There are always a lot more populist-minded plebs from the hinterlands than there are elitists from the Big Cities in the East.

I have friends and acquaintances who are mildly denier-istic and they always enjoy reading about an unknown blogger taking on those smart asses at the big universities.

True, none of these friends have graduate school level degrees, but then that is true of 97% of the world.

Solo denier bloggers..... with big corporate funding

I try and point out this "lone blogger" actually gets a lot of funding from big bad fossil fuel corporations but it cuts no ice.

The optics just aren't right in their mind's eye.

But when I say all this controversy is caused by the big lobbyists and big think tanks inside Washington's Beltway, they listen up.

Most people wouldn't vote for Christ Himself, if He came back to Earth and got an apartment "Inside the Beltway" .

So here's the deal : I set myself up as the nobody from nowhere blogging on the reality of climate change from my bedroom, while all my opponents are the big city Think Tanks, just stuffed with snotty guys and gals with snotty accents from Yale and Oxford.

So Jane,  please get it right : me david - you Goliath ....

Comments, denier-fighters ?