Media Loves “Global Boiling,” but Still Ignores IPCC Chair’s Rebuke of Climate Alarmism
Plus—Hollywood to Jim Caviezel: You’re Not *Our* Kind of Crazy
Back in 2016, it was extremely important that Earth’s average temperature not rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.
That’s when the U.S. joined more than 190 nations in signing the Paris climate change agreement. Scientists warned that surpassing the 1.5 degree threshold could mean the world would face dire climate consequences.
Now it looks like Earth will soon heat up past that all-important threshold and the world’s top climate official says … we shouldn’t sweat it too much.
Here’s how I put it last week:
Recently, Jim Skea, the new chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), criticized those who “constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction.”
Said the British scientist, “The world won't end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees.”
Surpassing that threshold would lead to many problems and social tensions, he said, but it wouldn’t constitute an existential threat to humanity.
Wow, that sure seems like big news!
Or maybe not.
Last week I noted that not a single major U.S. news outlet had covered Skea’s comments. A week later, not much has changed.
News outlets in India, Italy, and the UK have covered Skea’s heresy. But here in the states, the biggest names in news have stayed silent. The closest thing to an exception I could find was a piece in the New York-based Epoch Times. (Let me know if I’ve overlooked any.)
Around the same time that Skea made his comments, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres added a new term to the climate alarmist lexicon. “The era of global warming has ended,” he declared. “The era of global boiling has arrived.”
If you’re wondering, “global boiling” was deemed newsworthy by many American outlets including The Washington Post, CBS News, NBC News, MSNBC, and Axios.
To sum up, panic is newsworthy, but temperance is not. No wonder so many Americans suffer from climate anxiety.
Hollywood to Jim Caviezel: You’re Not *Our* Kind of Crazy
Recently, I suggested that if movie reviewers and other film industry folks are really worried about conspiracy mongering in Hollywood, they shouldn’t single out Sound of Freedom. If they really want to stamp out crackpottery, they should regard QAnon as merely one target out of many.
I ran through a bunch of zany theories that have attracted celebrity followers, but it’s hard to pack all the nuttiness into one article. So let me acknowledge another group—Actors and Artists for 9/11 Truth!
It’s unclear if the group is still active, but TheWrap reports that the lineup of members and fellow travelers includes roughly zero surprises: Woody Harrelson, Rosie O’Donnell, Willie Nelson, and Charlie and Martin Sheen.
For a brief refresher on truther origins, let’s turn to Garrett M. Graff, author of The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11:
The 9/11 conspiracy theories began as attacks against President George W. Bush, asserting that his administration was hiding the truth about al Qaeda’s attacks and doing the nefarious bidding of oil interests, the Saudi government or “the Jews.” By March 2005, the 9/11 conspiracies were prevalent enough that Popular Mechanics devoted a special issue to debunking them—a project that grew into a book with a foreword by Sen. John McCain.
But neither Popular Mechanics nor the 9/11 Commission could dissuade the true believers:
In late 2016, according to a poll by YouGov, 17% of Hillary Clinton voters said that the U.S. government definitely or probably helped plan 9/11, compared with 15% of Donald Trump voters.
Of course, such stubbornness is a feature of many conspiracy theorists, including those bedeviled by Russiagate.
A 2019 Ipsos/Reuters poll found that 50% of Americans who were aware of Robert Mueller’s report, which found no evidence that Mr. Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, still believed that it had.
Maybe I’m overlooking something, but it doesn’t seem like Woody Harrelson, Rosie O’Donnell and the rest of the Hollywood truthers have been punished by reviewers the way Jim Caviezel has.
And check out how Hollywood treated Roberto Orci.
Not only is the successful producer-screenwriter apparently a 9/11 truther, reviewers and reporters say, thanks to Orci, 2013’s Star Trek: Into Darkness is steeped in “inside job” trutherism.
When a reviewer lamented that he “can hear the 9/11 truthers tittering with glee,” it parallels reactions to Sound of Freedom, but with some important differences—Sound of Freedom’s plot steers clear of conspiracies, yet Hollywood ripped lead actor Jim Caviezel and rewarded Roberto Orci.
Critics showered Star Trek: Into Darkness with tomato love (84% fresh!), and Orci went on to write and produce many studio projects including Star Trek: Beyond, The Mummy, Scorpion, and Hawaii Five-0.
To sum up, Hollywood’s rule concerning kookery seems to be something like this: Be crazy like us or else!
Bonus Kookery—Kylie Jenner: A celeb who might be a chemtrail conspiracy theorist!
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and a soon-to-be-released feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.