a little rant

[strangedave]

alaimacerc reports that this weekend Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear host, freelance opinionated wanker, and known climate change denier, was on UK TV commenting approvingly on old clips of himself denying not just global warming but the ozone hole as well.

Comments

[loic]

People who've never spent much time in the southern hemisphere are quite happy to continue denying ozone layer depletion because they aren't seeing the effects themselves. It's really not something anyone talks about in the US.

[shrydar]

In the context of denialists, it's usually specifically about anthropogenic climate change.

[_fustian]

Really? My experience is that most "sceptics" go the whole hog, claiming it's all a giant left-wing conspiracy to create a One World Government and talking about Anthropogenic Global Cooling just to show off their rhetorical pecs. But then, I do get most of my denialism content via Twitter.

[shrydar]

You're right, I should been explicit about my comment relating to my own experience, which in turn comes via twitter, facebook, and the occasional dead tree edition of the worst australian.

There's a lot of muttering about the left-wing conspiritors hiding evidence of previous warming incidents that were neither caused by humans nor long term.

[ataxi]

Clarkson is such a dick. Don't know if I could watch more Top Gear these days, it was hard enough five years ago. He's just such a loathsome Tory.

[angriest]

(laughs at thought of a non-loathsome tory)

[ataxi]

Clarkson's on a breakaway when it comes to Tory loathsomeness - he's far worse than the mass of them in the Tory peloton.

[angriest]

This is true. If I do watch Top Gear, and that's not often, it's for the other two guys.

[dortamur]

Is Clarkson actually serious, though? I mean, from what I've seen of Top Gear, it's not the show you watch for caring about the environment - it's escapist fast car wankery, as a form of entertainment. I can't see any of the presenters going a Pro-green stance, even off show, since recommending the Prius over the Porsche is counter to the whole show.

Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't care about global warming, but is he exaggerating the claims to support his petrol-head image?

[strangedave]

Clarkson has written about it in newspaper columns etc as well as on the show. I mean, sure, I don't expect them to spend a lot of time on ecological concerns on the show, but he doesn't need to launch into the issue outside of it, which he has.

Is he exaggerating? Surely, it is part of Clarksons shtick to be an opinionated critic of anything that he thinks threatens his fun.

[dafwarg]

My only impression of Clarkson's view is the tongue-in-cheek commentary on Top Gear. I'm not backing him up, and if he's actually serious about it, then he's an idiot, but it seems to me that he's playing a character.

[delicious_irony]

That's how it comes across to me as well.

I mainly watch Top Gear for the byplay between the three, as well as the other two presenters. Clarkson's by far my least favourite.

[biofrog]

Somewhat related, I've just seen this latest report on temperatures in New Zealand: http://www.climatescience.org.nz/images/PDFs/global_warming_nz2.pdf... )

[strangedave]

Quite unsurprisingly, there are a lot of people who think the 'corrected' data is the bit that is wrong, and they make a pretty good case i.e. Tim Lambert here http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/new_zealand_climate_science_co.php... )