Richard Glover: 'Tattoo climate change deniers'

[Argent_Towers]

I really didn’t know how to interpret this thread’s title when I first saw it listed. But the first thing that popped into my head was that the tattoo climate - i.e. the culture surrounding tattoos - would somehow change the deniers (the thread count of fabric.)

[John_Mace]

@purplehorseshoe

• shrug *

I dunno. Just because the Nazis tattooed their prisoners doesn’t mean I wouldn’t mind some people going around with “I’m an idiot” tattooed onto their foreheads. You know, as fair warning.

I can think of some posters here who should have that tatooed as their sig lines!

[Der_Trihs]

@bup

A gold-painted hoohah killed my grandmother. :mad:

She was in Goldfinger?

[Cort]

@FXMastermind

Nothing says “My side is right” like a tattoo at gunpoint for your enemies.

Shut the fuck up, dickhead.

[purplehorseshoe]

** points gun at Cort **

[armedmonkey]

@Argent_Towers

I really didn’t know how to interpret this thread’s title when I first saw it listed. But the first thing that popped into my head was that the tattoo climate - i.e. the culture surrounding tattoos - would somehow change the deniers (the thread count of fabric.)

No, no, no. You have it wrong. Climate change is caused by human activity - specifically the practice of tatooing. All those electric needles are melting the ice caps. You know the tramp stamp your sister got? It killed three polar bears.

[XT]

Damn, that’s irony. My sister has a stylized polar bear family (loving male, female and baby bear) tattoo at the small of her back! :eek:

-XT

[GIGObuster]

At the Goldfinger laser tattoo removal place…

“Nice Octopussy, nice… why would you like to remove your tattoo Ms?”

[FXMastermind]

@xtisme

Damn, that’s irony. My sister has a stylized polar bear family (loving male, female and baby bear) tattoo at the small of her back!

Clearly she doesn’t know what male polar bears do to baby polar bears.

[Der_Trihs]

@FXMastermind

Clearly she doesn’t know what male polar bears do to baby polar bears.

Tattoo them at gunpoint? The furry bastards!

[FXMastermind]

Polar bear abuse!

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@xtisme

I know someone personally who was disembowled by a rusty cheese grater! And the cheese grater didn’t even get life…it got off with 10 years and came out a new grater, having lost the rust and (supposedly) paying it’s debt to society.

Tattooing global warming deniers is bad, but this is clearly the grater crime.

[FXMastermind]

Oh man. Even for you that was low.

[Mame]

Glover’s reply

I don’t find Glover funny, and frequently find his afternoon radio show irritating (though frequently with good, well conducted interviews). But good lord people, that piece was obviously not serious. There is a stereotype view that Americans are, in general, irony-impaired. This has simply reinforced that view among the reading public.

Sum total? He thinks the SDMB is right wing, and has removed his email addy from his pieces so he doesn’t get more hate mail.

Maybe I should ring in to his show and suggest his next piece be on removing shoes before entering a house.

[FXMastermind]

I knew it wasn’t ‘serious’, but it also wasn’t entertaining.

[FXMastermind]

Even stranger, quite a few threaten me with sexual violence. They say, in various forms, that they want to rape me.

Either he is “not serious” again, or he isn’t familiar with the internet. Maybe somebody should tell him about http://knowyourmeme.com/

Or 4chan

[bup]

@Mame

Glover’s reply

Sum total? He thinks the SDMB is right wing, and has removed his email addy from his pieces so he doesn’t get more hate mail.

Pretty clearly, the website he mentions is not the SDMB.

[FXMastermind]

And M. Glasgow, in an email sunnily titled ‘‘can’t wait to meet you’’, observed that: ‘‘I will kill you so dead that your rotting body will do nothing but energise the worms and maggots that will do their part in saving the planet from morons like you.’’

Hey! Stop stealing my material.

[Kobal2]

@Mame

[URL=“http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/a-climate-change-wave-of-hate-20110609-1ftix.html”]Sum total? He thinks the SDMB is right wing

I don’t think he’s saying that about the SDMB - **Quartz **presumably cribbed that link from somewhere else, yes ? I kinda doubt he reads the Sydney Morning Herald.

[GIGObuster]

@Mame

Glover’s reply

I don’t find Glover funny, and frequently find his afternoon radio show irritating (though frequently with good, well conducted interviews). But good lord people, that piece was obviously not serious. There is a stereotype view that Americans are, in general, irony-impaired. This has simply reinforced that view among the reading public.

Sum total? He thinks the SDMB is right wing, and has removed his email addy from his pieces so he doesn’t get more hate mail.

Maybe I should ring in to his show and suggest his next piece be on removing shoes before entering a house.

As others noticed, that was not the SDMB.

As I suspected, Glover was trolling, but if we take him at his word, then he is really naive, if he was so informed he should already had been aware about the death threats to the local climate scientists.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/06/australian_climate_scientists.php

The Canberra Times reports

Australia's leading climate change scientists are being targeted by a vicious, unrelenting email campaign that has resulted in police investigations of death threats.

The Australian National University has confirmed it moved several high-profile climate scientists, economists and policy researchers into more secure buildings, following explicit threats to their personal safety

And elsewhere:
http://climatecrocks.com/2010/03/15/flogging-the-scientists/

The Anti-science movement’s fascination with the 12th century goes way beyond just the temperature of the medieval period. There’s a longing for a return to those values as well.

(Glenn Beck) “There’s not enough knives, this…if the IPCC had been done by Japanese scientists, there’s not enough knives on planet Earth for hari kari that should have occurred.”

(Rush Limbaugh) “Making sure that every scientist at every university in this country that’s been involved in this is named, and fired, drawn and quartered, or whatever it is.”

Not to be outdone, climate denier Mark Morano called for public floggings of scientists.

What makes a great civilization turn away from science, reason, and civility, to hatred of knowledge, ignorance, fear, and brutality? We seem to be running an experiment to find out.

That was last year BTW.

FWIW, here is Glover’s addition to the original article:

I was trying to express the frustration felt by some towards those who deny climate change. Part of the frustration is that one imagines in 20 years’ time, when the effects are more obvious, that this group may forget their role in preventing timely action. Thus I suggested a series of ridiculous ways of making them stand witness to their beliefs, with each of these ways dismissed in turn as absurd. One method was rejected as being too reminiscent of Hitler, another as being absurdly evil.

My intention was to underline to the reader that I wasn’t seriously proposing these methods, but was suggesting them as a mark of frustration with the idea that people could prevent action but then pretend they hadn’t.

That said, I accept that some readers found the reference inappropriate and I certainly apologise to them for causing offence.