June 29, 2002

11:16 PM

are'nt we? i'm no fan of many of the green parties tactical decisions (not tossing the green party votes to the greenest presidential candidate in history for example...) - a very effective ad, never the less - particularly cogent as temperatures reach a sweltering 90 + degrees in northern minnesota today... quicktime required via newstoday
posted by specialk420 (13 comments total)

great ad... interestingly though i didn't think it was about global warming until the end.. I thought it was about our tolerance for little things that are making things shitty for us.. one after another ... and how we're complacent about it... then I saw the global warming thing and was actually disappointed it said that and it was on a specific issue, because I liked the overall theme better...
posted by twiggy at 11:39 PM on June 29, 2002

Hmmm...this was better delivered (and not in reference to global warming—metaphor is more effective when it relates more abstractly to a given circumstance) by Gore Vidal in Bob Roberts, IMHO. Different Green Party besides (this is for the UK I believe?); I wouldn’t want to blame them for our Greens’ decisions.
posted by sherman at 11:51 PM on June 29, 2002

not tossing the green party votes to the greenest presidential candidate in history for example...
Greener than the Green Party candidates even?
posted by thirteen at 11:55 PM on June 29, 2002

Greener than the Green Party candidates even?

Always possible. Al did write a book about the enviro’ment. Ralph just kept talking about corporations.
posted by sherman at 12:08 AM on June 30, 2002

Awwww get off blaming the Green party for the failure of the Democrats. You just need a preferential voting system like we have in Australia.

You NUMBER the preferences (as opposed to punching holes) in order of who you like best, ie. vote [1] Green, [2] Democraps - you need 50%+1 of the vote to win, so if no candidates make it "past the post" all the votes for the party with the least votes then have their 2nd preferences re-distributed. The votes for Nader would NOT have been wasted. But then, it's hopeless trying to explain anything about democracy to Americans, we all know they've got the greatest democracy on the planet yadda yadda yadda...
posted by Jimbob at 6:29 AM on June 30, 2002

A lot of people working on environmental issues felt that Gore's environmentalism was highly suspect. Although Bush claims credit for killing the Koyoto treaty, it had already been effectively killed administratively months prior to the election. The Clinton administration also wholeheartedly approved the hand-over of the publicly held research seed stocks to private biotech corporations who then get the opportunity to claim copyrights on those genomes. Environmentalism for the Clinton-Gore administration and appeared to primarily consist of tossing environmentalists a handful of bones for every turkey dinner served up to big business. The actions of federal law enforcement prior to and after Seattle attempting to restrict freedom of speech and freedom of movement to labor and environmental activists that were not reading off of the "New Democrat" script left a bad taste in the mouth of everybody involved.

Perhaps even worse for the Gore campaign was that starting in July it started sending a message that disgruntled labor and environmentalist were not constituents with valid concerns about the massive loss of jobs during the Clinton administration, the decline in real wages and increasing gap between working-class and upperclass incomes, or the massive handover of power to undemocratic international bodies. Instead the Gore campaign insisted that people concerned about these issues were just wayward children who needed to be brought into obedience to the Democratic Party. This enhanced the impression that neither candidate was interested in being a servant of the people.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:47 AM on June 30, 2002

It's a bit embarrassing to see the Greens present the "frogs will sit until they boil" thing as fact. Using frog-boiling as a folk tale is one thing, but presenting it as true is something I'd expect from manipulators like this guy, not people who claim to have science on their side. Talk about handing your opponent ammunition.

Fast Company looked into the boiling frogs myth years ago as part of their Consultant Debunking Unit. Here's a Googled snippet in case their site is still down:

First we spoke with national scientific authorities. According to Dr. George R. Zug, curator of reptiles and amphibians, the National Museum of Natural History, "Well that's, may I say, bullshit. If a frog had a means of getting out, it certainly would get out. And I cannot imagine that anything dropped in boiling water would not be scalded and die from the injuries."

Professor Doug Melton, Harvard University Biology Department, says, "If you put a frog in boiling water, it won't jump out. It will die. If you put it in cold water, it will jump before it gets hot -- they don't sit still for you."

Surprisingly, neither Snopes nor the alt.folklore.urban archive have anything on this, although you can find plenty of "daughter of a friend of my uncle" scenarios. I did like what one person says here: "...for a cold-blooded amphibian, the water wouldn't need to get anywhere near boiling to kill the frog. Probably 100F 38C would do just fine. 'Boiling the frog' smells like needless dramatics."
posted by mediareport at 10:24 AM on June 30, 2002

The part of this spot that made me snort was the text card at the end, where it claimed that "no animals were harmed making this film." What film? It's a television advertisement.
posted by kindall at 12:19 PM on June 30, 2002

particularly cogent as temperatures reach a sweltering 90 + degrees in northern minnesota today...
This is the intellectual level of most of the "evidence" for global warming. "Man, it was so hot today, there must be something funny going on in the climate." Dishonest greens do nothing to discourage this, even though they know is ridiculous to extrapolate long-term climatic change from the weather of one week, one year, or even one decade. Like their moral forebears, the communists and fascists, they are happy to stampede an ignorant populace for their nihilistic ends.
posted by Faze at 12:48 PM on June 30, 2002

Here's a thread dedicated to proving the existence of global warming and its consequences, Faze. By any standard, your comment is a troll. Unless you're completely oblivious to the consequences of greenhouse gases, CFC's, etc. etc. etc. (which would be a damn shame considering your overriding arrogance with the subject), you're blatantly provoking an argument.

You're not trolling, you say? I beg to differ.

Like their moral forebears, the communists and fascists, they are happy to stampede an ignorant populace for their nihilistic ends. - this is what people like to call being an ass.
posted by BlueTrain at 1:20 PM on June 30, 2002

Yet another terror alert out. This one for the July 4 holiday. No direct evidence, just speculation. Like their moral forebears, the communists and fascists, they are happy to stampede an ignorant populace for their nihilistic ends.
posted by nofundy at 7:22 AM on July 1, 2002

It is old news now, but I threw an S on the end of candidates, thus questioning Al Gore's greeness compared to every green party candidate ever.

the greenest presidential candidate in history

I do not think so. Green enough to appear seasick perhaps, but not nearly enough to attract the faithful.
posted by thirteen at 11:03 AM on July 1, 2002

Sorry, Blue Train, it's not a troll. And I'm not ignorant of the speculative consequences of the possible build-up of greenhouse gasses. But the field of speculation is of such global complexity and magnitude, that for all we know, the outcome is just as likely to be a new ice age as it is to be a new oven age -- or we could be looking at a more-or-less temperate or benign climatological future. Nobody knows. The data isn't convincing. I think the real agenda of the people who are demanding social action against "global warming," is nihilistic, in that (just like the WTC terrorists) they are moral and spiritual snobs who simply can't stand the fact that the United States if full of fat, happy slobs driving SUVs, burning leaves, cooking meat and enjoying life without what these people believe is the prerequisite suffering.
posted by Faze at 5:40 AM on July 2, 2002