Peter Tatchell, militant gay rights activist from the 1980s is reinventing himself as a Green Party Parliamentary Candidate for Oxford East. On commentissimplyabsurd, he writes today about a looming global oxygen shortage.
Compared to prehistoric times, the level of oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere has declined by over a third and in polluted cities the decline may be more than 50%. This change in the makeup of the air we breathe has potentially serious implications for our health. Indeed, it could ultimately threaten the survival of human life on earth, according to Roddy Newman, who is drafting a new book, The Oxygen Crisis.
We read this and found ourselves short of breath. But only because we couldn’t stop laughing. And who the hell is Roddy Newman anyway? Tatchell concludes,
Scaremongering? I don’t think so. A reason for doomsaying? Not yet. What is needed is an authoritative evidence-based investigation to ascertain current oxygen levels and what consequences, if any, there are for the long-term wellbeing of our species – and, indeed, of all species.
Green is not in fact merely the new pink. It is the new blue, yellow, black, brown… whatever. It is the colour chosen by anyone who ever nailed their colours to the mast, and found that, over the years, they’ve faded, and now find the need to reinvent themselves.
Still, Tatchell is not the maddest ever high-profile lunatic that the Greens have given a home to. In the early days of the party, David Icke, former footballer and sports TV presenter was their spokesman. Until this happened in 1991
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Icke’s views lead to the end of his relationship with the Green Party. The humiliation he suffered after the interview didn’t help what appeared to be a process of separation, not just from the Greens, but reality itself. Still, he reinvented himself as the son of god, and conspiracy theorist second to none, and sold a few books on the way, so it’s hard to have too much sympathy for him.
In the comments section, Tatchell replies to the jibes he surely deserves,
I am coming at this issue from a commonsense perspective, based on some evidence. It is more a case of queries on my part, rather than grand assertions. Raising these issues seem plausible and reasonable to me. Please advise if and how I am mistaken.
…The article above was not written as another doomsday scenario. Even if there is a danger from oxygen depletion it is still quiet a long way off. Moreover, I am a great believer that we humans can create solutions to problems – whether those problems are human-made or natural cycles.
Commonsense? Evidence? The ‘evidence’ that Tatchell claims to be in possession of misses something which barely needs repeating here. Air is 21% oxygen. There’s loads of it. And there’s nothing commonsensical about worrying about the end of it. That ought to have given him cause to pause before writing this nonsense. As it happens, it shows exactly how thoroughly you need to ‘understand the issues’ before creating a public role for yourself as somebody who is going to ‘save the planet’. His colleague, ‘Dr’ Caroline Lucas has no firmer grip on the science, yet wheels out similar factoids as incontrovertible evidence for her party’s policies. This group seeks public office, and influences the direction of public policy. As lunatics they provide some good laughs, but the reality is that they are, more often than not, taken seriously.
How has it come to pass that people wearing end-is-nigh sandwich boards have been given such credibility? This question cannot be answered just by looking at environmentalists or environmentalism alone. The answer must lie outside of environmentalism, otherwise we must give these lunatics credit for taking over the asylum that they do not deserve. After all, it is neither popularity nor intellectual power which has swept them to prominence.
So the oxygen concentration in London is only 10%. That sort of defies diffusion. Somebody should be arrested for breaking the laws of physics.
Where do these whackoes come from?
I love the “… I’m not a scientist but … [the world is about to end][we must all go live in caves][capitalism must end tomorrow]” etc etc.
Imagine a 40 year old physics professor coming out of Tate Modern saying, “I’ve never been to an art gallery before and I know nothing about art, but that Tracy Emin is totally shit. Rembrandt — now that’s what I call art.”
He would be called a fool and an idiot who should know better than to talk about artistic matters. That’s my view of Tatchell, Lucas, Gore, Lynas, Charles and the whole damn lot of them!
If there really is a shortage of oxygen, then surely it’s the fault of oxygen thieves like Peter Tatchell, Al Gore et al?
I really must point out that you’re not up to speed with David’s thinking recently – which actually pretty much gels with your own. In fact, I believe he was somewhat ahead of you, Martin Durkin etc. in seeing through the global warming conspiracy. See for example the following quotation from his website:
“One thing is guaranteed, the nation’s print and broadcast news media will continue to report global warming as a fact supported by “most” scientists when it is not. Global warming is a theory based on flawed and incomplete computer models discredited by the same government scientist who triggered the scare campaign…
There is no global warming, but there is a global political agenda, comparable to the failed Soviet Union experiment with Communism, being orchestrated by the United Nations, supported by its many Green NGO’s, to impose international treaties of every description that would turn the institution into a global government, superceding the sovereignty of every nation in the world.”
You can see David explaining the truth about so-called global warming and the link with sun activity at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFpnwrb-pyo. Again, this is something that Durkin’s film was quite right to highlight.
May I congratulate your site on the sterling work it’s doing to pull the wool from people’s eyes on this important issue, and suggest that you link to David’s site at http://www.davidicke.com/. After all, you’re very much on the same side, and like you David has always been brave in questioning the conventional ‘wisdom’ on this and many other topics.
Ho ho ho.
Lizard Resistor is funny, but inaccurately compares our argument to Icke’s. Particularly on the nature of environmentalism’s ascendancy, he is very much mistaken.
Where Icke, according to L-R, claims that the UN is a vehicle for a political agenda, we simply do not believe that environmentalism is so orchestrated. To believe that there is a conspiracy is, as we say above, to ‘give these lunatics credit for taking over the asylum that they do not deserve. After all, it is neither popularity nor intellectual power which has swept them to prominence.’
This also sets us apart from sceptics on the Right who believe that Green is the new red. While there may be some truth to it (environmental activists often frame their argument as slogans about capitalism), we believe that this misses the point that many on the Right (and, for that matter, the centre) have sought to reinvent themselves as Green. The Left was simply first to fall apart, and so its lost offspring are the first who found the need to find new ways to orientate themselves.
A conspiracy would be preferable. It would imply that there was some purpose.
Ike and his followers can only see political and social organisation as the work of conspiracy, because they have no other way of seeing things. The environmental movement is very similar. From it emerge ideas about the way we live our life that we have had foisted upon us. According to some, we don’t really want labour-saving devices, cheap clothes, cheap flights, nice houses, and cheap food. It is all thrust down our throats by consumer society in the interests of bankers and oil companies. ‘Deny it’, and of course, your arguments will be scrutinised for continuity with the work of Exxonmobil’s ‘well funded denial machine’ [Lord May of Oxford, President of the Royal Society], after the ‘tobacco strategy’ [Naomi Oreskes, Professor of History and Science Studies, Uni of San Diego].
While Icke the conspiracy theorist is a bit of a lonely and mad figure, conspiracy theorists Bob May and Naomi Oreskes are very much part of the establishment. No doubt Oreskes and May have political ‘agendas’ (although they are unaware of them), but they are only human. Agendas are not things to be terrified of in and of themselves, as Icke seems to be. What is interesting is how and why those agendas and ideologies are constructed from ‘scientific’ theories. Particularly when, as both May and Oreskes have accomplished a great deal of scientific learning, their theories about society turn out to be as mad as Icke’s, and as poorly thought through as Tatchell’s.
Far from being lonely or mad, David is in fact attracting big audiences as you can see from the video I linked to. At last Al Gore has some real competition! Finally people are waking up to the way the establishment is duping us into accepting authoritarian policies by peddling pseudo-scientific scare stories. Haven’t you pointed this out yourselves many times on this blog?
I’m disappointed by your negative attitude to David, especially as you have so much in common. Why are you so scared to admit it?
So obviously Lizard Resistor is some paid representative of David Icke, if not the man himself. Sadly his point that ANYONE has much in common with David Icke is retarded. How many people on this earth could have the unique combination of stupidity and audacity, as to publicly try to gain support for “The Dwindling Oxygen” theory? Few indeed. What Lizard Resistor or whoever he is is not getting is that Icke is the kind of person who says what he says and does what he does for attention and self promotion. It was as true when he was a Gay Rights Crusader as it is now that he is trying to be the Anti-Gore. This is why even gays who appreciated his mission still resented his tactics and behavior. In today’s world, where AlGore wins the Nobel Prize, it is no surprise to see a guy like Icke taking shots in the dark at similar issues, hoping for similar, undeserved notariety. With the ‘declining oxygen’ joke being thoroughly laughed off, he and his are apparently now trying to reinvent him as the “Anti-Gore”, a highly contrived, very desparate grab for the type of attention the real Al Gore gets (and for the same reason). But what Lizard Resistor is not getting is that WE DON’T WANT OUR OWN VERSION OF AL GORE. One is bad enough. We want truth and science to determine truth and science. Not some popularity contest winner to tell us what to think. There’s already enough of that.
The proof of course is Lizard Resistor’s inability to see the real point of this article.
Derek, you seem to be a little confused. David Icke and Peter Tatchell are not the same person. David has never been a gay rights campaigner or a proponent of the declining oxygen hypothesis. His guiding light has only ever been a determination to get at the TRUTH and demolish the lies we are told by the sort of mad ‘scientists’ who run establishment institutions like the Royal Society (how right you are about that one, Editors!). And for his pains he has been labelled mad himself.
I saw Lord Bob May once giving a public talk and was able to study him in some detail. The skin on the back of his neck had an undeniably scaly appearance and a decidedly greenish sheen. It may be premature to draw any conclusions from this observation – I merely point it out for the record.
How funny that Lizard Resistor is worried about Bob May being green-skinned.
Get back to your whisky, and back under your bridge, silly troll.
Derek, do not worry about LR, he finds himself compelled to speak on each occasion that the Green Party are embarassed in order to divert the conversation away from the subject.
Meanwhile, Tatchell continues, the latest is this:
Does anyone know more about “Roddy Newman”? The only thing I know is that he is not a scientist, as Peter Tatchell has stated (and of course that he is writing a book.) There seems to be nothing else at all about him on the internet.
I’m also curious as to what gas would fill the place of the missing oxygen… (Surely not our buddy CO2, currently at a mere few hundred parts per million.) Nitrogen? Argon?
Nitrous oxide??