Andrew L. Urban
Every day is International Ignorance Day. It marks ignorance among the population as well as ignorance among the political, bureaucratic and media classes.
There is good reason for having a handy phrase like ‘ignorance is bliss’. Because it is. One needs the security blanket of ignorance to think and do a lot of the things that make the news.
One needs to be ignorant, for example, to take to the streets shouting and displaying slogans, ‘from the river to the sea’. The less you know about the exact river and the sea in question, the more fervent your sloganeering, ignorant of the intent behind the slogan. It’s a prerequisite for protests with a fake cause. And of course, there is the mandatory rhyming slogan as a rider, ‘Palestine will be free’. Where is Palestine? Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the UN last week she wants to have one established as part of a two-state fantasy where one state already exists as a vibrant and successful democracy and the other, adjacent to it, would be a morally bankrupt, internally conflicted coalition of haters intent on exterminating the former.
Wong imagines that would curtail “the endless cycle of violence”.
Marching to ‘free Palestine’ requires ignorance of reality; accusing Israel of genocide is plain dumb. It isn’t genocide to hunt down terrorists who have invaded your country, raping and murdering innocent civilians. Terrorists are a disgrace, not a race.
A blanket of ignorance also covers the most consequential issue of our time: the wrangle over a massively complex science reduced to a meaningless slogan: ‘climate change’. That slogan fuses the two elements of the climate change phenomenon – ever-present natural climate variability on the one hand, and its possible drivers on the other. In other words, the globe may warm (as it often has) but the cause/s of any warming is not really understood.
Natural climate variability is well known to geologists and other scientists, but not widely understood by populations. It is not talked about in polite climate crazed society. It is hidden from view in a political act to keep ignorance as the lid on informed opinion.
The falsely formulated fearmongering demonising carbon dioxide is a formidable example of ignorance overcoming rationality and evidence. (The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at present, 0.04%, is too low, not too high. Humans generate 0.0012% of the total.)
It is notable that the only Australian political party to challenge climate alarm is One Nation. As for the media’s despicable role, it has failed to subject the IPCC to the scrutiny applied to most other organisations. This is a case of self-imposed ignorance.
Canadian journalist Donna Lafromboise’s book, The Delinquent Teenager – who was mistaken for the world’s top climate expert (Connor Court) is a cold blooded deconstruction of the incompetent, disreputable IPCC, the organisation that publishes the climate change bible.
Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister’s zealous alarmist policies are based on (wilful) ignorance, undeterred by evidence to the contrary, decimating economies and landscapes. That kind of ignorance is a prerequisite of his policies. But then, ignorance is bliss. Blissed is Chris Bowen. Blissed is Penny Wong.
Andrew L. Urban is the author of Climate Alarm Reality Check (Wilkinson Publishing).