The Angry Exile: Big Eco advertising your forthcoming death... again

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Sunday, 6 November 2011

Big Eco advertising your forthcoming death... again

Via Watts Up With That.

Okay, this is not as bad as the 1010 mob's gleeful explosive execution of anyone expressing ambivalence toward warble gloaming or that aborted video with hundreds and hundreds of airliners zooming towards a New York with smoke curling up from the World Trade Centre, but it's still pretty nasty. "You, you evil sceptics," goes the message, "You'll get it first." Not quite sure how that works - how can the climate tell who believed and us Untermenschen who weren't convinced? Maybe it's the same kind of magic by which the climate can tell difference between the evil CO₂ emitted by a power station or your breath and the benign and harmless CO₂ that's puffed out from the blowholes of whales and dolphins to feed their dear friends, the trees. Or maybe the climate is relying on the warble gloaming believers to muck and help with a set of matches. I've no idea, but somehow or other we're first in line for death despite the usual exhortations to cut down on our selfish energy use because poor people in developing nations are first in line for death. Consistency? Meh.

And so at this point I want to bring up my intermittently maintained list of warble gloaming dates for your diary, because a few weeks ago I noticed an addition spotted by The Filthy Engineer, who notes that in two-thirds of the spirit of reduce, reuse, recycle this has been reused and recycled since 2007.

Runaway Global Warming promises to literally burn-up agricultural areas into dust worldwide by 2012, causing global famine, anarchy, diseases, and war on a global scale as military powers including the U.S., Russia, and China, fight for control of the Earth's remaining resources.
Over 4.5 billion people could die from Global Warming related causes by 2012, as planet Earth accelarates into a greed-driven horrific catastrophe.

"Promises" does it? Then with less than two months 'til the start of 2012 we should see some signs of it already, shouldn't we? And "literally burn-up"? Seriously? Actual fields actually on actual fire? 4.5 billion of the world's 7 billion people dead (which still wouldn't be enough to satisfy the most extreme eco-psychos, such as this fucktroon)? As much as I'm prepared to believe that many warble gloaming catastrophists do actually believe what they claim, when someone comes out with ridiculously over the top scare claims like this I suspect that even they don't believe it. It's the old tactic suggested years ago by the late Dr Stephen Schneider of offering up scary scenarios to get attention even if they're vanishingly unlikely. I've no idea whether to blame overzealous PR of the kind Dr Schneider once suggested or journalistic license, but I suspect there's probably only one thing that's literally going to burn up.

Being generous and giving them 'til the end of next year the updated list now looks like this:

Probably should have happened by now, or failing that should be possible to observe a very large change in that direction - New York's West Side Highway impassable due to being underwater - Dr. James Hansen (1988/89 interview)
Probably should have happened around 2005 ± 1 yr - British children will not know snow in their own country - Dr David Viner (Independent, Mar 2000)
"Imminently" - loss of world's coral reefs - David Attenborough in July 2009 ('world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed')
By 2010 - 50 million refugees climate refugees (UN Environment Program - currently no link for UNEP site but Watts Up With That has details and evidence of claim)
Between 2010 and 2015, probably earlier - ice free Arctic - Louis Fortier, director of ArcticNet, speaking to Canada.com in 2007
2012 - fields on fire and approximately two thirds of the entire planet's population dead
Late 2013 - ice free Arctic - Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years')
2014 - the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair - WWF.
Dec 2016 - the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair - the Prince of Wails and the 100 months mob
Dec 2016 - loss of 'the levers of control' for the climate - the Prince of Fails... again.
Late 2019 - ice free Arctic - Pen Hadow (ten years to Arctic ice loss)
Late 2019 - the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair - UK Met Office.
Late 2029 - loss of Great Barrier Reef - marine scientist Charlie Veron ('global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years')
By approximately 2040 - ice free arctic yet again - NSIDC director Mark Serreze

Warble gloaming - I refuse to use the term climate change when climate has always been changing since the planet's ancient beginnings - warble gloaming might not need you to believe in it, but warble gloaming catastrophists very much do need you and everyone else to believe. Because they're all out of a job otherwise.

Comments (4)

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Patrick Harris · 699 weeks ago

A bit like those idiots that prophesised the end of the world but that the Lord would beam up the believers just before the appointed hour.

1 reply · active 698 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 698 weeks ago

At the risk of going to hell I might speculate that the Archangel Scotty was pissed at the transporter controls again.

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Bill Sticker · 698 weeks ago

Yes, Patrick, but notice all those believers are still with us. Worse luck. I sometimes think God has a very strange sense of humour.

BTW: AE. Your Wordpress comment login keeps putting me through to the intensedebate login page.
My recent post A very indecent European proposal

1 reply · active 698 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 698 weeks ago

Yes, both Rapturous and ecodoom predictions keep failing to come true. No idea about the ID/WP login thing. I'll have a play later and see if I can find a setting to change that fixes it, but to be honest I'm not going to put too much time into it. A move to WP is more likely than ever - I'd say I'm at the blog moving equivalent of DEFCON 2 right now, and from one or two things Blogger have said I reckon DEFCON 1 is only a couple of weeks away - and if/when that happens I'll be dropping ID for WP's own comments system.

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