Here is a witty description of the way the Climategate story is unfolding, from someone called David Solway:
Witnessing the spectacle of climate warmists scampering hither and thither in the face of predatory evidence that they and their pet theories may be doomed, I’m put in mind of the behavior of hamsters who suddenly find themselves trapped in a cage with a hungry snake. The ensuing drama is instructive.
First the hamsters freeze as if in a state of petrifaction induced by utter disbelief. When it dawns on them that they have what looks like an insoluble problem on their tiny paws, they begin to shake and fidget, and soon they are darting feverishly from one side of the cage to the other, endlessly back and forth, seeking an escape hatch which simply isn’t there. It occurs to them that they are cornered, there is no way out, and they start digging furiously into the sand floor, emitting plaintive squeals of fear and despair as the snake slowly uncoils from its torpor and begins its relentless approach.
Like David Solway, and like our own Johnathan Pearce, I am optimistic about how the Climategate story is unfolding. It will, hamster like, run and run. How many other climate scientists cooked their data, and how outrageously? Which politicians, and which journalists, took the lead in swallowing this story? Who has been paying all these climate scientists to find AGW by fair means or foul and then to recommend global statism? The questions are endless, the answers will be fascinating, and the dextrosphere won’t let go of this now.
But what I want to know is: how does David Solway know all this, about how hamsters behave when set upon in a cage by a snake? His description is suspiciously vivid. Has he actually done this experiment? Has he seen hamsters in a cage being attacked by a big snake, on account of him having just put them there? If so, and if he then did nothing to rescue the poor hamsters, because science is more important than being nice to hamsters, then: what a complete bastard. The Climategate scientists put themselves into their cage, but this cage is only metaphorical and nor are their critics literally going to eat them, however much some of them might deserve such a fate. But David Solway’s actual hamsters did nothing to deserve such torment.
He adds:
One feels for the caged hamsters.
Oh, one feels for them, does one? But not enough, it would seem, for one actually to try to rescue them.
Maybe David Solway just saw this on You-Tube. Or maybe he, or some equally nasty friend of his, set all this up personally, but then later, in the nick of time, he (or they) did rescue the hamsters (in which case David Solway is still a bastard but not as much of one). Either way, I think he should have said.
He ends his piece thus:
Unless, of course, a miracle should occur, the cage door open, and an indulgent hand reach inside to rescue the hamsters from their plight, ensuring that the snake starves to death while the hamsters frolic in relief and gratitude. This, too, could happen. As we know all too well, there is more than one indulgent hand ready to perform an act of tender, self-interested, and hamster-friendly mercy.
It’s almost as if a friend of David Solway’s read everything above this ending, and said what I just said, isn’t it?
As a description of Climategate this final reversal contradicts everything before it. “This too could happen.” How? An “indulgent hand”? What hand?
The idea of such pieces is to raise the morale of David Solway’s side and mine in the Climategate argument. Keep it up lads, we’re winning. And then he goes and ends by saying, for no reason: but then again, maybe we’re not winning.
Why do writers do this? Something to do with ending intriguingly and amusingly, perhaps, with a final and surprising U-turn that you did not see coming? Or maybe it’s a doomed attempt to mollify the unmollifiable opposition, an attempt to turn them into neutrals by being nice to them, an attempt to be inclusive, a friendly nod to all the people who aren’t reading in the first place.
Or maybe David Solway just wasn’t sure that his piece is actually right, in which case I think his doubts would have been better handled by appearing at the start alongside his hypothesis, on a this-may-not-be-right-but-here’s-a-thought basis.
Or, in this case, did he simply want to look less like a hamster-torturing bastard but forget that his way of trying to do this contradicts his entire argument?
What I want to know is, were those actual hamsters actually rescued?
Hamsters (fresh or frozen) seem to be a usual food for pet snakes. Not exactly my cup of tea, but not a one-off Mengele, either. See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/861746.stm
Thanks for the hamsters, they were delicious!
Since it is clear that being nice is good and being mean is bad, all governments should pass laws outlawing being mean. It is for everyone’s good. Everyone must be nice to everyone and if we outlaw being mean, then we have improved everyone’s lives because people will no longer be mean!
On second thought, governments ought to pass laws banning bad things – that would cover being mean and some other stuff too.
Perhaps David Solway’s point in that paragraph is to warn to us to keep a close watch on the cage, to ensure that no “hamster-friendly” hand comes near its door. Note the most important word in that sentence: “self-interested”. Such a “hand” can only refer to the news media.
Yeah, he’s done it. Sat there and watched as the poor little furry f*ckers met their doom. The bastard.
Hey, snakes have to eat, too.
I once saw a rat in a snake cage in a zoo in Singapore. Poor thing was as far from the snake as it could get, on the opposite side of the cage and up the top of a branch while the snake curled contentedly in the corner.
The rat was screaming its poor little heart out. It was terrified.
I had to get out of there. I know the snake had to be fed, but it didn’t mean I had to enjoy watching it.
Still, off topic I guess, not everything is about me.
I guess if a snake is kept as a pet it has to be fed something. and a hamster seems quite a sensible choice.
I have seen snakes fed live mice. Well, maybe once. The mouse was dropped into the cage with the snake and the snake struck so quickly the mouse never knew what was up, never experienced fear. It was humane.
Because snakes can be fed live animals in a humane manner, there could never be any excuse for the scenario described by Solway, and he is a cruel bastard.
Also, I don’t think hampsters need to be used for snake food, and since children keep them as pets they should not be. Snakes probably prefer mice anyway.
Yeah, nasty old David. He could at least have compared the climate scientists to a load of crickets or meal worms in a terrarium full of hamsters.
At least the hamsters in the snake analogy only get eaten one at a time at long intervals. The insects and worms get eaten or stuffed in the hamsters’ cheek pouches for later.
I hope that before some interfering goody-goody removes the snake from the cage, at least a couple of the fatter, smugger, hamsters get et*. Oh, and the rest of the nasty rats have signed their confessions and promised to be good little rodents in future.
*Metaphorically speaking of course.
(You have to say something like that nowadays or people get all hysterical and scream “DEATH THREAT !!11!!!”
Weird.
I don’t want people getting into state power who are wantonly cruel to animals – for reasons to do with them not being cruel to people. But then, I want to see less and less people getting into state power in the first place – whether they are cruel to animals or people or both or neither.
Then again, would I be willing to feed say, Barney Frank to a snake? Hmm…
Then again, would a snake be willing to eat one of its own? Hmm…
Flash Gordon: Children keep mice as pets too. Maybe we should just starve all the snakes to death. That would be very humane.
None of you people who are bitching here really think about where your meat comes from any further than “the grocery store”, do you? There is a food chain. Snakes are above hamsters. Welcome to life on Earth.
My young daughter “saved” a mouse and a rat from being snake food (at school, as I remember) and both ended up being pets for a few years. I didn’t like being backed into it, but what are you going to do?
Many snakes are fed live rodents, although snake fanciers tell me you can train a snake to accept frozen ones. I don’t know if this is a matter of convenience for the snake owner or squeamishness. I would not own a snake if I had to feed it live mammals, but that’s just me, not a judgment on snake owners.
We also owned, at various times, lizards, frogs, and mantises, and many live crickets met their ends at my house.
Maybe we should put the hamsters in an airtight cage and fill it with CO2 instead, to see if it got any warmer.
perlhaqr, I am amazed that this needs to be explained, but eating meat from an animal that was slaughtered as humanely as possible out of my sight is not the same as willingly watching an animal suffer.
“But David Solway’s actual hamsters did nothing to deserve such torment.”
Ah yes. In an ideal world, bad things only happen to bad people. And people are always to blame.
The snake eats the hamsters. The hamsters are scared of the snake. But somehow it’s the human bystander that gets the blame.
I assume the point of the original article is to use the snake/fluffy-wuffy-hamster stereotypes in a way contrary to our preconceived perceptions to make us look at our actions with regard to ClimateGate from a new perspective. Whether the analogy is really valid or not, that’s often a useful thing to do.
Whether you have sympathy or feelings of glee for the fate of the warmist climate scientists, it’s really about necessity. We have to get rid of the AGW cult. Snakes have to eat.
It may be that in thinking they deserve their fate we have no sympathy for the warmists. But other people do, and will, and even when they become a laughing stock people will be polite about it, and will let the matter drop. And when they do, then next time round somebody else will do it all over again. And again and again and again.
At the moment, it’s hard to imagine because the warmists are still riding high. But eventually they really will look as pitiable as those hamsters. Will everybody still have the strength of resolve to let nature take its course? And will people look at us the way we look at someone who would watch snakes eat live rodents?
Pa, I could be wrong, but I don’t think that climategate is the actual subject of Brian’s post.
Would I be prepared to feed Barney Frank to a snake?
If the United Kingdom has a Fifth Amendment I would “take the Fifth” on that one.
Of course a simpler solution would be for the people in his District to stop voting for him…………..
Oh now I am talking about an absurd fantasy, most of those voters are never going to find out about his crimes.
The feeding to a snake thing is much more of a “real world” option.
Solway’s a Canadian poet.
His stock in trade is vivid imagery. Does the imagery on offer in this piece really merit such lengthy rumination?
I mean, really?
They have livers.
I have fava beans and a nice, dry Chianti.
I don’t have fantasies of warmists being eaten by snakes. Snakes should be fed on free-range, frozen halal rodents, or nu-tofu vegan synth-I-rodent.
I do have fantasies that representatives of the scientific community as a whole, turn up at the CRU (and potentially GISS in NY and NOAA wherever the hell they are) with pitchforks and burning torches, tar and feathers.
After a short hearing, I fantasize about the guilty being run out of academia on a rail, whereupon they have to take a regular-Joe job in the private sector, where they’re too busy earning an honest living to even think about a career back in an educational or research role.
Indeed, the only involvement for the state that I can imagine is the issuance of a new kind of ASBO, which prohibits the ‘holder’ from proseletyzing their toxic theology to the public.
All other punishment can be administered as public riducule or ostracism.
Vaguely related: here’s a slightly different snake v. rodent video.
Simon, that was just weird.
If you’re ever in a position where you have to feed a snake, don’t feed it a frozen rodent. Not unless it’s thoroughly thawed all the way through the center, or else you will kill the snake.
It’s better to feed it dead animals instead of live if you at all can. And I’m told with nearly all snakes they can be conditioned to take dead animals. It’s better for the rodent, and the snake too as any meal large enough to satisfy it is also large enough to hurt it very badly if it’s given a chance to fight back.
Keeping snakes as pets was never my thing but growing up I had a few friends who had boas or gopher snakes.
The show David Solway put on for himself isn’t something I’d enjoy. And I’m not squeemish about the whole killing-an-animal for food thing. It doesn’t need to be done out of my sight; I’ll even do it as someone has to kill the animal as humanely as possible. Otherwise, the only way you’d have any meat at all is if we waited around for an animal to die. But just because I’m capable of doing so does not mean I enjoy watching an animal suffer.
It does bother me that the UEA crowd is trying to make its data sausage out of my sight. And from what I’ve seen it is really stomach turning.
David Solway may not be very nice, but what can be done? Tell him he isn’t allowed to be critical of AGW and from now on he’s got to be a proponent of it? I also doubt he’ll tarnish our side of the debate. From what I’ve seen the other side has more than it’s fair share of really nasty pieces of work.
Way to go, bunny!…Um, sorry, got carried away. Still, it reminds me of this. Apparently not all of the received wisdom we have about animal behavior is based on reality.
One feels for the caged hamsters. Oh, I feel for them, I feel utter disgust.
I do recall reading about a shrew that was dropped into a snake’s cage in the mistaken belief it was a small mouse. Next day, no snake: just a hungry shrew running around looking for something else to eat.
Animal Karma.
Wow! Thank you Alisa – that was amazing; if I can get my girlfriend past the horrible lion+crocodile bit of that, then I think she’ll like it too.
My call is that Brian has way over-analyzed here.
I have owned a pet snake. I fed it live mice. The mice naturally feared the snake; it sucks to be you when you arent at the top of the food chain. It wasnt cruel.
I have to say that I am greatly enjoying this Climategate spectacle right now. I dont feel one bit of pity for warmist researchers who might get their grant money taken away.
If you don the garb of Unassailable Science, you are fair game when we find out you are wearing whore’s underwear.
I don’t think Brian has over-analyzed, or even merely analyzed. I am guessing that the rather vivid description made an impact on him, just like it did on me, and he understandably was drawn to ask some questions about the person who felt compelled to come up with such a metaphor, quite unexpectedly within the context. And when the questions were asked, the intuitive answers weren’t pretty. It might come as a surprise to some, but not everyone owns pet snakes and feeds them live hamsters. I will go even further and suggest that you can tell quite a bit about a person from their attitude towards animals, including the kind of pets they keep and the way they feed them. Oh, and before anyone starts jumping up and down: I’d like to think that not every single discussion has to be about government policy or lack of it, and that we are entitled to express our dislike of some behaviors even while we think that these behaviors should remain perfectly legal.
Mike, you might be interested in some short commentary on the subject, to stress my point about received wisdom.
This posting did go on a bit, I agree. It was short and frivolous but got out of hand, partly because of my final point, about how final points shouldn’t contradict all that comes before, which was the most serious point I made in this.
Also, I think I forgot how many people keep snakes as pets, especially in America (?). I was thinking of such dramas as only happening in laboratories.
Strongly agree with the point about enjoying cruelty to animals being a sign of bad character generally, and of possible nastiness also to fellow humans. I believe murder detectives think like this.
Hasty addendum: I do not accuse Solway of having enjoyed what he describes. And I also agree with him that it’s a fine way to describe how the AGWers are now behaving. Part of what I had in mind was simply to pass on a very punchy piece of writing, which did indeed make me sit up.
What’s his poetry like?
I think I had better stop digging.
Back when I shared a flat with a fellow musician who also happened to be a zoo-keeper, I got to watch him feed his golden eyelash viper (how many of you have shared a flat with a deadly poisonous pet snake? I can almost hear the tinkling sound of health nazi’s embarrassing themselves). You take a live baby ‘pinky’ mouse, raised especially for the purpose and you hold it wriggling in forceps until the snake strikes. They will not eat dead things.
It’s not the eating part that bothers me so much as the part where they are sitting there awaiting their death. It’s hard for me to decide which I dislike more, rodents or snakes, but, regardless, neither deserves to be tortured, even if they must eat and be eaten. Anyway, this discussion is becoming too unpleasant for me to keep up.
One reason I weighed in on this is because it’s possible for people to react viscerally against something without knowing what may or may not be behind something.
Such as Mr. Solway’s description of putting a hamster in a cage with a snake. Which at first brush seems like an act of gratuitous cruelty, but can be justified in order to feed the snake.
And there is a tie-in with the AGW debate.
There was an article in the Daily Mail from the 8th, which asks the question “Is global warming causing hungry polar bears to resort to cannibalism?”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1234066/Is-global-warming-causing-hungry-polar-bears-resort-cannibalism.html
It’s a graphic article, including pictures, describing how a group of tourists came across a male polar bear eating a cub.
The tourists were apparently horrified at what they say, with some “left shaken and tearful.”
And it includes this money quote “Although infanticide can occur in all species of bear, it can be accentuated among polar bears when they run low on fat reserves and become hungry enough to resort to cannibalism, according to conservation group Polar Bears International.”
That’s the group the paper gives the last word. They are completely dismissive of the local Inuit, who say it’s a completely normal incident and who think it makes people in more southerly developed countries look ignorant.
“A male polar bear eating a cub becomes a big story and they try to marry it with climate change and so on, it becomes absurd when it’s a normal, normal occurrence.”
As far as the people pushing this AGW theory are concerned, local people who’ve lived off the land for generations upon generations and know the local wildlife intimately can’t be trusted. It’s the people in “conservation” with skin in the game.
Moreover, just like that picture of one polar bear on an iceberg, I’m sure that many people will be so negatively effective by the pictures that they will be compelled to further support to the AGW theory out of pure emotion.
For the polar bears!
But the people at Polar Bears International are being deliberately misleading. It isn’t that cannabalism “can occur” in any species of bear. In North America it is one of the major factors affecting cub mortality in all species of bears.
The Inuit are right; it’s a common occurance. Male bears kill and eat cubs just about any chance they get. They don’t need to be forced to “resort” to it; they’ve evolved to do it naturally. It may be repulsive to people who assign some sort of secondary morality to the act, but a bear killing and eating a cub is just being a bear. Actually a large bear killing and eating a smaller bear that’s already left it’s mother isn’t uncommon. So the idea that bears do this just to force a mother with cubs into heat is absurd.
As Jose Kusugak says in the article, “‘It makes the south – southern people – look so ignorant.”
He’s partially right. Falling for AGW requires keeping people ignorant, not just appearing to be so. And playing on emotions.
Alisa, I hope you don’t think I’m picking on you. Actually I was to post further based on your observation that much of our received wisdom about animals not being based upon reality.
It’s true; and in that sense it’s analogous to our received wisdom about AGW.
It’s also true that some of the facts about nature aren’t pretty. But we can’t let revulsion drive the train.
Personally, If I have to pick a source of received wisdom, I’ll go with the Inuit over the AGW rentseekers any day of the week.
MattP: no problem at all. BTW, lions also routinely eat their cubs. No, nature is not always pretty, but it nevertheless always beautiful. As to keeping pets and feeding them, I would say that this goes outside the scope of what we would think of as ‘nature’, at least in its “wild” sense. In the wild, the snake wouldn’t be fed by someone, and it wouldn’t find itself in a closed space together with its prey, where said prey has absolutely no chance of escape. Sure, it can happen occasionally, but not routinely. I am not saying that nature is “fair” (whatever that means), but it does maintain a certain balance when left alone. Kind of like human society, AKA ‘markets’:-)
[tonguecheek] hamsters have sharp teeth. if the hamsters chose to work collectively they would be more than a match for the snake, even if some of them are killed. This surely proves the merits of communism! [/tonguecheek]
Alisa, you are correct; one is natural and the other is not. I didn’t mean to imply that both were natural events. That wasn’t the analogy I was trying to make.
I just meant that both were events that are emotionally jarring, and that as a consequence people might be mislead if they’re unaware of the underlying facts. As a matter of fact, an uninformed public can easily mislead by dishonest brokers by playing upon the negative emotions aroused by such graphic events.
I don’t want to dwell on the snake thing, as I know you find it repulsive. Understandably, at first blush it easily appears to be a completely unjustified act of cruelty. But some of us presented some facts that many were unaware of, as Brian acknowledged, and I believe many are now aware it isn’t at all what if first appeared to be. Yes, a human being feeding a snake anything is not a part of nature. But we can discuss the reasons for it and justify it, under certain circumstances. Perhaps in your case the circumstances would be narrower than mine, such as in the case of rehabilitating an injured individual of a rare species in order to return it to the wild, but at least under some circumstances. And at least an open exchange of the underlying facts may have changed some people’s minds about what was going on.
Belief in AGW requires preventing that from ever, ever happening. All contrary evidence, in fact all evidence, can never be allowed to see the light of day. It requires suppressing evidence, as the UEA CRU crowd has demonstrated.
So that people can be kept in a state of ignorance and therefore vulnerable to emotional bullying.
If anyone is trying to blur the difference between the natural and unnatural it is the AGW crowd of fraudsters.
They are trying to convince the public that a male polar bear eating a cub is just about as unnatural an event as putting a hamster in a cage with a hungry snake.
When in fact it isn’t. Cannibalism, or more properly conspecific predation, is one of the major factors in cub mortality for all North American bear species. In fact, it isn’t especially rare for a larger bear to kill and eat a smaller bear that has left its mother and in no way can be considered a cub. In the case of a really big brownie or griz, that smaller bear can weigh several hundred pounds.
As you pointed out, our received wisdom on animals (and AGW) is not always grounded in reality. The Inuit leader quoted in the story, Jose Kusugak, sees that and is frustrated that we can’t separate fact from fiction.
The AGW crowd sees that and wants to keep it that way.
That’s where I was trying to go with my clumsy analogy. I wasn’t trying to blur the difference between the natural and unnatural; the AGW fraudsters are the ones doing that.
Matt, I agree with everything you said. It’s just that I didn’t take the original post to be about AGW almost at all. I took it to be about how sometimes a person with whom we agree on some very important issues can be mistaken for someone who also shares our values. Also, Brian may have been persuaded to change his mind on Solway or the snake-feeding issue, as he is perfectly entitled to do. Personally though, I wouldn’t trust a person who keeps the kind of pet that needs to be fed in this particular manner. To each their own.
Alisa,
I agree that was Brian’s intention for the post. But I think he initially missed the point that the image was meant to shock, and to evoke that reaction, and had been introduced to make a particular point about the political nastiness involved in ClimateGate, and people’s likely reactions to it. It’s not just incidental to the core message, it’s intentional.
That sort of jarring image is commonly used to try to force a re-evaluation of our possibly unacknowledged attitudes and assumptions – the metacontext if you like – and by seeing them from a new perspective to become more aware of them.
Or it may be that I’m reading too much into it, rather than others too little. Maybe he meant it. Or maybe he just clumsily made up a handy image for rhetorical effect, without thinking about the emotional effect it could have. People do.
Well yes, Pa, there were several ‘maybe’s in Brian’s post as well: he was wondering aloud about the guy and what was behind that rather unusual imagery he used to make his point. And it is very unusual, not something most people would have come up with, which is the whole point (clumsy, if anything, it is not, and the effect is not as much emotional as it is thought-provoking). BTW, I did not at all get the impression that Brian missed the point of it, but rather that he also saw an additional point that he found at least as interesting. If that was the case, I feel the same way. I think you can tell a lot about a person from his choice of metaphors.
Alisa, look at the title of the thread.
“Not everyone on our side in Climategate is very nice”
The goal of the AGW mongers is to convince people that no one on our side is very nice.
So in this very real sense this thread is about climate change.
Alisa, look at the title of the thread.
“Not everyone on our side in Climategate is very nice”
The goal of the AGW mongers is to convince people that no one on our side is very nice.
So in this very real sense this thread is about climate change.
Well Matt, I guess Brian’s post is similar to contemporary art: everyone can see in it whatever they like:-)
I’m not much of an art critic. I thought it was pretty clear that a thread with the title “Not eveone on our side in Climategate is very nice” was somehow remotely related to Climategate, since it was mentioned in the title.
But I’m used to being wrong. I spent a decade being wrong all the time. Before the divorce.
Heh, how about 2 decades:-)
A question for you, Alisa.
If a man makes a comment in a forest, and there isn’t a woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?
Of course:-)
Have a very Merry Christmas, Alisa.
You too, and a happy New Year.
The field is yours, today.
It’s difficult to defend a position that you don’t feel strongly about.
And I just don’t.
I’m neutral on snakes. I don’t believe in killing them needlessly (they are tasty, and make nice belts, but take my word, don’t try to make jerky as I did at an aircrew survival school) but I don’t feed them. In general, my only interaction with snakes involves using a rake to get them univolved with the guts of my warm dryer in the garage, and releasing them in a field near my house.
.
They can catch their own rats.