George Orwell, in his classic novel 1984, portrayed a world where the truth was ingeniously manipulated by politicians. Though conceived by some to be a Science Fiction novel, Orwell was actually portraying the rise of communism in the post World War II  era – 1984 actually  a play on 1948. The Cold War brought with it the fear of atomic fallout and mass destruction. The West weren’t really capable of protecting their citizens from these frightenng dangers so they fabricated the truth. In West Berlin, Germany  the authorities built 6 atomic bomb shelters. One of the shelters still exists and is living proof that, if it had been necessary to use it, the lucky  inhabitants would almost certainly not have survived to tell their tale. What further enhances this point is the fact that six shelters could hold no more than 20,000 citizens, all in all, not much of a solution for a city of several million. In England, at around the same time, civil servants were primed to protect themselves from atomic fallout by placing their briefcases above their heads during an attack or opening their umbrellas. If at home hiding under a table was supposedly the answer. An exhibit of briefcases is displayed in the Berlin shelter (see photo)  to emphasize the stupidity of these ideas.
   Now with all the talk of Global Warming,  AL Gore  used a few tricks of the well polished political trade to enhance his theories. He even won the Nobel peace prize and an Oscar for his efforts. As Iain Murray, senior fellow in Energy, Science and Technology at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C, pointed out:

Gore’s biggest rhetorical trick is saying that the Earth has a fever. He says that 10 of the hottest years in history came in the last 11 years, and this proves we must do something, because, “If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor.”
This is meaningless. The Earth has been much, much hotter in the past than today. No giant space nanny fed it medicine.
Moreover, a healthy baby has a constant temperature – that’s why a fever is bad. The Earth does not have a constant temperature. It has been generally warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in the early 19th century, but that has not been uniform. It’s had warming phases (the 1920s and 1930) and cooling phases (the 1940s to 1970s).
It’s also had periods like today, when temperatures are flat – there hasn’t been much warming since 1998. Yes, it’s warmer today than it was a hundred years ago, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Talking about fevers is misleading, but it’s a great rhetorical trick.

Murray goes on to state several more inaccuracies used by Gore in his presentations and movie. In great Hollywood fashion Gore believes that it’s the message that matters and not the accuracy of it. Remember we are talking of a town that produced an animated version of Pocahontas with a happy ending! Thanks to the influx of available information via the Internet, more and more examples are coming to light regarding the truths  that the general public are fed. Often, the adoption of a little white lie, or even a large one, is considered necessary to retain law and order. However, allowing our leaders to control our minds seems to be a much more dangerous concept.

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