Beauty As Propaganda

Netflix is celebrating the cruelest month by promoting a gorgeous new series called Our Planet, a documentary narrated by 93-year-old David Attenborough. Its purpose is to overwhelm us with beauty and, not coincidentally, educate us about how all this beauty is being threatened by climate change.

Significant timing for the oh-so-socially-conscious Netflix. The Climate Change consensus is presently in tatters. The much touted 97 percent agreement by scientists that the earth is warming significantly and that man is the cause has been debunked and ridiculed. The whole argument won’t be recapitulated here. Abundant documentation of this isn’t hard to find. Check out these articles from Skeptical Science, World Magazine, and ColdClimateChange.com.

The truly sad state of the Climate Change Faction at the moment can be seen in these excerpts from Reason Magazine’s bass-ackwards reasoning for reaffirming the shibboleths about Warming data. The intro promises a conclusive case:

“We are now much more confident than ever that human influence is dominant in long-term warming," declares a team of climate researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology led by Iselin Medhaug. Why? Because, among other things, they claim to have reconciled the differences between the computer model projections and observational temperature records. The article, "Reconciling controversies about the 'global warming hiatus'" appears today in Nature. 

First they note that there are definitional problems in the scientific literature. The global warming hiatus can describe the period between 1998 and 2015 in which there was (1) no discernible increase in global average temperature, (2) a dramatic slow-down in the increase warming from the prior late 20th century trend, and (3) a slower increase than projected by climate computer models. They also explore the proposed causes for the hiatus including external drivers such as solar variability and aerosols from volcanic eruptions; the possibility of a lower equilibrium climate sensitivity in response to added carbon dioxide; and internal variability, especially periodic long-term shifts in regional ocean temperatures. "

Then the final paragraph tells us the ‘scientists’ fixed their problem by adjusting observed temperature data upwards and computer model predictions of that data downward:

“Basically, the researchers reconciled the hiatus controversy by lowering modeled temperature trends while raising the observational temperature trend. This is fascinating work and it will be interesting to see how it stands up to the test of time and data."

Right. Accused of monkeying with data to fake the result you want, monkey some more with the data. Great plan. So, the scientists might welcome a little help from their friends about now. This is where Our Planet and Voice of God Attenborough come in to save the day for doom and disaster devotees.

Note the subtlety of the pitch. This is an entertainment for the Whole Family. It’s positively dripping with beauty—and maybe the occasional dulcet editorial comment slipped into the mellifluous flow of narration. The near whisper that warns like a divine caress. Make no mistake. The principal purpose here is propaganda and the principal tool is beauty. Here’s another trailer that accomplishes a propaganda purpose using much the same tool.

The creative genius behind the 1936 film Olympia, which sought admiration for the power and glory of The 1936 Nazi Olympiad, was the innovative photographer and filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, personal friend of Adolf Hitler. Wikipedia has a full biography of Leni Riefenstahl. You can read extensively about the praise and awards this film and its author received in advance of the Olympics. It worked. The underlying message is clarion and needs no narration. This is the Future. It is New, it is Pagan, it is Aryan, and it is the Germany the Third Reich has built. Without any clearly egregious political statement. What Netflix hopes for Our Planet, regardless of the disarray in the ranks of climate change demagogues.

That’s all we wanted to say. As you watch Our Planet, remember Olympia. Beauty CAN be a beast too.


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END NOTE: To put Attenborough in context. He’s one of three superannuated Brits whose experience with old age in the rotted ruins of the British Empire have made them hate God, Country, and Mankind. We’ll get around to the other two eventually. For now, David is fighting his last Goliath. It will end with his certain defeat. He can’t unspeak or unfilm the deeper realities he opposes.