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Sunday, August 7, 2016

Rio Olympic ceremony has a strong warning about climate change

Sou | 7:28 PM Go to the first of 9 comments. Add a comment
As PG remarked in the comments, deniers have been oddly quiet about the opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro. I'm not sure how popular the Olympic Games are in the USA. Still, I'm surprised that I haven't seen a WUWT conspiracy theorist link the opening ceremony to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, given their fear of the natural environment and their opposition to humans living in harmony with nature.

As Australia's ABC reported, the Games ceremony had a very strong message about climate change.
A rallying cry to save the planet from environmental destruction has launched the Olympic Games as Rio de Janeiro put on a glittering opening carnival.

The overwhelming theme of the evening was protection of the environment.

"It is not enough to stop harming the planet, it is time to start healing it," programme notes from the ceremony's organisers read...

...An early opening sequence depicted the birth of life, culminating in the sprouting of a green entanglement of leaves from the stadium floor depicting the Amazon rainforest.

Indigenous Brazilians then performed native dances before creating huge "Ocas" or native huts in the centre of the stage.

Yet the party mood was halted in its tracks by a sombre sequence titled 'After the Party' which used NASA scientific maps to warn of environmental crisis facing the planet, detailing rising sea levels to melting polar ice caps.



Huffington Post had this to say:
The Opening Ceremony at the Rio Olympics Friday evening was filled with celebrations of Brazilian culture and unity. But for a few brief moments, the message was polarizing and crystal clear: The world must do whatever it can to stop climate change. 

I read that the program included Ed Hawkins graphic of the temperature spiral, too. Well done, Dr Hawkins.

9 comments:

  1. Talking about it while continuing with business as usual is quite the fashion.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Perhaps the US deniers missed it. The NBC coverage of the opening ceremony was apalling for someone brought up on the BBC. So many ad breaks and cutaways to members of USA team taking self-esteem and screaming at the camera that the deniers probably turned over.

    Having said that the climate change bit did make it to air in the US.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Hawkins's graph has driven the Wutters even more 'barking' than they were already. Eric recently tried to nullify its impact by extending it over a palaeoclimate record.

    He used the GISP2 data to do this; however, too many people are now aware that GISP2 ends in 1855, so can't be compared to modern warming (set aside that it is in absolute temperatures from the top of an ice sheet in Greenland, not global land-sea surface anomalies as per the Hawkins graph).

    To be fair, comments on the thread pointing this out were allowed to stand.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Now, if only they'd also *learn* from those comments...

      However, expect the same misrepresentation to feature again and again at WUWT, and in the main post, not (just) the comments.

      Delete
  4. Tony Heller didn't miss it. He's written at least two articles about it, though it's easy to miss as he's gone into overdrive recently - 13 articles on 6th August alone.

    His main nonsense is titled "Olympic Sized Stench From Judy Dench"
    which probably tells you all you need to know.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "I haven't seen a WUWT conspiracy theorist link the opening ceremony to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, given their fear of the natural environment and their opposition to humans living in harmony with nature."
    ... and their keen knowledge of geography and their propensity for pattern recognition!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's there now as of 20:44 Sunday Toronto time, 10:44 Melbourne time Monday. Good fast response by Eric Worrall.

      Why aren’t green groups vigorously protesting Brazil’s environmental hypocrisy? I suspect they are getting so desperate for signs of political support, they’re willing to accept anything, overlook anything, in return for a few kind words.

      No responses so it looks like it just got posted

      Delete
  6. Ah a lovely quote. Not exactly a conspiracy theory but kinda close.

    Berniea August 7, 2016 at 7:34 pm

    I think Brazil is owned by the UN. In our broadcast of the opening ceremony the first dignitary in the stands they showed was Ban Ki Moon and that was a bad omen. I think the UN financed all the environmental propaganda in the opening ceremony and there was a lot of it. It permeated the whole event. Even the cauldron looked like a greenie’s idea of solar and wind power. It all made me feel sick to see the extent to which the UN has used the occasion to push their propaganda. The TV commentators added their nauseating support as well.

    Sounds reasonable to me. Three or four weeks ago some was telling about talking to a Texan who was complaining that Beijing was looking run down and that the UN should do something since it owned the city. I wonder if Berniea was that woman?

    ReplyDelete

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