You guys knew you were in good company, but what you didn’t know until today was that you were in the presence of celebrity.
I am pleased—nay, thrilled—to announce that I am the proud recipient of the “Progeny Calamity” award, a “Genuine IG-Noble Prize”.
Not that Ig Noble. This is instead a “genuine” Ignoble (note the lack of space). This issued by John Minck, a retiree who spends his remaining years chasing heretics.
The Certificate of Recognition reads:
For your Beyond-Prolific Essayist Annals, you are hereby awarded the “PROGENY CALAMITY.” This qualifies you to endure the Ignominy of the World’s Citizenry and Your Own Progeny by your befuddling of the Global Climate Crisis and ignoring of the “Grandchildren Test.” It certifies to you the Distinction of trampling on the Future of Your Grandchildren’s Progeny by handing them an Unraveling Social, Economic and Environment System, Extreme Weather Events, Polar Vortex, Massive Midwest Flooding, Rising Oceans, Never-Before-Seen Tornado and Hurricane Seasons. It deplores your Disrespect of Climate Science Expert Research with Statistical and Academic Obfuscation.
Award: A Shameful Role Model for Grandfathers
Accompanying this prestigious award was a charming letter from the award giver, which I reproduce below, in part, to prove to you, dear reader, that propaganda works.
At 88, as I use up my remaining years on earth, I write hundreds of letters about my causes and passions. Every day I browse the HuffPost for news, the National Catholic Register (zealots) and the National Catholic Reporter (pastorals) to see what the industrialized church is doing to its members.
On the NCRegister today, I saw the reference to your website monograph on the flaws on homosexuality. I’ve written a lot, but I must confess that your expressed expertise leaves me exhausted. From transgenderism to cosmic science you have an opinion. I admire such prolific output, while at the same time, challenge your certainty. When I found that you are an adviser to the Heartland Institute, that began to shape my opinion of you. It also nailed your politics. I decided that you have earned one of my IG-Noble Prizes….
Interruption…Indeed, I have become immensely wealthy via my Heartland connection. The $0 in total consideration I got from them (and every other global warming connection) last year matched the contribution from the year before, and the year before that, and…you get the idea, and is expected to match this year’s total. Yet even with all that, I have managed to retain my humble existence.
…A third award, which I call my IGNOBLE PRIZE, is dedicated to the list of leaders who have used their status in society or academia or politics to influence our national enterprise with policies which work to the detriment of the future generations who will inhabit our globa [sic] in the next 100 years. Your Heartland Institute qualifies as a VERY influential research enterprise which affects my progeny, but more importantly, your progeny…
…I was struck with the realization recently, as I watched the devastation across Heartland’s Midwest, fields inundated, levees breached, a string of violent tornadoes sweeping from Oklahoma up to Ohio, WAY before their regular season schedules. Hurricanes of UNUSUAL intensity, and more of them. The exceptional Polar Vortex across a wide swath of America. These are the symptoms of climate change denial, and your own PERSONAL contribution to the communal denial will bring CALAMITY to the future. Thereby, you receive one of my first PROGENY CALAMITY awards. Congratulations!…
Interruption…May we have lots more of the kind of calamities we’ve been having, because storms are down historically, in strength and in number. Yet propaganda (i.e. the “news”) says the opposite. The better it gets outside, the worse it gets inside “news”rooms.
…There are plenty of climate change deniers, all with their own motivations. But likewise there is a preponderance of the earth’s scientific community who believes it is coming on like a freight train. The problem with these global sized physical changes is that certain environment conditions may have a triggering point where something happens and there is no return.
Interruption…by “climate change denier” I’m guessing he means one who denies global cooling will be especially troublesome. Sorry, I meant global warming. Sorry, I meant climate change. Sorry, I meant et cetera.
The preponderance of the earth’s scientific community do not believe global cooling/warming is coming on anything like a freight train. A few do, but the majority are not hyperbolic. Yet, again, propaganda assures us the opposite is so.
My award giver said above he reads Huffpost for “news”. Propaganda works.
P.S. Minck emphasized in supplementary documents that my award was just as much for my adherence to Catholic dogma as to environmental reality. He made an argument something like that since God created necrophiliacs, necrophiliacs can marry dead bodies, which Catholics ought to support. Or maybe it was pedophiles.
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Propaganda works, indeed. The lies, when repeated often and loudly enough, become the truth in their minds.
This is why the Left is allergic to truth.
Congratulations!
Minck: I admire such prolific output, while at the same time, challenge your certainty.
Did you mention “Uncertainty”
Wow! Imagine living to 88 and not garnering any sense of cynicism about the certainty of governments, politicians, the press, “scienTISTs”, …
Is it suitable for framing?
Congratulations On A Well-Deserved Price. Will There Be An Acceptance Ceremony? Or an Acceptance Speech? Opinionated Minds Want To Know.
Could this be our Mr. Minck?
http://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/john_minck/inside_hp_00.htm
If so, how appropriate is this sentence/paragraph:
“Minck, interviewed at HP in late 1957 by Barney Oliver after finishing a dual EE/MBA Stanford degree, was ‘bounced’ from R&D consideration, and sent to Cort Van Rensselaer as a possible marketing candidate. It was propitious, launching a 37 year career for John, serving first as John Young’s right hand man in marketing at the free-wheeling microwave division – the source of so much of HP’s leadership in products, revenues, and profits for years – and then as the department manager for the emergent light-emitting diodes that HP launched just prior to introduction of personal electronics equipment such as HP handheld calculators.”
A well-deserved honor, Dr. Briggs! Hopefully this will increase your fame and fortune!
Telling people like Mr. Minck that CO2 has little effect on global temperature is like telling Cotton Mather that witches don’t exist.
Wow, writing letters like that is an interesting way to spend one’s golden years… and what a selection of media to read for one’s concluding years of life. Congratulations, I guess, on one of what must be many recipients of these missives!
And get off my lawn! 😉
“He made an argument something like that since God created necrophiliacs, necrophiliacs can marry dead bodies, which Catholics ought to support. Or maybe it was pedophiles.” I thought that was the argument of churches supporting homosexualilty—God made us that way so we can do whatever we want and you can’t tell us no. Catholics supporting same-sex behavior and marriage must support it, of course.
I question if the guy is really 88 years old. If so, he has lived one year 88 times. Not a collective 88 or else his brain is fried from old age. Anyone who lived 88 years and is too crazy to not see that what he lists is exactly what he lived through repeatedly should be institutionalized. However, I can’t see how he can be that crazy and uninformed and survived 88 years. Perhaps we should have sympathy for the man. He’s obviously not well.
Anyway, congratulations of the well-deserved award! Seems you’re doing something right!
According to his Bio (2011), he was born in 1930; started life as conservative but life in Palo Alto finally caught up with him shortly after Reagan was elected.
The only positive aspect of his view is he’s a pro-Nuclear Climate Changer.
http://www.hpmemoryproject.org/an/pdf/J-Minck_Life_111229a.pdf
I guess the cynicism distrust only worked one way.
Congratulations!! May God bless us all with the certainty that He is Love, as John writes in 1 John 4.
It is such a good that Mr. Minck reads you, for many blessings must be abounding to him, perhaps unknowingly by him, as he takes in and ruminates on the truths that you write. Hurrah for Mr. Minck, for keeping us on our toes!!!
God is blessing us all, C-Marie