Build-A-Bear Workshop, those cute mall toystores where kids can build their own teddy bears, has gone off the deep end on global warming.
Take a look at this video (the crapola starts at 1:22), aimed at small children, with elves and polar bears telling Santa that Christmas may have to be canceled because the North Pole is about to melt.
No, not Christmas 2055, the one coming later this week — that’s how bad the problem has gotten. Help! Help! The sky is falling!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I-AhVkXlb4[/youtube]
I don’t normally have a problem with a company having a political viewpoint (e.g., Ben & Jerry’s), as long as they’re willing to take the fallout. But when they aim their political messages at small children, they have passed over into propaganda and brainwashing. And they cross another line when they frighten the kids with a message that says there will be no Christmas.
My kids are far past their teddy bear years, but if/when they produce some grandkids for me, I’ll know where not to shop.
December 22nd, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I don’t see anything wrong with this per se. I’m a libertarian-conservative Republican who happens to accept the science on anthropogenic global warming. I don’t doubt many scientists push AGW and distort the facts to make AGW seem greater than it is, in order to serve a political agenda, but the science behind global warming is really pretty sound. Telling kids the North Pole is melting is true. Perhaps telling them that there will be no Christmas is taking a little too far, but then how many dozens of Christmas tales are there about Christmas almost being ruined/cancelled?
In any case, the real question is how to deal with environmental issues like AGW? Will more government power, spending, taxes, and regulation do any good, or is more enforcement of private property rights and the enabling of free market solutions the answer to AGW? I happen to side with the latter solution.
December 22nd, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Oh, God! That’s just wrong. Leave kids out of this crap.
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Gary: The question isn’t AGW (I think there are more questions about the science than you do, but that’s irrelevant). I have no problem, as I said, with companies presenting political viewpoints — to adults.
Build-A-Bear is engaged in brainwashing children.
December 22nd, 2009 at 7:49 pm
So… this is political how?
Oh wait, because idiot politicians and lobbyists want it to be political. Got it.
December 22nd, 2009 at 7:50 pm
P.S. That video made me hate bears somehow. And it made me hope their North Pole melts.
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:17 am
#5 Hahaha…
Alex, agreed. I remember in my elementary school science classes, we were taught about the evils of DDT. They would teach us how it kills birds and destroys eco-systems. Of course, mosquitos and malaria, which kills a million people every year and infects millions more, had almost been wiped out when DDT was banned thanks to that stupid “Silent Spring” book and eco-groups like Greenpeace. Now by a multiple factor birds and animals are killed each year by mosquito-borne diseases (West Nile, Yellow Fever, etc.). Of course they STILL teach us DDT is Satan… go figure.
December 23rd, 2009 at 3:47 am
Speaking of overreaches…
Plan to Move Guantánamo Detainees Faces a New Delay
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/us/politics/23gitmo.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
December 23rd, 2009 at 6:50 am
Good grief. What about dentists using toy teeth to make kids afraid of cavities? If brushing threatened the bottom line of rightwing business interests, no doubt the rightwing would be trying to obfuscate dental hygienics. Anyone who doesn’t know of the overwhelming scientific consensus in favor of man-made warming doesn’t want to know. It is premeditated irrationality for political/financial reasons.
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:49 am
The bald eagle (symbol of the USA) was one of numerous species nearly made extinct by DDT. Meanwhile, profligate use of DDT has lead to widespread resistance in insect populations, and non-persistent alternatives — that don’t keep killing years after application — have been on the market for years.
Is it arrogant to suggest that actual, real world science should get in the way of one believing whatever one chooses?
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:00 am
Build-a-Bear lost 4.8 million dollars in the 3rd quarter. Where are they getting the money to produce this propaganda. If I were a stock holder I would be demanding people’s heads.
December 23rd, 2009 at 9:10 am
Is it arrogant to suggest that actual, real world science should get in the way of one believing whatever one chooses
You must be new here…
December 23rd, 2009 at 11:09 am
This statement wins you the Marxist-Leninist Medallion for Heroic Repetition of Neosocialist AgitProp.
December 23rd, 2009 at 12:16 pm
the Marxist-Leninist Medallion for Heroic Repetition of Neosocialist AgitProp
the MLMHRNAP? It’s an award greatly overrated and given out far too frequently. I think Jan R happens to have a point. I see similar results when I try to persuade some of my co-religionists that the science behind organic evolution is very sound.
December 23rd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Funny you should mention Darwinism. Although evolutionary theory and the elegant logic of natural selection have both been valuable to further scientific inquiry into modern-day genetics, the underlying theory was also once hijacked for political purposes.
Remember all that stuff from the 20th Century about racial purity, Arian superiority, and eugenics? Then, as now, government-sponsored researchers delivered scientific support for the idea that government should be pushing the human gene pool in the right direction.
These are, of course, different times now. But the parallels are quite striking between the hijacking of the “settled science” behind eugenics et al. and the hijacking of climate science to push for government control of every last nook and cranny of the economy.
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I don’t see much parallel, MarkG. Well, unless you want to focus purely on the politicians while admitting that the core science is solid.
Euginics uses solid science (i.e., evolution) and mixes it with flawed or controversial philosophies to create something entirely different.
Politicians selectively use solid science (i.e., global climate studies) and use it to further their agendas.
Not that I’d compare the scientific community’s understanding of evolution to their understanding of global climate theory. The former has obviously been around much longer and has been used as the basic for decades worth of scientific discoveries in related disciplines.
Anyway, most “conservative” types who discredit global warming don’t seem to be doing so on the basis of political hijacking; they tend to claim there’s a global conspiracy engaged in bad science.
December 23rd, 2009 at 5:17 pm
You can break down the parts of AGW hypotheses and find empirical bits, less-than-empirical bits, and pure conjecture. The empirical bits involve the physics (thermodynamics) and chemistry (properties of carbon dioxide). The less-than-empirical (speculative) bits involve temperature reconstruction via proxy, where the data is uncertain. Even the recorded surface temperatures are somewhat speculative, leading to researchers’ questioning how these records need to be adjusted for accuracy (thereby making them less accurate).
The conjectural bits are the ones that suggest man’s carbon dioxide emissions are the most significant human-based forcing on global temperatures — what about land-use patterns? It is conjecture that there is a “right” temperature for the earth which is the temperature that existed 40 years ago. The appropriateness of the sites selected to read temperatures are assumed to be sufficient, but who knows?
Unimpeded by all this, the modern-day stand-ins for the eugenicists claim that this nascent field of inquiry has reached its final conclusions that require immediate action to save the planet. Last time around they aimed to save the species or specific races from debasement. And they denounced scientists who disagreed with their political objectives as “non-scientists.”