One difference between climate realists and warmists is that the former deal with what is – as here, at the Mount Washington Alpine Resort which is still open for skiers and snowboarders this weekend. This winter, the resort received more than 60 feet of snow — the deepest in resort history — and it claimed the deepest snow pack in Canada before opening day in December.

With so much snow still on the hill, the mountain will be opening in early July, the same time as it opens for summer operations with its Mile High Chairlift rides. What is becoming Mount Washington's longest-running season was a record-breaking one.

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Serious question.
How do we get prestige ?
Maybe your next book book: Prestige and How To Get It.
A series of case studies.
Prestige and Power are interlinked.

The two are inseparable. Without the former, you cannot have the latter and, with the latter, you can enhance the former.

The answer is beguilingly simple ... we develop "counter-prestige" ... except that prestige is the tool to govern the non-thinking masses ... the types that automatically obey, or give respect to, a man in uniform, solely because he wears a uniform. I think that's how Hitler did it ... all those uniforms, parades, his rank structure ... his own moustache ... all to project prestige.

There are, of course, other prestige models ... the trappings of royalty confer prestige ... the honours system, etc. In academia, titles, awards, the whole junk ... they are all part of the package.

Now, herein lies the paradox ... you have to use these tools to prevail against the enemy ... but in using them you become like your enemy ... you win, but your cause loses ... and so the cycle starts over. There has to be a better way.

Very interesting approach to the problem, Dr. N! Thing is, it's one of the words the most insufferable and affected Americans posture about with. For years I've watched them with my mouth open, and wondered where they learned it ... and I've tended to the idea that the snobbery is a pastiche of some euro superiority complex, esp. france. It's a froggie word, after all.

So I just looked it up... only Collins is to hand ... but the Latin original waspraestigiae: tricks! Well, well. So that's all it is - just part of the smoke and mirrors act...

The only way is ridicule.

Prestige is usually associated with large and fragile ego -- like a bubble, the bigger it gets, the louder the pop.

This is why I like Monckton, because his antics get right under the Warmists' skins at an emotional level, which is exactly the effect he tries to produce.

It's hopeless to take these people on at a rational level; religions don't admit rationality.

Take the recent 'Nazi' affront which all the MSM are scything Monckton for.

His SOP is:

1. Identify opposing actions that you find offensive.

2. Immediately say something along the same lines, but even more offensive.

3. Back down, but cite and hence publicise the initial offensive action.

So we see in this case the recent public references to forcibly tattooing skeptics (Glover) or inviting them to gas themselves with CO (Singer), the obvious Nazi connections of which were ignored by the compliant eco-friendly MSM.

So Monckton deliberately gets publicly offensive, knowing that the lame lefties of the MSM press will faithfully report it, then he gets (via his ostensible apology) his shots in on Singer and Glover which the MSM is forced to record.

Plus, he increases the chance that some rabid eco-nuts will try to bust up his imminent Australian lecture tour, with the resultant bad publicity for Green wackodom.

You have to attack the enemy's weak points, and overweening vanity and narcissism is the Left/Green's weakest.

This is why serious dictators always have comedians and artistes shot, because they know they present the greatest danger to their prestige, and hence their authority.

It is a useful tool, perhaps even necessary, but not sufficient. It only works when there is a counter-ideology, with sufficient prestige to challenge the orthodoxy. Ridicule diminishes the prestige of the target, but unless you can replace it with something equally or more prestigious, the status quo will be unaffected.


Monckton is a fool. He gets a hearing because he has prestige ... but by his actions he is destroying the very basis of his own power - and dragging down the rest of us. The "king" does not make jokes ... that is what the court jester does ... you can't be both.

And here is the useful pointer ... take the court jester (in another context) ... paid by the king to ridicule the court ... not dangerous if under license.

I don't think it is primarily cultivating prestige. I believe the more sinister idea that catastrophic global warming is the relatively successful scare it is because governments, worldwide, have adopted alarmists as, in Lenin's phrase, "useful idiots".

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken

I have repeatedly asked anybody, from Mann and Nurse & Professors, through Harriban, the "environmental" correspondents of all our papers, through alarmist bloggers worldwide down to politicians, to name 2 scientists who support catastrophic warming and aren't ultimately paid by the state or Greenpeace types and none of them have been able name even 1 who said it and really was independent. With millions of scientists worldwide and only about 40% government paid the chances of that happening without professing belief being a state requirement is less than of winning the Lottery Jackpot several weeks running.

QED We are being deliberately lied to by the state with all the power it can muster.

I didn't say it was primarily about cultivating prestige ... the point is that power and prestige are mutually self-supporting. Thus, prestige underwrites power. You need at least to read and understand Le Bon before you go any futher ... particularly:

So I checked again --- Chambers adds 'delusion' to the translation from Latin - adding also the precedent praestringere: 'to dazzle, blind'. To that translation Cassell's (Latin) adds 'to bind up; to tie up in front.' Tacitus transferred that to a sense of 'to blunt, or dull.'

To the meanings of praestigiae -arum, f. pl Cassell's adds 'deception, illusion, juggling.'

So, as you indicate Dr N: we can't defeat 'magicians' by adopting their methods. We identify them as the illusionists they are - and show how the 'tricks' are done. Even so, the audience falls into two camps: those who admire the arts of deception and those who find them nauseating. And, as someone else here has indicated - those in power tend to harness trompe l'oeil. I say Malory's use of Merlin (an anti-Christ figure) illustrates that for us. Funny how it keeps coming back to the frogules and our age-old battle against their incursion, though...

The fight has always been associated with the Power of the Word, which MAKES VISIBLE WHAT IS INVISIBLE. Maybe we need to find an opening in the entertainment business ourselves: to persuade someone to present an unromanticised take on Arthurian legend and the "new-fangled English." There's always Monty Python and the Holy Grail, for starters -- but surely we now have scope for new work that interprets the legends in light of historical contexts, like those of Malory's fate at the hands of europhile EIV, and even europhile Caxton, and even later smashing of the printing presses by other europhiles. All the situations provide good parallels for our times. Now that's something I'd like to work on!!!