henke on 12/3/2015 at 06:24
I looked at the first few articles (or the beginnings of them rather, I'm not about to subscribe) but didn't find anything too outrageous. I usually try to avoid learning too much about what my favourite entertainers are like in real life because it sooner or later turns up some bad shit, and I'm certainly not going to go trawling the archives looking for that shit.
I understand that in the UK, his attitude, and those like it, are probably more prevalent and hard to ignore, and I get why it'd start grating after a while. But me over here (especially as I don't read the tabloids) wouldn't know anything about that. As far as I'm concerned Clarkson is just a funny character on a TV show, and I'd prefer to go on believing that, thanks!
Medlar on 12/3/2015 at 08:07
I have been watching Top Gear for many years and when Clarkson first joined the team in 1988 he came across as a lanky well spoken public school boy, which of course is what he was. His saving grace in those days was his knowledge of the auto industry and his growing confidence to criticise some of the dreadful cars being rolled out.
Unsurprisingly he has now become a cartoon character of himself, he is unashamedly right wing, smokes like a chimney and arrogant. He resurrected Top Gear from imminent closure, is a talented writer and extremely wealthy.
He is a marmite man, you either love him or hate him...
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Clarkson) wiki
faetal on 12/3/2015 at 08:38
Henke - about 1 in 10 of his columns are some variation on sexism, xenophobia / racism, classism, global warming denial etc...
I don't find Top Gear particularly offensive, other than the super-cringeworthy scripted and stage-managed studio segments and when Clarkson drops a clanger, but his general media output is genuinely vile. He honestly thinks that anthropogenic climate change is made up by scientists for whatever reason and regularly says as much in his column in the UK's most read "newspaper". If you view him by his Top Gear performances alone, I can understand why he might come across as some bumbling cad who is a bit old-fashioned and not terribly careful about what he says, but funny nonetheless. If you look at how input to public opinion however, you see what he is - an unapologetically psychopathic right-wing loon.
Thor on 12/3/2015 at 10:04
About global warming, I think it's just a climate cycle. We had an ice age thousands of years ago, but the temperature's been going up ever since. It still hasn't reached the peak before it starts to cool down into another ice age. A little approximate, but I think human influence isn't that big.
Also thanks for educating me on 1/3 of Top Gear, ttlg.
faetal on 12/3/2015 at 10:53
Well what you think is kind of unimportant, given that the overwhelming majority of scientists in relevant fields agree that man made climate change exists. That's not to say that natural climate cycles don't have an effect, it's just that they take millions of years, which means that it's gradual enough that evolution can keep up and ecosystems aren't necessarily destroyed. The warming which has been happening since we started releasing huge stores of greenhouse gases via industrialisation is faster than anything on record, including the warming which is posited to have caused the Permian mass extinction, which wiped out >90% of all life on earth with as little as 5 degrees of sudden (over ~200,000 years) climate increase. We've pushed average global temperatures up by as much as 1.2 degrees in just over 200 years and the rate of change in increasing as population growth increases energy demand and positive feedback mechanisms begin to kick in. We're already seeing the beginnings of de-synchronisation of plants and their insect pollinators - if too many plant species find themselves not being pollinated a few too many years in a row, we're looking at the beginnings of a food web collapse. Without enough time for natural adaptation to drive evolution of eco-systems, you're looking at species disappearing in reverse order of their resilience to change.
This isn't some thing which some people have made up or exaggerated, it's an extremely worrying and at some point irreversible threat to the earth's ability to carry us as a species. Of course it's more emotionally gratifying to not believe it and carry on with life as usual though, so I'm not surprised by the amount of dissonance being converted to disbelief (almost exclusively by those who don't understand the mechanisms they are hypothesising about). Anyway, if you want to chat about climate change, create a new thread or this one will end up all over the place.
SD on 12/3/2015 at 11:14
Quote Posted by henke
Preeeetty sure that's a joke. I've always taken his whole cranky oaf persona as just a character he's doing. Getting mad at Clarkson would be like getting mad at Homer Simpson, or Michael Scott.
Too true. It never fails to amaze me how many otherwise intelligent people have difficulty discerning between the character Jeremy Clarkson and the actor, Jeremy Clarkson, who plays him.
faetal on 12/3/2015 at 12:08
Talking of intelligence, how is it you know for certain that there is no overlap between the two?
(To the extent that you can make a statement that those who think otherwise are wrong, despite being "otherwise intelligent")
Pyrian on 12/3/2015 at 12:16
Quote Posted by Thor
We had an ice age thousands of years ago, but the temperature's been going up ever since. It still hasn't reached the peak before it starts to cool down into another ice age.
No, that's mostly wrong. The post-ice-age peak was about 8,000 years ago. We were in a slow cooling trend before we interrupted things.
Gryzemuis on 12/3/2015 at 13:25
It doesn't matter whether the earth is really warming up or not.
It doesn't matter whether this is a natural process, or man-made.
It doesn't matter if nature will adept in a way that Faetal likes or doesn't like.
The only thing that matters is the fact that humanity will not be able to do anything about it.
We can't solve world-hunger. That's a simple problem. A problem that we know how to solve. And a problem that's actually affordable, if we really wanted. But we can't solve world-hunger. Same goes for wars and regional conflicts and a lot of other bad stuff.
Anyone really believes we can convince 350 million Americans to use less energy ? Use less gas and oil ? Do you think we can convince China to stop with their progress ? What happens when India gets their act together ? Will they care that the West had 100-200 years to destroy the world, and now that it is their time, they have to sit still and be good ?
I think it's only worthwhile to worry about stuff that you can actually influence.
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About Clarkson. The world is full of political-correct people. Especially the media, tv and politics are full of them. It's boring. It's painful. It's contra-productive. It's conservative. What Clarkson does is kick some people in the shins. Whether he kicks the right people in the shins doesn't matter so much. Just the fact that he does it, is refreshing in today's world. I think that's why people like Clarkson.
