Oh, Dear...

I picked up this morning's National Post (yes, we have a real, honest to goodness subscription now.  Hey, it was for charity. ;-D) and a below the fold, front page headline caught my eye.

Brought to the brink by climate change.

With this being right under the headline and photo about Haiti (which I won't even try to write about right now), I figured, did someone pull a Danny Glover?  Or was it another article talking about how yet another group of people are about to be wiped out by [fill in the blank] because of climate change?  Then I saw the subtitle

Mental duress

Oh, I thought.  Another article about the psychological disorders being blamed on climate change, then?

Well, almost.

It turned out to be an article about one Mardi Tindal, and her mental anguish about the failure of Copenhagen.

And just who is Marki Tindal, that we should know or care about her mental state?  Why, she's the newly elected moderator for the United Church of Canada, freshly back from COP15. Why she was there, I haven't figured out, but she was.  From the article...

Mardi Tindal, the newly elected moderator of the United Church of Canada, returned from last month's climate change summit in Copenhagen with a deep malaise. Not a true clinical depression, but an anxious despair that reduced her to weeping.

Okay, so I can see being really emotional coming back after a big event like that.  But seriously... at this point, I'd be concerned that she's taking on too much.

 

 She was so disappointed by the meeting's failure to reach a binding deal that she broke down in the car one day as her husband drove toward their home church in Brantford, Ont.

If I were her husband, yeah, I'd be worried.  Time to back off and regroup, Honey.  Something like that...

"I simply wept. My tears were quiet, but I spoke through them, and I was being listened to. My husband said, 'There is great power in what you have just said, and it is a powerful message that makes clear why you are weeping.' "

Seriously?  That was his response?  Aside from turning out to be an enabler, do people really talk like that?  I mean, I can understand writing like that, but talking?

"And I said, 'Doug, I'm weeping for the millions of lives that have been lost as a result of what did and did not happen in Copenhagen," Ms. Tindal said.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... hold on there.  Millions of live that have been lost?  When did this happen?  Copenhagen failed, millions of people dropped dead, and it never made the news? 

Right.  At this point, I'm thinking there is something seriously wrong with this woman's mental state.

Go and read the rest of the article.  Come back when you're done, and we'll chat some more...



Ya back?  Cool.

So the article goes on to quote Psychological Magazine and a UK psychiatrist, talking about how all sorts of things, from psychological disorders to the spread of infectious disease, are going to get worse because of climate change.  Then it tells how Ms. Tyndal travelled to Ottowa to personally deliver her letter of lament to the GG, PM and party leaders.  Other MPs will get theirs in the mail.

So here we have a woman who is clearly emotionally and mentally disturbed (and I don't mean that as any sort of diagnosis; just a description of her behaviour and comments as described in the article) who also thinks her mental state is important enough to share with Canada's political leaders.  All of them.

Then she's quoted...

"... the fate of civilization and of millions of the planet's life forms hanging by the frayed thread of inaction,"

Wow.  Who'd have thought that, after all these billions of years, life on earth was so very fragile?

 

Then she compares herself to abolitionist William Wilberforce, and suffragate Nellie McClung.  Oh, and yes!  There it is!  Martin Luther King, Jr.!  You just knew he had to be brought in, too, didn't you?

Mental duress and hubris, all wrapped up in one package.  Interesting combination.

"What if, instead of racial segregation, King had spoken about high greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere?"

WTF?  Seriously? Is she seriously equating gasses that make up 5% of the earth's atmosphere with racial segregation?  Is she suggesting that GHG levels can in any way match the importance of equal rights and the end of racism?

I know there are people out there who anthropomorphize animals, believing that they think and feel just like humans, and should have the same rights we have applied to them (if not more so), but this is the first time I've seen someone do the same with atmospheric gasses.  

Okay, all joking aside...

Here we have a woman who is clearly passionate about her beliefs about anthropogenic climate change.  Passionate to the point that it's effecting her mental and emotional state.  This is something that's on the rise, and particularly evident among children who have become so frightened by the alarmism they're taught in school, many are unable to sleep due to worries, have nightmares, suffer from depression and anxiety, etc.  In Ms. Tyndal's case, she's also a religious leader who is using her position to spread her beliefs.

What I'm wondering, though, is what's going to happen when reality hits?  How does someone with such a mental and emotional commitment to a cause respond to increasing evidence that the position they hold is false?  That they've been lied to and misled?  As more and more evidence of manipulation and collusion emerges; as increasing data is gathered and revealed, showing that AGW alarmism is the biggest manufactured scare in human history, how will people like Ms. Tyndal respond?  

 

What will their "mental duress" be then?