I’ve pointed out that Senator James Inhofe, the new Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is to Climate Denial what Strom Thurmond was to civil rights.
Climate denying members of congress need to be held accountable for their no-longer-in-the-basement Crazy Uncle.
Mainstream media has been slow on the draw to take apart climate denial talking points, and has for too long pursued a “false balance” approach to the climate issue – but a number of indicators seem to show that is changing.
If you’ve been following the blog this week, you know that key presidential hopefuls are beginning to hedge their climate denial positions, obviously in the face of changing poll numbers, and continued indicators of planetary change that cannot be ignored.
The fact that the long-somnolent media is awakening to the issue probably will be a factor as well.
Above, Time Science editor Jeffrey Kluger goes after Inhofe, much like CNN’s Jake Tapper did in an interview not long ago. (below)
I had no idea Inhofe was seven feet tall. Improves his stature in my mind.
The main stream media writes more often about killer bees than AGW. The owners of the MSM are all very powerful Republicans. Nowhere on the MSM will you find people talking about AGW in any ratio to its importance – and this includes radio, TV, newspapers and magazines.
And this is the fault of the Democrats, quite frankly. A party who still, after thirty years of failure, doesn’t have a clue how to move public opinion, or develop campaign issues, demand equal time, or even have a clear core philosophy. They have been doomed since Tip O’Neill retired, and still have not learned that they are bringing a penknife to a gunfight when it comes to the Republican party.
I think I actually hate them more than the Republicans.
Lets hope all the shoving and pushing works and we are on the brink of a breakthrough ..
Even the mild mannered Christian Science Monitor are wondering : –
“What are Republicans going to do about climate change?”
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2015/0123/What-are-Republicans-going-to-do-about-climate-change
NOTHING, I hope, as this BS is overblown. 1st off, take a strong of course scratch that Jake Tapper is wrong of course, only 53 so-called scientists actually wrote the original finding that AGW was occurring, far from the so-called consensus. Anyway, Censuses is not sciencejust what everyone believes. Try some more recent natural causes of worrying, http://onforb.es/1EhpNdL Here’s anothero hilarious one, “95% of Climate Models Agree: The Observations Must be Wrong”, http://tinyurl.com/mc3ggqd . And yes, two Canadians did rip apart Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick, regardless of what the National Science Foundation said.
“Yes. Of course. Because it’s harder to believe in science than it is to believe that there’s a four-decade plot afoot that virtually every country in the world has signed onto, dragging virtually every scientist in the world along with them—none of whom have ever had a crisis of conscience or spilled the beans in a bar or simply decided to sell the whole sordid story to the press—and that only a rump faction in the U.S. knows the truth. Makes perfect sense.”
http://tinyurl.com/ojefa4g
“the lack of acceptance of the science of climate change is neither due to a lack of knowledge, nor due to a misunderstanding of science”.
http://theconversation.com/is-it-time-to-take-science-out-of-the-climate-change-debate-36371
You’re right, it’s due to the failure of alarmists to present a convincing case, that the world is actually warming for other than natural cyclical events, like http://bit.ly/1ItI9Fa , and http://onforb.es/1EhpNdL , where we’re usually in glacial, but currently are lucky enough to be in an Interglacial period, lucky us!
“How can United States possibly compete in the scientific community when we have throwbacks like this running major committees.”
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/01/one-perfect-tweet-sums-why-climate-denial-congress-so-dangerous
“MORE AGNOSTICISM ON CATASTROPHIC ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING (CAGW)”, http://wp.me/p3JfLw-1b
I’m inclined to agree with this lady:
An Oregon University professor has controversially compared skepticism of global warming to racism.
Sociology and environmental studies professor Kari Norgaard wrote a paper criticising non-believers, suggesting that doubters need to be have a ‘sickness’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2123260/If-dont-believe-climate-change-sick-Oregon-professor-likens-skepticism-racism.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2123260/If-dont-believe-climate-change-sick-Oregon-professor-likens-skepticism-racism.html
I’m inclined to agree with her, too.
But the comments are telling — especially those that fixate on the professor’s appearance — as is the way the comments are ‘liked’. Perhaps this is indicative only of groupthink on the part of the Daily Mail’s readership, but the lack of action on the part of homo fatuus brutus suggests that it’s more widespread.
In 1775 James Hutton argued to the Royal Society of Edinburgh that the earth’s geology is motivated by a great underground heat source, and as well, the gradual attrition of land which led down the road to sedimentary formations. He also submitted that volcanoes and molten rock below the surface created new rock in a constant regenerative manner.
For that he was called an atheist. The other Society folks said, ‘Only God can create primordial rock’. At the time people thought granite (or other igneous rock) was of a ‘primordial’ nature: it was created when the Christian god created the earth and could not further be done so. Volcanoes got in the way of their ideology. Indeed a fellow by the name of Werner – a mineralogist – explained them away as merely coal seam fires that may just melt a little local rock. Another by the name of Kirwin straw-manned Hutton’s idea on erosion and its constancy, to expressly argue against the man, using a discrete, unrepresentative sample of a particular stream with no apparent earth being taken downward in it.
Today’s climate denialists are yesterday’s volcano denialists. Indeed I’ve written a 302 page satire on the subject, set in 1820 – 21.
“I’ve written a 302 page satire on the subject”
Sounds fun. Do you have a link?
I do. It’s something I just finished a few weeks ago: I’ve yet to read it myself from front to back, and have scarcely thought of the episodes (chapters) that were written in 2013, but I’ve thrown together ideas on science denial secondary to ideology, delinquent belief systems, and community identity; propagandistic subterfuge and the lingering nature it owns, even when rightly called out; how all of such affects and manifests through scientifically illiterate folks; and the idea of knowing something is probable, even in lieu of every nook and cranny detail, &c. I’ve even addressed the importance of science communication in the last chapter, and gave a hat tip to Climate Crocks and Skeptical Science.
The topics I covered were early geology, pre-Darwinian evolution, agricultural science. I even spent a few weeks deciphering James Hutton’s often disorderly, redundant, and long winded first chapter of his Theory of the Earth, and boiled it down to an elementary summary inside a science lecture that I placed in the story. I did the selfsame type of summary for Erasmus Darwin’s (grandfather of Charles Darwin) Zoonomia, for his chapter on evolution (E Darwin had sort of a Lamarckian view of evolution). And I threw in lots and lots of interesting quotes from the men themselves; some of the more famous being Hutton’s notion that the earth is in a timeless state of crustal ‘death’ and rejuvenation, and not a thing born 6,000 years ago: “But if the succession of worlds is established in the system of nature, it is in vain to look for any thing higher in the origin of the earth. The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,–no prospect of an end.”; and E Darwin’s idea that all life was born from a singular bacteria or bacterium set: “ …would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations; and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!” [this quote deals with the animal kingdom, but he actually generalizes it several paragraphs down (I’m just cutting and pasting what I used in my story.)]
There’s also some fun stuff where I use basic dimensional analysis driven calculations to solve logistical problems, and which further portrays how a scientist solves a problem in the face of both knowns and unknowns.
Anyway, soon as I read it through to gauge whether or not I accomplished my satirical goals, I’ll start promoting it (though it’s just a hobby, really). There may be a time, several months down the road where I do some more editing for a second edition, but here is the link nonetheless (my pen name is Thomas Smyth):
http://www.hiltonheadadventurer.com/PDF_backups/W&H_WorkingCopy.pdf
[The science related stuff, I think starts in Chapter 3, Pg. 67]
Or lulu prints hardcopies for ten bucks plus shipping:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/thomas-smyth/of-woodbridge-and-hedgely/paperback/product-22008695.html
Thanks!
In the 21st Century, we have developed a thin veneer of modern civilization. How would earlier mankind viewed a small minority that argued from self belief and stubbornness that the mass extinction of many species, severe impact to the poorest nations, is academically wrong and their own self formulated theory is right.
I am angry at such egotistic people who think they know better than our learning centers, very, very angry. I am not American and I do not understand (or care) about the difference between democrats and republicans, I do want to see progress, I do want to know that future generations have our support, and am fed up hearing such stories as this:-
“They went ‘balls to the wall’ with their drilling because they didn’t care. It was just money, money, money.”
There is more to life than a quick buck a lot, lot more.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/01/23/3612513/life-as-a-louisiana-fisherman/
Well said.
And remember, every baby starts off as a caveman.
Education is absolutely crucial.
Get it wrong, and you get American polictics!
“How would earlier mankind viewed a small minority that argued from self belief and stubbornness that the mass extinction of many species, severe impact to the poorest nations, is academically wrong and their own self formulated theory is right.” This is humorous to me as the alarmists have often stated that the world needs fewer people, that they are the chosen remaining few. If the world is subjected to wind turbines and solar panels, the undeveloped countries will never develop.One cannot melt steel with a solar panel. Who the egotistical one? all for a failed theory, that Al Gore developed from nowhere.
“One cannot melt steel with a solar panel.”
While this statement is technically correct for certain definitions of ‘solar panel’, in practise it is totally wrong.
I can only surmise that your favor of the massive solar concentrating farmers in the Mojave Desert of California, which burn birds wings, and destroy habitat for turtles. What environmentalist!
Life is full of choices. I show you proof that your mindset is flawed; you choose to think, or not.
you and dumboldguy show me the warmists BS
ZZZZZzzzzz………..!!!
For more on Inhofe’s talk last week, see MedievalDeception 2015: Inhofe Drags Senate Back To Dark Ages. Put another way, if you want to deceive, at least copy a higher quality of junk than an anonymous Wall Street Jounral Opinion piece.
You mean like http://on.wsj.com/1BuHGRM or http://bit.ly/1z6ezmZ ?
No, those are low quality junk also. I’d suggest that you try again, but really don’t want to encourage you to throw more denier BS against the wall.
Yeah, you’re right, 16 top-rated climate scientists is is real low-quality junk, isn’t it, gooh-ball.
Yes, Richard. Since you want to double down on your ignorance, I will again state that your link is JUNK of the lowest order, and has been thought to be so for the two years since the 16 denier shills signed it and the WSJ printed it. It has been ripped apart by dozens of REAL “top-rated” climate scientists since then.
Do you know anything at all about your so-called “top-rated climate scientists”, Richard? Richard Lindzen is the only one of them that can put forth the slightest claim of being a “climate scientist”, and he is perhaps one of the best known (and most-debunked) deniers. The rest of them are camp followers and shills for Exxon-Mobil, The Heartland Institute, The Marshall Institute, and other eight wing denier groups.
William Happer, Roger Cohen, Michael Kelly, Nir Shaviv, and Antonio Zichichi are physicists who work mainly NOT in areas related to climate science but in such areas as atomic physics, optics, and nanoscience. Rodney Nichols is a physicist who works as a policy wonk, not a scientist.
Claude Allegre is a geochemist, and Harrison H. Schmitt is a geologist
J. Scott Armstrong is a professor of business and marketing.
Jan Breslow is a doctor and geneticist.
Edward David is an electrical engineer
William Kininmonth is a retired weatherman
James McGrath is a polymer chemist
Burt Rutan and Henk Tennekes are aeronautical engineers
NONE of them have conducted any climate research or published any peer-reviewed articles with the exception of Lindzen. NONE of them have any business offering their bought and paid for (by the fossil fuel interests) opinions about climate change.
YOU have no business coming on Crock and crapping up our discussions with your ignorance.
And what the hell is a “gooh-ball”? Should I be insulted?
By the way,I a not looking for denier stuff, only waiting for a REASONABLE reason to be worried,about the so-called AGW-caused warming, and I haven’t heard one yet, certainly not one from YOU!
LOL (actually LMAO) at this comment. The irony and self-delusion are overwhelming.
1) You are “not looking for denier stuff”? You have never cited anything BUT “denier stuff” here. What ARE you looking for when you “research”?
2) Oh, I see. You’re “only waiting for a REASONABLE reason to be worried about the so-called AGW-caused warming” REASONABLE reason? Lord love a duck!
3) “so-called AGW-caused warming”? Ignoring the redundancies, the use of “so-called” indicates that your mind is closed (as if we didn’t know that).
You haven’t yet heard a REASONABLE reason to be worried,about the so-called AGW-caused warming because you are UNreasonable, ignorant of the science, and a motivated reasoner of the highest order, You don’t WANT to hear REASON because you are content in your little conservative dream world parroting denier horseshit.
(And you really ought to change your Gravatar profile—-calling yourself “politically moderate” is laughable).