The Prophet Chicken Little, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #157
February 15, 2010 Mike Gold 0 Comments
Warning: trick ending ahead!
Every time it snows, the right wing fatheads seize the opportunity to prove to America just how stupid they are.
Climate change does not mean it will never get cold. There’s a big difference between climate and the weather, and the Republican ostriches are either too dumb or too preoccupied to understand that. Washington’s got three feet of snow? That’s not even remotely typical. Besides, you’d think the Repubs would be happy that nature is fulfilling their most intense wet dream: the Capitol has been shut down.
So the Virginia Republican Party has been sponsoring all kinds of videos and speeches that say that because it’s snowing, the whole climate change thing is a farce and the Democrats who support this conspiracy should be voted out. They’re hardly alone out there in the Virginia Redlands, but their Internet videos have captured the media’s attention.
If the Republicans get their way, their grandchildren may drown. My grandchildren may drown. And it will be the Republicans’ fault, but they won’t understand that until they’ve been forced to move to their plush estates in eastern Nevada.
Yeah, yeah. I can hear it now. The Repubs are simply using exaggeration and metaphor to make a point. Sure. You betcha. I used to believe that, but by now they’ve been babbling their pre-packaged manta so often and with such conviction that I firmly believe they actually mean what they say, in the very words they say it. You repeat a lie often enough and you begin to believe it. More important, others believe you mean it.
Besides, there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that Republican party leaders Michael Steele, Eric Cantor and Sarah Palin are speaking from their hearts, and in Brief-Governor Palin’s case from her palm as well. As usual Rush Limbaugh is speaking from his ass, which is the true seat of the Republican Party. All of these nincompoops are true believers.
Think about this: the Winter Olympics started last Friday in Vancouver, British Columbia. Without snow. In February. In Vancouver! Screw the melting glaciers and the ever-shrinking Antarctic; balmy Vancouver’s too hot for snow. They’ve actually had to bring in snow by truck and even helicopter.
Oh, and for the record: on a global basis, January 2010 was the warmest January ever recorded. Ever.
There’s only one cure for this nonsense. We’ve got to get over the two-party system that has strangling debate and progress. We need at least four, maybe five viable parties. We’ve got the electorate in at least as many camps; it’s high time we had all significant points of view represented in Washington, and we as citizens have the true right to choose.
But my being pro-choice is hardly a surprise.
Comics industry graybeard and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show onThe Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed the following Thursdays at 10:00 PM Eastern. Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants pop up each and every live-long day at the same venue. He is also at the start of finishing three books, and as the saying goes, hopes to read more after that.
Marc Alan Fishman
February 15, 2010 - 10:26 am
Rush speaks from his ass? You were right… that WAS a twist… of the colon. Adding viable parties to our crap system requires those “new” parties to figure out a way to market themselves, and their views. Too many stooopid American’s just vote based on what they think to be true.
Are you a Christian who believes the brown people fear our freedom? Vote Red or be Dead!
Are you a Pink-Commie who wants to government to solve all your problems, and kiss you goodnight? Vote Blue or be screwed!
For now, the extra parties only take away margins (generally) from the demo(n)crats… I’d like to see a fairer system, but fear that more parties may actually require more people with real intelligence… not spin doctors to be running our country.
R. Maheras
February 15, 2010 - 12:21 pm
There is no proof that the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere during the past 250 years will cause sea levels to rise.
That isn’t a Republican talking point, that’s a fact.
There’s no proof, and I defy you, or anyone, to cite any.
I’ll even do you one better. There IS proof that CO2 levels do NOT have anything to do with rising sea levels.
According to the IPCC (the body responsible for the original claims that sea levels will rise because CO2 levels are rising), ice core samples prove that during the 10,000 years before the year 1750, CO2 levels were remarkably stable.
They emphasize that fact, of course, to hammer home their theory that the industrial revolution upset the atmosphere’s CO2 stability, and the increases in CO2 will lead to Global Warming, rising sea levels, famine, super hurricanes, etc., etc.
Well, as far as the rising sea levels theory goes, the IPCC is full of shit.
How do I know? Simple. During that same 10,000 years of CO2 stability in the atmosphere that the IPCC talks about, sea levels steadily and inexorably rose more than 50 meters. That’s right… sea levels rose more than 150 feet… higher than a 15-story building. And, yes, they continue to rise — yet they have risen at a LINEAR rate during the past 100 years, regardless of what the CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been.
That pretty much kills the alleged CO2/sea levels link, in my opinion.
It also brings into question the IPCC’s theory that rising CO2 levels will bring about all of the changing climate extremes they claim. For, during the 10,000 years of CO2 stability, there were all kinds of changes in the climate extremes — from centuries-long warming periods to mini ice ages.
This is not a partisan argument, mind you. This is a science vs. political hysteria argument.
Alan Coil
February 15, 2010 - 12:55 pm
“Every single year since 1917 has been hotter than 1917. Every single year since 1956 has been hotter than 1956. Every single year since 1992 has been hotter than 1992.”
Them’s the facts, Jack.
Vinnie Bartilucci
February 15, 2010 - 8:18 pm
“Them’s the facts, Jack”
And of course you have a verifiable source to go with that fact? Indeed, quote, since you used quotation marks?
Seven-tenths of one degree, Celsius. Specifically 0.74 degree, 1.33 degrees farenheit. With a margin of error of 0.18 °C, or 0.32 °F
–IPCC (2007-05-04). “Summary for Policymakers”. Climate Change 2007
That’s the mean temperature rise they can (for lack of a better term) prove in the last century.
Ask the average person how much they THINK the temperature has gone up, based on the things they’ve heard. People think The Day After Tomorrow was a documentary. Hell, people think An Inconvenient Truth was a documentary.
Look at this chart. That increase LOOKS precipitous until you look at the scale on the X-Axis. It’s a scale of less than one degree. When Al Gore showed charts like this in his film, how clearly did he point out that scale? How many people saw the line alone, and thought “WOW, that looks like a lot”?
Note the DROP in temperature from the 40’s to the 80’s. (Especially you, Alan, since it flies in the face of your “fact” mentioned above.) Because of that drop, scientists (and the environmentalist movement) were CONVINCED that the Earth was COOLING just 30 years ago. Newsweek wrote about it – a transcript and scan are available here.
I’ve said it before, I shall say it again. Global Warming is the latest attempt to terrify people into doing something perfectly reasonable and good, namely, clean up the environment. Clobal cooling didn’t work, the hole in ozone layer didn’t scare anybody, and nobody really got a good explanation of acid rain across (I got one in seventh grade, I understand it perfectly, and I STILL know its effect is negligible) But with Global Warming they scored a win, and have people scared enough that they’re passing all sorts of laws that will achieve exactly nothing in improving the environment, and causing enough cynical damage to the GOOD idea of cleaning things up that The Conservicans will be able to wave off a number of GOOD ideas that will cost business too much.
They went with a scary name that would get a response, and didn’t think ahead. The changes to the climate can (so it’s hastily explained, and as it was explained to me as the “greenhouse effect” with I was in THIRD FUCKING GRADE) can cause more extreme weather in both directions, i.e. colder winters and hotter summers. But again, they went with “Global warming” leaving themselves wide open for the endless “Hey, how come it’s SNOWING so much?” attacks we’re hearing between chuckles. Totally their fault – f you call something red, and then blue things start showing up, you’re going to lose credibility when you have to come back and explain “Well, it’s ewd, but when blue shows up, that only proves our point”. They went for the grabber, and damn the actual facts, such as they are.
Even the Global Warming people know they screwed up with the name, which is why for tha last year or so they’ve been slowly steering towards the use of “Climate Change”. Almost a year ago, the New York Times wrote about this subtle change to the verbiage to get away from the terminology that people had started roling their eyes up and turning their ears off to. This is not a case of, say, amending the theory in the face of new or contrary data, this is a simple repackaging. The crowning irony is that they have chosen to go with the term that Bush The Younger was using, because he didn’t want to address/admit Global Warming, a term that they all PILLORIED him for, calling him a “denier”.
The Global Warming people can’t even get the stories straight with their previous attempts. Just a few days ago, scientists were saying that the hole in the ozone was getting better, but this was a BAD thing, because it will helpcontribute to global warming.
Cleaning up the environment is a great idea, for many reasons that barely even need explaining. Cleaner air, cleaner water, easier to catch fish and grow plants, not to mention breathe. We should absolutely plant more trees, the single simplest and most attractive way to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is entirely possible to be all for improving the environment AND still believe Global Warming is puffed-up flummery.
We shouldn’t have to scare people into it. But if you’re going to, get your story straight, because what inevitably happens is the pendulum will swing the other way and it’s revealed your bucket don’t hold ice. And “they” (the unshaven hordes who vote people into office despite what the smart people know is better for them) will jump to the conclusion that there’s NO problem at all, and try to get any positive work done on environmental issues for a few years.
As long as they’re trying to rename their horse, why not just go with calling it “pollution” and sticking to reasonable ideas that don’t need nightmare fuel poured all over it to make it swallowable.
Alan Coil
February 15, 2010 - 8:36 pm
It doesn’t matter how many sources I had, Vinnie, because you deniers deny even the proof.
Google the quote. Read the article by Johann Hari. Then simply continue to deny, as I know you will. I have faith in you.
Vinnie Bartilucci
February 15, 2010 - 9:08 pm
“you deniers deny even the proof.”
What proof? The quote. Is wrong.
The chart I posted flatly disproves it.
Russ and I present documented information, articles and statistics. Sourced quotes, mostly from the IPCC itself.
And you wave your hands and post a heartfelt quote (which you still haven’t sourced, asking me to do that work) and call it fact.
That’s rather a microcosm of the entire debate.
I am in favor of improving the enrironment. I have lots of flourescent bulbs in my house, and if I could afford a Tesla, I would buy one. I am NOT in favor of doing good things for the wrong reasons.
We are standing on the same side of this argument – we both think we should clean things up a bit. But because I don’t hold to your nightmare scanario, in short, since I don’t agree on the REASONS we should do the thing we both agree we should do, you call me a “denier”.
Do you not see the problem here?
Yes, I deny. I dare to suggest that of ALL the reasons that cleaning up the environment is a good thing, this ONE, the one you’re hitched your wagon to, is questionable. As for such heinous act I am tarred with the epithet “loony” by people who will first act offended and claim that I was twisting their words and never said “loony” and never once notice that it’s a quote from a Monty Python sketch.
It frightens me that people like you have convinced so many, so completely, of so little. Of course, the same people will pillory the power of advertising for all but cramming Big Macs down their throats, never once admitting that it weren’t for the same power, we’d still all be agreed that we should clean up the environment just because “less pollution is good” is almost a truism.
It’s not enough that I do the right thing, I have to agree with you about why. Well, sorry, if you reasons don’t hold water, then yeah, I’ll have to keep doing the things you want me to do for MY reasons, and suffer your slings and arrows.
Alan Coil
February 15, 2010 - 10:13 pm
I told you how to find the article. That you don’t care to look for it says it all.
R. Maheras
February 16, 2010 - 12:57 am
Alan Coil wrote: ““Every single year since 1917 has been hotter than 1917. Every single year since 1956 has been hotter than 1956. Every single year since 1992 has been hotter than 1992.” Them’s the facts, Jack.”
If they are, indeed, facts, they have absolutely nothing to do with my discussion about the theory linking rising CO2 levels since 1750, and rising sea levels.
Was that some sort of diversionary move to avoid addressing my research, or did you just not pay any attention to anything I said?
R. Maheras
February 16, 2010 - 1:16 am
Good ol’ BBC.
They just interviewed the “Climategate” professor whose University of East Anglia department was behind much of the original Global Warming data that was bandied about, and now he’s hemming and hawing, back-pedaling, and sounds as defensive as hell. And he even admits that we may have had warmer periods in the recent past, and that he’s not very good at keeping track of data.
He even admits there’s been some recent cooling! Although, he added, “not much.”
This is the guy whose data is responsible for a push to spend hundreds of billions — even trillions — on future environmental policy???
Holy guacamole!!!
Read it for yourself: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511701.stm
Vinnie Bartilucci
February 16, 2010 - 4:42 am
“I told you how to find the article.”
“Google it” is not telling someone how to find something. It’s the 21st century version of “look it up if you don’t believe me”. Give an address. Do something that isn’t an empty gesture leading to “You see?”
“That you don’t care to look for it says it all.”
You are like the best person to debate. You’re a clown bopper – you bounce back up with a smile on your face ready for the next pummelling.
You are everything that the average person expects in a liberal. You say nearly nothing, refuse to back up a single thing you do say with anything remotely resembling evidence, and you expect everyone to bow to your will simply because you feel you’re right. You run entirely on feelings, while Russ and I (and a fair bit of the rest of the world) can present all the documented (and SOURCED) information we like, and it bounces off like complaints off a Southwest Airlines representatives. You could be taken, unchanged, and inserted into a King of the Hill episode.
And I can come up with all the invective and verbiage I want, and entertain everyone reading, but at the end of the day, that’s all I’m doing, because I know that in my heart I know NOTHING I say will convince you of anything.
But it keeps the crowd happy, so I keep on. Just understand that when I argue with you, I’m using you like a jobber, for the entertainment of the audience. My entrance theme is “Human Cannonball” and you come out to “Tubthumping”. And while a few people might look at you with a bit of pity and a mumbled “Aw, bless” and others might root for you simply because they don’t like the other guy’s gimmick, there’s little doubt who’s walking back to the Gorilla with hands raised.
Vinnie Bartilucci
February 16, 2010 - 5:36 am
A couple interesting points from the BBC article Russ cited (with a link, the proper way of citing things)
“I’m a scientist trying to measure temperature. If I registered that the climate has been cooling I’d say so. But it hasn’t until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend.”
So the temperature has been going down, but that’s to be discounted. Why? Mightn’t that show progress against the fight, a battle some maintain cannot be won? But it’s not in line with the desired results, so it’s downplayed and explained away
“He said many people had been made sceptical about climate change by the snow in the northern hemisphere – but they didn’t realise that the satellite record from the University of Alabama in Huntsville showed it had been the warmest January since records began in 1979.”
That’s Mike’s point about the warmest January. One thing that isn’t mentioned (and I’m curious to learn it) is by how much the temperature exceeded the previous ones. Since we’re talking about a mean increase of less than one degree Celsius over a century, I’m betting it’s a vanishingly small amount, no more than, I’ll guess a tenth of a degree. An increase, yes, but one so small that I imagine that is people heard the actual number, they’d reply, “That’s IT? You got me all worked up for THAT?” So the actual amounts are mentioned in hushed tones, if at all, and people are left to imagine how much these increases are.
But the part that I find interesting is that while they’ve been talking about a century of tracking in other research, this measurement is based on only thirty years of data. Now to be fair, thirty years is plenty of time to examine a trend, and the satellite measurements are much more accurate than whatever methods they were using before that. As you go back, the reliability of the temperature measurements becomes slightly less credible, based on the limited nature of the sampling and the lower level of the technology available.
But in both cases, it’s far from enough to accurately show changes on a geologic scale. The “Middle Ages Warm Period” which he mentioned is a period of similar warming (and a later droppong back to “normal temperature” that scientists believe occured (based on modern measuring methods) about the time of the Renaissance. FAR beofre there was enough technology to make an effect on the Earth by humanity. There is evidence that these increases have happened before, and had little input from man. But again, that’s not in the window of results that are desired, so that is’t mentioned often, except by crackpots and deniers. Some of which work and have worked for crackpot organizations like NASA.
Alan Coil
February 16, 2010 - 10:03 am
Lemme explain this to you in simpler terms. Take the entire quote I posted. Cut and paste it into the Google search window. Hit enter. The first item on the search page is the article by Johann Hari.
I’ll not respond to the rest of your posting, as it is simply character assassination.
R. Maheras
February 16, 2010 - 10:54 am
Johann Hari is a leftist journalist who has a long history of being a political shill. In my opinion, he has about as much credibility as Rush Limbaugh.
Vinnie Bartilucci
February 16, 2010 - 7:19 pm
I had a bad day. So in the words of Bugs Bunny, “I can’t play with you now…I got IMPORTANT things ta do!”
I’ll start up again with the next crazy thing one of these columnists says.
Rick Oliver
February 17, 2010 - 6:03 am
Well, if there is no global warming, or there is but CO2 doesn’t cause it, could someone please tell the president to stop shilling for the nuclear power industry? And also to stop talking about the mythical “clean coal”.
Personally I drive a diesel truck. Very low CO2 emissions but lots of soot; so I’m counteracting the non-existent CO2-based global warming with global dimming.
Alan Coil
February 17, 2010 - 10:36 am
Vinnie…again…with the dismissive, down the nose look, and the “I’ve got important things ta do.”
Keep your head in the sand, Vinnie.
Reg
February 18, 2010 - 3:50 pm
I have online subscriptions to several regional papers…and found the following timely (in terms of this thread) article. Should add a little more fuel to the discussion.
“Norwegian diplomat: beware climate change
A worried Norwegian ambassador to the United States visited Charlotte on Wednesday to raise awareness of global warming.
While warming in the Southeast was negligible for much of the past century, Norway is among a handful of Arctic nations witnessing rapid changes at the top of the globe.
The 2009 mean temperature in Spitsbergen, in the country’s north, was 5.2 degrees above the 1961-1990 average, the government says, warning that traditional sports like skiing may disappear in some areas. And because most Norwegians live on the long coastline, they’re wary of rising seas.
“I can jump out of my kitchen window into the ocean,” said Ambassador Wegger Christian Strommen. “That’s why we’re scared.”
Arctic sea ice has declined by 11 percent per decade over the past three decades, said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center. Meier was one of two scientists appearing with Strommen.
Sea ice is disappearing faster than climate models predicted, he said. It’s also thinning to about half its historic depth, releasing more of the ocean’s heat into the atmosphere. That, in turn, influences global ocean currents and wind patterns that can alter climate in distant places like North Carolina.
“What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic,” Meier said.
Melting sea ice won’t raise sea levels. But melting glaciers, which are receding rapidly in Greenland and elsewhere, will. Recent projections predict seas will rise 2.6 feet to 6.4 feet by 2100, threatening much of North Carolina’s low-lying coast.
Climate models predict faster sea-level rise, warmer temperatures and more intense droughts, rainfall and storms.
Average Southeastern temperatures rose only 0.3 degrees between 1901 and 2008, but 1.6 degrees between 1970 and 2008, said Ellen Douglas, a water engineer at the University of Massachusetts. The region also grew drier since 1970, she said.
Congressional action on climate change has been slowed by upcoming elections and focus on the economy, said Rafe Pomerance, a former Clinton administration official now with Clean Air-Cool Planet. Some observers don’t expect action to limit greenhouse gases this year.
Worldwide, he said, “the essential factor is U.S. leadership. The rest of the world simply won’t do this if we don’t.” “
Reg
February 19, 2010 - 6:35 pm
And perhaps giving comfort to the opposing side…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/02/unknowns_behind_climate_chiefs.html
« Previous | Main
Unknowns behind climate chief’s resignation
Richard Black | 08:31 UK time, Friday, 19 February 2010
Rumours that Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate official, would be leaving his post well before the end of this year were rife even during the Copenhagen summit.
The theory went like this. If Copenhagen turned out to be a “failure” – however you want to define that – then someone would have to take the blame.