Climate Change

James Inhofe, God, Leeches and Climate Change

March 12, 2012 By mario piperni

Worried about climate change and its devastating effects on our planet? Don’t be. God’s got it covered. And you don’t need to believe me. Believe instead Senator James Inhofe.

Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that “as long as the earth remains there will be springtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.” My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.

Senator James Inhofe’s solution to dealing with climate change is to sit on your ass and rely on a book written at a time when the earth was thought to be flat and much of medicine involved curing illness by way of spells and incantations. By the way, whatever happened to bloodletting? Did science go and kill off that most respectable method of fending off disease? Damn scientists.

So Inhofe goes off and writes a book he titles The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future but leaves out the fact that oil and gas industries have contributed over $1.3 million to his political campaigns. He also finds it outrageous and arrogant that anyone could possibly believe that humans have any effect over God’s climate but thinks it completely plausible that you accept that tens of thousands of scientists the world over have conspired to engineer this enormous hoax. As a ThinkProgress reader put it…

It’s so much easier to believe that the world’s atmospheric scientists are faking millions of bits of data in thousands of scientific papers in dozens of different scientific fields–and different languages–and cross-matching them so that they all tell a story that is 180 degree opposed from reality, and making sure no one spills the beans.

Well…yes, that is exactly what Inhofe and other climate change deniers want you to believe. After all, why shouldn’t rational people believe the brilliant minds on the right over the world’s top scientists, you know, those pinheads in white lab coats and elitist university degrees hanging on their office walls.

That great scientific mind, Bill O’Reilly, once summed up in eight simple words how scientific thought works in Wingnuttia. It goes like this, “Sun up, sun down. Tide in, tide out.”

Now let’s get back to the serious work of leeches and bloodletting.

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Filed Under: Climate Change, global warming, Idiot Talk Tagged With: James Inhofe

Newt The Dinosaur Guy

January 2, 2012 By mario piperni

Here’s what an ass sounds like when he’s:

a) so full of himself, it starts oozing out of every body orifice.
b) so desperate to win that he…
c) tries to win over the idiot base by pretending he doesn’t believe in global warming science.

“I’m an amateur paleontologist, so I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the earth’s temperature over a very long time,” Gingrich said. “I’m a lot harder to convince than just by looking at a computer model.”

Pathetic. Newt Gingrich once dreamed of becoming a zookeeper, read a couple of books on dinosaurs and kept a T-Rex skull in his office when he served as Speaker of the House and that, he believes, qualifies him to dismiss climate change data as erroneous. Gingrich, the pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-scientist bullshit artist feels he’s better equipped to determine the validity of climate science than the 98% of the world’s climatologists who study this stuff day in, day out and warn of the impending danger of ignoring the data.

Gingrich’s statement is too ridiculous for words but yet they’re words of wisdom to those less knowledgeable than Newt. That’s simply the way it works.

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Filed Under: Climate Change Tagged With: gingrich

Republicans Rewriting Science

October 13, 2011 By mario piperni

Conservative, anti-science, knuckle-dragging ignorance is alive and well in Texas.

Top environmental officials under Perry have gutted a recent report on sea level rise in Galveston Bay, removing all mentions of climate change. For the past decade, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which is run by Perry political appointees, including famed global warming denier Bryan Shaw, has contracted with the Houston Advanced Research Center to produce regular reports on the state of the Bay. But when HARC submitted its most recent State of the Bay publication to the commission earlier this year, officials decided they couldn’t accept a report that said climate change is caused by human activity and is causing the sea level to rise. Top officials at the commission proceeded to edit the paper to censor its references to human-induced climate change or future projections on how much the bay will rise.

[...]

TCEQ even deleted a reference to the fact that the bay is currently rising by 3 millimeters a year—five times faster than the long-term average. The edited version that TCEQ sent back also killed a line noting that the bay’s “future will be strongly regulated by the now rising sea,” as well as the factual assertion that the disappearance of the wetlands is “due mainly to direct human intervention.” The officials also cut out the statement that the water level rise “is one of the main impacts of global climate change.”

The degree of willful ignorance on the part of GW deniers is astounding. Fossil fuel lobbyists line the pockets of politicians as they go about the dirty business of censoring scientific research on the causes and effects of climate change. None of this is new to conservatives and Republicans. From day one, the Bush administration blatantly censored government funded research which ran counter to the story they were promoting. From 2007.

The Bush administration was yesterday accused of systemic tampering with the work of government climate scientists to eliminate politically inconvenient material about global warming.

At a hearing of Congress, scientists and advocacy groups described a campaign by the White House to remove references to global warming from scientific reports and limit public mention of the topic to avoid pressure on an administration opposed to mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions.

Such pressure extended even to the use of the words “global warming” or “climate change”, said a report released yesterday by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Government Accountability Project. The report said nearly half of climate scientists at government agencies had been advised against using those terms.

And here’s a 2006 piece on James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world’s top climatologists.

…this imminent scientist says that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is little point in discussing climate change with your run-of-the-mill, Fox News parrot. These people are clueless. Enough of them would believe that the earth is flat and the center of our solar system if Bill O’Reilly believed it to be so. If these fools are unwilling to accept the scientific consensus of 98% of the world’s climatologists over that of a lying monkey, it’s fair to assume that anything anyone else has to say on the matter will have little impact on their beliefs. It’s an old line but true nonetheless – you can’t fix stupid.

The focus needs to be on ensuring that as many as possible of the politicians who push an anti-science, GW denying agenda, remain out of power. If there’s no Rick Perry or George W. Bush to appoint officials with the authority to censor and make a mockery of science, then maybe, truth and common sense can win out.

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Filed Under: Climate Change, science Tagged With: global warming, Republican anti-science

‘Mushy’ Mitt Romney

August 25, 2011 By mario piperni

Rick Perry has pulled ahead of the pack and Mitt Romney did what Romney does best – retreat from his core beliefs.

Romney – June 2011:

“I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that.”

“It’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.”

Perry – August 2011:

“I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. I don’t think, from my perspective, that I want America to be engaged in spending that much money on still a scientific theory that has not been proven, and from my perspective, is more and more being put into question.”

Romney – August 2011:

“Do I think the world’s getting hotter? Yeah, I don’t know that but I think that it is.”

“I don’t know if it’s mostly caused by humans.”

“What I’m not willing to do is spend trillions of dollars on something I don’t know the answer to.”

“I do not believe in cap and trade and I do not believe in putting a carbon cap” on polluting industries, Romney said.

Just like he did on abortion, gay rights, gun control, immigration, campaign finance and health care, Romney has turned away from previously stated positions and sold his soul in hope of becoming the next president. The latest Gallop poll has Perry taking a commanding lead over Romney as Republican’s candidate of choice – 29% for Perry, 17% for Romney. Combine that with endorsements from climate skeptics in the Senate – yes I refer to the pathetically stupid Jim Inhofe…

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe said Wednesday that he plans to endorse Texas Gov. Rick Perry for president.

“I called Rick Perry a year ago and told him, ‘If you’re running for president, I’ll be the first to endorse you,’” Inhofe said at a State Chamber of Commerce breakfast at the Tulsa Press Club.

“I’m going to be that person on Monday.”

Inhofe said he “likes Mitt Romney, but he’s a little mushy on environmental issues.”

…and what you’re left with is Romney pulling a 180…again. He sees his second chance at fulfilling his dream in danger of slipping away at the hands of a Texas fool and his gut reaction is to immediately pander to the ignorance of the base he so desperately needs to win.

One can almost feel for Romney and the dilemma he finds himself in. He has come to learn what it is to be a candidate in today’s Republican Party – a truth expressed so well by a reader at TPM.

You can’t have an informed, reasonable position on anything, i.e. one that is based on established fact or a preponderance of scientific evidence (e.g. climate change, evolution) and be a viable Republican candidate. Mitt knows this; Huntsman will learn it soon enough.

Faust is alive and well and living in the heart and soul of Mitt Romney.

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Filed Under: Climate Change, Republican Dicks Tagged With: mitt romney

Republicans – On The Wrong Side of Science

August 22, 2011 By mario piperni

In the last post, Gary Johnson spoke of Republicans, social issues and intolerance. Let’s now take a look at Republicans and the views on climate change held by those vying for the President’s job.

Rick Perry:

“I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. I don’t think, from my perspective, that I want America to be engaged in spending that much money on still a scientific theory that has not been proven, and from my perspective, is more and more being put into question.”

Michele Bachmann:

“I think all these issues have to be settled on the base of real science, not manufactured science.”

Rick Santorum:

“It’s just an excuse for more government control of your life. And I’ve never been for any scheme or even accepted the junk science behind the whole narrative.”

Jon Huntsman:

“The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party – the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012. When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science – Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.”

And we won’t even get into Republicans and evolution.

Make no mistake about it, the Republican Party is the anti-science party. But if critical thinking is not your thing and you happen to be a Fox News guzzling lapdog who watches and believes the crap served on that network, then Perry, Bachmann and Santorum are the ones you should be sticking with. And if Sister Sarah joins the race, throw her into the moron heap as well. But if you’re a thinking conservative, then you might want to consider Huntsman. A presidential debate between Mr. Huntsman and President Obama would be a fine thing to watch and would do much to elevate American politics beyond the cartoon spectacle it has now become. Sadly, it’ll never happen.

Who is leading the Republican primary? Rick Perry. Who doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning the primary? Jon Huntsman.

Obviously, the GOP has no intention of relinquishing its well earned title as the Party of Ignorance.

UPDATE:

Michael Tomasky is also impressed with Huntsman…

Far be it from me to fail to do my small part to help seal Jon Huntsman’s doom, so count me as one more impressed liberal. His tweet from last week about believing in science and evolution and his remarks from his This Week appearance on Sunday, in which he disparaged his opponents on various reality-based grounds, were the words of a man who actually occupies this planet (and I mean the 4.5 billion-year-old one, not the one formed divinely 6,000 years ago when caveman and dinosaur fell simultaneously from the sky). Occupying this planet, of course, gives him no chance of winning the GOP primary, but it does give the rest of us a narrow thread of hope about the future.

[...]

The Huntsman strategy here is obvious: position himself as the moderate and reasonable guy on the off chance Republicans decide to be moderate and reasonable. We must assume he is aware that his odds on this are rather long, so what he’s really hoping for is to be the consensus candidate of 2016. Maybe the party just has to go through this purge, this Reign of Terror; so just let it do that, and once it does and nominates an extremist who can’t beat a weak incumbent during a time of 9 percent unemployment rates, and the heads are piled high enough in the tumbrels and enough people finally have returned to their senses, he will ride the Thermidorian wave to victory after Obama leaves town.

…but with a warning for liberals.

Remember: at the recent Fox News debate, when the candidates were asked to raise their hands if they would oppose a long-term budget deal that cut $10 for every single dollar it raised in revenue, Huntsman’s hand shot up just like Mitt Romney’s and Newt Gingrich’s did. There are some forms of standing out he is clearly not willing to do, and let’s keep focused on those, because liberals are too easily won over (as he surely knows) by Republicans who sound reasonable on cultural issues.

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