Tag: climate change

I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.

[…] 

What we ought to be doing is inventing a whole series of breakthrough mechanisms that create incentives for people to have a better environmental outcome in an economically positive way, to accelerate the transition to better and cleaner technologies.

Disgraced former Speaker Newt Gingrich, speaking in 2007.
Source: Washington Post

Not Equal to the Challenge

John McCain, 2008: We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers [of climate change] are great. The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge.
John McCain, 2010: It’s an inexact science.
Ezra Klein, 2011: I take that as an exact answer to McCain’s original question: No, our government is not equal to the challenge.
Lemkin: The moment people are even one one hundredth as irrationally terrified of carbon emissions as they are of dread “radiation” (regardless of source, quantity, exposure, time, distance, shielding, or any other mitigating factor: sweet merciful Flying Spaghetti Monster, it’s RADIATION!!!!!) then we’ll be getting somewhere on the issue. Until then: Al Gore is fat. It snowed today. And etc… The fact is: carbon emissions (and the associated other outputs of fossil fuel use) have a real, daily, and quantifiable health impact upon us all over and above the impacts on the broader global environment. That’s a collective impact that is almost certainly immeasurably greater in terms of real damage to lives, lifespan, and property than that of all nuclear accidents everywhere and forever combined. But, hey: Charlie Sheen everyone!

Does EPA propose we stop breathing?

John Shimkus, (R, IL), showing the intellectual rigor on carbon emissions that he will bring to the Energy Committee, which he hopes to chair.
Similarly, Shimkus believes that God’s Biblical promise not to destroy the Earth again after that whole flood unpleasantness singularly disproves any possible dangers that might arise from that whole imaginary hoax that is climate change.
I look forward to numerous investigations into The Rainbow Connection.

Barack Obama understands that if people ignore George Will and believe the planet is getting warmer rather than cooler, that this will make him more politically popular. He also knows that people might believe scientists about something like this. His problem is that while American scientists are all ready to coordinate their message in order to advance a foreign agenda, JournoList doesn’t have the reach necessary to extend this kind of partisanship to foreign scientists. Fortunately, though, foreigners hate America. And foreigners know that Obama’s death panels and general socialism will cripple the US economy. So in order to boost Obama’s fortunes, they’ve gotten 48 countries’ worth of scientists together to promote this lie. Fortunately, George Will still has the guts to call it like it is and the Post—and dozens of other papers across the country—still publish his bold work. Kudos.

Matthew Yglesias explaining it all

Blather in the Wild

Bob Somerby notes it too:

Question: Have you seen any stories about the way the heat wave proves that global warming is happening? We ask because of the lunacy that occurred when it snowed in D.C. this year.

[…]

There has been no nonsense this week—and that, of course, is good. But in these well-twinned weather events, we can’t help seeing the shape of American politics over the past forty years. One tribe has broadcast well-known bits of nonsense: Socialized medicine has failed wherever it’s been tried! The Social Security trust fund has already been spent! If we lower tax rates, we get extra revenue! In the absence of active attempts at rebuttal, such nonsense has been quite effective. Claims of this type have driven American politics, as in the past year’s debate about the Obama health plan.

Many people believed what they heard about that unusual snow in D.C. This week, it’s been very hot in D.C. Thankfully, not a word has been said.

I tend to agree up to a point, in that it is intellectually comfortable to see a lack of foolishness in the discourse. But, by the same token, you cannot win a the larger game you refuse to play the smaller one. And, let’s face it, The Democrat categorically refuses to use a convenient heat wave (or, for that matter, any other politically useful event) to make the GOP an object of derision; the GOP and its media enablers have no such compunction about using a convenient snow storm, oil spill, natural disaster, and or terrorist attack. It’s all about messaging and inoculation. The first thing low information voters should think about when faced with some future snowstorm-related attacks on Democrats should be some Democrat pointing out the fact that it’s hot today in an amusing way that demeans and debases some particularly idiotic, utterly predictable GOP talking point.
Neither today’s heat or last winter’s freak snowstorms have much if anything to do with global warming per se; but you cannot simply grin and bear an attack, no matter how ridiculous, and hope that the truth will out because you have the facts on your side.

The facts do not matter.

I said: hot out there.

Average high for Boston today? 79°F.

Temperature right this very second? 88°F

The same can be said for most if not all of the eastern seaboard of Our Great Republic.

This must be extremely embarrassing for the global warming deniers. I’m already sick of the blanket coverage of this heat and how embarrassing it is for them. Such blather is sufficiently prevalent that probably one half of one degree of this heat is directly attributable to B-roll of eggs frying on pavement.

On the one hand, Republicans have had a major role in shaping [the healthcare reform, financial regulation, and climate change bills]. On the other hand, they haven’t had to vote for these bills, and so they could cleanly campaign against legislation that a member of their party helped write. And as an added bonus, Democrats are stuck trying to defend a bill that their base doesn’t like very much and that’s thick with compromises that annoy political elites.

Ezra Klein on the Lone Republican strategy, which has put Snowe, Corker, and now Lindsey “Huckleberry” Graham alone in the room full of Democrats, at least until it mattered. Bill successfully shaped to GOP specifications, compromise time is over, Democrats pass unpopular, weakened bill (seemingly forgetting to dump the compromise portions every single time) and the GOP gets to campaign against it all, with emphasis on “back room deals” and “sweetheart provisions,” many or even most of which were made at their behest.
And, worst of all, The Democrat is shocked every single time.

Hot out there

By my gauge, it’s currently 86° in sunny Boston, MA. NOAA says we goin’ to 92° (though that figure clearly represents a government takeover of weather forecasting). Today’s low will likely turn out to have been 57°, four degrees above the average high.

This is all terribly embarrassing for the climate change deniers. I’m sure they will be called to account for this deviation from their unsubstantiated by any data ever collected anywhere “nothing’s changing” stance. How can “nothing’s changing” possibly account for the fact that it is warm today? I demand to know. ‘Merica demands to know. Also, Al Gore is fat.