This is almost hypnotic. One of the leaders at a Tea Party event with the Citizens of Liberty holds forth on the science of global warming. [Note: there will be no academic credit awarded for this Internet learning exercise].
The site for this organization makes clear that this is about a world socialist agenda:
No, nothing will ever be enough for these extremists. Because it really isn’t about saving the planet in the first place. It’s about pushing a socialist agenda to cripple the capitalist nations of the west. It’s about wealth redistribution and socialist schemes under the guise of environmentalism.
While nothing will ever be enough to straighten out the socialists and other Koolaid drinkers, we have more than enough for the American people to force our government to stop treating us worse than foreign dictators and stop this cap and trade global warming tax nonsense in the Senate.
I had to add this to our library of hard-right science, here.
Mike A.
Well said. The Bush regime and its religous right followers have brought science down to a level that is scary. That lady in the video and all that actually believe that she is telling the truth, where is their science to rebut the peer reviewed studies that prove global warming is mostly man made? The only thing that they can point to is the sun is getting warmer and God is taking care of us!
Jim Byrne, the answer is yes.
Mike A.,
Are you claiming that an ice cube, made up of fresh water, floating on fresh water when melted, would result in a different resultant water level than what would occur if the ice cube was floating on salt water?
Interesting displacement theory.
“Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.” – Jules Henri Poincare
IS, you’re ignoring, among other things, the difference in density between saltwater and freshwater. Back to the drawing board.
Global warming is to this generation’s conspiracy theorists what chlorination of drinking water supplies was to the conspiracy theorists of the ’50s, another plot to enslave mankind. Dialogue is impossible because the Bush administration succeeded in politicizing science to such a great extent that many conservatives now regard serious scientific inquiry as simply another tool to advance the liberal agenda. The attack on climate change research and the attack on evolution theory both spring from the same mind-set, a deadly combination of anti-intellectualism and biblical literalism. The woman speaking in the video is illustrative of this new know-nothingism. She is a perfect illustration of why one can visit the bookstore at the Grand Canyon National Park and buy literature explaining how the canyon was formed by Noah’s flood.
to all that think ocean levels will rise when ice caps melt. Take a large bowl of water and put a large chunk of ice in it, mark the bowls water level before and after the ice melts. Then get back to me and let me know what happens.
rAFFLAW:
I do not believe global warming is man made, oh we may contribute a tenth of a degree increase with human activity but the major cause of global warming is the sun in my opinion.
The cost to reverse that tenth of a degree is going to be staggering. From where I sit, I cannot understand why we would try and spend billions of dollars to cause a minor adjustment in mean earth temperature.
Green technology is not going to create jobs. The government cannot create jobs if the private sector doesn’t think it is worth allocating resources to. The only way to do this is with tax cuts and other benefits for companies that “create” green jobs. This is the same as paying farmers to not plant or plant peanuts or soybeans. This creates a false reality and will take resources from things that actually work to create jobs.
Bill Clinton was lucky in that he rode a technology tidal wave that was created by the private sector. When Clinton took office very few people even knew what the Internet was and now just about everybody uses it. I think Obama thinks he can do the same thing but the problem is that the private sector created that boom not government.
Government, in my opinion, does not allocate resources efficiently or effectively. A committee of bureaucrats cannot figure out all of the unintended consequences that will occur from central planning. I don’t care how smart you are you cannot control and foresee consequences that will result when you cause 300 million people to take financial decisions based on what the government intends to do or not do. It is intellectual folly and supreme arrogance.
We are going to become a third world country, but at least we will be green.
China and India should surpass us in terms of GDP in a few years and our standard of living will be in the toilet but we will have lots of clean air to breathe and clean water to drink, but probably not because we will not be able to afford clean-up costs.
I think I done discovered the theory of relativity. They must be relatives.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5aNn4Sfmas&hl=en&fs=1&]
Jill
I thought too we had elected a President that would do the right thing but that ship has sailed.
Don’t know a lot about the following subjects. Desalination, hydro electricity, earth moving, high speed rail systems to name a few but I do know that here in Wisconsin it is “grow local, eat local” and recently Wisconsin refused to go along with building coal fired energy plants. Some hope anyway.
Now it occurs to me that the southwest, including California has politicians that simply wish to continue to ignore drought conditions even when a large share of American agriculture is produced in California.
I recommended this possibility: Below San Diego bury large pipes from the Pacific ocean inland say 20 miles and at that point dig a canal 2 or so miles wide and hundreds of feet deep leading to hydro electric dams. Sea water would be pulled in through these pipes, fed into this canal…during the process stripping as much salt from the water as possible. The used water would be re-routed to the beginning of the canal to increase water pressure and further remove salt. Water from below the dam would also be pulled into desalination plants. Water would be moved from the desalination plant process to canals moving it into California, Arizona and New Mexico. Electricity generated from the dams would be transmitted also into California, Arizona and New Mexico. I can see hundreds of these hydro dams and desalination plants along the border between the USA and Mexico all the way to the Gulf Of Mexico. In addition, an electric rail system drawing power from these dams could be built above the canals to transport workers. Also, this corridor could be used for solar plants, in some areas wind farms, for recycling plants, and perhaps even plastic recycle facilities. Call me crazy but why can’t we build lego type houses from recycled plastic. God knows there is an island of plastic the size of Texas floating in the ocean now.
I believe there are ways to address these problems: drought, clean water, ocean acidity, mass migration that is coming from rising sea levels, climate change that is a direct result of ocean warming, water pollution from mountain top removal mining and oil drilling.
Catastrophic scenarios abound: Polar ice caps melting is one of them, complete loss of ocean marine ecosystems, the Southwest turning to a “dust bowl.” Even the disappearance of bees. Einstein has stated that when the bees disappear man has about 4 years left.
I do, however, believe that mankind will indeed become extinct before an American president puts the survival of it’s people above a second term.
Jill,
Isn’t it a little naive to think the industry leaders will do something to kill their golden goose? It has to come from government and the Obama administration has been working at pushing the global warming issue forward. It has only been 6 months. I understand your comments about so-called clean coal, but that is only one part of the picture. One more thing. Those tea baggers or the people who are inciting and instigating the tea-baggers are not ignorant. Their bills are being paid for by corporations and Fox News. Thankfully, their numbers are small, but the right wing media like Fox and others are stoking the flames to increase the numbers, but more likely to make the small numbers seem larger than they are.
It is the Obama administration and our indurstry “leaders” that make me much more angry that this woman. They have access to the best scientific evidence yet they do worse than nothing. They still wish to invest in things like “clean coal” and the oil industry. Who then is more culpable? The person who is ignorant and does nothing or those people who know very well the consequences and still do nothing or actively support those activities that will bring harm? I’m very unhappy with the ignorance displayed and embraced by this woman and her followers but I am angry as hell at our ruling elite, who for some reason, think money can buy them out of any problem, including this one. That is a miscalculation that will cost us all dearly.
It matters not a fart-hing just who, exactly, is “responsible for global warming.” The effects proceed apace despite any time-burgling blamestorming sessions convened by hapless humans.
Nor does identifying the culprit (that dirty birdie!) alter what must be done: adapt or perish. This has been the bargain for at least 3.7 billion years, and probably much longer.
There are a couple of key markers worth watching. The lag so far has been sea level rise. Climate models have been off in the sense their predictions are coming true much earlier. Nor have they accounted for the acceleration of warming/melting that is observed, particularly in the arctic. The ice that is going, hundreds of thousands of years in the making, buttresses land sheets. Take away the supports…this is not rocket science.
Pray sea level rise does not follow this pattern. The global economy will not be able to respond to the ongoing disaster recovery that will be required.
For ostriches such as those in the video, at least the sand is dry.
Pax,
M.
IS,
I understand that the deniers think that the warming is caused by natural forces. However, the vast majority of scientists agree that it is man’s activities that are causing the global warming. If you do not agree with sound scientific studies aren’t you spitting into the wind? Are these deniers taking this stand because they think their corporations will be harmed by legislation to curb our emissions and they don’t care about the outcome if their dividends are continuing to be paid? This tea bag lady is a prime example of what the denier faction is feeding to the masses. They give them lies such as hers that the global warming studies have been discredited and never state by whom. The difficult and expensive solutions that are necessary to slow down and eliminate global warming are necessary and we have waited too long already. IS, the experts tell us that we can reverse the effects of global warming if we act now. Do you disagree with the scientific community or do you believe like the lady in the video that the science has been “discredited”?
I’m not certain her audience was buying her speech as much as she hoped for. There was a lot less enthusiasm and cheering that I might have expected. I wonder if the issue could be divorced from taxes so that people could actually hear out the evidence. This seems like an antitaxation rally to me, hitched on to global warming as the boogieman. If global warming was hitched to a jobs creation program, which it certainly could be if we’d get cracking on alternative energy, I suspect many people at the rally might be on board with the idea. People are desperate for jobs. People are scared. Small business people get screwed a lot. The problem is the analysis of the issue gets seen through an untrue lens. In this case, clear and overwhelming evidence is seen as so many evil lies. Those christians urging stewardship of the earth are on the right track in reaching out to these types of christian conservatives. The secular and/or non-fundamentalist relgious community needs to offer solutions that create jobs and wealth while cleaning up the environmental damage.
Put me on the search committee for the Palin 2012 Campaign. I think I see the next Administrator of the EPA.
Same bunch that is always the first to scream for help when the Sh.t hits the fan.
Rafflaw:
Most of the “right” wing thought is that mean earth temperatures are rising slightly but they think it is caused by natural forces, such as ramped up sun activity.
As to solutions I recently heard about a rock that will absorb CO2.
Finally for most of earths 5 or so billion years it has been hotter than it is now. So our current period is not exactly the norm for earths temperature.
On the one hand some people think we cannot control our environment and on the other they do. I doubt we can even if we stopped all human CO2 emitting activity, if mother nature wants to heat the earth that is what is going to happen.
That video was very hard to watch. Global warming has not, and I will repeat myself for the right wing deniers here, Global Warming Has not been discredited. Get busy and actually do some reading instead of watching Fox News and listening to this tea bag “expert”.
Everything I’ve ever read – from proponents or opponents – about the supposed strategies for combating Global Warming support her theory.
Even if its happening, and even if – a big “if” – mankind is the primary cause, the methods being put forth by the Warmists to stop the trend DO seem to be far more about “pushing a socialist agenda to cripple the capitalist nations of the west” than they do about cooling the planet.
Rep Lyons, they are calling your name. South Africa anyone?