As Betty Cracker mentioned today, it’s Earth Day, and Gallup has released a poll on what Americans believe will be coming with the effects of climate change. Most Americans agree that the effects of climate change will happen in their lifetimes, a few believe the effects won’t be felt until future generations.
And then there are the paste eating blockheads conservative Republicans.
While a majority of fart-lighting Jackass reenactors conservative Republicans actually do believe the effects of climate change will affect humanity at some point, two in five are running around going “Well, actually…” while the evidence (and the super storms, rising sea levels, melting polar ice caps, public opinion and reams of data) drowns them.
Pretty solid evidence here that like most other issues in America, there’s a major partisan gap between people on the left and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 watchers people on the right.
Happy Earth Day indeed.
Mike in NC
Conservatives simply don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to the planet after they’re dead, as reflected in just about all of their ideology.
dm
Fart lighting might actually be beneficial: it converts methane to CO2. From a greater to a lesser greenhouse gas.
shortstop
It wouldn’t be so awful if they weren’t taking the rest of us down with them.
J R in WV
You want to talk about a raft of lies, I just got a telephone push poll that started out,
And that was it. No poll, no brief message, just the bare allegation that the media has reported in a firestorm of news that middle east dictators have donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
This is already the dirtiest election in American history, and they haven’t even started shoveling the shit yet. I’ve heard that the Clinton Foundation has had a lot of money donated, but I don’t remember a firestorm, and I don’t remember Middle-eastern dictators, and I don’t think the Clinton Foundation’s stated purpose is to benefit the Clinton family or their election work.
I wonder how bad it will get?
Bobby B.
In Oregon we’ve already got climate change with fiery drought . As the west dries out and the east drowns maybe we should find a way to jack up theeastern seaboard to fix the tilt and get the water flowing toward California. I’d hate to have to watch the confederacy drown slowly and painfully. FIX THE TILT! FIX THE TILT! HAPPY EARTH DAY!
MattF
“Will never happen” is the one that belies the “I’m not a scientist” dodge. I’d like to see the correlation between climate-change denial and, say, creationism.
Germy Shoemangler
@J R in WV: I don’t think the Clinton Foundation’s stated purpose is to benefit the Clinton family or their election work.
My local (sinclair-owned) teevee nooz and internet commenters are fixated on “Clinton accepted money from despots who oppress women” and try to leave the impression that somehow they are funding her campaign or her lifestyle.
It will get bad.
*Not that they care about the suppression of women. They just to rub the librul democraps noses in it
japa21
@J R in WV: This is mild compared to how it will get. Future questions will include the following lead ins:
Considering the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Vince Foster;
Considering the outlandish way Clinton has pushed her grandchild into the limelight;
Considering the obvious malfeasance of Clinton in regards to Benghazi;
Considering the fact that Clinton worked for a Muslim, socialist, Kenyan Dictator;
NotMax
@J R in WV
Same might well be said of every quadrennial election.
David Updike
I want to know where they found these alleged “Liberal/Moderate Republicans” they speak of.
japa21
@MattF: Well, I remeber some GOP Congressperson (Don’t have the time to Google it) who said that all this climate change talk is nonsense because God promised after the Flood not to destroy the world.
JaneE
Everyone I know keeps talking about how unusual the weather is. Daffodils in January. Snow in the mountains in April. Drought because I am in CA, and you can’t help but notice it where ever you are in the state. Most of these people are ardent Republicans, but they can’t deny what they see every day, and every year. In the last 4-5 years they have moved from “it ain’t happenin'” to “man can’t be doing all this” with a few “God’s mysterious ways” thrown in. We get appeals to pray for rain in the local paper periodically on the religion page. But I am the only person on the block not watering my lawn.
MattF
@J R in WV: They’re looking for the golden lie– the one that turns Hillary into John Kerry. One real problem for them is that they have already told so many utterly bizarre lies about the Clintons– no one believes any of it unless they already believe all of it.
Ryan
Given the penchant for commenters on the right to misspell all the time, the question I come back to is whether we simply skipped a generation in terms of sending kids to school. Or in those immortal words, “Is our children learning?”
Elizabelle
The military takes climate change extremely seriously. They’ve been planning for its effects for several years now.
And I thought the military and cops were secular saints to conservatives.
MattF
@Elizabelle: What’s sometimes forgotten is that the basis of military education is engineering, so some respect for scientific truth is built-in. Except for the funny-looking costumes, Annapolis and West Point are graduating engineers.
NotMax
@MattF
Whereas the Air Force academy is graduating Bible-thumpers.
*sigh*
boatboy_srq
@Mike in NC:
Far more accurate. The lack of caring is comprehensible when you consider their offspring will either be Raptured along with them, never get borne thanks to the Return of Gun-Totin’ Capitalist Jeebus, or deserve the Eternal Damnation they will suffer for not accepting their
Lord and SaviourGeneral of All Souls.MattF
@NotMax: Yup.
boatboy_srq
@Bobby B.:
There’ll be a fortune to be made in the ferryboat business. We could call the business Charon Cruises.
Davis X. Machina
Look, there’s a choice you have to make:
A.) Destroy the world. FQ1 profits go up.
B.) Admit Al Gore and the hippies are right.
So A it is.
Zandar
@Elizabelle: Same thing with insurance companies, who are not really happy with this “having to pay for billions in climate change fueled damage” thing they’re being stuck with.
Davis X. Machina
@Zandar: They’re not stuck with it if they can get the taxpayer to provide reinsurance.
Shawn
The worst thing to happen to the environment was Al Gore. As soon as this became a partisan issue instead of a science issue it was lost. Yes the right needs to get over that but calling them paste eaters and jackasses etc is really never going to change their mind. New Atheists make the same mistake in their treatment of believers. You either want to be right, and if so keep the same tact and keep enjoying the superiority, or you want things to get better which means you change the conversation and try to welcome people into the fold rather than shaming them into it. Perhaps you shouldn’t have to, people shouldn’t NEED their hands held to come to an obvious conclusion but we all know that they do. This shouldn’t be a right versus left issue but both side absolutley love that it is.
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: Military; the insurance industry; all the minor deities of Conservatist thought are onboard with AGCC. It’s not a coincidence that entertainment (Fauxnews) and gambling (Adelson) are among those leading the “climate change conspiracy” school of thought.
boatboy_srq
@Davis X. Machina: In this age of “gubmint is the problem” and “wasteful spending” that’s hardly a sinecure. The very people they need on board are the ones tightening the purse strings.
japa21
@Shawn: I think the left would be very relieved to see the right come to grips with reality and remove the politicization from this. It is the right that seems to see the need to make it into a political football. And this has nothing to do with Al Gore, per se. If not him, the right would have found someone else to go after.
Elizabelle
@Davis X. Machina: I’m wondering if some of the resistance to Southern states expanding Medicaid or operating their own health exchanges is partially that the conservatives in charge realize they will want to use tax dollars to reimburse the (wealthy) coast dwellers, whose homes are about to become uninsurable and, after that, uninhabitable.
They’re not getting political contributions, or partying at beach houses, with the uninsured or low income. Not their problem.
boatboy_srq
@JaneE: Part of the problem is that the Beltway is square in the middle of the part of the US that’s cooling as a result: the idea that everywhere on the planet is getting warmer except in Washington is about as alien as the idea that there is a US of A that exists beyond I-495.
Elizabelle
@boatboy_srq: Adelson rules a desert empire. Drowning might seem downright exotic to him.
WereBear
What we are witnessing is the harnessing and monetization of stupidity.
Which, as we all know, is limitless.
Betty Cracker
@Shawn: This analysis misses the profit motive, which is the key driver behind lies about climate change. It was destined to become a partisan issue because one party is 100% co-opted by big business whereas the other is only a partially owned subsidiary.
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: Adelson rules a desert empire created by soaking anyone and everyone who thought that s/he could strike it rich betting on something where the house has the advantage. Fleecing of the Rubes, legalized.
Chris
@J R in WV:
Considering how thoroughly in bed the Republican Party and its best buds in the oil sector are with the Saudi royals and the rest of the shady elites around them, I call projection. Again.
NorthLeft12
@Mike in NC: Except when it has to do with the deficit, then they go on and on and on and on about how can we in good conscience pass on the costs of healthcare, good education, infrastructure maintenance, environmental protection, and social programs to our children and grandchildren? Neglecting to mention that our children and grandchildren will be the ones to most likely benefit from those initiatives.
However, there is no discussion when the deficit is inflated for the military, foreign wars, policing, and all other security related issues.
It is all lp service.
Davis X. Machina
@boatboy_srq: It’s not like it’s spending on people. It’s hoovering up your money and my money to keep corporations out of the shit. That will go on forever.
shell
But Michelle Bachmann says that the Rapture is almost upon us, so who needs to worry about the planet?
ruemara
@boatboy_srq: yes, this. It’s not that they’ll be dead; it’s that they and all their family will be raptured and anything left is getting the Lord’s good judgement.
NotMax
OT:
If you’ve nothing better to do, TCM is showing Life Begins for Andy Hardy at 2:45 p.m. Eastern time.
Somewhat downplaying the relentlessly cloying affectations of the Hardy films, this one stands alone in letting grim realities such as homelessness and death intrude as story elements.
Not recommending it as a must see, rather as an unusual entry in the series.
scav
The actions of man can and are bringing about the Rapture, as we’ve been told again and again and again. The Rapture, sometimes the End Times, sometmes the Apocalypse, but that’s just branding details — we have been told time and time again about the ways of mankind, sometimes even a single solitary (ahem symbolic man) bringing that about. Locigal positival mainstream obvious, suitable for electioneering pandering as kissing baby friendly. But men’s actions changing the Weather?! Unpossible.
NorthLeft12
@Shawn: So, the Right’s pathological hatred of Al Gore gives them a pass on ignoring an oncoming ecological catastrophe?
Shawn, I guess in your world Al Gore and any other “liberal” Democrats should have kept their mouths shut about climate change and waited for the Republicans to “discover” the issue.
Yes, I can see Senator Inhofe leading the charge to reduce the impact of climate change. Surrrrre.
jonas
Who has time to worry about global warming at a time when the Constitution has been pretty much replaced with Sharia Law and Christians are about be herded into concentration camps and forced to gay marry and buy food with Ameros? Doesn’t anyone here watch Duck Dynasty?
boatboy_srq
@scav: I do love how the same people convinced that they alone are Blessed by the One All-Powerful God treat him like some dime-store djinn trapped in a lamp and capable of being summoned by their antics.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Adelson was no piker financially, but it was the opening and running of his casino in China (Macau) that made him filthy rich.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Adelson was no piker financially, but it was the opening and running of his cas*no in China (Macau) that made him filthy rich.
scav
@NorthLeft12: Don’t forget that wandering up to non-christians in the street and telling them they’re necessarily and inevitably damned for all eternity and inevitably amoral in all their actions and behaviors because they don’t beleave in the baaaaaayyybeeeeee is caring and loving behavior and unproblematic, but not kowtowing in all ways to the “faith” of xians is totally problematic behavior by atheists so it’s all their fault.
Cervantes
@Shawn:
Can you say when all this happened? (Thanks.)
jonas
@Shawn: Have you ever listened to anything Al Gore has ever said on the subject? He was absolutely *not* the one who “politicized” the issue. An Inconvenient Truth called out people who attacked the science of global warming, particularly the energy industry. It was then the energy industry who decided that they could easily buy Republican politicians like James Imhofe and pay them to “raise questions” about the science and attack policies — once supported by both Republicans and Democrats, such as cap-and-trade — designed to mitigate climate change. Once the Wingnut Wurlitzer (see the BJ Lexicon) got going on it, it became a partisan issue and science denial became a litmus test for Republican candidates. Not before.
And yes, people who simply outright deny that climate change is happening and that a century’s worth of massive CO2 inputs into the atmosphere have nothing to do with it are irrational idiots following ideology rather than science. AKA paste-eating blockheads.
boatboy_srq
@NotMax: Wonder if there’s any hay to be made by tying any Adelson donations back to Chinese gamblers. It’d be interesting to flip J R in WV’s recent experience with that.
Frankensteinbeck
I doubt seriously that even 1 in 10 conservative Republicans actually believe the Rapture is coming in their lifetimes. They talk about it as a shibboleth. That’s it. Similarly, they’re sure not rejecting climate science for the benefit of big business. The vast majority of this is Cleek’s Law. Liberals must, must be wrong about everything, because if we’re right, black people are as good as white people. Like gun control, even the ones who believe we should do something will vote against anyone who tries to do something and thus makes common cause with (nigger-loving) liberals. Racism isn’t a fringe factor in conservative politics. It is the giant, central, overwhelming factor and everything else is fringe.
@Shawn:
That is some serious blaming the victim. Environmentalism was already a liberal/conservative divide issue. It has been at least since Carter. Republicans just weren’t so completely, desperately, rabidly driven by Cleek’s Law that they refused to listen to the big stuff before.
@Elizabelle:
Maybe some, but you should generally bet that their leaders think roughly like their voters. There’ll be some corrupt manipulators, but people like Cheney really believe in invasion and torture.
@NorthLeft12:
‘Deficit’ means ‘giving money to black people’. They can’t actually say ‘You give too much money to black people’ aloud, can they? They have to weasel around it and find explanations they’re not ashamed of. Some of them have very little shame, and come damn close, but if you look at their actions and not their words, what they want is to cut all the services that they think go to minorities. They don’t give a flying pig fuck about the actual deficit.
Shawn
@NorthLeft12: I totally hear you and as I said, no it shouldn’t, but partisan issues tend to stay divided on partisan lines. I know plenty of people on the left who couldn’t tell you the first thing about why climate change is important or how we came to be in this situation or how we discovered/measured it or how to fix it (except by driving a Prius and buying anything with the word green in the name) or the name of any body OTHER than Al Gore connected closely to this issue. They’ll say “all the scientists say” but can’t name a single scientist who said. Half of the left is only behind it because they know it is a lefty issue.
And I said nothing about leaving them to discover the issue – so that was a bad guess. I just said name calling doesn’t change minds. It usually has the opposite effect and entrenches people even further.
Gindy51
@Elizabelle: He also owns Macau casinos (where he makes most of his ill gotten gains) so maybe not so much. I am not sure what things are happening to those islands but it can’t be good. http://www.forbes.com/sites/muhammadcohen/2014/05/15/sands-macao-the-house-that-built-sheldon-adelson/
Belafon
@Shawn: Except Al Gore didn’t make the environment about Al Gore, the right did. If you don’t have the facts, attack the messenger.
Elizabelle
What do you do in North Carolina, when a scientific estimate reveals your coastline might erode 39 inches by 2100 (8 inches by 2050; with major erosion after that)? Taking with it over a billion of property, and tanking the development/real estate industry’s ability to sell to
suckersbuyers who might be interested in resale, down the road?Why, you bury the study and issue one that looks 30 years out. Says the oil and gas guy, appointed by the GOP governor to head your coastal commission (NOTE: a democratic administration ordered the scientific evaluation):
Great article by the Washington Post, from last June. On N.C.’s Outer Banks, scary climate-change predictions prompt a change of forecast
Miami and Norfolk are taking their coastline studies seriously, and planning for inundation. Wealthy landowners in the Carolinas and elsewhere are funding seawalls and berms to protect their homes.
Not a possibility for the barrier islands of the Outer Banks, though.
Article’s an excellent read, and actually sympathetic to the real estate and community interests too. Reporter is Lori Montgomery.
philpm
@Mike in NC: Hell, they don’t care what happens to it now, since Obama is going to cause the Rapture any day now.
Shawn
@Belafon: Al Gore might not have inteded to make it about him, but he kind of did anyways. I totally agree about attacking the messenger, I just think that was predictable and preventable.
Villago Delenda Est
@Davis X. Machina: That’s pretty much it. Short term profit is more important than long term survival.
We are fucked.
SatanicPanic
@Shawn:
Of course it does. Look at what the Republicans did to Al Gore’s image.
Cervantes
@Frankensteinbeck:
Jimmy Carter in 1979:
That solar heater, comprising thirty-two panels, was removed in 1986 by Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff. (Al Gore made him do it.)
Mandalay
@J R in WV:
The campaign call you received was certainly low and dirty. But the underlying issue – exactly who is donating to the Clinton Foundation – is a perfectly legitimate issue to raise.
The Clinton foundation does good work, and if you go to the Clinton Foundation web site you can see who is giving them money. For example, there is a donation of between $1 million and $5 million from an organization named “Friends of Saudi Arabia”, but good luck with identifying the precise people behind that donation.
Why is that problematic? Well Clinton is likely our next president, we are trying to persuade Iran not to develop nuclear weapons, and Saudi Arabia and Iran are coming close to poking each other in the eye right now. That donation deserves as much attention as the cash the Kochs are throwing at Walker.
It’s early days but the media will be focusing on this in the coming months. Clinton will need to persuade voters that donors to the Clinton Foundation will never impact how she will act as president. That’s rough on her since she can argue that she’s only been trying to make the world a better place, but increased scrutiny is inevitable. Hopefully she can turn that scrutiny to her advantage.
Amir Khalid
@Shawn:
No, no “kind of did”. It’s not on Al Gore that Republicans attacked his environmental advocacy because he was a Democrat, at a time when he’d already quit partisan politics.
lol
@Shawn:
Yes, it’s always the Democrats’ fault that the nutcase right keeps turning this shit into a partisan issue.
Elizabelle
What I love is that Al Gore and Barack Obama are walking around with Nobel Peace Prizes.
Saint Reagan? No.
For Republicans, war and polarization and obfuscation and capitalism pursued to its massive destructive capabilities without regulation or restraint, is their brand. They’ve silenced or ejected their moderates, which is why we need David Brooks to Bobosplain.
Cervantes
@Shawn:
Now you’re just being silly.
D58826
America really is an exceptional country. In what other country would a couple of hard-working job creators (i.e. the Koch brothers) take valuable time to look out for the well being of the undeserving:
In fact since this is such a time consuming process and the Koch’s are stepping up to the plate to undertake this task, once they are done we can just skip all that messy election stuff. They have identified the right policies and the right candidate for the rest of us. I’m sure most Americans are more concerned with what Kanye and Kim are doing this week or are busy buying a sympathy card for Paris H. on the death of her BFF pooch.
SatanicPanic
Are conservatives right about anything? I keep hearing that China owns us but… China Has a Massive Debt Problem
Hmm, yeah
scav
“Well, if you Peeeee-pul just would stop so visibly Ex-Issstt-ing and overtly not a-Greeee-ing then there would be nothing to disagree about (!), so of course it is All. Your. Fault. Stop being so Upppity and Confrontational and Actual — Talk to Us Nicely and Everything will be Hunky Dory. Here endeth the lesson.”
Shawn
@SatanicPanic: Whose mind did they change? All name calling does is solidify the base and entrench the opposition. Nobody that liked AL Gore didn’t after they heard anything anbody on the right said about him (or vice versa).
I’m not saying it his fault per se or the fault of any Democrat for supporting this issue (though actual support and apparent support could be debated in some cases), but when one side latches on to an issue they have to know the other side (especially THAT other side) will largely oppose it on spec – that’s not a new thing – it might be more intensified lately. My thing is if you know what your opponent is going to do, you either pick being right or serve the issue and the left, for the most part, has picked being right.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Elizabelle: In reality, for those people she interviews in the article, you do nothing. It’s like Salton Sea real estate – did a pretty healthy trade until the early 1980s floods wiped out half the real estate, and then the Sea started shrinking, became hypersaline, and all the fish started dying. The only beaches left there are made of pieces of fish bones. It is a horrible place even to visit for a day.
It took less than ten years to go from “seaside desert resort” to mostly-abandoned shithole. And that’s what will happen to the Outer Banks.
Also, this kind of scenario is exactly why the DoD did their pioneering study/plan about climate change back in the 1990s. They’re one of the biggest oceanfront real estate holders, if not the biggest, in the world. They’d like to keep it or move it, not lose it.
SatanicPanic
@Shawn: Their own- Republicans used to be more or less on board with the science.
Svensker
@MattF:
The engineers I know are all stone conservatives, creationists and climate deniers. YMMV
Gravenstone
@Germy Shoemangler:
So, the donors were Republicans?
RaflW
OK, Republicans, here’s the deal: Global warming is a curse from God, in response to rampant greed and a turning away from the path of Jesus.*
.
*This Jesus: “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.” (Luke 14:13)
Roger Moore
@Shawn:
Bullshit. The environment has been a political issue at least since Reagan tried to gut the EPA. Global warming is a political issue because the big fossil fuel companies don’t want to lose business, and they’re pushing their lackeys in the Republican party to do everything they can to prevent action. Blaming this on the Democrats politicizing the issue is classic “she made me hit her” abusive behavior.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@SatanicPanic: They don’t own us. The vast majority of US debt is held by Americans. I think the Chinese hold, at most, 3 trillion is US debt. Which is a lot, but when the overall number is closing in on 20 trillion, well, it’s just not that much.
Plus, the old saw still holds true: if I owe the bank a million dollars, I have a problem. If I owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Shawn has a bad case of High Broderism.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
Not quite. Yes, a lot of his properties are in Vegas, but he also owns ones in Macau and Singapore, both of which could suffer terrible harm from rising sea level.
Shawn
@CONGRATULATIONS!: HAHA fair enough.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
Singaporeans could always move to Johor Bahru and drive up the price of everything there — which, come to think of it, is what they’ve always done.
SatanicPanic
@CONGRATULATIONS!: mmm hmmm. It’s funny when they’re like “what if they decide to call in the debt?” like our national debt is the same as the $50 they owe their brother
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Parts of Singapore are at a slightly higher elevation than most of JB.
brantl
@Shawn: Are you an idiot? Seriously, are you an idiot? I don’t love that these pinheads won’t get on with necessary work, jam it up at every possible chance, and some of the morons go out and get their overgrown trucks/SUVs/penis & testosterone substitutes fitted out with pipes to make them burn even dirtier. You keep selling yourself that “both sides do it/love it” and one of these days your brain will fall out. Good lord!
catclub
@NotMax:
Naturally, no Chinese dollars could get into the US elections via THAT route. It is unpossible. And has never happened before.
brantl
@Betty Cracker: Damn straight.
RaflW
@Shawn:
Well, then, tell us how you would have prevented the partisanization. Just thinking it was preventable is not quite enough for the rest of us to go on.
catclub
@NotMax:
1968 and 1972 were really bad. 1976 may have gone against that trend.
D58826
@Mandalay: Up to a point I agree that the funding of the Clinton Foundation is a legitimate issue. However I suspect that the media will quickly follow the scandal mongers at the GFOP/Judical watch/etc down every obscure rabbit hole that they are pointed to . The last time we went thru this over 100 million dollars and eight years were spent investigating the Clinton’s to discover that Bill lied about a blow job.
Now if the MSM would show the same level of interest in the GOP contenders then maybe it would be a different matter. You mentioned Saudi Arabia, well when it comes to ties with the Saudi’s you would be hard pressed to find a politician in the US with deeper ties than the Bush family. I don’t remember that being an issue for with Bush 41 or 43. I doubt it will be one for the current Bush. The Bush family connections to the S&L meltdown in the late 80’s also got short shrift.
The source of Mrs. McCain’s money was briefly discussed in 2008 but never to the extent that ‘Clinton corruption’ has been. Mit’s tax returns and Cayman island money also caused a bit of a stir but it soon blew over. He never did release his tax returns prior to 2010. Harry Reid claimed that Mit had paid no income tax in those years. I have no idea if Harry had the goods or not but the story quickly turn to Harry being a liar.
I suspect that we will spend the next 18 months listening to Benghazi and Vice Foster (whom the Clinton’s obviously murdered because he knew the truth about Benghazi), Look I don’t think the Clintons are 100% honest. I suspect they have done a thing or two that they would not want to tell their Mothers but that applies to all politicians.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cervantes:
And which Obama replaced last year.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
Yeah, but they can’t bring their multi-billion-dollar buildings with them. Since that’s what Adelson has put his money into, it doesn’t help him much if the Singaporeans move across the straight.
sparrow
@Svensker: Yup. It’s broad-brushing, but engineers tend to be conservative and scientists tend to be liberal (or at least, not authoritarian). I figure it’s mostly self-selecting. In science, you you don’t know what is right or best, you are going out to explore. It is by nature open-ended, and you have to accept the possibility of being wrong, and be open to taking a new course/having a new opinion. Engineering (especially at the lower levels) is more focused on best practices, what is tried and true, what is “known”. Granted, that’s leaving out a lot of the research side of engineering (e.g., PhDs doing nanomaterials research are going to be closer to scientists I think), but in terms of application, my theory is hat the emphasis on the “right way” to do things is appealing to natural authoritarians.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
Alternatively, Singapore could make itself the Venice of South-east Asia. Meanwhile, my relatives in JB could always come up further north.
brantl
@Shawn:
I have a hard time singling out one scientist out of the 20,000 that signed the UN Climate Change report, too. I still know that there are 20,000 of them. You need a much better argument, bub.
Gravenstone
@SatanicPanic: And actually, Japan just recently retook their position as the largest single holders of US Treasury backed debt. SO yeah, China schmina
Eta: largest single foreign holders. As noted above, Americans hold the largest single portion
jonas
@Frankensteinbeck:
Maybe not, but their representatives sure as hell are.
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: I would identify greed rather than racism as the unifying factor of conservative politics. But it’s probably a chicken-egg thing.
RaflW
@Shawn:
So, wait, the left could have served the global warming cause by being wrong?
Roger Moore
@Cervantes:
But not Marina Bay, which is where Adelson’s property is located. Of course, if Marina Bay gets flooded by seawater, Singapore is in deep trouble because that means all of their other sea level reservoirs are going to get flooded, and they’re going to be very short on space to hold their potable water.
Kenneth Almquist
@japa21: The Congressman who cited the Bible in defense of his position that we shouldn’t do anything to avert global warming was John Shimkus. Shimkus was attacking a straw man because no scientist has predicted that global warming would flood the entire world. The worst case is that large numbers of coastal cities end up under water and have to be evacuated.
brantl
@Shawn: You are an idiot.
Bubblegum Tate
@Mike in NC:
Which makes their constant whine about “liberals don’t want my grandchildren to grow up to be free!” even funnier/more obnoxious.
Roger Moore
@sparrow:
I would put it a little bit differently. Science is about finding out how the the universe that is works, while engineering is about making things work the way you want them to. That’s a very significant difference in outlook.
Shawn
@brantl: but can you name the report bub?
Hal
Not surprised. A conservative friend had a post on Facebook dismissing man made climate change, then gave his own theory; that the earth’s axis had tilted. I say theory in this case even though there was no studies done on his part. No peer reviewed papers published. All he needed as proof was his own science free personal beliefs.
My fave part of his rant was a friend of his who stated the only thing liberals had to support climate change was the opinion of 97% of climate change scientists. He meant that as an insult.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: Yeah, was wondering about Macau.
Anyone know what Singapore is doing about preparing for climate change? They’re a technocratic society, aren’t they?
scav
My God, apparently if we (meaning one random person on the inter-webs) lost or can’t name the paperwork for Global Warming, let alone cite all the authors from memory in APA approved format, It’s like totally called off! Or, something.
Roger Moore
@Gravenstone:
And the Fed holds about as much as Japan and China put together, and Social Security owns more than Japan, China, and the Fed put together.
Belafon
@brantl: I happen to be pretty good at using numbers even though I don’t know the name of the person that invented them. Fire as well.
RaflW
@Shawn: That’s your retort?
Why do liberals have to know the names of scientists/reports to be credible in their belief in the science of AGW?
Most people get their information from intermediaries such as newspapers, web sites and TV. If I watch science programming on PBS, am I to be carefully taking notes and memorizing scientists names so that I can argue climate issues? If I can’t name the IPCC report authors, credentials and bona fides, then my acceptance of consensus science is pointless?
Utter, incomprehensible nonsense, sir.
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: Democrats vie for Nobels. Republicans vie for corner offices on K St.
scav
@RaflW: Come on, it could totally have been predicted we wouldn’t find his assertion persuasive because he called us “Bub”.
Cervantes
@Roger Moore:
I was just responding to the notion that come sea-level rise, Singaporeans could take refuge in JB.
You’re right that Adelson and his properties weren’t on my mind.
FlipYrWhig
@Shawn: Uh, remember how after An Inconvenient Truth there were ads featuring, among others, Nancy Pelosi AND Newt Gingrich together? So Al Gore’s raising the profile of the issue resulted in pockets of bipartisan consensus, as it was meant to do. It then proved fleeting because of a concerted campaign to disparage it — and, more importantly IMHO, because the economic collapse of 2008 made people think of climate/environment as a less pressing issue than they did even months before. You’re way, way off.
NorthLeft12
@Elizabelle: Uhh, some of that was pretty laughable. I struggle to understand how tourism [in the short term -say twenty-five years] would be impacted by this forecast. People will still visit and stay in the area for short periods of time.
What will be impacted is the construction of new homes and businesses, as people realize that in the long term [say over fifty years] the ecological changes will diminish the value of the property, right?
An observation; once again certain people want information suppressed and hidden that will prevent consumers from making an informed decision about their purchase. I am sure there will be some people who will buy a property in that area in the hope or belief that climate change is not real and that the water levels will not rise significantly. They will still negotiate as if the water level will rise, and will complain to the government to take local measures to protect their investment.
Cervantes
@SiubhanDuinne:
To be fair, the first solar-electric system on the grounds of the White House — 9 kilowatts, as I recall — was installed during the reign of Cheney and Bush.
Shawn
@FlipYrWhig: No, I never saw one of those, but thank you. Maybe I am retconning the issue a bit.
jl
@Shawn:
” Al Gore might not have inteded to make it about him, but he kind of did anyways. ”
How did he do that? People forget the ‘Give me the man and I will give you the case’ principal of the old Soviet KGB.
The reactionaries will throw everything against the wall to see what sticks. Then concern trolls look at what sticks on the wall, and with 20-20 hindsight, help them out by concern trolling that since out of a thousand tons of BS they threw, something stuck, so there has to be merit in it. And the target was at fault.
Brachiator
@MattF:
Well you know, Hillary threw away the medals she won for fighting in the Vietnam war.
FlipYrWhig
@Shawn: More info on that effort from media coverage in 2008: Time magazine on “‘We’ Climate Campaign.”
jl
@Brachiator:
” Well you know, Hillary threw away the medals she won for fighting in the Vietnam war. ”
Uh-oh. Why did you comment that? It’s out there now, the media will have to report the controversy. HRC is doomed.
Cervantes
@jl:
No, it’s OK. The medals she threw away were the ones awarded by the North Vietnamese.
jl
@Cervantes: You should call the NYT, maybe the two of you could do some business.
Mandalay
@D58826:
The difference is that you can go to the Clinton Foundation’s web site, and see the list of donors. It’s explicit, and that makes it easier to raise it as an issue.
It’s close to certain that the Clinton Foundation has accepted “tainted” money. But that equally applies to the RNC, the Catholic Church, Greenpeace and the Red Cross. The more interesting point is whether any enterprising investigator can establish any relationship between donations to the Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s conduct as a politician. I strongly doubt that any exists; she is not directly associated with the Clinton Foundation AFAIK, and she is too big to be bribed in such an obvious manner.
If her Republican opponent chooses to raise the Clinton Foundation as an issue I think they might end up getting burned. Clinton can reel off a list of its achievements, and then say to her opponent: “That’s what the Clinton Foundation has achieved, shitwipe. Now what the fuck have YOU ever done to make the world a better place?”.
NorthLeft12
@Svensker: Sorry that your contacts with Engineers have lead you to this stereotype.
Engineering is supposed to be about science, logic, and fact. I expect that other Engineers should base their opinions on accepted science and fact, and shut their yaps in areas that they have no expertise or knowledge. At least that was part of the training I received as a Professional Engineer here in Canada.
Unfortunately, my limited contacts with Engineers in the US [including some relatives] supports your observation.
Bill Arnold
@Shawn:
You will find, if you ask, that most people cannot name a single living scientist, of any sort. (Except maybe Stephen Hawking.) It’s even worse if you ask them to name a living engineer.
Not disagreeing with the general argument though. (Maybe a little, but there is some truth in it.)
john b
@NorthLeft12: I think it depends a lot on the discipline of engineering. Also, it depends on where in the hierarchy of engineering you’re looking. The types who are just doing engineering to be salesmen or executives are probably going to be like those types in any other business. The ones who want to figure out what the best practices should be, are (like someone else said) much more like scientists in their mindsets. I say this as a pretty liberal engineer.
Also, i haven’t met an engineer under 50 who doesn’t believe that we need to do something about climate change, or who doesn’t understand the basic science around why its happening. That may have to do with my field though.
They also know however, how far from knowing exactly what’s going on we are. They know how hard of a problem figuring out what’s going to happen in the future is.
Elizabelle
LOL. NYTimes just put up a good article on Obama speaking about climate change at 4 Eastern today from the Everglades.
And they illustrated it with a photo of him boarding Air Force One to get there.
AF One looks like a big blue whale that’s about to swallow him. You laugh and think “what’s the carbon footprint on THAT thing?”
Truly worth a look. Wonderful photo, and a hoot they used it that way.
Eric U.
it seems that a number of the most well-known denialists are engineers. The average rube doesn’t really care if the “expert” holds a doctorate in a relevant field, just that their biases are being confirmed. During my education in engineering, nobody ever told me not to speak about subjects where I am not an expert. In fact, the opposite is often implied during engineering training. I work with engineers that I assume could do good work in the field of climate science, and I also work with people that would probably try to get on the denialist gravy train if the opportunity presented itself.
trollhattan
@NorthLeft12:
Have worked with and/or for engineers most of my professional life. The “best” know what they know to a high degree and are equally aware of what they don’t know, and make sure those topics are performed by content experts, especially discipline scientists. Perhaps my favorite boss was a P.E. and a PhD hydrogeologist, so a “double-threat” if you will, and even he deferred to the biologists and especially the toxicologists. Held his own against the chemists, though. “Bad” engineers will instead argue with the scientists, et al, try and do it themselves, or even alter their results to fit the workplan/budget/client expectations. Ugh.
The worst thing that happens to good engineers is being made regional vice presidents or somesuch, putting them well out of their comfort/competency zones.
Also, too, never take health or dietary advice from an engineer. Just don’t.
Brachiator
@D58826:
Her father had been the head of one of the largest beer distributorships in the US and she inherited the company, or control of it. There is not much worthy of discussion or investigation here. You can’t blame the MSM for not following up on a non-story.
But your larger point is on the mark. The GOP smear campaign tries to link the Clinton’s with shady foreign money in order to depict them as dishonest and potentially traitors, while Republicans love America no matter how hard they sell out to foreign interests.
Good one.
trollhattan
@Eric U.:
A good many geologists simply don’t care because they think in terms of ages and epochs and periods and simply don’t understand what the fuss is about. “It will all fix itself with time.” Okay then.
jl
@john b:
” Also, i haven’t met an engineer under 50 who doesn’t believe that we need to do something about climate change, or who doesn’t understand the basic science around why its happening. That may have to do with my field though. ”
All the geological and geotechnical engineers I know believe in global warming, and make fun of those who don’t (and those who don;t seem to be in the minority). But you might have a point, since these are all people who actually do serious engineering in academics or govt, or industry, not engineers who move into the sales and managerial end asap to chase as much money as possible.
SatanicPanic
@Gravenstone: The biggest problem with that is that it reminds me of the 80s, a decade I would prefer be forgotten
jl
@trollhattan:
” A good many geologists simply don’t care because they think in terms of ages and epochs and periods and simply don’t understand what the fuss is about. “It will all fix itself with time.” Okay then. ”
That is true too. I get jokes like, “Well the ocean acidity thing will work itself out in a million years or so, and then a couple a more for the atmosphere. There will be a few pockets of fish and shit that will survive and then they’ll repopulate the ocean. They’ll look all different.”
And I ask, well, what will we do in the meantime.
“Aw, hell, the rocks will still be there. That’s my expertise”.
gene108
@Eric U.:
Engineers, physicists, and others in hard sciences are very difficult denialists to deal with. They know or think they know enough math and science to argue with someone in a climate science related field and/or poke holes in any statistical method used to determine future climate predictions.
It really comes down to whether they approve of DFH’s or disapprove of DFH’s, with regards to what side of the debate they will come down on.
Brachiator
@Cervantes:
That’s right. She got them in that photo ceremony with Jane Fonda.
Bill Arnold
@Hal:
Last time I looked (last night), the north star was still where it has been for the last several decades relative to the land. Are you sure he was serious?
Paul in KY
@Shawn: They (Republicans) made it a political issue by the choices they made in congress & industries they supported.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Well said, Betty.
schrodinger's cat
I think, Shawn is the same troll who was calling himself Steve last week. Steve’s persona was that of a conservative while Shawn is more Broder-like. Both may or may not be DougJ.
ETA: Next up, he is going to call himself Thurston.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Will say that if you have been a Presidential nominee, you never really quit (nor should you) ‘partisan’ politics. Kind of like The Hunger Games, if you were a winner.
Paul in KY
@Hal: Even if he is correct about the tilt changing (and that is something that is easily measured) it still means the sea levels are rising. getting hotter, etc. What would he do about that?
Paul in KY
@Belafon: Fire was invented by Ulgrck the Smelly. Saw it on Wiki.
Paul in KY
@NorthLeft12: The people who own the condos/houses (and rent them out) want to sell them one day or have their kids sell them & they feel they won’t be able to do that (and get a profit). At some point in time, I think they are correct. I don’t feel badly for them, though.
Paul in KY
@Shawn: You aren’t the ‘Shawn’ that lives with John are you?
Tenar Darell
@Elizabelle: I kinda feel bad for them too. But by burying the study, they’ve basically decided to do nothing until the flood, and in the meantime, they will bilk whoever is left holding the bag. Just like during the financial collapse.
And it is not like they don’t have small scale examples of programs which might work. There was a small batch of local Cape Cod house buy backs in the 70’s (not sure about dates or where; bad memory, sorry). This was before talking about climate change was common, when they were trying to re-create and save the dunes. It worked to get people to stop re-building, for them to get some money out, and to get them out of their homes while still allowing people to enjoy those homes until they died.
What is happening now, is so much bigger, it’s possible that this kind of effort won’t even work work again on the Cape. But North Carolina is guaranteeing that this kind of pragmatic long term planning will not be available to soften the blow at all, because they are refusing to do it. I want to be sympathetic, but I’m furious at this childish behavior. It’s “na na na, I can’t see you!” taken to such an extreme that I want to do something equally and even more extremely obnoxious.
Basically, their refusal to face reality and plan for it, makes me want to abandon them completely. That is a singularly unproductive response to something that will affect us all. Worst, this anger? frustration? impatience? (In not sure there’s a name for disgust at someone else’s extreme denial) also blinds us to possible solutions. Seriously, how do we do an interventions on entire states?
chopper
@Shawn:
I can’t name a single virologist. doesn’t mean the consensus that HIV causes AIDS is bullshit or that my believing it is out of trying to be ‘trendy’.
seriously, you’re either a buffoon or DougJ pretending to be one.
schrodinger's cat
@Shawn: Use Google Scholar, you will find peer reviewed papers on climate change or any other topic for that matter.
Tree With Water
This is a bit of long overdue, good news for Mother Earth in my neck of the redwoods, and potentially for others elsewhere:
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/3832017-181/sen-mike-mcguire-introduces-sweeping
Bubblegum Tate
@Elizabelle:
The whole Outer Banks thing is messed up and weird. My dad is a property owner on Ocracoke (he’d been dreaming of having a house there since before I was even alive, bought a piece of land back in the ’80s, and finally put a house on it about 25 years later). As a kid, I loved it–Ocracoke is so cool. As an adult, though, I’m…less enthused. I still love going, but it’s hard not to see the whole thing as A) a doomed folly, and B) a playground for the rich that ordinary North Carolinians are forced to subsidize.
The “beach nourishment” thing reminds me of Venice: You’re fighting a guaranteed losing battle. These islands are glorified sandbars. You can’t stop them from turning over, eroding, being reshaped. But the state still pours millions upon millions of dollars into dredging, nourishing beaches, keeping Route 12 in place, and generally trying to prevent the islands from changing. Most of the people who’ve been on Ocracoke for a while are more sanguine about the whole thing–they’ve been through enough flooding and hurricanes and landscape shifts to know you can’t win a battle with nature, so they’re just determined to enjoy it for what it is while they can–but developers smell money. So they plant this idea that no, this stuff is NOT inevitable, we can stave all of it off, and indeed we MUST stave it all off, or else everybody loses everything, and that’s not how things work in America!
There’s more than a little sunken-cost fallacy being thrown around, and definitely plenty of chaff: Much of the Outer Banks are technically a national park–Cape Hatteras National Seashore–and of course good-hearted people want to keep beautiful parks open, right? And they’re now playing the “don’t you resent these pointy-headed LIEbruls waving around the climate change myth and trying to tell you what to do?” resentment card, to pretty good effect. Which is kind of sad because NC isn’t exactly the richest state–and eastern NC in particular is pretty crushingly poor–and there are much better things that could be done with all that money the state spends on beach nourishment and such.
Elizabelle
@Tenar Darell: Humane comment. Maybe down the road North Carolina should buy some homeowners out, not at inflated prices, and allow them to remain while they’re safe.
I would guess insurers are going to have a big say. Eventually it might get too expensive for the states to subsidize those who can’t get affordable insurance on the coast.
And why should somebody inland have to subsidize someone else’s second (or third) home?
Elizabelle
@Bubblegum Tate: Beach nourishment uber kids and poors nourishment!
True. Erosion is inevitable, and the barrier islands are — well — they have their purpose, and it’s not sustaining (major) development.
The developers may not like being called the bad guys here, but they sort of are.
And I don’t have that much sympathy for folks (I know a few) who built 3500-4000 sf homes on the water. A few couples with kids who visit very occasionally. That’s not sustainable. It’s kind of greedy, actually.
D58826
@Brachiator: I seem to remember that there was some reporting that the father had links to a few underworld characters. That was the part that wasn’t followed up on
Bubblegum Tate
@SatanicPanic:
That’s a question I’ve been pondering a lot over the past several years. I mean, you’d think they’d have been right about something at some point, right? But I can’t find any conservative prediction that has come true or any conservative stance that doesn’t have at least one major lie as its foundation.
Tenar Darell
@Elizabelle: Hah! I certainly don’t feel humane. I feel like telling them to go fuck themselves instead of their fucking the country, their state, its citizens, and even their customers. Just want to put steel toe boots on and kick some asses. Like I said, not productive, and it blocks out any ideas on how to talk to people who don’t even use the same facts as I do.
Bubblegum Tate
@Elizabelle:
I wouldn’t even say “sort of.” They are. They smell money, and they don’t want anything standing between them and that money. Ocracoke is way overdeveloped, and I imagine Hatteras, etc. are, too. But developers want to build and sell a bunch more massive vacation homes, so fuck your unstable environment, fuck your climate change, we’re building this, dammit!
This is the real truth:
But developers don’t wanna hear that.
And I suppose in some ways, even my dad is part of the problem. Now, he knew what he was getting into, and it’s not like some developer sold him on the idea–like I said, he’d been harboring the dream for decades, well before developing on Ocracoke became a “thing.” I remember visiting the land a few years after he bought it, and there was nothing there. It was just sand with a bit of grass and–seriously–a stick in the ground with a small tag indicating that the land was his. That’s it. No structures to be seen, not even a real road. Hell, it took easily 15 years before it was even conceivable to run plumbing to his plot. But now, it’s a full-on paved road, lined with houses–vacation houses, to be sure, including my dad’s. And it’s not as though he built a mansion, but he didn’t build a shack, either. The island definitely is not meant to support the kind of large-scale construction that’s been going on, but it quite possibly isn’t meant to support houses like my dad’s, either.
J R in WV
@Kenneth Almquist:
Don’t forget the strong possibility that we won’t have the capacity to grow enough food to support the population. This is a problem whether you are speaking of your local area, a national area, or the whole planet.
And more serious than having to abandon large coastal cities by miles.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
No, no! More accurate: Hillary has no medals won for valor in the VN war!
Utterly truthful, utterly irrelevant and mindlessly stupid. But convincing.
brantl
@Shawn: I did, you idiot. The UN report on Climate Change. God, you’re an argumentative dope.
evodevo
@MattF: Many years ago a fundie I knew told me point-blank : “I don’t care about global warming. Jesus will always take care of MY family.” And that attitude describes A LOT of the locals here in Ky.
Sherparick
We have had a spell of cold winters and snow in the East and Northeast U.S. this decade, which allows the political class in D.C. and the economic elite in New York to enjoy their delusions. But there is a least some evidence that this “cold” is the result of extra melting off the Greenland glaciers and the shrinking of the Arctic ice cap, which causes colder fresh water to float over deeper saltier water as the Labrador current descends into the North Atlantic and to slow the flow of the warm water Gulf Stream to the Arctic east of Greenland. The effects of Global Warming are happening now, and they have been happening for 50 years (just look at plant zone maps in 1960 and 1970 for one thing or the fact that sea level has already gone up 10 cm since 1970). Big weather events such as storms and droughts happen all the time, and were happening before the 19th century, so they are difficult to attribute causation to Global Warming. But sea level rise, the incremental changes in plant growing zones show its reality, and the accelerating melting of glaciers (Mountain, Arctic, and Antarctica) are effects happening now that effect us now.