I’m sorry, but there’s just no other title suitable for a post on the denial of the very real threat of climate change. Not when a story like this comes out:
The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday.
Where to begin? What to say? It’s so fucking stupid and so fucking arrogant and so fucking crazy and it may already be too fucking late to do anything about it anyway. These climate change deniers, and that means Bush at the head of a whole array of deniers in and out of public life, are like Holocaust deniers. It’s that fucking serious. Instead of denying the past, however, they deny the present and the future. They think it’s a hoax, or they just don’t give a shit, or all they care about is fucking the whole world for their own self-interest, or all of that together.
And soon we may all be fucked, along with our planet, because these fucking idiots refuse to do anything about, refuse even to acknowledge, the enormous crisis that looms all around us and that, from all we know, has already begun to overwhelm us, to destroy us.
No, there are no apologies here. I’ve had it with them all. If they don’t give a fuck about us and our planet, why should we give a fuck about them? They’re fucking insane.
Okay, so I lifted Michael Stickings’s entire post. Michael is one of those bloggers who take the principle of evenhandedness practically to its logical extreme. If I wrote that sort of thing the BDS crowd (Bush Defense Syndrome) would write it off as some sort of mental illness. That may even be a little true; I will freely admit that as far as I am concerned the president lost thebenefit-of-the-doubt some time around when he mocked Karla Faye Tucker. The guy just repulses me. That hardly means Republicans in general, but a loaded gun wouldn’t convince me to support this administration.
These days it seems as though the administration has driven the evenhanded moderates and even rightwingers with intellectual credibility past the breaking point. Gregory Djerejian passed me up months ago, along with what seems like the entire retired leadership of the US military. John Cole, of course. Even unapologetic trog-cons like Cold Fury (e.g., libs lost Vietnam) agree that the present leadership deserves to go:
The Republican Party leadership is as execrable a gaggle of out-of-touch backroom wheeler-dealers as ever screwed an honest man, and the difference between them and any lowlife Democrat you’d care to name is…well, just about nonexistent, seeing as how both varieties of corrupt pol are after one thing and one thing only: power.
I can’t say I’m eager to see more Dems elected, but a vote for Chafee is a vote for a whole lot of things that need to be eliminated, not encouraged. Party leaders are clearly willing to countenance making this election a “six of one, half a dozen of the other” proposition. Muth makes a strong case for sending ‘em a different message, just as Al has been doing here for a good while now. Honestly, if the Repub leadership truly thinks Chafee is the best they can do, it’s obviously time for a new crop of leaders.
Cheers to that. If the Dems gain power and throw the same awful K street orgy as the current Pubs I like to think that I will have the credibility to write that post.
You can see it in blog comments. A while back I got to wondering what had happened to most of the pleasant and/or reasonable Republicans around here. Some say driven off by the angry chorus, which is no doubt partly true. Even so, after absorbing the general ebb and flow for months I realized that a good number of our “liberal” commenters would actually be Republicans or right-leaning libertarians under any normal administration. Many voted for Bush once and a good number did twice. A decent number have no specific love for the Democratic party. But like this blog’s frontpage writers, most have figured out that our current leaders are simply no damned good for this country.
So, time for regime change. The Democrats may not be greeted with candy and flowers, not by me anyway, but at this point they can hardly be worse.
Sherard
Well obviously. See the utter destruction of Florida and the greater East Coast of the US this hurricane season.
DOH!!! What’s that ? That didn’t happen ? I blame global warming. Maybe they blocked it because it was drivel.
Comparing holocaust deniers with climate change “deniers” is FAR more offensive than anything the Bush administration has done. That’s fucking retarded.
Tim F.
Weather and climate. Happens every time.
Faux News
Actually I think our troops were supposed to be greated by “flowers and dancing”, not “flowers and candy”. If the Dems win then they can do the “maccacarana” dance in Copley Square in Boston. With flower petals falling down like snow.
Paul L.
When an Expert’s Not an Expert
“As far as the media is concerned, Dr. Gray is the “go-to” guy for hurricanes, but his views on global warming are simply unwelcome.”
Steven Donegal
“That hardly means Republicans in general, but a loaded gun wouldn’t convince me to support this administration.”
That’s Ok, Tim, in a few days they won’t need a loaded gun. They’ll just waterboard you.
Pb
Sherard,
You’re a moron. I’d explain further, but I don’t think you’d understand it then, either.
ThymeZone
The idea of a government applying political color to science is so reprehensible that it by itself makes me determined to rid the country of these meddlesome and pigheaded idiots ASAP.
Science to me is all about seeking information. A government that tries to put a lid on the search for truth in science would stop at nothing at putting a lid on the search for any truth that is inconvenient to them.
The question is not whether global warming is or is not tied to human activity or is or is not a particular threat. The question is whether we will allow government to steer that conversation one way or the other in order to protect its particular worldview or please its particular power base.
I don’t really care if it turns out that Global Warming is the work of Satan. Just give me the empirical support for the idea and let the process make the best determination of what to do. And keep government’s hands off the work product. Let the science stand or fall on its own merits, as determined by scientists. Not politicians.
Pb
Well said, ThymeZone. This all reminds me of something Digby wrote not too long ago:
Mac Buckets
Oh, the reason there have been so few hurricanes this year is because I solved the global warming problem last spring. Turns out it was just a bad emmission control valve on my Suburban. So it’s not a problem any more — see, no hurricanes!
Face
I stepped outside my apt this morning, and it was freakin COLD outside. Like lower 40s. I hadda go inside and grab a fleece. It’s obvious global warming is a ruse. If my town, as part of the globe, is chilly, then it’s CLEAR that the Earth is not getting warmer, but colder. Colder by the day, in fact.
jg
Raises hand. My voter card still says republican.
Riw
The hurricanes were predicted on ‘Coast to Coast’ five years ago.
Bruce Moomaw
Keep in mind that Cold Fury is objecting to the current GOP being too MODERATE, not too right-wing. Let’s not see sanity where it doesn’t exist, no matter how frantic we may be to find some at this point.
As for Mac Buckets: please. Every scientific article and report on this subject points out that we’re dealing with a case of averages and gradual trends, which is precisely why it took 25 goddamn years to convince virtually the entire scientific community that the phenomenon is real. At this point, let me assure you they’re convinced. (If you doubt it, just take a stroll through the news columns and the scientific reports in the last few years of “Science” and “Nature”.)
Tsulagi
Yeah, at the very beginning of the new millennium most people I knew probably would have pegged me as a right-leaning libertarian. But after 9/11, way too many of those people jumped on the short busses for the express trip to retardocon playgrounds. I actually had a casual friend who got behind the Freedom Fries thing when it first popped. That’s when I knew we were in deep shit.
Little did I know at the time how deep it would get. Now? Until the Republican Party can prove to me that people like Bush, Cheney, Rove, DeLay, Dobson, Allen, Brownback, and a bunch of others are dismissed as their lunatic fringe, they’re not seeing another vote from me.
Proud Liberal
It must be hard being MacBuckts. Always trying to justify and defend the worst President in modern hisotry. I really feel your pain MacBuckets.
capelza
jg…mine says Democrat. I turned 18 in 1974..Nixon still loomed large…but now that I think about it, I WAS registered GOP because I voted for Ford in the primary of ’76 against Ronald “You’ve seen one redwood tree, you’ve seen them all” Reagan (I lived in Humboldt County, CA…the whole junk bond extravaganza impacted and continues to impact the last remaining stands of virgin redwood there because of some asshole leveraged a hostile takeover of a local and pretty benevolent lumber company. The lumber mill was torn down, a huge mall built on the land and to pay for this the new owner has to cut down every tree standing. Yeah, that last sentence is hyperbole.)
Until the mid 90’s I was comfortable voting for Republicans, particularily in State and Local elections. I had voted more than once for a GOP Senator.
The whole Ken Starr thing completely and utterly turned me off the GOP…my kind of R started being called a RINO and men and women who had served their country and their party for decades were turned into pariahs. It drove my Goldwater R mother from the party…we both have a solemn vow to never vote R again until the maniacs are gone. So we have been shrill for a decade.
The Other Steve
Pretty much the same story here.
Although I didn’t become shrill until 1998 when the Republicans committed treason.
Mac Buckets
Huh? You must have MBDS — Mac Buckets Derangement Syndrome.
Andrew
You guys are trying to explain science to someone who doesn’t understand basic logic.
You’d have better luck teaching a pig to sing opera.
capelza
Sorry for the double post…but as to climate change. People point to the extremes of weather change in recent years, but I can tell you this, in the last 50 years (as long as I have been on the planet..the weather has indeed changed.
My neices and nephews do not know what it is like to stand waitng for the bus in a couple of feet of snow in SW Missouri in early spring because that doesn’t happen anymore as it did when I was a little kid. They don’t know what it is like to play hillbilly hockey on in their sneakers on the frozen ponds or haing sleds that one would actually use in the winter because it snowed every year). They don’t know how wet it used to be back there, because it has been hot and DRY, no rain for months or spending a large chunk of their summer sleeping hours in the storm cellar because of tornadoes.
Friends in Nebraska talk about the same things. The huge snow storms are gone. Things have changed..slowly, but those of us old enough to remember know it isn’t the same.
Tom
Sure they can.
RSA
What annoys me is that the Bush administration doesn’t even want discussion of the issue. The story includes, for example,
It’s not saying that global warming is definitely happening and here’s what we definitely need to do about it, even if there are obvious conclusions that can be drawn (everything seems to be couched in the standard, contingent, scientific language). The Bush administration doesn’t want you to be thinking about these things, however.
jg
I turned 3 in ’74. :)
Since Reagan was president during my growing years I considered myself a republican. I was very happy to do so until the impeachment hearings. Since then not so much. I didn’t vote in 2000 but I would have voted for Bush. I bought all the spin about creating the internet and sighing. I was all over going to war with Iraq for the same reasons Mac was, Saddam had to go. But unlike Mac when it occurred to me that these guys lied to get the rest of the country to go along I woke up.
capelza
Oh pppppppbbbbbbbbbbtttttttt!
See, I don’t condemn people that bought the bull…I am just glad when they see things for what they really are.
I’ll tell you, about 10 years ago, a bunch of were sitting around and the subject of GWB running for president came up. We all joked that if he ever became president we’d go to war with Iraq because of the whole daddy thing. We were only joking!!! We never thought the goober, as we saw him back then, would get the nomination or actually win..(whether he really did is a subject for another day). But as I heard the Iraq war drums beating I was slack jawed in amazement as I watched people I considered smart fall for it.
stickler
My registration card still reads “R” as well.
Not a snowflake’s chance in hell I’ll vote for an R this year, or any year in the forseeable future, though.
I’ll admit, remaining a registered Republican has its little joys. It was kind of fun putting the “Republicans for Kerry” sticker on my pickup in 2004. And I get some entertaining robocalls from the GOP every now and then. Even a few live push polls (the one on illegal immigration was particularly sastisfying, when I told the pollster I thought the GOP was the biggest part of the problem).
Pb
-4 here…
Pb
How? Make the case, I’m listening.
Mac Buckets
Lies? Clinton said that Saddam was a WMD threat, and passed the measure that made regime change in Iraq our official policy. John Kerry said Saddam was a WMD threat. Madeline Albright said Saddam would have a nuclear weapon. Every bigtime Democrat in Congress since 1997 said Saddam had WMD. The UN said Saddam hadn’t accounted for the WMD that he had declared.
Woke up? Sounds like you just have selective amnesia.
If you really did used to be a Republican (oldest schtick on the internet), I can’t say that we miss your intellectual rigor.
Gus
Wellstone was a little to the right for me, but I at least had an understanding of Libertarian Republican impulses (particularly as a former recreational toker). I had a great deal of respect for Buckley, George Will et. al., even when I disagreed with them. I’m from Minnesota which has a great tradition of moderate Republicans (Harold Stassen and Dave Durenberger come to mind). These authoritarian Republican types don’t even seem to have a coherent philosophy, other than cut taxes and never admit there’s even a remote possibility you could be wrong. Oh, and pander like madmen to the Christian right.
capelza
Mac…while the people you mentioned believed that Saddam had WMD’s..they did not launch a poorly thoughtout invasion, particularily whilst engaged in a war already.
As for you questioning people’s word that they were former Republicans..if you had come across this blog just recently without knowing Cole’s former stance..would you also question his veracity as well?
Shockingly, there are a lot of people who are R’s who think the party has gone batshit crazy.
Just as there are the Reagan Democrats. Do you doubt there truth as well…or is it just an inability to realise that some people don’t consider their political party a suicide pact and that leaving it is not apostatacy in a country with free choice…or is it to you?
chriskoz
Mac: So, others may have believed that Saddam was a WMD threat… and you think that means the current administration didn’t lie about anything? Nothing Clinton, Kerry, Albright, or anyone else said excuses the crap the administration pulled with thier “Curveball evidence” and “Saddam-9/11 connections”. Just because others were fools too doesn’t mean the Bush administration didn’t lie.
And you want to make jabs at the “intellectual rigor” of others?
JWeidner
No doubt. Republicans these days prefer ignorant, down-to-earth, types.
Pb
I don’t know about you guys, but these days, I wouldn’t claim to be a Republican–or even a former Republican–unless I was one. And even then I’m not sure that I’d want to bring it up.
Mr Furious
Just want to set the record straight. Not me. More libertarian than the average lefty perhaps, but nowhere near Republican.
Sure as shit not me.
Mr Furious
Which shows more intellectual rigor? Blind allegiance or reasoned thought and deduction leading to a change of opinion?
srv
Most Iraqis want us out in a year
78% overall think US presence is provoking more conflict
61% approve of attacks on US-led forces
Progress!
jg
This just keeps coming back no matter how many times you kill it. What people thought BEFORE they inspectors were let back in doesn’t matter. Its after they were let back that the bullshit started. The only people still thinking he had wmd after the inspectors were let back in were members of the Bush administration or the people who got their information from the Bush administration. I thought he had wmd because I got my info from the media which got it from Bush.
See all those people may have thought something. Bush knew. He knew Saddam had not reconstructed his nuke facilities and didn’t have wmd (chem and bio don’t count, sorry). He said that they did, but knew that they didn’t. How that is different from saying you didn’t have sex with that woman when she in fact gave you head is something I don’t understand.
Mac Buckets
Ah, this old nonsense dodge.
Their relative inaction (Clinton did bomb Iraq the day before his impeachment hearing) merely shows they didn’t have the will to really oust Saddam, not that they didn’t think he was a threat (they said over and over that he was).
That doesn’t make their WMD “lies” any more true, does it?
So your theory is that the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration both were “lying” to inflate Saddam as a WMD threat, and that both Administrations knew that the other side was lying, but that neither of these two sides (which hated one another) would raise the point about the other “lying” about a military objective during the 1998 election, the 2000 election, or the 2002 election? That would require an amazing amount of cooperation between the two administrations.
Good luck rationalizing that one!
jg
Calling it the oldest schtick etc is rather dismissivev isn’t it? When did I say I used to be a republican? I thougtht I was clear but I realize you are biased so I’ll say it explicitly leaving you no room to spin in into something that matches up on your talking point cue card. I am a republican but I’m pissed at the current republican leadership and the direction of the party. I also have no problem voting a straight democratic ticket just to restore balance to a government that was meant to be divided.
capelza
A nonesense dodge? And yes, bring up the “wag the dog” nonesense dodge in response.
Having a lick of sense in realising that invading Iraq (like the GOP of the 90’s would cotton to that anyway…wasn’t it Tony Snow in ’99 that said Kosovo would be the next Vietnam?) was not a good idea is not the same as not having the will. And look where that “will” has got us…
Listen, I don’t know that Bush was even lying in his belief that Iraq had WMD’s…it was the doctoring, cherry picking and possibly simply forging the evidence that makes him and his liars.
Sojourner
LMAO!!
Sorry, Mac. We already know these folks didn’t have the same intelligence the Bushies did at the time they started this ridiculous war.
And you look ridiculous continuing to defend it.
ThymeZone
But, he got you to say “Mac.”
Sojourner
Yeh. He may be totally deranged but he is endearing.
chriskoz
No, in fact that is NOT my theory. (someone with “intellectual rigor” would be able to figure that out.)
My belief is that the Bush administration lied when they claimed “we know where the WMDs are”. My belief is the Bush administration lied when they claimed there was a working relationship between Saddam and Osama. My belief is the Bush administration lied when they claimed the intelligence community thought those aluminum tubes were only suitable for use in a centrifuge. And there are many other Iraq lies that came from this administration only. My belief is that even if they did honestly believe Saddam was a threat, the Bush administration still lied to sell the Iraq war.
I heard none of these claims from Clinton, Kerry, or Albright. Therfore… those people may have been wrong about Saddam, but they sure as shit didn’t try to sell an invasion of Iraq based on lies like the ones from the Bush administration. (at least not that I’m aware of)
As a side note… I am not defending Clinton, Kerry, or anyone else who claimed Saddam was a threat. If you have evidence that they lied… fine. All that means is that they are liars just like Bush. I was always brought up to believe two wrongs do not make a right. So… claiming “someone else lied too” in no way absolves the Bush administration of it’s pack of lies.
harrison
I don’t suppose anybody coughed up to read the actual “Nature” article before climbing up a tree and throwing their own crap at everybody in sight.
Shabbazz
It’s true, you know — Pat Tillman died heroicly while singlehandedly leading 20 platoons of soldiers up a 90 degree embankment to give puppies and kittens to amputee orphans in Afghanistan!
Jessica Lynch was both captured and rescued in a series of heroic Rambo style shoot-em-up thrillers that would make James Cameron envious!
Achmed Challabi had nothing but the best of intentions and all of his pre-war information was based on cold-hard-empirical-scientific-facts reguardless of the stacks of information to the contrary.
Letting the Defense Department create it’s on clandestine “intelligence agency” (and I use that term losely) had nothing to do with the horribly botched pre-war intelligence. Nosir! That was all the fault of the CIA (and, of course, CLINTON!!) That’s why George Tennant was given the Medal of Freedom — you know, to help ease the pain of falling on his sword.
Abu Ghraib was nothing to worry about! It was just a few bad apples blowing off steam. Nothing worse than a little college prank! All those terrorist-aiding-liberals need to just shut up already! And the NY Times had better NEVER show the remaining videos and photos which prove just how sadistic that place was — lets they be labeled treasonists (again).
Wiretapping American citizens without a warrent is GOOD for the country! How else can you preserve freedom then by erroding the basic freedom of privacy — all the while blatantly lying to the public about the program? I mean, it all makes sense! We especially need to monitor those pesky journalists or else they could potentially reveal other illegal and shockingly anti-american programs (like Abu Ghraib, Hatitha, Warrentless Wiretapping, Secret Prisons, Prisoner Torture, Elimination of the Geneva Convention).
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
It would almost be funny if it weren’t so god-damned tragic!
Shabbazz
Oh yeah — I forgot to mention — that Science (all science) is just a theory and the White House should reserve the right to ammend any scientific study as it sees fit! Global Climate Change is all just a myth (much like evolution) and we should teach alternative theories in the classroom to explain the mysterious existence of hurricanes and platypuses.
The EPA reports the air is toxic in lower Manhattan — NOSENSE! Just let the White House ammend the report a little here, a little there and — PRESTO! The problem is gone!
We should just apply the same logic to the threat of Global Climate Change and allow the Executive to unilaterally ammend the problem out of existence! PRESTO!
Tsulagi
Shabbazz,
Don’t fuck with Tillman’s memory. After that no class attempt at humor, I didn’t hear a thing you said.
Shabbazz
>> Don’t fuck with Tillman’s memory.
I was doing nothing of the sort. I was lambasting the clear and obvious deceit (which is the subject of the thread) that was shoveled around by the Military following the incident. They did more to disparage his memory than all the Shabbazzes of the world combined. Sad, but true.
Paul L.
Imagine the outrage if the right tried to stop funding scientists who believe in Global
WarmingClimate Changei.e. Manns, Tim F.
Hey Hey Ho Ho, This Dissent Has Got to Go!
However since Global
WarmingClimate Change is such a problem you guys support building more Nuclear Reactors or are you guys like the commenter jadegold at Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactors are my Kind of Nukes!Chefrad
How did the Bush administration come down on the Great Vowel Shift?