08 December, 2009

Global Warming Dumbfuckery Abounds

My darlings, I have the solution to our energy woes.  We can stop global warming in its tracks by tapping into a source of infinitely renewable energy.  All we have to do is tap into the endless dumbfuckery of the global warming deniers.  We can heat our homes with their fevered imaginations.  We can run our industries on with the dynamos of their denial.  We could recharge our electric cars by holding memos and emails just out of their reach on treadmills.  We'll never need oil, gas or coal again.

They're so fucking desperate they've turned to a life of crime in a pathetic attempt to discredit the science:
Burglars and hackers have attacked the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, apparently in an attempt to further the “Climategate” intimidation of global warming researchers. The Climategate smear campaign rests on the release of thousands of emails illegally hacked last month from the British Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The National Post reports that the Centre for Climate Modelling, a government institution, is also the victim of repeated criminal attacks:
Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria scientist and key contributor to the Nobel prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says there have been a number of attempted breaches in recent months, including two successful break-ins at his campus office in which a dead computer was stolen and papers were rummaged through.
As the United States — led by President Barack Obama — prepares to join the world in the fight against global warming, the opponents of reform are resorting to criminal desperation, harkening back to the amoral extremes of Richard Nixon.
Oh, yes.  That certainly adds to their credibility.  That puts them right up there with ALF and murderers of abortion doctors as fighters for truth, justice, and the American way.

But just in case their thefts don't destroy the science, in case all they can find is evidence for global warming as they rummage through scientists' effects, they've got a backup plan:
"Biased thermometers" are to blame for scientific data documenting a precipitous rise in global temperatures, according to Marc Morano.


Morano was Rush Limbaugh's former producer and a columnist at the rightwing "news" site, Cybercast News Service, before becoming denialist-extraordinaire Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)'s top aide on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works. In 2003, Inhofe described global warming as "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," a statement which he stills stands by today.

Morano now runs the climate denialist website ClimateDepot.com and is, essentially, the very heart of the entire climate change denialist echosphere.

[snip]


Here's the too-short debate between Morano and Balog, as hosted by CNN's Rick Sanchez, where Morano argues that the earth is actually cooling, despite scientific evidence --- based on "biased thermometers," as Morano argues, "placed near air conditioner outlets, near asphalt" --- showing this decade to be the warmest on record. We'll leave it to you to decide whose got their facts straight, the science photographer or Rush Limbaugh's former producer:


Wow.  "Biased thermometers."  That's novel.  And I suppose the "biased thermometers" are causing the melting of the Arctic sea ice, the drastic loss of Antarctic ice sheets, retreating glaciers, forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels, because the earth's just that gullible.  It's all a psychosomatic effect.  Brilliant!

But "biased thermometer" man and the happy gang of smash-and-grab goobers aren't the only ones fighting the science of global warming.  Billionaire right-wing fucktard David Koch is pouring tons of cash into the fight:
In an op-ed in the Boston Globe yesterday, I observed that Koch has manufactured a positive image for himself by giving to laudable causes, while at the same time, quietly “funneling tens of millions of dollars to more subterranean efforts that reflect his conservative politics.” Despite his funding of the Smithsonian, Koch has done more to politicize and and undermine the public’s understanding of science than any other single person. Koch has funded the leading groups dedicated to spreading skepticism of climate change:
– Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing tea party group which Koch founded in 1984 and continues to finance, has just announced that it will send a team of political operatives to Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Change Conference. AFP intends to hold a press conference to attack any climate change solution the President promises as a mistake that will “kill jobs here” and “infringe on our personal and national freedoms.”
– Koch has funded the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has been the most aggressive conservative front group heralding hacked e-mails as proof that climate change does not exist.
– Koch funds the “Hot Air Tour,” a campaign led by lobbyists stopping in cities across the country to call into question the science underpinning climate change. The tour also features an actual hot air balloon to illustrate their beleif that climate change science is just “hot air.”
The National Academy of Sciences, the US Global Change Research Program, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have all come to the same conclusion: “that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use and the loss of carbon-sink capacity in heavily timbered forests are increasing temperatures and making oceans more acidic.” David Koch’s Koch Industries derives much of its profit from its oil refineries, one of the major emitters of carbon dioxide, and from its George-Pacific timber subsidiary, one of the largest contributors to the loss of carbon-sink capacity.
And if you thought Bush's gang of nitwits were done fucking the country over when Obama took over the White House, think again.

Why are they all so frantic, you may ask?  Well, it could have something to do with the fact that world leaders are meeting in Copenhagen to hash out a game plan for dealing with the climate crisis.  And it could have something to do with the EPA's stark findings:

As expected, the Environmental Protection Agency is poised to formally declare that greenhouse gases are a dangerous public-health hazard and must be regulated by the government. The "endangerment finding" is the result of a study ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007 on the effects of greenhouse gas pollution on human health and welfare.

Whether Congress approves a cap-and-trade measure or not, the conclusion raises the specter of combating global warming through the regulatory process of the Clean Air Act. As you may have heard, business groups, to put it mildly, aren't fond of that idea.

[snip]

Today's EPA declaration should help crystallize the near-future for polluters: back cap and trade or the EPA won't have much of a choice. It's your call.
That's why they know their only hope is to destroy the science.  Alas for them, there's too much science.  And even if it weren't for the science, we're going to have a lot of Pacific Island nations underwater soon enough who will be happy to put a human face on the cost of global warming.

So, you may ask, what can you, as a person intelligent enough to realize we must do something about global warming, do?  Use your energies wisely.  And some genius inventor needs to get to work on that stupidity-to-energy conversion device.

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