Radical Right Attacks McCain Over Global Warming: ‘Loony,’ ‘Environmental Extremist,’ ‘Popping Off’
Radical Right Attacks McCain Over Global Warming: ‘Loony,’ ‘Environmental Extremist,’ ‘Popping Off’
Yesterday in California, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said what has now become conventional wisdom: that the Bush administration’s inaction on global warming has had damaging consequences for our environment. “I would assess this administration’s record on global warming as terrible. And I have held hearings when I was chairman of the Commerce Committee for years and got no cooperation from the administration on this issue whatsoever,” McCain said.
For speaking such a casual truth, McCain has come under attack from the small contingent of global warming deniers on the right who refuse to accept the science. A few examples of the attacks:
Ankle Biting Pundits: McCain Sides With The Loony Left On Global Warming. … No Senator McCain, the President’s record on global warming is not terrible. Just because he doesn’t want to go along with the Euro’s and the lefties in voluntarily destroying our economy doesn’t make him wrong.
Jon Fleischman: McCain Embraces Environmental Extremism in California Appearance
National Review: He’s in CA doing “non-political” global warming events?? Gee, and they wonder why conservatives don’t trust him.
Tonight, Fox pundit Mort Kondracke said McCain’s comments were an example of him “popping off” and demonstrating he is “not entirely in control of his mouth.” Watch it:
Global warming is not a partisan issue. A recent poll taken among conservatives in South Carolina indicate 56 percent believe global warming is happening. Slowly, a consensus on the issue is building, leaving only the fringe right in its wake.
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McCain has a huge problem. I call it a ’straddling’ problem. You see, in 2000, it was easier to straddle appealing to independents and conservatives. Now is not the case. Bush republicans have pushed independents away in droves. Because Bush republicans believe its ok to deny global warming and have pamphlets saying the Great Flood caused the grand canyon. Whenever McCain says something sensible on one of these issues, he gets slammed by the right. But whenever he says something to appeal to the right, like overturning Roe v. Wade, he gets (justifiably) slammed by independents. He is basically, week by week, hopping from one chasm to another. Today he says the Iraq war has been a train wreck. Tomorrow he’ll say we need 40,000 more of our soldiers aboard that wrecked train.
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:39 pmMcCain cannot seem to do anything right. And I can’t help but laugh and laugh and laugh
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:40 pmThis is exactly what I said it was. They are doing exactly what I thought they would.
McCain is doing everything he can to make it seem like he has not been on board with Bush this whole time. The average Joe republican out there will think “Well, McCain isn’t like Bush, so I can vote for him” Not realizing that McCain is just another NeoCon puppet.
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:45 pm“week by week, hopping from one chasm to another.”
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:47 pmGood one!
And, in global warming parlance,
hopping from one ice floe to another………
Speaking of average Joe republicans, Leebeermahn announced today that he would consider switching parties again, completing his right hand turn…
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:54 pmJoe, why don’t you just cut to the chase and join the Likud party?
McCain is a whore who will kiss Falwell’s ass one week, and Bush’s ass the next day. He won’t even have the courtesy of giving a reach around.
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:57 pmmmm…your economy is already “destroyed”.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:03 pmAnd it has to do with a oily thing named Iraq. No lefty-euro thingie there.
“The American way of life is not negotiable” Dick Cheney
You are so right Dick, you just don’t know why…
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:14 pmMust be pretty groovy to have an American way of life you don’t need to negotiate, Dickee……
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:38 pmSeems like about 90% of Americans have to negotiate a way of life you could care less about.
With statements like that, Dick, there is no surprise in being attacked by terrorists…….
If the right wing wants to eat its own young (and its old too), who am I to object?
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:40 pmFreaks on parade.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:47 pmSlowly, a consensus on the issue is building, leaving only the fringe right in its wake.
Sadly, it seems like that fringe is the one that gets all the mic time and gets all the decision making powers, no matter how loud common sense might scream.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:52 pmUm, wake up call, McCain. The right is not behind you. Stop wasting your time on this presidential run.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:06 pmEh, lots of lip service about global warming, but there is no political will in the US to do what it takes to stop burning fossil fuels. None whatsoever.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:15 pmGo ahead, let the GOP eat their own — see if we care!
It appears that McCain is learning firsthand the truth of Aesop’s fable about the boy, the man, and the donkey — “try to please everybody, and you end up pleasing nobody.”
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:48 pmWell, I guess this throws out all the nonsense the media has been pushing about the right being willing to run an electable, moderate republican rather than one that follows right wing nuttitude to the letter.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:51 pmI agree with 3. This is just like what Schwarzenegger did: pretend to distance himself from Bush.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:57 pmMcCain will say anything, do anything, to feed the insaitiable beast that is his ambition.
He’s a pathetic, wretched creature.
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:02 pmI think the ankle biter is correct. WPE has a completely different plan for destroying our economy.
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:36 pmAside from the presidential politics of this situation, I’m happy to see McCain–at least ostensibly–coming down on the right side of this issue. (We’ll see what he actually does about the issue.) I’d be glad to welcome everyone else aboard, since we’ll need cooperation from a lot of people to effectively fight global warming. I’d even welcome Rush Limbaugh, although I heard him smugly say this morning that he refuses to use fluorescent light bulbs (presumably because “left wing loonies” use them).
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:44 pmhttp://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php
ClimateScienceWatch
Promoting integrity in the use of climate science in government
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http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/everythings-cool-nyc/
“Everything’s Cool” global warming documentary has first New York City screening on February 20 (19 Feb 07)
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Links Page: Very helpful.
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/links/
Government Accountability and Scientific Integrity
Government Accountability Project
Union of Concerned Scientists
UCS Reports on Scientific Integrity in Policymaking
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
Pacific Institute’s initiative on the Integrity of Science
Open the Government
Climate Change — Science and Policy
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
U.S. National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
Jim Hansen – NASA page
Jim Hansen – Columbia University page
Stephen Schneider – Climate Change
ClimateArk – Climate Change Portal and Search Engine
American Meteorological Society Environmental Science Seminar Series
Hurricanes and Climate Change – USGCRP links
Blogs-
Real Climate
Chris Mooney, The Intersection
Government-
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:59 pmU.S. Climate Change Science Program
U.S. Global Change Research Program
U.S. Climate Change Technology Program
McCain does not have any friends on the left or right. Hard to get elected president with only support from 10% middle > lol.
February 23rd, 2007 at 12:41 ama new phrase i read today for the nice sounding global warming is global meltdown
February 23rd, 2007 at 1:11 am#21 – Thanks Rachael.
#14 – That’s exactly what it takes – a politician to have the balls to say: We need to stop burning fossil fuels. We are killing our planet by our actions. Not just our great-grandchildren’s lives will be altered, but, life on the planet as we know it will be gone in 200 years unless we drastically alter our energy consumption NOW. This thing is bigger than Republicans and Democrats. Anyone who cares should start calling the Repubicans out “You refuse to admit gobal warming is real because it eats into your profit margin. You are putting money ahead of your great granchildren’s lives. Shame on you.” The oldest game in the book is to call someone a ‘looney’ in order to discredit them. Time to fight back and call it like it is. Speak the truth and put the lies to rest.
February 23rd, 2007 at 1:53 am“Anyone who cares should start calling the Repubicans out “You refuse to admit gobal warming is real because it eats into your profit margin.”
But it doesn’t. Green policies routinely provide *more* long-term profits for corporations who adopt them. The real problem is that the Reich-wing is so reactionary that they’re simply against anything that liberals are for! You literally can’t sit down and have a rational conversation with them about Global Warming because they’ll meltdown in the first 30 seconds of any discussion about it.
February 23rd, 2007 at 3:55 amAL AND THE IPCC ARE LYING:
The Earth’s True Carbon Dioxide Record
Is Buried Under Gore
Feb. 22, 2007 (EIRNS)—The historical record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, claimed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the basis for greenhouse gas reduction, is a fraud. Research by a Freiburg, Germany professor, Ernst-Georg Beck, shows that the IPCC construed and concocted the pre-1957 CO2 record from measurements on recently drilled ice cores, ignoring over 90,000 direct, accurate measurements by chemical methods from 1857 to 1957.[*]
In a thorough review of 175 scientific papers, Beck found that the founders of modern greenhouse theory, Guy Stewart Callendar and Charles David Keeling (a special idol of Al Gore’s), had completely ignored careful and systematic measurements by some of the most famous names of physical chemistry, among them several Nobel prize winners. Measurements by these chemists showed that today’s atmospheric CO2 concentration of about 375 parts per million (ppm) have been exceeded in the past, including a period from 1936 to 1944, when the CO2 levels varied from 393.0 to 454.7 ppm. There were also measurements, accurate to within 3 percent, of 375.00 in 1885 (Hempel in Dresden), 390.0 in 1866 (Gorup, Erlangen), and 416.0 in 1857 and 1858 (von Gilm, Innsbruck). Ironically, while the 1940s increase correlated with a period of average atmospheric warming, Beck and others have shown that the warming preceded the increase in CO2 concentrations.
The data found by Beck came mainly from the northern hemisphere, geographically spread from Alaska over Europe to Poona, India, nearly all taken from rural areas or the periphery of towns without contamination by industry, at a measuring height of approx. 2 meters above ground. Evaluation of chemical methods revealed a maximum error of 3% down to 1% in the best cases.
By contrast, the measurements hoked up from ice cores, show a rather steady increase in CO2 levels, conveniently corresponding to the preconceived idea that increasing industrial activity has produced a steady CO2 increase. As Beck’s collaborator, Dr. Zbigniew Jaworoswki, former director of the Polish radiation monitoring service has shown, the gaseous inclusions in ice cores have no validity as historical proxies for atmospheric concentrations.[**]
Lesson for Greenhouse Gas Theorists
According to the greenhouse warming theory, the increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration caused by human activity, such as burning of fossil fuels, acts like the glass in a greenhouse to prevent the re-radiation of solar rays received at the Earth’s surface. While such an effect exists, carbon dioxide is low on the list of greenhouse gases, accounting for at most 2 or 3 percent of the greenhouse effect. By far the most important greenhouse gas is water vapor. However, water in the form of clouds can reflect back solar radiation causing temperature reduction. There are so many interrelated effects, that correlating global temperature to CO2 concentration is like attempting to predict the value of a hedge fund by the phases of the Moon.
To concoct a convincing case of such correlation requires ample, sophisticated lying, and the greenhouse theorists have been caught at it. By a delightful historical irony, it could be said that it is Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa who has caught them. Our modern understanding of photosynthesis began when the Flemish researcher Jan Baptist van Helmont took up Cusa’s challenge (stated in the “De Staticis” section of De Idiota Mente) to weigh a plant and its soil before and after growth. Van Helmont discovered, circa 1620, that the soil supporting a willow tree, which had grown to 169 pounds in five years, had changed weight by less than a few ounces. However, Van Helmont, who gave us the word “gas,” mistakenly concluded that the plant’s mass had come solely from the water applied. It took almost two more centuries to uncover the astounding fact that much of the mass of the plant, and all of its structural backbone, derives from the invisible and apparently weightless air, most especially the carbon dioxide component of it. That was the achievement of the revolution in chemistry launched by Lavoisier, and pushed forward by Gay-Lussac, Avogadro, Gerhardt, and others at the beginning of the 19th century. The ability to place two invisible gases in a balance and compare their weights, proved to be the secret to the determination of atomic weights, and from that the unlocking of the secrets of both the atom and the cell.
Unfortunately for the liars at the IPCC, the measurement of atmospheric CO2 concentration had been a special focus of chemists since that early 19th century elaboration of the process of photosynthesis, and their carefully recorded measurements are still with us. The inconvenient truth is that Al Gore still exists, but only fools and Presidential “front-runners,” so named because of the ample leaks of bodily fluids from their anterior orifices, give serious credence to his emissions.
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[*] http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/BeckCO2short.pdf.
[**] See “Ice Core Data Show No Carbon Dioxide Increase” at http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com.
February 23rd, 2007 at 6:26 amGuys every govt. is saving their turfs at the cost of environment. Maybe we would adopt as human beings with global warming and become hideous.
Hi Hi,
Say What.
http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com
February 23rd, 2007 at 6:37 amMcCain seems to be sincere on this issue.At least he says the truth here.
February 23rd, 2007 at 6:54 amIs their a pool I can join for the date and time he flip-flops? I say that inside 2 weeks, McCain will make some statement that contradicts his recent comment. The statement will be something like Exxon-Mobile don’t really cause global warming, but global warming is a problem nonetheless. Oh heck, I’ll pick a date. March 3.
February 23rd, 2007 at 8:25 amMcCain will back track in a few days.
February 23rd, 2007 at 9:17 amMcCain has lost all credability – there was a time that I liked him, but not any more. He flip flops so much I am dizzy!
February 23rd, 2007 at 10:28 amOnce again, the stupid, fringe right demonstrating why they lost so big last November. They’re out of touch, and out of ideas.
McCain is self-destructing.
February 23rd, 2007 at 10:45 amTP says,
“A recent poll taken among conservatives in South Carolina indicate 56 percent believe global warming is happening.”
Margin of error is 4+ points. Only 42% of those who believe it’s probably happening blame it on humans, most think warming is caused by natural variability.
Reasonable people in S.C. prevail.
February 23rd, 2007 at 11:04 amWish I had a better, more graphic way of ROTFLMAO at Righty.
RAL – I’m laughing at you. Are you also a holocaust denier, cause I know a lot of Righties are into that, too.
February 23rd, 2007 at 11:52 am[...] is evaluate the data with the appropriate amount of skepticism and not be influenced by true anti-science global warming absolutists who are politically aligned with Al Gore’s version of science and are unwilling/incapable [...]
February 23rd, 2007 at 12:07 pm[...] Radical Right Attacks McCain Over Global Warming. Think Progress, February 22, 2007. “Sen. John McCain said what has now become conventional wisdom: that the Bush administration’s inaction on global warming has had damaging consequences for our environment. ‘I would assess this administration’s record on global warming as terrible. And I have held hearings when I was chairman of the Commerce Committee for years and got no cooperation from the administration on this issue whatsoever,’ McCain said [on Wednesday in California]. For speaking such a casual truth, McCain has come under attack from the small contingent of global warming deniers on the right who refuse to accept the science. A few examples of the attacks: Ankle Biting Pundits: ‘McCain Sides With The Loony Left On Global Warming. … No Senator McCain, the President’s record on global warming is not terrible. Just because he doesn’t want to go along with the Euro’s and the lefties in voluntarily destroying our economy doesn’t make him wrong’… Jon Fleischman: ‘McCain Embraces Environmental Extremism in California Appearance’… National Review: ‘He’s in CA doing “non-political†global warming events?? Gee, and they wonder why conservatives don’t trust him.’” [...]
February 23rd, 2007 at 12:36 pmWHAT! Mr. Pasty-Faced Flip-Flop Madman McPAIN a LOONY? AN ENVIROMENTAL EXTREMIST? POPPING OFF? Why the HELL don’t you repugnant-repub rightwingnuts wait until next week? Then McPain will SWING OVER TO YOUR SIDE LIKE THE DEMENTED PENDULUM HE IS!!!!!
February 23rd, 2007 at 5:59 pmJohn McPAIN swings like a pendulum do
Fleischman and Kristol on rightwingnut bicycles two by two
Mort Kondracke the four-eyed Fox(tm) creep is cravin’
The rosy red ASS-cheeks of the little children!
GUESS WHERE Kondracke “pops off” in?
McCain never had me fooled. All I need to know is that he’s Republican. I’ve been a card carrying member of the anti-Republican party since Reagan, and now after watching the last election subscribe to the philosophy of my political party I feel more empowered then ever. Keep voting anti-Republican folks, and make the world a better place to include some hope that we can reverse the well documented effects of global warming. I look forward to the day when my party is disbanded because alas there are no longer any more Republicans in America to vote against. I believe. Keep voting anti-Republican.
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:01 pmhear! hear! Mr. Davol.
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:02 pm[...] Radical Right Attacks McCain Over Global Warming. Think Progress, February 22, 2007. “Sen. John McCain said what has now become conventional wisdom: that the Bush administration’s inaction on global warming has had damaging consequences for our environment. ‘I would assess this administration’s record on global warming as terrible. And I have held hearings when I was chairman of the Commerce Committee for years and got no cooperation from the administration on this issue whatsoever,’ McCain said [on Wednesday in California]. For speaking such a casual truth, McCain has come under attack from the small contingent of global warming deniers on the right who refuse to accept the science. A few examples of the attacks: Ankle Biting Pundits: ‘McCain Sides With The Loony Left On Global Warming. … No Senator McCain, the President’s record on global warming is not terrible. Just because he doesn’t want to go along with the Euro’s and the lefties in voluntarily destroying our economy doesn’t make him wrong’… Jon Fleischman: ‘McCain Embraces Environmental Extremism in California Appearance’… National Review: ‘He’s in CA doing “non-political†global warming events?? Gee, and they wonder why conservatives don’t trust him.’” [...]
February 25th, 2007 at 11:38 am