Rep. Barton: Climate change is ‘natural,’ humans should just ‘get shade.’
Rep. Barton: Climate change is ‘natural,’ humans should just ‘get shade.’
In a hearing today on adapting to climate change, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) denied the consensus on man-made climate change, saying it is “natural.” His solution to the warming planet? Just get some “shade”:
BARTON: I believe that Earth’s climate is changing, but I think it’s changing for natural variation reasons. And I think man-kind has been adopting, or adapting, to climate as long as man has walked the Earth. When it rains we find shelter. When it’s hot, we get shade. When it’s cold, we find a warm place to stay. Adaptation is the practical, affordable, utterly natural reflex response to nature when the planet is heating or cooling, as it always is.
“Nature doesn’t seem to adjust to people as much as people adjust to nature,” he added. “Adaptation to shifts in temperature is not that difficult.” Watch it:
Last year, Barton — known as “Smokey Joe” for his efforts on behalf of big polluters — stalled congressional efforts to decrease power plant emissions.
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The corn and wheat can fan itself.
March 25th, 2009 at 8:39 pmThere will be PLENTY of shade under STUPID . . . . . seems there is a lot of THAT in Texas.
March 25th, 2009 at 8:43 pmAnd when the millions of starving humans attack his grandkids their just going to tell them, hey adapt asshowls!
March 25th, 2009 at 8:44 pmand when it’s time to cull the herd we’ll be looking for you Rep. Barton. It’s nature’s way, I’m sure you’ll understand.
March 25th, 2009 at 8:46 pmNatural selection should preclude his progeny from procreating.
March 25th, 2009 at 8:49 pmIsn’t that cute? Rep.Barton is trying to think. And look how easy his solution is. Why in the world haven’t hundreds of scientists thought of this? Just get a big tent or umbrella.
He must have attended a grade school science class. Just the one of course. Well as for me, I am not going to worry one more minute about the nasty old warming. Tomorrow I am going out to get a beach umbrella. We don’t need no stinking scientists or melting polar caps to tell us whats what.
Phewww. I feel better.
March 25th, 2009 at 8:50 pmRep. Barton: Climate change is ‘natural,’ humans should just ‘get shade.’
– - Get bent, Joe.
March 25th, 2009 at 8:51 pmWhat kind of fool idea is that? Man has always controlled nature according to his needs.
—
March 25th, 2009 at 8:51 pmYou failed basic evolutionary biology? Would you like to discuss this premise of yours?
Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that the Republican Party is “growing more and more irrelevant to America’s young people.
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/03/23/the_obama_generation.html
March 25th, 2009 at 8:52 pmMan has always controlled nature according to his needs.
March 25th, 2009 at 8:53 pm—
ala great job Brownie
When it rains we find shelter. When it’s hot, we get shade. When it’s cold, we find a warm place to stay.
When the frozen methane clathrates melt, we suffocate…
March 25th, 2009 at 8:54 pmHey Klatu,
March 25th, 2009 at 8:54 pmCare to explain that piece of batshit crazy logic?
No need to monitor those volcanoes. After all man has always been in control…
March 25th, 2009 at 8:54 pmChrtistmas Tsunami? F uck yeah baby! Man has always been in control…
March 25th, 2009 at 8:55 pmHey Klatu,
March 25th, 2009 at 8:56 pmCare to explain that piece of batshit crazy logic?
– my money says no!
dbadass says:
March 25th, 2009 at 8:57 pmSo does mine db. Looks like kaltu turned tail and ran.
What kind of fool idea is that? Man has always controlled nature according to his needs.
I’m picturing the guy trying to parasail in a hurricane…
March 25th, 2009 at 8:58 pmChrtistmas Tsunami? F uck yeah baby!
Picture the missionaries, trying to explain it as they’re treading water.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:00 pmStupidity runs deep in the republiscum party…
March 25th, 2009 at 9:05 pmGreat idea Barton. Perhaps we can modify the fabulous missile defense system to just deploy some really big parasols.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:06 pmHey guys atleast he admit Global Warming is a problem lol
March 25th, 2009 at 9:08 pmYa see, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When you think of it, mass migration is just traveling, together, in large numbers. Water shortages are opportunities. I can eat glass.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:10 pmMy fondest wish would be for every Congress seat to be taken over by people who passed every science class they ever took so that they might understand how the scientific method works. It not to say the scientists always agree, they don’t. But, at least they would argue for the health and welfare of people instead of for the wealth of corporate pocketbooks.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:13 pmChat
March 25th, 2009 at 9:17 pmYou wouldn’t be pushing some sort of porn thing would you?
Google “Klatu” and you get some very interesting results. I haven’t had time to check them, but something smells here. When thousands of recognized scientists agree that human activity (like burning coal and oil) are changing the climate of the earth much faster than “nature,” real men might actually read something. But not these evolutionary retards. No siree. They know best. Let’s see how long Miami beach or for that matter Manhattan last when the oceans rise a few more feet.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:17 pmGod I just wish someone would ask idiots like this how they can think that pumping tons of chemicals and pollutants into our environment on a daily basis can’t possibly have an adverse affect on our climate.
Ask them if they would like to have those chemicals and pollutants pumped into their homes.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:17 pmMan has always controlled nature according to his needs.
— yeah, those rain dances always work for us here in the desert of Phoenix. Not.
On the other hand, I do like the fact though, that I can control, through the miracle of contraception, when and if my spouse and I decide to have a baby. That’s the type of “controlling nature according to (my) needs” that I can approve of!!!
March 25th, 2009 at 9:19 pmWhen it rains we find shelter. When it’s hot, we get shade. When it’s cold, we find a warm place to stay.
And when NYC floods, get a boat.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:19 pmKlatu Says:
What kind of fool idea is that? Man has always controlled nature according to his needs.
Too bad no Man thought of controlling Katrina, aye?
March 25th, 2009 at 9:23 pmKlatu Says:
Man has always controlled nature according to his needs.
And Woman has always controlled Man according to her needs.
/Sorry for the repeat, I just had to post this.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:27 pm/…sez the guy whose turn it is to cook dinner for his wife.
I’m so sick of morons like this having anything to say about anything! All he does is take lobby money and go home to eat bbq..WHAT AN ASS !
BUT, as soon as the final transaction is done that GIVES texas BACK TO MEXICO, then he’ll get his under a bulldozer…
March 25th, 2009 at 9:31 pmIt never ceases to me what people will do for money.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:32 pmIt just seems to get more outrageous with time.
Listening to the clip I’m struck by how much Rep Barton sounds like a sixth grader reading a school report…….a sixth grader from about 40 or 50 years ago.
Sixth graders today are generally much quicker mentally, have better reading skills and access to much more information.
Rep Barton is the human equivalent of a dinosaur.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:40 pmHis time has passed and he has not adapted to present conditions.
Ironic considering his little ’school report’ is on adaptation.
Klatu Says:
Nature doesn’t seem to adjust to people as much as people adjust to nature?
What kind of fool idea is that? Man has always controlled nature according to his needs.
____________
Right right right… just tell nature you’ve decided to adjust yer blood pH up or down a few percentage points and see if nature supports the idea.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:42 pmWho cares? The GOP is irrelevant on this. They’re just a bunch of jokers mimicing whatever crap comes out of Rush Limbaugh’s AM radio show.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:47 pmKlatu Says:
Nature doesn’t seem to adjust to people as much as people adjust to nature?
What kind of fool idea is that? Man has always controlled nature according to his needs.
So what you’re saying is that it’s true that the Bush Administration caused Hurricane Katrina. Well, thanks for clearing that up.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:47 pmPeople will suffer and die because of lack of water and food. This guy isn’t (just) an idiot, he is cruel.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:48 pmEverytime I start thinking that they hold class down in College Station, one those aggies shows his behind!
March 25th, 2009 at 9:54 pmAnd when the first floor of expensive sea-side resorts are under water – the taxpayer will once again be tapped to bail out the corporations.
March 25th, 2009 at 10:12 pmTell that to Syria.
March 25th, 2009 at 10:40 pmI can’t even begin to express the dismay and rage this policy-maker’s infantile “logic” engenders.
And let’s not forget those who voted for him.
The sooner everyone in Austin just leaves so that Chuck Norris can become President of the secessionist Republic of Texas, the better off the non-Texan majority of the US will be.
March 25th, 2009 at 10:49 pmSo, how does this intellectual explain the acidification of the oceans ?
Surely there must be some natural explaination no ?
March 25th, 2009 at 10:49 pmWhile it is true that climate shifts have taken place naturally in earth’s history, the alarmingly unique factor in the current trend is the RATE at which it is happening–many, many times faster than anything previously measured in ice core or geological/mineralogical samples that provide evidence of past climates.
The industries that are financing the “global warming denial campaign” share the same unethical “profit at all costs” philosophy that has dominated the decision-making process of the tobacco industry as it repeatedly denied any health-related consequences of using their products.
Economic impact cannot be the sole factor in every regulatory policy of the U.S. government. Those that do not learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them. We can no longer afford to be so short-sighted when the long-term consequences of our inaction are so great.
March 25th, 2009 at 11:09 pmI agree! Let’s get some shade! Too bad this moron supports policies of deforestation and the destruction of trees, wetlands, mountains and more in order to drill for the few remaining drops of oil.
Yes, let’s get some shade by planting trees, recycling and other environmental projects.
March 25th, 2009 at 11:23 pmDarn you beat me to it fly.
“When the oceanic ecosystem declines, we photosynthesize.”
March 25th, 2009 at 11:47 pm.
Throughout history cold periods have been the worst times for humanity, warm ones have been better for human prosperity.
The CNN Meteorologist saying that the Man-Made Climate Change theory is “arrogant” is a great advancement in the cause of educating the masses with the truth. Hopefully more of the MSM will start speaking out. The word is spreading, tell all your friends and family, and tell them to do the same.
Gore and his Man-Bear-Pig. The politicians on board with this scam must be simply out of their minds. For one thing, there’s plenty of oil and NG, we just need to drill for it and refine it. Also expand and improve nuclear, wind, hydro, solar and hemp fuel.
Can’t anybody talk some sense into Obama, Gore, McCain, Brown and Merkel about how temperatures rise first, and THEN carbon-dioxide levels rise.
Carbon-dioxide doesn’t cause warming, sun activity does, warming causes CO2 levels to rise.
The Laws proposed like taxing Cows for flatulence are among the stupidest, but ALL the laws proposed will totally destroy the world economy and starve 100’s of millions of people worldwide, all without changing the weather one bit. And it will take probably 100 years to repeal these insane laws. STOP the insanity! TELL EVERYONE!
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
humans’ breath is poison
just one child hurts the world
worse than a jet engine
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
don’t research all theories
put an end to all debate
silence all your critics
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
spread hysteria
wildly exaggerate
scare little kids not ready
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
keep people all worked up
about global warming
March 25th, 2009 at 11:54 pmdespite inconvenient facts
.
The Great Global Warming Swindle
href=”http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=-4123082535546754758
.
All real freedom starts with freedom of speech. Without freedom of speech there can be no real freedom.
.
Oops, this should work:
http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=-4123082535546754758
:)
March 26th, 2009 at 12:01 am“Smokey” Joe? How dare you call my congress critter “Smokey? I usually call him “Asthma”, when I’m not calling him “Stupid”. See why, when asked to call my congress critter, I politely say, “You have got to be kidding. He is a moran.” Yes sir, a genuine, Texas born, Texas bred moran. My moran. Help me.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:26 amOne common adaptation to drought is starvation.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:33 am“Rep. Barton: Climate change is ‘natural,’ humans should just ‘get shade.’”
It’s time for Barton to retire. Big polluters… lol
March 26th, 2009 at 12:35 amAfter a few years of drought, that shade turns into the tinder that fuels a firestorm.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:40 am.
People, let’s pray that Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) doesn’t experience a drought…
… Often.
.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:29 amUSpace:
Let’s talk for a second about science.
Scientists lookat the world every bit as carefully as any poet. Scientists listen to nature with calmness and patience, for years. And they craft their descriptions with great humility and greater care.
Before they make any statements, they argue intensively among themselves. For years.
And their arguments are always from What Nature Says, not What they, or we, want Nature to say.
It’s a tremendous process. And all that care and humility has had tremendous results. More than human arrogance and bravado by a long shot.
Humility and patience has never gotten any respect from the braggarts of the world. It doesn’t make one’s dick hard to contemplate how little we know and how little the universe cares for our conceptions. Far better to stand on a rock and shout than stand on a rock and listen.
Listen, punk.
Whether you’re an arrogant teenager or a lazy adult, listen instead of talking.
Nature has been speaking, and scientists have been taking it down. In numbers, charts, spectrograms, the stripes of chromatography and curved isobars.
You want to be able to come to conclusions about this without that work, without that listening. You want to believe you can understand Dante without learning Italian, Goethe without knowing German, Pushkin without knowing Russian. Because you’re a genius. a poet. You think you understand Zen without all that tedium.
And you think you can understand the infinitely greater poetry without listening to the transcriptions of Nature’s singing.
And of course there are fat radio hosts to tell you you can.
Sure! You’re Howard Roark! You’re the Crown of Creation! In apprehension how like a God! You’re the King of Infinite Space!
Except for the fact that you have those bad dreams.
Listen, buddy.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:33 amGlobal Warming for you is about CNN and Al Gore. You feel you’re the equal of all that. You figure that, since you’re a genius, you’re better than those fat politicians, who can’t figure out what you’ve figured out.
Your lazy ass makes me sick.
All that math, all those reams of data–you can’t be bothered to learn the science. You can’t be bothered to unlearn your egotism.
You Know Better.
And so you listen to the evil people who stroke you, and say you don’t have to work at it. And you believe their lies because they make your dick hard.
And the Universe is speaking to you in torrents of infinite wisdom, and you refuse to listen to Her instead of Them.
Rep. Barton, I mean no disrespect, sir… but I hope your district in Texas isn’t too close to the coastline. You’ll find your views on global warming radically altered once your house is underwater. XoD
March 26th, 2009 at 2:24 amUSpace Says:
Can’t anybody talk some sense into Obama, Gore, McCain, Brown and Merkel about how temperatures rise first, and THEN carbon-dioxide levels rise.
Carbon-dioxide doesn’t cause warming, sun activity does, warming causes CO2 levels to rise.
Wrong. Solar activity has actually decreased over much of the 20th century, while average global temperatures have risen. And carbon dioxide does cause warming, as ice cores have revealed. It’s just that in the past, this has been part of a feedback loop occurring after a natural warming cycle has already begun – usually due to orbital shifts or other natural Malenkovitch cycles.
The situation we have now – where CO2 is rising BEFORE temperatures rise – is unprecedented. That’s why it’s so dangerous.
March 26th, 2009 at 8:31 amRep. Barton is not ‘natural,’ humans should just ‘get shed of him.’
March 26th, 2009 at 9:07 amBarton’s statements are the views of a clueless boob! Having people like Barton and Senator Inhofe in positions to set policy is frightening. It does not matter how much evidence is put before them, they sing the same tune. And it’s all about where their campaign contributions come from.
March 26th, 2009 at 9:25 amCan we just get oxygen tanks when the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere reaches the point of toxicity to humans, which it will eventually if we keep going?
March 26th, 2009 at 10:31 amEvery time I scroll through TP’s start page I chuckle when I see this headline. Truely, it is The Stupidest Thing I’ve heard an elected official say. Even surpasses that loon Bachman.
It’s right up there with Reagans “trees cause air pollution.”
It’s just hard to stop laughing when I read this. How’d he get elected. Did all the republicans in this country cheat to get into office?
March 26th, 2009 at 11:15 amKind of convenient that Barton is from the Texas 6th district (south of Dallas).
Ask the folks in Galveston what they would think of a little sea rise and increase in hurricaines.
As the folks in the dessert areas of Texas what they would think of a few more degrees.
March 26th, 2009 at 11:23 ampbg #55, great post. I’d recommend it more if I could.
March 26th, 2009 at 11:28 amYou can bet is bank account is being well supported by the big polluters……..
March 26th, 2009 at 11:46 amHe is correct saying that climate change is natural BUT humans are causing it to become a more rapid process instead of a gradual process.
It seems Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) would
March 26th, 2009 at 1:05 pmlike a moratorium on greenhouse
construction-as a way to stop all
this greenhouse gas nonsense.
I cannot describe how utterly ILL it makes me when someone misuses the word ‘believe’.
Sure, Barton ‘believes’ in global warming. Sure. George W. Bush ‘believed’ Saddam had WMD. Cheney ‘believed’ torture would produce actionable intelligence. Rumsfeld ‘believed’ the Iraq
March 26th, 2009 at 5:11 pmwar would be a success, despite the horrid planning. Rush Limbaugh ‘believes’ that Obama’s attempts to address the Bush Depression will fail.
This is all the fault of mixing religion with reality.
March 26th, 2009 at 5:11 pmWhile I’m willing to concede that there actually is a microscopically tiny pearl of wisdom hidden deep within the simpleminded complacency of Barton’s statement — to wit, that adaptation is the key to survival (and it’s oddly ironic that someone like him should fall back on such a Darwinian idea in order to support his argument!) — the fatal flaw in his argument is that he’s assuming the effects of climate change will be minimal when this is by no means guaranteed. It is more or less accepted as fact that the planet has experienced climate changes before and that this is to some extent a natural process since such changes took place not only long before human beings became industrialized but in fact long before they even walked this earth — that is not subject to dispute. However, this does not automatically imply that human beings are incapable of exacerbating this process simply because he doesn’t believe it — especially not in an era when human beings are capable of reshaping the environment on the molecular level in order to suit their own needs whereas all other species before us have been shaped by the environment.
Another more or less accepted fact which Barton has oh-so-conveniently forgotten or chosen to ignore is that climate changes have in the past often resulted in the extinction of many (sometimes even most) of whatever species are dominant on the planet. Admittedly, we have a better chance than other species before us have had of surviving climate change by dint of our capacity for reason and the technologies which we have developed — but that’s still no guarantee that the consequences of climate change might not have a severe or even devastating impact on our species and how we live, and sticking our heads in the sand simply because we don’t want to think about it isn’t an effective way of dealing with this.
March 26th, 2009 at 8:44 pmName one time in history that the climate has stayed exactly the same for an extended period? Name one, please. Climate change? No kidding, Sherlock. Whatever.
March 26th, 2009 at 10:19 pmNow this is just plain old scary. Surely intelligent republicans, the 5 or 6 of them you can find hiding in say, NH, are cringing at this :) :)
Kind of like Bush saying that the air smells just fine.
March 27th, 2009 at 5:42 am