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Global Warming Deniers Are Getting Burned
By Clay Bennett via the Cartoonist Group
Plus a bonus cartoon
Mike Smith via the Cartoonist Group
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The GOP should bear the principal blame and political consequences for government inaction on the climate. They have placed our nation’s security at risk in the face of a clear and present danger. Let us never forget the names of those who have consistently denied the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change. Someday soon, each of them and the party they represent should be held accountable by the American people for their reckless statements and actions.
You are so correct – the GOP should bear the blame. Back when Gore’s film was released it said we needed to start then – look at the climate now. Hate to say but it’s probably too late for the earth – well maybe not the earth but the human species because it’s one huge chain. Unfortunately, with the circle of life – there is a trickle down affect – um – that’s probably even a trickle up one though thinking about it. Smaller species on up :)
The Repugnants are to blame, but the odium also adheres to the ruling business elite and a Democratic Party that has hardly busted a gut urging action. And, of course, the Rightwing MSM and the evil that is Murdochism stand at the peak of the denialist conspiracy.
The Dems are as beholding to the corporatocracy as the Republicans. However, the politics of the conservative right are simpatico with the demands of their masters. The Democrats have to try to somehow twist themselves around so that they look concerned about the needs of real human beings while begging for someone to fuel their Super PACS. Their position is inherently compromised and therefore weakened. That is why they can’t openly and assertively sell what is good about Health Care Affordability Act. Also why they are unable to give Labor the support it needs to survive the onslaught that it is enduring. Etc. etc.
In order to thrive, the real human beings have to stand up and speak in numbers great enough to counter-balance the dollars-as-words, corporate-person-speach.
We should consider the possibility that future prosecution and legal liability might have the same effect on the Fake Skeptics and Rupert as they do on other activities- discouragement.
It is possible these jagoffs might reduce their species-threatening Denialism if they fret over future justice.
Unfortunately, if Harold is like most of the regulars on a certain anti-climate science website, he’ll just turn the air conditioning down a couple more notches and redouble his efforts to cast climate change as a giant hoax by cherry-picking locations that are currently cooler than normal, all while neglecting to point out that the North American heat wave is in the context of a much warmer than normal globe. Apparently even Mother Nature is in on the hoax now.
The Green Party convention is meeting in Baltimore right now to nominate Dr. Jill Stein as their candidate for president. The party platform, in a paragraph:
“She is highlighting what she describes as a Green New Deal as the main focus of her platform. She calls it an emergency program designed to create 25 million jobs and jump-start a green economy for the 21st century to help address climate change and make wars for oil obsolete.”
Sounds like the prescription we need, but, sadly, we all know she has no chance of winning. The rules are rigged against third parties. But, taking a queue from Thom Hartmann, if you live in an uncontested state you can vote for the Greens without voting against the Democrats (assuming the name of the game is to play keep-away from the worst possible outcome – a Willard in the White House). Since we don’t actually “vote” – rather, we “electoral vote”, we can help build up the Greens vote totals, adding as much credibility to the cause as we can. So… even though our vote is “secret”, I have given away my strategy and my intention.
For the first time in Green Party history, Dr. Stein has raised enough money to qualify for Federal Matching Funds. Even Nader didn’t do that. Maybe the fact that a candidate qualifies for matching funds should be enough to get them into the national debates.
Great. If the Greens get enough votes they can make sure Romney wins the election.
I used to think it was worth it to run a Green just so I could say, twenty years later, that in 1990 where I lived, we ran a candidate saying that civilization needed to live within the limits set by the fact the planet is not an infinite size. We got nowhere, but I can say there were voices offering voters a choice when the die was cast for what we face now.
But that Green Party, i.e. the British Columbia Greens, went on to campaign against a referendum put forward by the government there that would have given them the balance of power in BC given then current voting patterns. They defeated a proportional representation referendum by causing enough confusion with their opposition it failed by less than 2% of the vote to get the required 60% vote.
That’s how stupid the Greens in BC proved themselves to be when it counted.
It doesn’t surprise me to see US Greens now getting ready to help Romney win.
And I forgot to add my comment about the BC Greens: All I can say is at least you have a major party like the NDP. The US has nothing like that!
Maybe the Greens perceive that whoever wins will take us to climate hell, although maybe at a slightly different rate. Or maybe that it’s too late unless we ditch “growth.”
The Green sell-out in Germany has been epic, and it is now just another neo-liberal party of the Right with some bourgeois touchy-feely features. The trajectory was plain years ago when it split into ‘Realo’ (sell-outs) and ‘Fundies (real anti-capitalists, an essential for proper ecological salvation) factions. The same sad story is true of the big Green NGOs, most of whom have sold out to the money power of business, so that their leaders can remain ‘relevant’ by rubbing shoulders with the parasites who are destroying humanity.
I’ll launch in and add that the Australian Greens are currently disappointing a large swag of their supporters through their political naivety and intransigence. They don’t seem to understand the concept of taking small steps forward. Instead, they want all or nothing.
Gillian, I think you may be judging the Australian Greens too harshly. It is long past the stage where partial measures and compromises will do any good, whatsoever. Someone has to draw the line in the sand where survival lies on one side, and business-as-usual with a few token ‘greenwashes’ lies on the other. When Kevin Rudd announced that his emissions reduction target for 2020 was a miserable and contemptible 5% I began praying for his political demise. Politics as usual is simply suicidal.
I don’t know how state laws work on this, but a possible solution in the US Presidential elections would be for the Greens to put up as their presidential electors the exact same people who are the Democratic Party’s electors. In that case, I can say I’m voting Green but in reality my vote would count towards an Obama victory. If that’s doable and happened in enough states, it would send a storng pro-environment message to the Democrats.
On this side of the 49th parallel each state’s electors are allocated on a winner-take-all basis. It’s called the Electoral College – something our Founders wrote into the Constitution, possibly as a layer of protection against the Rabble voting for the wrong candidate. Were it not for the Electoral College, we would have elected a President Gore in 2000 instead of a President Cheney (aka, Bush). We can only speculate on how different things might be now… but I digress.
To clarify my strategy for voting Green, I live in Illinois, a state so certain to cast it’s electoral votes for Obama, that neither candidate will spend any appreciable amount of money here to sway voters. R-Money has, for all practical purposes, conceded Illinois to Obama, much as Obama has conceded Alabama to R-Money. This election will be determined by voters in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Iowa, and one or two other states. The rest of us really don’t count. Thus my Green vote will not help elect a president R-Money, but will hopefully help send a message.
… that message was sent very effectively by Bill McKibbon’s & 350.org march on the White House. Voting Green after the fact wound not have stopped Keystone XL. Feet on the Street did.
Artful, artful.
Nothing makes politicians pay attention like when they see people are paying attention. Nothing like feet on the street. This is government by the people, and when we show our will it is powerful. Right now, aside from McKibben et al work, the only people that show up in the offices are the lobbyists.
But the Earth and this nation have a lobbyist, too. You. Me. We just have to start showing up at our jobs.
Harold should have a radio blasting Rush-isms.
Links on three disparate subjects that may be of interest:
http://www.woodmann.com/fravia/kuririrh.htm
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-06/battle-over-climate-change?single-page-view=true
http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/nuke-conundrum
The Nuclear Power Conundrum
by Bill Chameides | Jul 05, 2012
Are fossil fuels the retro fallback option for a nuclear-free future?
New York University’s Jay Rosen gave the keynote address to the 2nd UK Conference of Science Journalists, June 25, 2012 at The Royal Society, London. He defined the term “wicked problems” with climate change as the easy example. The real problem is that the media does not do a good job at covering wicked problem and, again, climate change is a great example.
Rosen cited the need for a network of expertise to deal with these problems. I think that we are part of that network and we should be pushing any media that we see, read to get it right. After all, the media belongs to us, right?
Here is the URL to Rosen’s speech:
http://pressthink.org/2012/06/covering-wicked-problems/
The Western MSM, as Chomsky and Herman showed in ‘Manufacturing Consent’ and any consumer of the MSM product knows from everyday experience, is a crude propaganda system designed to indoctrinate the public in service to the ruling elite’s (the owners of the MSM)power and wealth. The process, which was once somewhat even-handed and subtle, has, in recent years, as the evil and destructiveness of the system became so apparent, become shrill, hysterical and vicious, best exemplified by the Murdoch apparat. To expect the MSM to do anything but propagandise is sheer delusion. We will get sane MSM coverage of the ecological crises only when the owners of the MSM deign that it should be so.
Denial is definitely less in evidence the last couple of years. The extreme weather has not convinced the denial community, but it has caused them to be more cautious in their strident denial claims. You see, more and more Americans have been hammered by the extreme weather and fewer and fewer are patient enough after first hand experience with climate change to listen passively to denial chatter.
A few years back, in any social setting, a denier could always be found pushing their agenda, now I notice the same folks are much more cautious. Is reality finally hitting home?
Maybe, but I will say it is too late. To right the ship will take a decade of crisis measures, followed by a lag time that will push earth into a major crisis. Our options now is to hold it to a crisis level event and not an extinction level event.
What bothers me is that to this day some media channels feel that giving a voice to the deniers is somehow “fair and balanced” as if there are two sides to every issue. This is absurd. Ignorance should not be given equal time. Let’s shut these people out and get on to devoting all effort to the work at hand – there is no more time for this silliness.
Good point!
Was there ‘fair and balanced’ reporting in the US, say, during the Second World War?
Of course, not.
This is a particularly egregious and malignant hypocrisy by the MSM. On any subject important to the 0.01%, like the destruction of Syria and Libya, or the uniform demonisation of Iran, China and Russia, the MSM reptiles never display balance. They speak with one voice and rarely is the voice of dissent ever heard. The process also involves the active suppression of facts that do not fit the elite’s narrative, and the propaganda is always couched in crude Manichean terms, where the enemy/victim is always evil incarnate. Only when the Bosses have money at stake does a fraudulent ‘balance’ ever emerge, in this case between truth and lies, rationality and idiocy and human survival and sheer, bloody-minded, destructiveness.
UK begins apportioning blame for ignoring scientists and planners:
Caroline Spelman’s deep cuts to flood defences begin to look foolish
Everyone and most species on earth are “getting burned.” Global heating deniers are getting rich, at least until money buys nothing. Don’t you know we’re addicted, and the pushers are running government.
Welcome to the global gas chamber, brought to you by the general engines and ignitions of the globalized military-industrial-fuels-of-war complex. Fill ‘er up with precursors to carbonic acid. Make sure that acidic gas chamber is complete. A complete catastrophe.
Nuclear bombs, many on alert status, is one worry. Nuking the climate, however, is “normal economic activity.”
The Koch brothers’ sock puppets have gotten off of blatant denialism, which just looks stupid these days, and have gotten onto “oh here look at this 55 page piece about the mayor’s middle name, here I’ll reprint it for you on the climate forum.”
One place that we should be going is actively discussing where innovative solar products come from, why innovations are dying in droves in the two valleys of death, (don’t tell me, you haven’t heard the term, have you) and why no one but a serious community altruist would want to be living on the bleeding edge of solar technology. We should be talking about why climate change innovation is utterly dysfunctional, the same way that Ethiopia should be talking about why their government is utterly dysfunctional and public officials are individually self-serving. If we’re not actively moving toward the change we need, maybe part of the climate change movement itself is dysfunctional. The protest side is getting its act together but the strategists? Are all of the remaining innovation strategists supporting themselves by taking corporate money? What track is this train headed down? Grade: F. If you’re following a failing movement and not trying to steer it better, then what good are you doing?
That’s my two cents.
Denying the blatant truth will not make Climate Change go away whether or not you believe it or not. We can spend Millions trying to convince the world that it does not exist as Dirty Energy Corporate Lobbyists do or divert even 1/2 that amount of money into Clean Energy Resources. The difference will Literally mean the survival of our Species!
Dr. James Hansen speaks on climate change, April, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha3qLXpFZTs
He talks about a law suit against the government, because of fossil fuel consumption and that we run out of time.
“The Science is crystal clear”
Must Watch…
A progressive dance song im working on
tagline: Co2 emissions and extreme weather…
The Rate of Climate Change http://soundcloud.com/galaxy-studio/galaxy-machine-the-rate-of
will upload a new version later… tweaking
Rays of Hope – Turning the Tide on Climate Change
Reading the news and the science with eyes wide open can be pretty disheartening these days.
This is especially true in the context of three tough threads that Climate Progress readers will be well aware of:
• Increasingly more accurate climate-related numbers, which are showing that to avoid devastating multiplier effects, emissions have to be reduced before 2020
• The pathetic failure of governments overall to seize the moment at the recent Rio Summit, illustrating again how functionally impotent and disconnected is the formal world leadership
• The continued, even growing, intensity of a corporate and right-wing alliance for increasing fossil fuel consumption, in the U.S. and worldwide, in both gas and coal — at a time when fossil fuel use must decrease for survival
Seems we’re just about cooked. I could easily stop right there, give up on change, and focus on making beautiful things, walking in the woods, and our family organic garden.
But there’s got to be a better option than just trying to hide gracefully while things come to end around us. Like millions of people who can see what’s happening, I’m deeply worried, and I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about what we can really do.
Even though in the medium term of 20 to 40 years, the technical challenges of continued GHG reductions will be huge — and we’ll have to work enormously hard to meet them — I’m not so worried about that. I’m confident that once we rise to the challenge, we can do great things.
What really worries me is that we might not rise to the challenge until it is too late to make enough difference. Looking at the three bullet points above — for instance — that does seem to be where we’re headed.
And that’s why I try to explain why I’m so very excited about something that might sound almost unremarkable, on the surface.
I think this proposal provides a realistic, even quantified roadmap for how those of us, who understand the need, can band together and make enough change now, so that when the rest of humanity wakes up over the next several years, it’s not already too late.
http://www.ArchitectureWeek.com/newsletters/green/127.html#rays
Yes, the economy is number one in the voters minds, but realistically, faced with macro-economic forces largely outside of our control, politicians can only have an impact around the margins of this disaster. The real issue in this campaign season should be climate change. Despite the imbecilic stance of the right, Obama has done more on this issue than other recent presidents. He should make this his, and our, hallmark, issue. I’m truly frightened about what is already happening to people in the developing world as a result of the calamitous weather events that have killed thousands. I shudder when I think of the world I’m leaving to my son and future grandchildren. We need to call Obama out on this and demand that he campaign on this life and death issue.
Yes.
Obama Stunner: Climate Change Will Be A Campaign Issue, We Need to Do Much More To Combat It
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/25/470940/obama-stunner-climate-change-will-be-a-campaign-issue-we-need-to-do-much-more-to-combat-it/
Japan floods: 250,000 people ordered to leave homes
About 250,000 people have been ordered to leave their homes to avoid floods caused by torrential rainfall in south-west Japan, officials say.
Flooding and landslides on the southern island of Kyushu have left at least 20 people dead in the past three days.
TV footage showed muddy waters sweeping through homes and streets as rivers burst their banks in the north of the island.
The Japan Meteorological Agency has warned of further rain and landslides.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18840329
These torrential rains we get nowadys are remarkable.
Yes and for only a 4% increase in water vapour. I’m sure it can go higher than that, ME
I don’t know how many of you keep up with this, but the arctic has been roasting like crazy this summer. First, the all time record high temperature in Greenland in May was broken ( According to weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera as reported by Jeff Masters’ wunderblog), then the all time low June snow cover extent for the northern hemisphere was broken for the 3rd time in the last 5 years (NSIDC), and the PIOMAS – modelled arctic sea ice volume for the end of June is at a record low for the third consecutive year! One heat wave can’t be blamed on global warming, but this many, this close together in time, spread over such large areas, and with no sign of being part of a natural cycle, well, that’s different.
Too bad we have to wait so long for a revision in the IPCC report…
BookTV: James Hansen, “Storms of My Grandchildren”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vagxyfQrncw
Very on point, brief interview, which aired on CSPAN. The integral information is really good here. James Hansen come a long way with his speeches and this might be one of the best.
Now he needs a bigger audience.
This video was uploaded 5 days ago…
We are seeing a couple major landslides over the last few weeks!
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Landslide+could+largest+North+America/6934457/story.html
Climate Chaos http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Johnsons+Landing+high+risk+landslide+area+district/6934420/story.html
Johnsons Landing not a high-risk landslide area: district
http://www.vancouversun.com
Johnsons Landing was not a known landslide hot spot, so Kootenay Central Regiona
Climate Chaos village councillor and a 30-year resident of the area, said road washouts in the spring are not uncommon, but the landslide at Johnsons Landing was of a much greater and unusual magnitude.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” said Lang. “This is Mother Nature.”
4 minutes ago · Like
Climate Chaos egion was hit by heavy rains in the month of June, with triple the average rainfall, which has been exacerbated by a high snowpack. He noted that while it is 35 C at the valley bottom, people are still snowmobiling high in the mountains.
Kootenay Lake’s water level is at a 40-year high, and a marina in nearby Kaslo is partly flooded. At the end of June, a mudslide wiped out a dam that provides water for Kaslo.
“It’s been a difficult six weeks,” observed Gustafson.
Others are also suggesting the extreme weather was a factor in the landslide.
We did a boat trip on Kootenay last year; the lake level was absurdly high, so much so that many mooring areas were impossible to use. We had a near-miss with getting the prop fouled on anchored moorings in one spot because the mooring buoys were submerged.
We chartered from Kaslo Shipyard (excellent outfit) whose dock facilities were partially underwater; their dockside workshop was flooded.
All that said, still an excellent time though the locals thought us deeply bizarre for not fishing. Kootenay Lake and the surrounding mountains truly beautiful.
Greenland ice melt video:
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/07/the-wet-side-of-greenland.html
Climate Chaos shared a link.
2 seconds ago
“how can we cope …. If this keeps happening every 2 yrs”….
Flooding victims: ‘If insurers don’t pay we are stuffed’ – video
http://www.guardian.co.uk
Residents of Croston in Lancashire talk to the Guardian’s Martin Wainwright about the flash floods that hit their homes
Civilization is teetering….
Insurance industry starting to drop everything and run for the hills… oops… the hills are on fire!
Nationwide Insurance: Fracking Damage Won’t Be Covered
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/nationwide-insurance-fracking_n_1669775.html
Dmitri Orlov, in a smashing piece of psychological speculation, compares the desecration and poisoning of the land by thousands of fracking shafts and the associated waste with self-mutilation in the psychotic individual. A psychotic society full of psychopathic individuals will have a difficult time relating to reality and acting rationally. The denialists are morally and psychologically insane, so attempts to reason with them are essentially impossible.
Gosh, that Greenland ice melt stuff is scary…but it shouldn’t be too surprising given the “heat wave” of such epic proportions (as far above average as it would be if it were to reach 110 degrees F. in Washington DC!) I suspect the Greenland melt this year will end up as the largest of any single year in the Holocene…
Also, according to Weather Underground, Resolute, Nunavut (in the Canadian High Arctic, just north of the main channel of the Northwest Passage) reached 68 degrees F. on July 2 of this year. This is as far above average (using their values) as 113 in DC or 142 in Death Valley would be!!! The heat wave at the same time we had here in the US of A pales in comparison.
Excellent cartoon by Mike Smith… the contemporary ‘circular firing squad’, lol.
Look at the graph from Wunderground here on recent temps versus historic trends:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2149
We have been 1+ to ~2 degrees F above the previous highest record for the last 4 months, and over 4.5 degrees over the long-term average for the last 6 months at least.
Something has gone seriously awry just in the last few months–a major discontinuity–or jump down the Dantean rings–from our slower march toward hell.
Is this related to our new embrace of fracking? To the reports of methane bubbling out of the Arctic? China reducing its aerosol emissions? Just all sorts of bad karma catching up with us?
The thought of the denialists being burned is rather alluring. Perhaps what we need is a good old auto da fe, and a few bonfires of the (profanities).
Perhaps the Great White Pointers have worked out who is destroying their oceans, their homes?
No more swimming idly by while their dwindling friends and relatives get wrapped up next to the chips or a kid goes past on a surf board. What if they get together with the other denizens of the deep, and they then talk to the amphibia who then get together with the landbased species, including the bacteria and viruses?
Please understand what we are doing, ie. breaking the rules, and that Old Ma Nature is as she has ever been – a mother, both good and terrible, ME
I like how Harold reminds me of a “Just World Believer”.