As the Senate debate expired this summer, a longtime environmental lobbyist told me that he believed the “real tragedy” surrounding the issue was that Obama understood it profoundly. “I believe Barack Obama understands that fifty years from now no one’s going to know about health care,” the lobbyist said. “Economic historians will know that we had a recession at this time. Everybody is going to be thinking about whether Barack Obama was the James Buchanan of climate change.

It may be true that Obama “profoundly” understands what failing to address global warming means.  Certainly I (and many others) thought that was true — until he basically punted on the issue without a serious fight.

The lengthy New Yorker piece, “As The World Burns,” however, suggests that if Obama did understand the transcendent nature of human-caused climate change, he personally didn’t try bloody hard to put together 60 votes for a bill.

The piece is well worth reading, although the conclusion, quoted above, just misses the mark.  I don’t believe that in 50 years “Everybody is going to be thinking about whether Barack Obama was the James Buchanan of climate change.”  Let’s set aside whether “everybody” (or even most people) in 2060 (or even today) would know what the “James Buchanan of climate change” means.  For the record, Wikipedia notes:

Read more

UPDATE:  The discredited Anthony Watts, who consistently writes (or reposts) the most offensive pieces in the denialsphere, has outdone himself.  In his effort to  smear climate science realists, he actually got suckered into repeating the message of the most infamous and murderous terrorist in the world!

Memo to Watts:  You know your anti-science smear-fest has hit a new low when a blogger like Keith Kloor calls you out.  Kloor comments on Watts’ latest masterwork:

… Andrew W correctly gets your intention when he writes in a comment above:

“Good on you Anthony, we need to get a link going in peoples minds between Bin Laden and the likes of Romm and McKibben”….

Just as the British video deserves to be widely denounced, so too does Watts — both for the smear and for serving as a vessel for Bin Laden’s disinformation.

Read more

Conservatives say the darndest things on video, as Think Progress shows.

Earlier this month, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) held an America Speaks Out town hall at the Elberton Civic Center in Elberton, Georgia to discuss various issues with constituents. At one point, Broun made the wild claim to his constituents that the federal government, through the Centers for Disease Control, would be calling Americans every single day to make sure they eat their fruits and vegetables. Broun called this “socialism of the highest order“:

Read more