Last night I came across an entertaining news analysis and commentary site on the web, called AlterNet.com. The “alter” must be short for “alternate universe” because damn. If you want to learn what a hero and patriot the recently deceased Howard Zinn was; how a Texas Board of Ed is currently trying to “infuse textbooks with ultraconservative ideology” (unlike their hero Howard Zinn, whose footnote-deficient Marxist diatribe called “A People’s History of the United States” is presumably juuust fine!); or the latest hate-fostering racist escapades of the righty du jour, then this site is for you.
Actually, the only reason I found this site, is because they found me. In a piece posted this weekend, yours truly had the honor of being cited among a handful of righty blogs whose skeptical position vis à vis man-made global warming climate change “may be funny, but it’s also very dangerous.”
Here is what was written by contributor Daniela Perdomo about us funny and dangerous cynics:
The Right’s Inability to Grasp Climate Change May Be Funny, But It’s Also Very Dangerous
The so-called Snowpocalypse has brought out the funny bone in the right-wing media, but their inability to correctly draw causal connections is very dangerous.
February 12, 2010 | By Daniela PerdomoClimate change conspiracies are hardly new, but the so-called Snowpocalypse in Washington D.C. has returned them front-and-center to every single right-wing media outlet. …
For years since climate change has been accepted fact among the bulk of the international scientific and environmental community,
Wrong. Just because Al Gore, Barack Obama, and Leonardo DiCaprio say it is doesn’t make it so. Ask these 700 scientists with climate- or environment-related PhD’s whether it’s accepted fact.
many people have contended that global warming is a farce brought on by a New World Order (often embodied by the relatively powerless United Nations) to construct a world government that will undermine American sovereignty
I guess Ms. Perdomo missed the recent Copenhagen “climate conference” where much less time was spent discussing the reliability of the science than was spent bashing the United States, bashing capitalism and applauding socialism, drawing up international treaties designed to end prosperity in America, and concocting schemes that would siphon billions of our hard-earned dollars and redistribute it among poorer nations deemed the supposed victims of American disproportionate carbon output.
and make us all slaves to Al Gore and his green business cronies, who will be swimming in our green—our hard-earned cash …
Ms. Perdomo, again, is apparently ignorant of the fact that Al Gore has been lobbying Congress on behalf of a company he co-owns for them to enact draconian c(r)ap-and-trade regulations that would make him the world’s first carbon billionaire—with a “b”; this would be in addition to the $100 million Gore has already made off the global warming racket.
Of course, this completely ignores evidence that the last decade was the warmest ever on the meteorological record,
Bzzzzzt. Wrong again. First of all, “on the meteorogical record” means since the late 19th century, which is a blip of a blip of a blip on the timeline of Earth’s history. Secondly, we’ve been coming out of a mini-Ice Age since around 1850 so any increase in climate temperature since then is the convenient result of that fact. And third, climate scientists have corrected and NASA itself has admitted that the 1990’s were not the warmest ever; rather it was the 1930’s. In fact, five—i.e., half—of the hottest ten years on “meteorological record” took place before 1950. (This is what’s known in the field as “an inconvenient truth”)
and that while in the long-run we can expect winter squalls like the one that just ravaged the Beltway to be far more uncommon, in the meantime, all this snow may very well be the result of warmer air supercharged with moisture that will result in snowstorms rather than in torrential winter rains, as long as the temperature remains below freezing. In fact, precipitation of all kinds is up—way up. A recent study by the U.S. Global Change Research Program found that levels of very high precipitation from Maine to D.C. rose by 67 percent from 1958 to 2007; the Midwest has seen a 30 percent increase. Global warming holds that weather of all sorts—warm and cold—will be extreme, as we trend to an overall hotter planet.
And strike three, yer out. I defy Ms. Perdomo to find a single qualified climate scientist (not a hysterical environmentalist activist or governmental bureaucrat busybody posing as a climate scientist) who will attest that, if such increases have indeed existed, they can be remotely attributed to human activity. To do so is to aver that such “extreme” weather events never happened before around 1980. Which is complete and utter nonsense.
But this logic doesn’t sit well with Matt Patterson, a blogger at Pajamas Media, who accuses the Environmental Protection Agency of fear-mongering by classifying carbon-dioxide—“literally our very breath”—as an atmospheric pollutant,
Apparently Perdomo sees nothing disconcerting about a politically entrenched organization (and a cooperating activist Supreme Court) declaring a pollutant that which comes out of every exhaling mouth and which is food for the planet’s vegetation.
and scoffs at “any possible downsides” to the global warming conspiracy: “[O]h my God, I might have to walk over a few feet to keep from drowning.” Clearly he hasn’t seen a photographic projection of Manhattan submerged under water in the not-too-distant future; nor has he heard of the plight of island nations like the Maldives, which is expected to be underwater sometime within the century.
Oh yeah, because those Hollywood-esque scenarios and photoshopped images are really the stuff of hard facts that respectable climate scientists believe.
While Patterson suggests we are more likely entering an ice age than experiencing global warming, Patrick J. Michaels at the National Review Online, thinks the snowstorms in D.C. were much ado about nothing. “[T]here are those who insist that it snowed more than when they were little,”writes Michaels, a former state climatologist for Virginia. “That’s partially a matter of physical perspective, as 20 inches of snow on the ground looks a lot bigger to a three-foot child than to a six-foot adult.” Cute.
Most right-wingers are in Michaels’ camp—they really do believe nothing is happening. Emblematic of this is a Washington Times editorial titled “Snowmageddon is nigh,” which reads: “Those who value freedom should thank Mother Nature for her sense of humor, undermining the case for global warming one flake at a time. So although we’re quite tired of shoveling, we say, ‘Bring on the blizzard.’” (Did you catch the “flake” pun?)
How exactly does Perdomo know that Michaels is a right-winger? Because he writes at National Review? Fair enough; she’s probably right on that. But why does she dismiss his credentials due to that likelihood? Michaels isn’t merely a “former state climatologist for Virginia.” He held that position for nearly three decades, and is currently the senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute. In addition, he is a research professor of Environmental Sciences at University of Virginia, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, and program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. Oh, did I mention he is a contributing author and reviewer of the U.N. IPCC, as well as the author of four books on climate change? But (unlike what adorns Al Gore’s stunning résumé) Patrick Michaels’ impeccable credentials don’t mean a whit to left-wing ideologues like Perdomo because he’s presumably (gasp!) a right-winger!
Now comes the good stuff:
Ah yes, freedom. That’s what it all comes down to, for many of these folks. Over at Vocal Minority, a blog dedicated to “exposing liberal ignorance,” a climate change believer is considered analogous to “Islamic radicals [that] will put you to death for apostasy.” Similarly, the “global warming alarmist punishes her non-believers first with smears, lies, and verbal attacks; then moves on to taxes and surcharges, and ultimately imprisonment.”
I guess I should be flattered that VM was included in this article. But what’s insulting is that Ms. Perdomo didn’t even refute my statement. She just assumed I was out of my gourd and therefore felt no need to. O.K., so let me back up the statement with which she takes issue:
(1) Smears, lies, and personal attacks:
May 11, 2004: Rajendra K. Pachauri, the presently-embattled chair of the IPCC equated the thinking of “skeptic environmentalist” Bjørn Lomborg with that of Adolf Hitler.
June 19, 2006: Al Gore appeared on two news-talk shows. On one he called scientists who dispute the reality of global warming as “part of a lunatic fringe,” and on the other he said, “The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona.”
October 6, 2006: U.K. environment secretary David Milibrand said “Those who deny [climate change] are the flat-Earthers of the twenty-first century.”January 17, 2007: The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen suggests that meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of catastrophic AGW and compared skeptics to Holocaust deniers.
Those are pretty harsh words, considering Cullen just smeared the founder of the company that employs her: John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, thinks that Al Gore’s catastrophic AGW theory is hooey:
March 26, 2007: Jonathan Chait of Newsweek dismisses conservative/Republican catastrophic AGW deniers as tools, shills, and puppets of the energy industry.
July 7, 2007: At “Live Earth” RFK, Jr., bellowed, “The next time you see John Stossel or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity —these Flat Earthers, these corporate toadies, lying to you, lying to the American public …”
July 16, 2007: Michael T. Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) threatened to launch a campaign to smear and end the career of climate skeptic Marlo Lewis: “Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.”
December 4, 2009: Just before embarking on his trip to Copenhagen, British PM Gordon Brown called climate skeptics “flat-earthers.” Again environment secretary Miliband opens his mouth and called them “climate saboteurs” who are “dangerous and deceitful.”
(2) Taxes and surcharges:
Let’s start with the carbon tax. HowStuffWorks.com describes it with smiles and giggles:
While cap-and-trade seems to have won over most politicians, many economists and consumers prefer carbon tax for its simplicity and impartiality.
Oh sure, it’s simple and impartial. So is chopping off the tongue of anybody who says something some politician deems unfit for society. And I’d like to see these consumers who actually like being taxed for carbon use. Puh-lease!
Carbon tax is a form of pollution tax. It levies a fee on the production, distribution or use of fossil fuels based on how much carbon their combustion emits. The government sets a price per ton on carbon, then translates it into a tax on electricity, natural gas or oil. Because the tax makes using dirty fuels more expensive, it encourages utilities, businesses and individuals to reduce consumption and increase energy efficiency. Carbon tax also makes alternative energy more cost-competitive with cheaper, polluting fuels like coal, natural gas and oil.
Um, no. What it does do is put government-mandated restrictions on your freedom, your prosperity, and your overall quality of life. Having to fork out more of your hard-earned income in carbon taxes for electricity and gas is just the beginning. Everything you buy will be significantly more because of the energy companies use to manufacture their products, the gas trucks use to transport that product to your local store, and the electricity retail stores use to operate and sell what you buy. (All those costs inevitably get passed on to the consumer.) Furthermore, while you’re paying more on your own energy and gas bills and on products you buy, you’ll find your paycheck being less and less adequate. The carbon taxes your employer has to pay will be conpensated for by means of lower salaries and raises for you.
All this for the imagined purpose of “saaaaving the plaaaanet.” Then, decades from now, after enslaving ourselves to this lifestyle, we will notice that the planet hasn’t gotten one degree cooler, but our government has become an unstoppable authoritarian behemoth 180 degrees out of phase with what our Founders envisioned.
That’s what a carbon tax would do.
But there’s more:
November, 2004: Politicians from California, Oregon, and other states consider GPSing your car so they can tax drivers by the mile (in addition to taxing your gasoline, of course. What, you think politicians are going to eliminate one tax just because they’re planning to add another one?)
September, 2009: Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) proposes to add 50-cent tax per gallon of gas, as well as eliminate mortgage tax deductions on “McMansions,” homes that are 3,000 square feet and larger. (The average U.S. home is around 2,300 sq. ft.).
Then there’s c(r)ap-and-trade looming over our heads. Which by all measures would be a death knell for this once-magnificent republic.
(3) Imprisonment (oh, and I forgot execution):
September 19, 2006: A contributor at Grist.org writes: “When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards—some sort of climate Nuremberg.”
July 7, 2007: At the afformentioned “Live Earth” event, RFK, Jr. declared that AGW skepticism was “treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.”
November 12, 2007: Yvo de Boer, director of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change said: “Failing to recognize the urgency of [catastrophic man-made global warming] and act on it would be nothing less that criminally irresponsible.”
January 31, 2008: At a climate conference in Montreal, environmental scientist (and a former board member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association) David Suzuki said: “What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there’s a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they’re doing is a criminal act. … It’s an intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years.”
June 23, 2008: NASA’s James Hansen called for trials for oil firm chiefs for “high crimes against humanity and nature,” and “actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.”
March 2, 2009: At a Capitol Climate Action rally, RFK, Jr. (who’s a lawyer, by the way), said that the CEO of a certain energy company “should be in jail… for all of eternity” and called energy companies “criminal enterprises.”
June 5, 2009: Joe Romm, who served in the Clinton administration and whom U.S. News and World Report named one of the “top 8 Washington players on energy and the environment” and “Influential Liberal Climate Change Expert” wrote on his website that “It is not my wrath you need fear when there’s an entire generation that will soon be ready to strangle you and your kind while you sleep in your beds.”
* * * * *
So there you go, Ms. Perdomo. Ample evidence that my statement about lies, smears, taxes, imprisonment, and even execution is 100% accurate.
I’m not sure which is more funny and dangerous: that the instances listed above are real, or that Perdomo dismisses them or at the very least is unaware of them.
Related reading: This useful compilation by Marc Morano at Climate Depot
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