I’m sorry, I feel stupider for having read this: it’s Ken Ham talking about climate change. He reports the headlines:
Shortly after the Fourth of July weekend here in the US, headlines proclaimed: “For the third day in a row, Earth’s average temperature breaks record highs.” Last week on July 5, 2023, the average global temperature (according to one university’s “Climate Reanalyzer,” “a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world’s condition”) was a record 62.8 degrees Fahrenheit (or 17.18 C), beating the “record” set on Monday. But is this really a record?
Yes.
But Ol’ Ken questions it.
…was last week really a record? Well, it might have been—but we don’t really know! Humans have only been recording climate data since the 1880s, and we’ve only had robust data since satellite data collection began in the 1970s. So we have no idea how warm the warmest day on earth was in all of the earth’s history! (But we do know, based on the fossil record, that the earth’s climate was much warmer before the flood!)
You idiot. We have over a century of robust climate records, and this was the highest temperature on record, therefore, yes, it was a record high temperature. Words mean things, you know. They weren’t saying this was the hottest the planet had ever been — that probably occurred about 4½ billion years ago, when the planet was a molten ball of rock — but the hottest since we humans have been carefully tracking the climate. OK, you fucking stupid charlatan?
But he goes on to top that disingenuous word game. He claims that he believes in climate change.
Not only do I believe in climate change, but I’m a climate change alarmist, and I do believe humans have caused climate change!
Except…just not the way scientists do, with their measurements and data and records. No, he believes in a coming Biblical catastrophe.
Well, I’m not referring to a supposed slight global temperature increase allegedly caused by humans burning fossil fuels. I’m referring to the ultimate catastrophic climate change everyone should be aware of when one day in the future, Jesus will return, and the earth (and the whole universe) will be judged with fire, and God will make a new heavens and earth.
He then goes on to say that humans are the cause of this coming catastrophic climate change,
because of our sin in Adam
…except he then goes on to say that we’re not going to be the cause.
So, man is not going to destroy the earth! We can boldly proclaim that humans aren’t going to destroy themselves or the earth because God is in complete control, and he will determine when the ultimate catastrophic climate change will occur. So, the climate change countdown clock is absurd! We need to understand and believe in climate alarmism in a biblical context.
This is a bait-and-switch game AiG plays all the time. They have multiple articles with titles like Science Confirms Climate Change
and The Globe Is Warming, But It’s Not Your Fault!
and I’m a Climate Change Alarmist!
that, when you actually read them, are denying all the scientific evidence in order to claim that the basis of their belief rests entirely on Bible prophecy, and that, of course, the way to prepare for climate change is to pray and go to church and give Answers in Genesis your money. The only reason you should worry about environmental catastrophe is if you don’t fear God.
Lord, I despise these liars.
There is absolutely nothing benign and uplifting about the fundie perversion of xianity.
Their best idea is that jesus is going to show up any day now, 2,000 years late, kill 8 billion people and destroy the earth.
That makes jesus by far the most accomplished genocidal maniac in history.
The one good thing about all this is something the fundie xians can’t take credit for.
AFAWK, jesus the god doesn’t exist which explains why he is invisible and does nothing.
This is stupid and pointless even though it is a central part of fundie xianity.
Why am I, 8 billion people, the entire biosphere, and the earth being punished for thousands of years for a minor sin some guy supposedly did thousands of years ago.
Since we didn’t do it, we are being punished for something we didn’t do and most of us don’t even know about.
Even humans don’t punish children for the sins of their parents, very often anyway.
@1, @2
But without original sin, what threat exists to compel obedience to the church?
He’s disqualified, res ipsa loquitur, before he even ays a word. But his claim that the world was much warmer “before the flood” should be enough to force him into some kind of psychiatric outpatient treatment.
Dear PZ, I know it is important to be aware of the full range of human expression and to support the rational and constructive and to battle the irrational and delusional. But, as you point out, and by reading a wide range of news sites, the world is so full of crackpot, rightwingnut xtian terrorists that it makes my head hurt! As you said, Ken Ham and the rest of these aholes (including repugnantcants) use double speak: grab attention with a credible headline then shovel their irrational bullshit at the reader in the article. this results in our living in a world almost devoid of honesty and reason.
Slightly off topic: There is a war on decent teachers. Another was just fired (wisconsin, this time) having her class sing a positive and inclusive song: ‘Rainbowland’, also a duet by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton https://www.alternet.org/wisconsin-school-board-ousts-teacher/
Also known as a witch hunt.
The Dark Ages aren’t really over with.
They just moved to places like Wisconsin, Florida, Texas, and the rest of the Red states.
<sarcasm>
Shame on you, PZ. That’s a misleading headline because it implies that on something — anything — on which Ken Ham pontificates in public, he is not a disingenuous fraud. The evidence is… otherwise.
</sarcasm>
@6 raven said: The Dark Ages aren’t really over with.
I reply: You are so correct. I fear society is heading into an even darker age with all the attention paid and banal publicity given to the imbeciles in government and society in general. Religion has always been one of the most twisted and destructive forces in society. There are reports and graphs showing that religious belief and practice is declining in the united states. But, even if those tweaked opinion polls are true, the religious fanatics seem to be getting more exposure in the media and are able to raise lots of money from the sheople so they can wreak greater destruction and harm on all the ‘others’. Welcome to the apocalypse.
raven @ 2, history denies your statement. “The sins of the father fall unto the son”, also known of as the corruption of blood. That’s only relatively recently been rejected by nations. Otherwise, we’d have not had to explicitly prohibit it in the US Constitution and the UK prohibiting it in 1814.
shermanj @ 8, when one looks at a minority view holder, one always should also look to see if they have a gun. Note how many religious fanatics have multiple firearms and quite a few, literally tons of ammunition. Then, note their militancy, incessant claims of being in a state of war and their history of violence. Yes, one should pay attention, not necessarily heed their desired will, but at least pay attention enough to know if one needs one’s own howitzer.
Few want to shoot anyone once a howitzer is parked on their toes.
I wonder if Ken the (non-astronaut) Ham watches the news and howmany of his follwoers do? Globe-wide and including the Ole US of A :
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/europe-us-swelter-under-blistering-heat/a-66243206
& from same European news site : :
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/south-korea-thousands-told-to-evacuate-amid-deadly-floods/a-66241537
Whilst from my local Aussie ABC news earlier this week :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-11/antarctic-sea-ice-dropping-to-record-low-levels/102587598
I wonder at what point the evidnece willbe so obviosus so glaring that even these Deniers finally have to face it?
I also wonder what might be said and what they might face if and when there are trials for Climate Criminals in the world they have made for us all…
StevoR, knowing these people personally, albeit under duress, they dress everything up as god’s will. Kid gets shot dead in school, thanks be to god. Nuclear exchange? God did it. Forest fire started by humans playing with fire in a fire watch condition, god did it.
Their reasoning sounds precisely like that of a spouse abuser, “you made me hit you repeatedly with that sledgehammer, it’s all your fault”.
In short, criminally batshit crazy. What’s needed for public safety is to disarm them and put them into colonies well away from inhabited areas, treating them like the lepers of old.
Wzrd1 @ 12
Northern Sweden has plenty of depopulated rural areas you can use for that (in return, we want some corner of the nicer parts of California).
Or you can ask Norway to sell you Bear Island or Jan Mayen.
Wzrd1, this should be a safe distance out for the nutters.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Mayen
See? There is even a volcano, providing free geothermal heating in winter. And if the canned provisions get scarce, they can eat seal flubber or the odd greenland shark*.
*The shark meat can be made safe to eat if you literally bury it in the ground for half a year, like the Icelanders do.
The time is long long overdue to recognise religion as a mental illness which needs to be treated.
I live in a state beneath Minnesota (what state isn’t). There was a star in the sky six hands high and it looked like it should be on the horizon. I’m nearly sixty years old and I have never experienced smog in the hinterlands. Dystopia seems to be all too real.
Re: wzrd1 @ #9…
I should think a 20mm Oerlikon would suffice. It could–most likely–be mounted on a pickup for mobility.
@ fishy : “I live in a state beneath Minnesota (what state isn’t).”
Umm, so underground in some sort of giant subterreanean hollow earth style cavern? Oh you mean south! ;-)
Oh and, er, Alaska? (Sorry, you did ask & couldn’t resist.)
whheydt @ 17, naw, way too anemic. A minimum of 105mm, preferred being 155mm. I’ll stick with my preferred sidearm of a 16-inch/50-caliber Mark 7 gun.
@18
I live in an abandoned salt mine in Michigan. It’s quite roomy.
“on climate change” was absolutely not neccessary
Wzrd1 @ 19 What you need is a surplus STRV 103 aka “S Tank” . You can drive and fire it from the same position. Bonus; the kids will be unable to scratch it with their keys.
Typical Ham Pork poop. Lure them in with a flashy headline and then hit them with Adam, Sin, Hell and suffering then tell them how Yeshua Ben Joseph is the only way to avoid all that. It’s skeevy. Then there’s the more typical evangelical RW position : Climate change doesn’t matter because YHWH is going to fix all that, so keep on burning coal. Hitchens was right. Religion poisons everything. Including the planet.
Words like records and record high are just librul sophistry.
They are just twisting god’s will for their gay agenda.
I forgot writing “checkmate, atheists “.
Also, insett random anti-semitic slur.
I’m Christian and I despise liars like Ken Ham and their ignorant pseudoscience nonsense.
@25: That is usually spelled “Checkmate, Athiests” to convey the complete experience.
Earth is at its hottest in thousands of years. Here’s how we know.
@11 StevoR: They have already started. The company front people and the scientist deniers are shifting to “it’s beyond human control”, “it won’t be as bad as predicted” and “it’s too expensive to do anything right now”.
The conspiracy theorists have added climate control as a means of population control to their list of theories. Still a lot of deniers but you don’t expect evidence to mean much to people who believe in a flat earth and that Trump is part of a global conspiracy to save humanity from aliens.
It’s the religious deniers that are still strong on denial. The Christian fundamentalists take the position that humanity can’t screw up the Earth before Jesus returns because that would mess up God’s master plan. In reality it’s a lot of simple partisanship. They are conservative so they deny and being fundamentalist religious types they generally won’t change their position no matter what evidence is shown to them. Eventually the current generation will die and the next will probably incorporate global warming in God’s plan to punish humans.
Most of the right-wingers I know still say environmentalism, in general, is a communist plot. As the mainstream right becomes more and more paranoid and given to conspiracy theories, I think they will claim that any climate-change-related disasters were engineered by the (((Deep State))) using everything from doctored data to orbital weather control satellites.
StevoR: I wonder at what point the evidnece willbe so obviosus so glaring that even these Deniers finally have to face it?
It seems you’ve missed the usual playbook when it comes to conservative action on mitigating problems. Their reaction to things always seems to come in stages:
It isn’t possible.
It’s possible, but it isn’t happening.
It’s possible, and it’s happening, but it’s not affecting people we care about.
It’s possible, it’s happening, and it’s affecting people we care about, but it’s not our fault.
It’s possible, it’s happening, it’s affecting people we care about, and it’s our fault, but we can’t do anything about it.
It’s a shitty way to govern, but a fair chunk of the populace seems to like it.
‘The only reason you should worry about environmental catastrophe is if you don’t fear God.’ That’s the crux of it. He’s saying if real life disasters are either not mentioned in the Bible or seemingly contradicted by something the Bible says will happen in the future then they are not disasters and Christians, if they agree with Answers in Genesis, know the real truth about so-called ‘climate alarmism’. (And then as the heat and wildfires get worse in North America and southern Europe, Ham will change the subject.)
https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/stars/did-webb-telescope-capture-stars-at-birth/ First I will ask ‘where does the Bible say new stars cannot be forming ‘now’ (as seen by our telescopes)?’ Then I will read Ken Ham’s nonsense.