See that chart up there compiled by NASA of ground and ocean surface temperature readings over the last century? Fear not, for Senator James Inhofe (R-bugfuck) assures us all, every one, that God is on the case, and in fact He has been from the very beginning when the univserse was created lo those few thousand years ago. It says so in Genesis:
(Think Progress) — Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that “as long as the earth remains there will be springtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.” My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.
That’s right foolish humans! Stop believing you can change the world, for good or evil, cuz that’s the Lord’s domain; He’s Still Up There, ya know? Who do you think you are in the great scheme of divinely authorized climate changing biota anyway?
Mindless bacteria drifting in the ocean, herbivores breaking wind, green plants without a single neuron to call their own, yes, they might be able to pull it off. But eight billion humans burning gigatons of carbon-laden syrup that took a quarter billion years to store up in the space of a single century have no chance, and James Inhofe knows this to a metaphysical certainty. Because of one line in an ancient nomadic fable passed down orally for dozens of generations by neolithic sheep ranchers who, incidentally, are also privy to the One True Answer to everything. Indeed, Inhofe knows this, and the fact that he takes disproportionately huge contribution/bribes from the fossil fuel industry, and is promoting a new book called The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, has nothing to do with his fair and balanced analysis.
Inhofe is in the running for the title of Dumbest Senator Serving.
The other one is ALSO from Oklahoma.
Inhofe objects to global warming for two reasons:
1. Some of his financial supporters don’t like AGW.
b. He realizes that the actions necessary to deal with AGW are not acceptable to many voters.
As a result, he pretends AGW isn’t happening.
That guy needs to make a hot landing on a closed runway. Only this time I hope he doesn’t notice in time.
@Randomfactor :
Who is the other one, this Aussie is curious to know?
Michelle Bachmann is Minnesota right -and also no longer serving in Congress, yeah? Rick Perry is Texan and ditto – didn’t he lose by a record margin or something? Jeb Bush is Florida, yes? Ken Cuccinnelli is from virginia ain’t he? So .. okay, who?
Oh & is there really a US state called Bugfuck? Never heard of that one! Did they add it recently? ;-)
As for Inhofe’s comments and new book – yeesh. The stoopid it burns. Just hope he fails to get back in after the 2012 election.
I just hope climatologist Michael Mann’s new book ‘The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars : Dispatches from the frontlines’ released just a week or month or so ago out-sells Inhofe’s waste of paper by many orders of astronomical magnitude.
The other U.S. senator from Oklahoma is Tom Coburn, nearly as nutty as Inhofe. Two of a kind.
Unfortunately, Michele Bachmann remains a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and her presidential campaign folded early enough to allow her to file for re-election to her House seat. Damn. I was hoping she’d chase the illusion of a GOP nomination long enough to miss the deadline.
@ ^ Zeno : Okay, thanks. I had’nt heard of him before.
Bachman~wise, lemme get this straight – she’s out of her seat now but could be back after the next election if she wins? Much chance she won’t?
StevoR: Not quite. She’s still in the seat for the time being. Were she to lose her election in November, she’d be out of a job in early January. (Different states have different rules on whether or not a Congressman can also run for national office – Joe Biden was reelected to the Senate while simultaneously getting elected to the Vice Presidency. Due to a quirk in the US election calendar, he served for two weeks as Senator before resigning to become Vice President.)
Can’t say how likely she is to get reelected. Incumbents generally have the advantage, she’s in a suburban/exurban district that is pretty friendly to Republicans, but getting her kicked out of the House would be a rhetorical win for the Democrats, so they may be paying extra attention (i.e. $$) to that race.
@ ^ cottonnero : Oh ‘k. Thanks.
That’s, well, its not my political system and it sure seems weird and not a great way of doing things to me.
***
Jim Inhofe :
I probably don’t need to debunk this here but how dumb is Inhofe to fail to understand that Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating (HIRGO) as I prefer to call it* does NOT say there’ll never be springtime or other seasons, harvest, cold’n’heat, day’n’night?!
HIRGO means seasons will get more extreme not disappear, it has a lot of implications but making Earth tidally locked and therefore abolishing night or day on one hemisphere (outside of libration zones) is NOT and never has been one of them.
For pity’s sake, how *can* people take what morons like Inhofe so stupidly say when about a milliseconds thought is enough to realise they’re talking utter nonsense?
—–
* Because ‘Anthropogenic’ is a weasel word whereas ‘Human Induced’ is more straightforwardly clear a description because the geologically extremely rapid pace of the change is part of the problem and because ‘warming’ has too many positive connotations and is too mild a word.
I think what bugs me the most is that they’ll never concede the issue, no matter how bad things get. Someday they’ll say it was scientists’ fault, that if only they hadn’t politicized warming and had gathered REAL evidence all those years ago then of COURSE they’d have accepted the data and fixed everything. No matter what, it’ll never be their fault.
These same fundie xians then turn around and claim god is going to show up any minute for the Rapture and kill 7 billion people and destroy the earth. Quoting rather imaginatively a few other bible verses.
The latest prediction is the end of March 2012 by some follower of HW Armstrong. Armstrong himself predicted it twice, both times wrongly.
40% of the US population think jesus is going to show up by 2050.
The bible is just one big Rorschach inkblot that you can claim means whatever you want it to.
Why do you Americans always denigrate your congressmen? After all, you Americans voted for them!
I have never had the opportunity to vote for Bachmann because I don’t live in Minnesota. Nor do I live in Oklahoma so I cannot vote for or against Inhofe. However I do live in the state Joseph Lieberman represents in the Senate. I voted for him in 2000, I voted against him in 2006 (senators have six year terms). Either way, I can say unkind words about Lieberman when he says and does stupid things.
“[Bachmann’s] presidential campaign folded early enough to allow her to file for re-election to her House seat. Damn. I was hoping she’d chase the illusion of a GOP nomination long enough to miss the deadline.”
You had to know that was not going to happen.
That’s a good question Alan. It’s depressing sometimes to think of the potential of democracy and then navigate the actual day-to-day results. The answer to your question is complex, but the gist of it, why middle class voters sometimes elect people working against their economic interests, boils down to money. Conservatives have invested for decades and continue to invest in their causes. I’ve seen data where about half of it is from a handful of extremely wealthy people and families, but half of it is from moderately successful, upper middle class folks.
Over time they’ve built up a huge, interlocking network of orgs from the national media down to the local church, newspaper, and schoolboard. For a long time democrats did not do so to the same degree, we still don’t do it as well. There are many aspects to this, but just two examples; 1) I have friends who work on all kinds of campaigns at high levels, and they’re unemployed in between election years. Republicans offer those same folks a place, a job, a grant, something to tide them over and keep them engaged in off years. They have a lot of orgs they can place people at, entire parallel worlds of academic, political, industry jobs some of which pay damn well. 2) I have progressive-science friends who are highy educated successful writers, but most of them struggle to sell books to people actually interested in reading them. Conservatives set aside thousands of dollars to buy bulk orders of books like Inhofe’s latest tome. They don’t read all those copies, or even give them away, many copies end up in storage or landfills, but the sales count, the royalties help support the writer and the numbers help push the book up to greater visibility on tracking lists.
The result is conservatives are more cohesive and can project talking points — and they have no misgivings whatsoever about lying their ass off — no matter how crazy or silly or hypocritical or just plain blatantly wrong gibberish those points are, and get enough people repeating them or listening, from the water cooler to the op-ed pages, that they can win a share of contests, despite being complete disasters lately when they get into power.
This “God” character … has he ever been right?
The voter who is unwilling to vote for a candidate who is at best a mixed bag is impractical.
The voter who is unwilling to correct their representative when they are mis-represented will always be mis-represented.
The voter who is unwilling to re-examine their past voting decisions is an idiot.
And it’s an example of the sunk cost fallacy … do I need to go on?
(Yes, I’m well aware that most of the people criticizing any particular politician probably did not vote for that politician. Nonetheless – the underlying sentiment in alanuk’s statement is thunderously stupid.)
Does the Bible also say that ocean acidification will never happen. This will be a terrible problem resulting in the collapse of ecosystems and the extinction of millions of people. This needs to get much more attention.
Michele [one ‘l’] Bachmann is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, which makes her a member of Congress, but not a Senator (the U.S. Congress is a bicameral legislature, consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives).
Rick Perry is the Governor of the state of Texas; Jeb Bush is the former Governor of Florida and is not, as far as I can tell, currently serving in government in any capacity.
Ken Cuccinelli is Attorney General of Virginia.
As for “losing by a record margin or something”, you may be thinking of Rick Santorum, who was a first a Representative and then a Senator from Pennsylvania, but lost his Senate seat in 2006 when he got 41% of the vote to his opponent’s 59%.
alanuk:
There’s also the problem of our two-party system.
While it’s unofficial, in the practical sense we have two choices, and only two choices, for any given seat: The Republican (conservative) candidate or the Democratic (liberal) candidate. These candidates are chosen by their parties. While primary elections are held, which technically allows the public to help select the official candidate for at least one party, participation in these tends to be lower and often not well-representative of the broader public. It’s hard to know much about the dozens of candidates in any given election cycle (primary or official), and so money and party support often talks louder than anyone’s actual platform or record. In many cases the party officials effectively select whichever candidate they prefer. Thanks to district mapping policies, they can even select their own VOTERS to a limited extent.
Candidates representing other parties or running independently almost never have a viable shot at winning a position. They lack the resources of the two entrenched parties, and they face the classic problem of spoiling elections in a winner-takes-all system. That is, the majority of voters choose (for example) a conservative candidate, but the Democratic candidate wins because there was a third-party conservative who pulled too many votes away from the Republican.
Changing the system wouldn’t fix everything, but I’ve felt for a long time that we do need to fundamentally overhaul our voting structure.
AARRGGHH!!! As an Oklahoman, I am ashamed but not surprised. Here in the bibble-belt of fundyland, “Gawd said it; I believe it; and that settles it” is the foundation of law.
@18. Hercules Grytpype-Thynne : Thanks for that informative comment – much appreciated.
Yeah, I think I was confusing the two Ricks there – Perry for Santorum with the record losing margin thing.
Afraid I’ve always been pretty bad with typos – I do try to correct them in preview but a lot only seem to appear after I’ve clicked the submit button.