The Righties Just Don’t Get It November 1, 2012
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Uncategorized.Tags: althernative energy, Chris Christie, geothermal, global warming, infrastructure, sandy, sea levels, wake-up call, wind power
trackback
If you check below, my blogmate’s last two posts both are negative commentary on the global warming phenomenon. The whole deal with Mark Steyn and Professor Michael Mann is a complex story that Cory and I have actually covered in some detail in “The Hound Online” which is a FOX derivative online newsblog. Let me summarize: Michael Mann is a climatologist who first developed the “hockey stick graph” which is basically an analysis of terrestrial temperatures that shows the sudden uptick in the last century attributed to manmade carbon emissions warming the atmosphere. Mark Steyn is an ultra-conservative pundit who has called Mann a fraud and compared him metaphorically to Jerry Sandusky. Mann is suing Steyn for libel and defamation of character. He may not win in court, but that does not in any way diminish Steyn’s epic dickishness. The second submission is less oblique and simply tells you why the righties believe alternative energy, in this case wind power, cannot possibly succeed.
Meanwhile, even dyed-in-the-wool conservatives like Governor Chris Christie are beginning to see the empiric truth. Global warming is real and its consequences are real. Irene was a once-in-a-century storm, followed in less than a year by Sandy, which is a once-in-a-century storm. The New York subway system and the rest of the buried infrastructure just got a realtime lesson in rising seal levels. The Midwest and the Plains just suffered through another in a series of crippling droughts and heat waves, and every American will feel the consequences of that when they tally up the cost of this year’s Thanksgiving feast.
It’s not whether things like wind power and biofuel and geothermal are feasible. It’s that they HAVE to work. There’s no alternative. The righties can shout, “Drill baby, drill!!” until they’re hoarse. In the short term, burning all the oil and coal they can suck out of the muck will only hasten the consequences of global warming, and in the long term, they’re still talking about a finite commodity. Nobody’s sure if there’s enough petroleum left in the ground for another few decades or another few centuries, but everyone is sure there isn’t enough to last forever. The righties love to bemoan the horror of the debt on our grandchildren, but they don’t seem to care whether those grandchildren will have electricity, clean air, or drinkable water. Ignoring the reality of global warming won’t make it go away and depending on fossil fuels for our energy future won’t cure the patient, it will just delay the hearse’s arrival for a couple of months. Sandy was a wake-up call. It’s time to find out if anyone was listening.
BW
Want to know how to tell if a story is complete BS? When is reads “This is the biggest storm SINCE…”.
Yup, my favorite line I heard (before losing power): “We have NEVER seen a storm like this in 70 years…”
I understand the part of the city that had the worst flooding was originally marshland and is currently built on landfill. That being said, the claim that it’s “the worst flood since … ” starts to sound a little hollow.
Can anyone tell one, just ONE port in the USA where the tide gauges over the last century have shown any sea level rise?
Just one port, its not that hard. Find me just ONE port anywhere.
Captain cook etched mean sea level in a rock formation outside the port of Hobart in Tasmania Australia….its STILL mean sea level today.
Just one port ladies, that’s all we’re asking, one port whose tide gauges are showing mean sea level rise.
Cheers,
john
Sea levels started “rising” (a relative term to say the least) at the end of the last mass glacial period ca. 10,000 years ago at the same time the glaciers started their retreat and the resulting floods carried the sand created by the glaciers to the beaches upon which dwellings and businesses have been built. Beaches are shifting, unstable, temporary land structures. Also Briffa, who helped with the so-called hockey stick graph and related data management, recently co-authored a paper “clarifying” the result and recognizing the obvious existence of the medieval warm period. Result: no hockey stick. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/28/manns-hockey-stick-disappears-and-crus-briffa-helps-make-the-mwp-live-again-by-pointing-out-bias-in-ther-data/.
Centrally created poverty and purposeful retardation of the ascent of man are not the right solutions. These are the opposite of the right solutions. Expensive power on unstable grids will make us poorer. Doing that, especially apparently to protect New Jersey seaside homes from predictable and repeatedly predicted Atlantic storm phenomena, ought to be justified by proponents as a correct trade-off.
Also, as noted elsewhere, got any cites for higher mean sea levels at ports anywhere?
I agree, the rise in the level of seals is very disturbing. They are big heffers, too, and when they start appearing in your local high street don’t come running to me.
I agree that the rise in the level of seals is potentially catastrophic. Selas have been migrating as far south as Tampa in America and Marbella in Europe. The effect upon the local eco-systems will be awful, plus they don’t half make an awful mess ofthe beaches.
You only have to go to the wharves of San Francisco and listen to the barking, burping and farting of the seals there to understand that we just cannot have seal levels rising any further.
“He [Mann] may not win in court….”
See? Mr Wendell hasn’t entirely lost touch w/reality.
True, but it does remind me of the “well, yes, but…” remarks I get from my children when reality doesn’t jive with their perception.
Weather does not = climate. And…ICYMI: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2220722/Global-warming-The-Mail-Sunday-answers-world-warming-not.html
It has to work. Even if it doesn’t. This sort of magic thinking is ridiculed when associated with religion. What you said is nothing more than secular faith healing.
Very good analogy.
Those are all interesting assertions and opinions. I was wondering when an argument was to be made, as there were not any facts put into evidence. Saying something must be so has all the persuasion of an adolescent with a temper tantrum. Each to his own. Cheers.
There is nothing new about big storms like this: http://www.hurricaneville.com/historic.html
Any chance of you correcting the above stupidity to make it clear that Steyn was QUOTING someone comparing Mann to Sandusky? Or are you happy having things wrong?
Oh yeah, being wrong is the only way to decieve.
That’s a response?
And to be even clearer, Steyn was commenting on the quality of the two investigations conducted by Penn State. I fear he was not entirely impressed with the ardor with which Sandusky was investigated and suggested that the same “non-investigation” took place with Mann.
Or should I say, Nobel Laureate Mann. (Wouldn’t want to be sued by the jackass.)
High water levels from Sandy has nothing to do with global warming. There is no evidence yet that the oceans are rising and even if they were, the results would be measured in millimeters, not meters. You make the mistake of taking the particular and attributing it to the general. Science and logic don’t work that way. It is comments like this that discredit Global Warming and set the cause back. If you want to make the case, please do it credibly, or you’ll be more fuel for the deniers.
I deny that I’m a denier. Oh wait