Buchanan: "more and more science" says climate change "a hoax," "scam" designed to "transfer wealth and power" to "world government"
June 27, 2009 1:04 pm ET
From the 11am June 27 edition of MSNBC's MSNBC Live:
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i am an oppressed white male. i am lying in my hammock and my wife insists i get up and get my own ice water. and it's my birthday.
just because pat buchanan is a loon does not mean i am not oppressed. obviously.
there really does seem to be a reasonable controversy as to how much of global warming is attributable to human activity. that is just my opinion. and i could easily be as loony as pat buchanan.
this argument is not terribly reassuring. it suggests that the rapidity, intensity and irreversibility of climate-devastating warming is such that we humans could not possibly account but for a small part of it.
in any case, it seems objectionable that so many of the global warming denials slippery slope right into conspiracy theories. every potential controversy surrounding global warming science is offered as prima facie evidence that the government is determined to get in our shorts.
and throughout all of this the white male oppression aimed at me continues unabated. i worked outside today in hot, humid weather and my wife now refuses to stay in the same room with me unless i shower.
not liking my chances of any birthday surprises.
It would be one thing if he had cited any valid science (which he didn't), and if that science had refuted man-made climate change. Pat's taking it one step further, asserting that this science (which he doesn't cite) not only shows that it's a hoax, but exposes the motivation behind that hoax.
Sort of like somebody saying that evidence of evolution proves that religion is a hoax designed to control people. Even the valid science of evolution doesn't prove the motivation of those who deny it.
Pat also continues to demonstrate the far rights inability to grasp the concept of net effects, whether it's applied to taxes, jobs, or government spending. No wonder they do such a lousy job with the economy, their entire ideology seems to be based on the idea that if they keep all of their money in their wretched little fist, they make more money.
you seem to have nailed the argument. not the part about the 'wretched little fist.' the part about controversy being evidence of a concerted hoax.
pat buchanan claims scientific controversy without offering any science from either side. even if he did, how does scientific debate on global warming result in de facto evidence of a conspiracy to deprive US citizens of their rights?
he reaches too far. the argument does not hold. it does not really have to hold.
by sleight of hand he slips taxation into the argument. the original argument becomes a non-issue. our nation is founded on the outcry of 'no taxation without representation.' he gets real traction by going anti-tax.
one wonders whether his core audience is very critical in the first place. but it appears to positively froth on conspiracy theory.
warm them up with the mention of science. beat the anti-tax drum. then pour on the conspiracy.
it is really more of a matter of entertainment then sophistry.
but overall i would say you nailed it.
They keep repeating their debunked talking points. Boehner, in particular, thought that if he did it in a very loud voice, it made his points even more true. It didn't.
Bottom line, they always argue that it's about the Have-nots trying to get their greedy, undeserving, socialist paws of the ever-expanding wealth of the Haves. They simply dismiss out-of-hand the potential disaster that awaits even them AND their progeny that rising sea levels, extreme storms, intense droughts, crop failures, famine, rapid and uncontrollable mass human migrations, and a collapsing marine food chain would more than likely bring. They suffer a miser's dementia instead, sitting warily in their gated communities, maniacally clutching their bulging bags of Krugerrands, while they coo and whisper that their Precious is safe with them.
It reminds me of Eric von Stroheim's classic silent film Greed. In it, the protagonist, McTeague, suffers for many years from his wife's obsession with a small fortune that she wins in a lottery. In her growing mental illness, she is unwilling to spend a single dollar of it, and buys 3 or 4 day old rancid meat at the butcher shop in order to stretch out his paycheck and increase her fortune's size. It produces a suffocating environment and a paranoid and roiling emotional cauldron of abuse and manipulation, finally resulting in her murder. Infected himself by his wife's gangrene-like avarice, McTeague then seizes her fortune and flees into Death Valley, where he inevitably perishes in the hellish desert heat, alone and unmourned, the money having been swallowed up by the unforgiving retribution of nature.
In other words, Buchanan represents the very same level of greed, paranoia, and unreasoning denial that von Stroheim so brilliantly illustrated back over eighty years ago. He speaks for those members of the power elite who would rather face global catastrophe than risk parting with a fistful of pennies. He is one of the faces of irrational greed.
In even fewer words, he is a chortling lemming.
I caught a History Channel show about Nikola Tesla this evening, and I'm guessing the same types considered him insane, not just for some of his more out-there ideas regarding his work, but for his business sense. Tearing up royalty contracts in order to keep his research at Westinghouse going, quitting his job with Thomas Edison because of Edison's greed.
Maybe he was a little nutty in his genius, but he seemed to understand how trivial money was in relation to other things.
A less grim example of the same greedy, nihilist tendancy is the classic Jack Benny sketch, in which an armed robber pulls a gun on him and hisses "Your money or your life!"
Benny stares at him, but doesn't react.
"I said your money or your life!" the bandit repeats menacingly.
"I'M THINKING... I'M THINKING!" Benny exasperatedly shrugs.
When Paul Thomas Anderson was writing the screenplay for There Shall Be Blood, he says that he watched Treasure Of Sierra Madre every evening, just to stay in the proper mindset for his own protagonist.
We have a relatively small proportion of the earth's population, yet we hold, consume and produce well more than 50% of its wealth, resources and toxins. When China and India, with more than 50% of the world's population, attain our "standard of living," what then? If Gore et al are correct, as I believe they are, no one on earth will be in an "enviable position," unless you find the ability to say "I told you so," sufficient compensation for the destruction of one's children's world.
Of course, the history of the second half of the 20th Century shows, pretty clearly, that we tend to bring new technology on line before we consider their possible negative consequences. PCBs in the Hudson and Love Canal would be just two examples of unfortunate side effects, and of corporate irresponsibility.
I prefer adult realism to child's play.
What if it doesn't?
Read your comment again. Notice what you're doing more than once to defend BUchanan? You're saying that if you don't see the most extreme, disastrous evidence of something today, any predictions of moving toward that event are debunked.
Let me try to make it more clear; Your dentist tells you that if you don't brush and floss regularly, and don't visit him for checkups, you'll probably lose your teeth.
The equivalent of your points above would be "I haven't brushed, flossed, or had a checkup all week, and I still have all of my teeth. You're an alarmist.".
There's a lot of money being poured into convincing the public that the conspiracy is on the side of Science, and oil companies and other large corporations are just trying to get the truth out. There's a lot of information available on the topic, try to look at some of it without having your mind made up already, and see if you can honestly say which side makes sense.
What these zombies can never provide is a motive behind the real scientists who are doing the work. Aside from some vague "government control", or paranoia that the SUV will be pulled out from under their fat azzes, they can never give any reason why somebody would be spending huge sums of money to concoct this "hoax".
GW deniers, on the other hand,have the most obvious motives imaginable.
Climate Change is one of the best examples of the emptiness of most right wing rhetoric. As I've said before here, even the dopiest cop & lawyer tv shows understand the concept of "motive". It's the essential factor that they couldn't begin without, yet conspicuously missing from the arguments of the flat-earthers who get their science from Rush L and Hannity.
Got that, P&R. I do listen to right wing radio & TV, so I understand that this "government control" theme works there.I'm just asking to have it fleshed out a little more.
Is it just Al Gore who will control the planet??I I don't think he's even running for president again, so that sorta ruins that theory)
The scientists? How will they implement their reign of totalitarian terror, and how do they benefit from this "control"?
How did Al Gore's movie enforce his "commandments"? I understand how religion is used to do this, unquestioned obedience is normal there, but science doesn't work like that.
You're still stuck on this "government control" idea, and you're really supporting my point above. (thank you, btw)
If anybody else in opposition to the science can help, I'd appreciate it.
MOTIVE That's what we're looking for. WHO created the Climate Change Hoax, and how do they profit by it?
In other words, is the percentage of science reports declaring this to be a hoax changing? If the ratio of hoax-to-non-hoax is increasing, then YES. If not, then NO.
Amazing how even the new HD format of MSNBC cannot make Pat's comments come into the 21st century.
That little tactic seems to be working. No basis in truth but it works. They lie and the sheep follow.
Why would anyone turn to a political hack for atmospheric science instead of, I dunno ... A SCIENTIST????
Really, I want to know why you post here given your contributions.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Uh not really. Since THAT is the question I say you really shouldnt turn to an enthobiologist for information on atmospheric science.
You haven't yet, all you do is call names in the hope that will nullify science. All it does is nullify your credibility, not that you had any to begin with.
You want proof, here is just some;
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/gore.html#2003ua
Complete with references to peer-reviewed studies, that you, on the left, say just doesn't exist.
1) that Global Warming is a hoax
2) that he's insane
Alfgore hasn't the nerve or facts to support his position. But he stands to become a billionaire by fooling you Lefties.
But I guess when you are unable to defend someone, you just redirect and point a finger at someone else.
Nicely done!
Think that might have an effect on the earth?
And ... They keep calling this an 'energy' tax. If it's a tax, it's a tax on carbon fuels, not energy as a whole.
Conservatives should be in love in cap-and-trade. This is a whole new investment market. The Chicago Board of Exchange might need to open a whole new wing to make room for the trading in this new commodity.
I'm sick and tired of them running this emotional scam when in reality they could not give one half of a rat's fat ass about low and middle class people.
Why does no one ever call them on these blatant lies?
By the way, at one time my business had 4 employees. I hired them, yet I wasn't rich. How'd that happen?
And by the way, sir, no rich man ever "gave" me anything. I earn my way through competence alone. The people I work for never seem to have any complaints about my ability to make them money, and the ones I don't work for wish I did.
Are you sure about that? Did you forget Dr. Tiller already, just to name one example? Or how about abstinence only sex ed, which has proven to be a complete and utter failure?
I could go on and on. We had 8 years of religious-based rule. That's enough for me.
"Actually, many scientists do believe the activity of the sun is at an 8,000 year high over the past 60 years and may very well be at least partially responsible for the recent warming trend." - An Inconvenient Book, pg. 6, emphasis added
Many scientists, yet he doesn't cite one. Then get a load of the qualifiers! May, at least, partially...wow, that settles it for me, Glenn. This global warming thing is probably possibly maybe perhaps fake.
Randy
Of course, without the internet, there would be no e-mail.
And who invented the internet? Al Gore.
Now it all makes sense...
:0)
So in Pat's fantasy land there is already a World Government?
Haven't you seen the news reports on the "New World Order"?
You know, they have those black SUV's running around the country
arresting god fearing people.
I know I haven't seen any but; that is because I only come out of the bunker long enough to stock up on more MREs and ammunition.
(BTW Tongue firmly in cheek)
I won't hold my breath waiting for you to produce it.
-- As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming...
Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled.
Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence."
However, I feel some skepticism within this article. I need to do the research myself, but I don't believe that being a "skeptic" means that one is a "non-believer", as the article cites Joanne Simpson to be. She still supports the side of global warming/climate change, but also asks for scientists for both sides to stop "hurling personal epithets at each other".
Itoh is a physical chemist with emphasis on industrial chemistry and only familiarization with environmental sciences. Giaever declared himself a "dissenter", but his research is in superconductors, not in climate science.
Finally, Ian Plimer may be a geologist, but there are some voices that are stating that "the science is missing from Ian Plimer's 'Heaven and Earth'" and that "Plimer has done an enormous disservice to science, and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and the influence of humans, by publishing this book". Just because a book on science is selling well--that does not mean the data involved is legitimate.
Obviously, no matter what you say or what common sense evidence you present, the deniers are lock-step with Rush, CEI, ExxonMobil(lottsa money there) and AEI , all political agenda driven with huge influence around the world and I didn't even mention the Neocons whose political and monitary aims dwarf the others.
That was fun.
Can we do more?
Corporations are only out to perpetuate themselves and to increase their profits.
Politicians are only out to get themselves re-elected and increase their power base.
Sound about the same? Neither is to be trusted in what they say without taking anything you hear with a grain of salt.
That is not to say that there are not any socially conscious corporations or that there are not any politicians who are actually there to serve the people. I am sure there are, the only problem being that they are in the minority.
And, Yes. I am kind of jaded.
Even after the Wall Street collapse? Try again.
Talk in loud firm voice.
Make difinitive statesments. (especially when spouting rubbish)
Never make a statement that is backed up by data.
Act offended when someone calls you out on your positions.
For those who don't know. Weather is a chaotic system. There are THOUSANDS of varibles that affect the weather and weather systems.
That is why there are differences in opinions. Granted the global warming deniers seem to be in a minority but; the very fact that we don't really know for sure allows them to get away with it.