Who is Contacting Me? Climate Change Denying Crackpots, That’s Who.
If the medium is the message, this “First State Patriots” meeting on debunking climate change and shitting on Castle for voting for “Cap and Trade!” is going to be a nutbag fest.
The flyer arrived in my driveway last night, in a plastic zip lock bag which also contained a few stones. This is an advertising medium favored by babysitters, lawn mowers, and independent handymen. It was so convincingly disguised that I passed on picking it up on my way out to walk the dog this morning and only bent down to check it out after Rags completed his morning inspection of neighborhood fire hydrants.
As you can see this is no ordinary handyman advertisement. “First State Patriots” are hosting and world renowned quack David Legates to mock rationality and spit in the face of the scientific method on August 9th. He is sharing the stage with this year’s “Crazy Eileen” John Nichols – who is going to take a dump on Mike Castle for his “cap and tax” vote.
Note how Legates uses the word “Rational” twice in the eight word title of his talk. (That’s how you know he is rational, and all the other scientists in the world are full of shit.)
Bring your birth certificate to be entered in a drawing for a genuine numbered and signed Christine O’Donnell bounced check.
Go to the White House with your unemployment check and get the make believe President sign it. There are over 3 million job losses since the most unqualified man to be President took the oath.
Speaking of nutbag fests, are you talking about Cabinet meetings with Joe Bite Me and the other misfits?
Boring and off topic. I give that comment only 1 out of 4 skins.
I find that comment derivative of the genre. Thumbs down.
I had an e-mail from Rich Collins, of the Positive Growth Alliance, on this event. I find myself wondering who named Legates as “State Climatologist?” I need to look in state code and see if that’s a legal position or just a traditional role. here was a bit of a kerfuffle over his (I think it was him) use of the title during the Minner administration.
He was stripped of the title by Ruth Ann Minner, but continues to use it because he is a wealthy quack, having tapped into the Exxon Mobil/Wingnut Climate Change Denying gravy train.
“Joe Bite ME”- You regurgitate Rush reeeeeeaal gude! Let’s hear your WC Fields
Hey, i believe in climate change — and that, based upon the historical record, it is cyclical and not caused by human beings.
But for those of you who believe the human population is the source of the problem, you have the ability to act right now to stop it. Become a Carbon Martyr by taking your own life to reduce the human population.
Obama recycles unemployment checks and dead servicemen in Afghanistan.
The Joe Bite Me comes from Gen McChrystal, in case you can’t read as most liberals can’t or won’t.
For those who might be interested in the data:
http://www.tommywonk.com/2010/07/trajectory-of-global-warming.html
Thanks for that link Tom. Too bad these Republican nut jobs are not swayed by facts.
“Bring your birth certificate to be entered in a drawing for a genuine numbered and signed Christine O’Donnell bounced check.”
I am so stealing that.
As for our conservatrolls, don’t you love the sound of rattles shaking in unison? Must be feeding time on the maternity ward.
Hey, i believe in climate change — and that, based upon the historical record, it is cyclical and not caused by human beings.
Cancer occurs naturally, therefore cigarettes don’t cause cancer. Smoke away!
“based upon the historical record, it is cyclical and not caused by human beings.”
Careful there, little loyalist. While cyclical climate change has never been questioned — this is the basis of our “state climatologist’s” obfuscations — it does not automatically follow that human activity therefore cannot have any effect. What none of you can deny is that CO2 levels have risen dramatically during the industrial revolution. While we can’t be certain what effect this will have, a great deal of evidence is that global temperatures are rising.
What part of this don’t you understand?
Yes, a great deal of evidence is that temperatures are rising — just as they have done cyclically during the entire history of the earth, including prior to the industrial revolution.
And yet, when those cycles are corrected for, there is a rise that the cycles don’t account for. The simplicity of your understanding is touching, but you are exhibiting faith, not scientific understanding. Further, your understanding leaves out the clearly measured rise in CO2 levels.
CO2 levels are now at the highest point ever measured and the link between CO2 and temperature is quite clear.
As far as the cyclical changes go, we’re just leaving a cyclical low solar activity period. So they cycle is actually in the opposite direction of the change in temperature. There’s just been a huge chunk of the Greenland ice sheet to come loose, which is bad news because it’s land-based ice, which means rising sea levels.
Meanwhile in Russia:
The piece that calved was a piece of land-based glacier that extended over the sea. By itself, its effect on sea levels is vanishingly small. That’s part of the problem here — despite the impression left by “Inconvenient Truth,” these changes as measured on humans will be slow and gradual. In geologic time frames, though — something you’ll never hear our State Quack, er Climatologist acknowledge — they are exceptionally fast. AS will be the effect on thousands of species that already live in habitats already fragmented by human activity.
But don’t worry, UI, extinction is another perfectly natural phenomenon.
Some of the sea level change is already being seen and a lot will happen within this century. However, by then Inhofe will be long gone so why does he care?
So if anyone wants to know what it’s like to be in a class with David Legates for an entire semester, I can tell you. I mean, he was a pretty good lecturer, except for the climate change denial stuff (without ever disclosing his research funding from Big Oil), so it was hard to get too mad. But even from the back of the lecture hall with 150 or so kids staring at me, I felt compelled at two points to question his science. It was pretty BS, especially his “Climategate” nonsense. I took pretty detailed notes of his lies on climate change once I realized who he was. It was so frustrating though *because* he was so good at his job otherwise.
“Within this century” means “not in my lifetime.” IIRC (too busy to look it up) it’s been several inches over the past century.
Bill: So what tack did his climate change denial take in class?
At first it was pretty subtle, twisting and omitting information so people didn’t get the full picture. For example, repeatedly emphasizing the role/size of water as a greenhouse gas. Yes, it’s true that that’s the most prevalent one, but it also hasn’t changed much in prevalence. Or emphasizing how little of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide, but giving it to us in percentages (and percentages which were several decades out of date, too) as opposed to parts per million. This makes it seem like CO2 couldn’t be warming the planet because it’s just too darned small, when small changes in the parts per million are in fact enough.
Toward the end of the course, he did a half hour on climate change (yes, one half hour in a semester long course on earth processes) and basically said it wasn’t man-made and that rising temperatures don’t cause bigger/more frequent storms and that droughts are due to overpopulation not climate change. He also snidely remarked that he couldn’t show us the University of East Anglia’s data because their website was down (a reference to “climategate”)… this was his response to me challenging him on the supposed drop in average temperatures he had cherry picked. It was absurd: he pointed to a little dip of a couple years and said that showed a temperature decline, while the rest of the graph showed a marked upward trend over the past century.
I’m also nearly positive that he was the person who put up a poster from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists outside his lab classroom, which equated meteorite impacts, axial wobbles, etc. to “human activity” as factors of climate change, and put “human activity” last. All of the factors listed can be factors, but only a couple (e.g. volcanic activity) were actually common/frequent occurrences.
And at no point did he disclose his funding sources/Big Oil affiliations (http://www.desmogblog.com/david-legates).
My understanding is that he’s no longer going to be teaching the course. And lest anybody think I’m just being vindictive, I got an A for the semester and as I said above, he was really helpful otherwise and an excellent lecturer.
Yes, one of the tricks that deniers have used lately is to pick the year 1998 (the year of a very strong El Nino) and cherry pick a “trend” just on those years. Legates knows very well that you can’t do trends that way. However, I doubt that trick will work any more because I think there’s at least 3 years now as hot or hotter than 1998.