“Unfair to Crazy Conspiracy Theories”

(1:00PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

Simulposted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

    Given this contempt for hard science, I’m almost reluctant to mention the deniers’ dishonesty on matters economic. But in addition to rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a point of misrepresenting the results of studies of the bill’s economic impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low.

    Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?

    Yes, it is – and that’s why it’s unforgivable.

    Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole – but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

nytimes.com

     This Sunday Paul Krugman wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times titled “Betraying The Planet”. In his article, Mr. Krugman lauds the passage of the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill in the House as a “remarkable achievement”, but points out that 212 members of the House of Representatives voted against it and the reasons why they might do so.

    In the past few years all of the Republican talking heads and Corporate Conservative Pundits have made it their jobs to debunk the “Biggest Hoax Evah” as they call it, that of man made climate change.

    They have been as successful as Baghdad Bob in their media campaign to convince us that the Polar Ice caps are not melting away, this is all natural and how the Gods intended it to be.

    In his article, Paul Krugman quotes a recent study done by M.I.T. who have doubled their estimates of how much the world’s temperature will go up over the next century. (From 4 degrees to 9 degrees)

    According to this clip of a documentary from the National Geographic, if the world’s temperature goes up by 6% in the next century, a “Doomsday” scenario would take place.

    From M.I.T.’s own website

    “There’s no way the world can or should take these risks,” Prinn says. And the odds indicated by this modeling may actually understate the problem, because the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks that can occur, for example, if increased temperatures caused a large-scale melting of permafrost in arctic regions and subsequent release of large quantities of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Including that feedback “is just going to make it worse,” Prinn says.

    The lead author of the paper describing the new projections is Andrei Sokolov, research scientist in the Joint Program. Other authors, besides Sokolov and Prinn, include Peter H. Stone, Chris E. Forest, Sergey Paltsev, Adam Schlosser, Stephanie Dutkiewicz, John Reilly, Marcus Sarofim, Chien Wang and Henry D. Jacoby, all of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, as well as Mort Webster of MIT’s Engineering Systems Division and D. Kicklighter, B. Felzer and J. Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.

    According to Paul Krugman, instead of an actual debate on the merits of a bill like Waxman-Markey, instead what we got from the 212 nay sayers on climate change is just that, a refusal to even consider the reality of the matter.

    To many of these people, climate change does not exist as long as it is politically beneficial for it not to do so. The consequences that our Species face are not important in the long run when compared with the warm, glowing feeling wealthy people get when their Corporations make big profits.

    These people are called Republicans. They say “No!” to things for a living when they aren’t calling things socialist, fascist, terrorist and Un-American.

    There are others who fight crucial environmental legislation who are not Republicans, but who do so solely out of allegiance to their Corporate Feudal Lords.

    One of these people is Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who recently tweeted these words of “concern”. For some strange reason these people are often called Democrats.

ThinkProgress.org

    Of course, less rational concern can be found in similar arguments against man made environmental change by the likes of these paid off crooks media pundits who sleep in comfortable beds in expensive homes value their journalistic integrity.

    “It’s not really man made.”

~snip~

   “More and more scientists are coming forward to say this is a hoax and a scam which is designed to transfer wealth and power from the private sector to the Government sector, and from the Government of the United States to a World Government, which is what we are going to get in Copenhagen when we get the Kyoto II agreements.”

– Pat Buchanan, doddering old hateful fool

mediamatters.org

or this bit of nonsense

Glenn Beck, raving mad man, fake journalist who does no research

:    ” I think this is a watermelon bill.”

Phil Kerpen, Director of Policy for Americans For Prosperity, AFP

:    ” I think you are exactly right. This bill is green on the outside, the thinnest green on the outside, and inside it is deep communist red.”

mediamatters.org

    Paul Krugman specifically saved a little space in his article for a response to the lunatic ravings of Representative Paul Broun (R-GA), who summed up his parties disconnect with realty in his speech on the House floor this Friday.

    In that speech, Rep Broun called climate change a “hoax” that has been perpetrated by the scientific world for reasons which he failed to disclose.

    If you recognize Paul Broun’s name, it is probably from his last two trips to Keith Olbermann’s Worst Person in the World list, which I have managed to find on YouTube and have posted below.

5/1/09

    “Of course it is sad to see a 23 month old child die from this disease. We don’t have any specifics, I tried to find out this morning, the specifics about this child that has died, whether it was one from Mexico, possibly an illegal alien. . . ”

– Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA)

    The quote in question is in regards to the first victim to die in the USA of H1N1 Hybrid Swine Flu diesase.

   You may also remember this little episode in Rep. Broun’s career late last year.

11/11/08

    ” May sound a bit crazy and off base ”

~snip~

    ” You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a Democratic Germany. I’m not comparing (Obama) to Adolf Hitler, what I’m saying is there is the potential of going down that road.”

   The right wing of the Conservative Party looks like it is trying to Co-Opt the looney conspiracy ravings of the fringes and the Libertarian party, and in doing so they find a whole new army of strawmen to raise discord among the voices of science, reason and empathy.

   And isn’t that the whole point?

    In the last year, Conservative members of Congress such as Michelle Bachmann and Paul Broun, to name a few, have clearly made Conspiracy theory strawmen into a sock puppet theater the likes of which can take up entire days of the news cycle, as evidenced by Fox News and other pathetic coverage that is skewed towards the Corporate Status Quo. Other members of Congress such as Ron Paul make a living at this type of Conspiracy game, going on shows wholly dedicated to fringe theories and other nonsense. Slowly, these meme’s have found their way into every day programming like Glenn Beck’s Fake News variety hour and Lou Dobbs’s daily rant over the edge.

   I do not write this dairy in order to advocate CT. Rather, I prefer the logic of the scientific method, and the easy principal of “Occam’s Razor”. Based on this concept, I am lead to believe that the real reason CT is dragged into this conversation, or any other, is because of two reasons.

A. It is a Scare Tactic to trick the uninformed and feeble-minded.

B. Reform (X) will cost Corporations/Wealthy People money.

    Isn’t the simplest reasoning usually the correct one?

    Perhaps Paul Krugman would not feel so bad about insulting crazy, unhinged and paranoid conspiracy theorists if he listened to the rhetoric coming out of the Republican party and their Corporate financed media apparatus more often.

    Sure, there is a slim chance in my mind that the spike in Global Temperatures may be caused by a natural “cooling cycle” that the sun and the earth are going through right now. That could be a possibility, albeit a certainly unlikely one. But why would I believe it when the people who truly advocate this theory also believe that President Obama is the next Hitler.

   Maybe we could take the GOP a little more seriously if they would spend less time trying to prove that the world is flat, and more time fixing the problem at hand.

   On climate change, as well as other issues, I’d say maybe we should let the GOP continue to dig their own graves, but on this issue I would feel differently if I was not genuinely worried that they may be digging ours as well.