Thursday, February 11, 2010

Snowbama

I figure I might as well join the crowd and blame the president for the lousy weather blanketing the East Coast. The minority in Congress seems hell-bent on blaming him for everything else!

I’ve long been opposed the attitude that weather is “bad” or “good.” I generally find weather, in general, interesting. However, there’s certainly such a thing as too much of a good thing, and a lot of people have been experiencing that lately!

Which brings me to the topic of the ignoramuses on FOX News and elsewhere who’ve been using the record snow falls in the East to mock Al Gore and the whole concept of global climate change. (They might as well lump in the horrific mud slides in California, too, while they’re at it—an example of what happens when cycles of extreme heat and dryness are followed by wildfires and soil erosion—then lots of rain.)

Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh—these geniuses pretend to believe that “global warming” can’t be real if it’s snowing outside. (And it’s hard to say which is worse—being ignorant enough to believe what they’re saying or lying about something so critically important.)

Since at least the late 1970s, when I first started reading about climate change, scientists have said that an overall increase in global temperatures would ramp up the natural cycles of the atmosphere and start causing extreme weather events across the planet, as well as extremely rapid melting of polar ice. That’s all been happening—at alarming rates and faster than most estimates predicted.

Just ask residents of Bangladesh, New Orleans, Florida, and now Washington D.C. about extreme weather. Records are now being broken every year in terms of temperatures, precipitation, and the number and severity of storms. What used to be “100-year” storms and “500-year” storms are becoming annual events.

From a global perspective, the first decade of the 21st Century, which just ended, was the warmest on record. Pretty much every year that goes by is either the warmest year on record or close to it. When even George Bush admitted to the need to start getting serious about reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, I thought we’d finally start making progress as a nation toward being responsible global citizens and concerning ourselves about the well-being of our children and grandchildren.

Apparently, I was wrong. In the minority, Republicans have clearly decided to ensure that NO progress occurs on ANY issue whatever, be it saving the planet, helping the millions of Americans who can’t afford health insurance, or reforming the financial industries which—just a few short months ago—nearly thrust the entire world into another Great Depression with their irresponsible lending and investment practices.

Evidently the Party of No has NO time to help save the plant—not when there are elections to consider and money to be made from special interests.

And there are ALWAYS elections to consider.

9 comments:

Six said...

You forgot to blame the earthquake in Hati on Obama too... I believe Hugo Chavez was doing that one.

You mention about the effects of climate change, "That’s all been happening—at alarming rates and faster than most estimates predicted." I thought the science recently had been scrambling to explain why it has not been happening as fast as many alarmists were predicting? You cite DC, Katrina, etc... could you direct me to some sources you used to point to those events in the weather as being caused by global warming?

Idna said...

Actually, Six, CJ forgot to blame the earthquake on Fox and the Republicans!

Jane, this post is really beneath you. No matter what topic you write on, somehow you manage to end it mocking, bashing and blaming Fox, Bush, Palin or the Republicans ... usually, all of the above.

I will not get into all the fake global warming science that has recently been exposed. But you stated "in the 1970's, when I first started reading about climate change" .... was that before or after the 'scientists' were warning us about the coming Ice Age?

Finally, your constant complaining that the GOP is stopping ALL progress on ALL issues. How many times does it have to be pointed out that the DEMOCRATS have OWNED IT ALL?

Ever since, Mr. Wonderful took office, the DemocRATS had the White House, they had BOTH houses of Congress. There was NO WAY that the GOP could have stopped them. So if you must blame a party for not passing (bad) legislation, look to your own party. It was the DemocRATS that failed to pass those bills.

It was the DemocRATS who said NO to "saving the planet", NO to "helping the millions of Americans who can’t afford health insurance", NO "to reforming the financial industries."

BTW ... we could sure use some of that global-warming-produced snow in our part of the globe for the Olympics!

Sue said...

There's a good article in today's NY Times on this topic. Much more balanced than Jane's diatribe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/science/earth/11climate.html?th&emc=th

Idna's right, Jane, you're refusing to consider topics on their own merits and insisting on propagandizing everything from a strongly liberal/Democratic perspective. Your blog site offers to provide thoughts and comments from a rational perspective. I'm frankly getting bored with the constant attacks on other (mainly well-meaning) people just because they don't share your perspective (which I'm not finding rational at all too much of the time.)

Six said...

Not to get off track but - To pour some water on your Fox is worse than MSNBC - and vise versa debate, there is a good article up at the Nation highlighting one of the primary reasons I avoid CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/jones

I know it's not exactly news that the so called news organizations spins thier stories while pretending (otherwise known as lying) not to be biased ( and why I prefer to only read things that are openly and admittedly biased), but good to see someone has actually taken the time to gather some of the facts and shed some light.

Citizen Jane said...

Hi, Six,

Lol. Yes, I forgot about the earthquakes. Surely the one in Chicago must have been an Obamaquake, right? After all, he came from there, and 2 + 2 makes 5. (I've been watching too many Fox clips lately!)

No one can say, of course, that any specific storm or severe weather event, taken by itself, was "caused" by global climate change. Extreme weather events have always happened: "500-year" storms could be expected to happen--every 500 years or so, even before humans began dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The point is that many more such events are occurring and that from what we know about the dynamics of weather, rapidly rising temperatures are likely to blame.

One of the best books I read on the subject is unfortunately out of print: The Last 100 Years (1991), by Jonathan Weiner. Much more recently, Thomas L Friedman has been doing a good job of documenting both the economics and the science of global climate change (which isn't really a matter of dabate anywhere but in the U.S.). See for example "The World is Flat." And here are a few links to articles:

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/extreme.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/understanding/extreme_climate.shtml

http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/links/hurricanes.htm

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/extremes.html

A lot of the recent literature for laypersons on the subject has been written by and for deniers of GCC--many of the rest of us accepted the reality of it decades ago.

Citizen Jane said...

Thanks for the links, Sue and Six. Both interesting. Sue, I don't quite get your point in posting the one you did, however. Granted, the article didn't take sides but did contain the following statement: "But Dr. Masters also said that government and academic studies had consistently predicted an increasing frequency of just these kinds of record-setting storms, because warmer air carries more moisture."

Implicit is that rapidly rising global temperatures is an established fact, not a theory.

Six, while it's true that there's bound to be some bias in all media that accepts private money, Fox is quantitatively and qualitatively different from the others. While MSNBC has Keith Olbermann, it also has Campbell Brown, as well as many hours a day of unbiased, nonpartisan programming. If anyone doubts that Fox routinely tortures the truth, I suggest watching a major event on C-SPAN and then coverage on FOX and other cable channels. Then see which one comes closer to reality.

You can tell a habitual FOX watcher from his or her chronic anger, as well as a habitual tone of contempt and sarcasm when speaking of public matters. That's why I'm angry at FOX (and I am); such attitudes are bad for the country.

Sue said...

Hi, Jane. I posted the link because I felt it was a balanced approach to a question. You take the quotation from a person on one side and accept it as fact, but you're ignoring the equally valid references to people on the other side -- whose positions were also given some credibility by the Times.

I don't dispute that there are temperature (climate) fluctuations. Back in the 70s the experts were predicting a mini-ice age. Maybe this is it! :-) And even if a warming trend is continuing, it doesn't necessarily result from manmade greenhouse gases. Earth has been a lot warmer than this before.

Finally, is your being angry at Fox any better than Fox viewers being angry at the government? In your case, the anger is caused by and directed at Fox news. To many of the viewers, the anger came first. Fox merely provides a voice.

Catlover said...

Regarding the Hati earthquake:

Pres. Obama has issued a directive to the the USGS (U.S Geological Survey) to name, the massive tectonic plates, beneath the Caribbean Sea that shifted suddenly to cause the horrendous damage to the western portion of island of Hispaniola and the nation of Hati.



From hence forth these plates shall be named Bush's Fault.

Citizen Jane said...

Lol. Thanks, Catlover! (I was losing my sense of humor there for a minute. But it's back.)