ill news

[realthog]

Continuing their War on America, the incoming Republican House leadership have announced they're going to abolish the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, which accordingly held its last meeting yesterday. Stephanie Vallejo has the story here.

This is, obviously, both imbecilic and extraordinarily destructive to the national interest. The Republican reasoning, if such it can be called, appears to be that, since the Committee was created by Nancy Pelosi, they should abolish it to piss off both her and President Obama -- the fate of the nation, and indeed of the world, be damned.

It's like something out of South Park, isn't it?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Ah, but it will discourage *thinking*. That has to be good, doesn't it...

Idiots.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Ah, but it will discourage *thinking*. That has to be good, doesn't it

That does seem to be exactly the stratagem.

[chalcedony.livejournal.com]

I'm going to bed. Wake me in two years.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Please don't go to bed. Over the next two years we need as many as possible people of sound mind harassing these destructive bastards and publicizing their iniquities. If you sleep for two years it may well be you'll have nothing to wake up to.

Jeez, I need a beer to calm me down. 'Scuse me a moment . . .

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Anything to oppose common sense and energy independence.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

You have it in a nutshell.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I've just finished reading the proofs of a forthcoming book review in International Development Planning Review: Here's the first sentence: "Over the past few years, it has been hard to avoid climate change as a subject of political debate, with climate change 'sceptics' loudly declaring that the subject is not settled, or radio chat show hosts in the United States pontificating about it, usually with rather less knowledge of climate science and its likely economic and social effects than a geography first former."

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I think your reviewer has it exactly right. I've been writing about a bunch of the wingnut AGW-deniers today, and far too many of their "arguments" are so outright childish as to be embarrassing: how can they possibly, I keep asking myself, be granted a public stage without being promptly laughed back off it?

The amazing part is that any piece of false information which serves to counter climate change that's slipped into the wingnuttia echo chamber, no matter how egregiously ridiculous it might be, no matter the obviousness of its stupidity, is circulated and recirculated all around the echo chamber as proven fact. I was reading a piece today from a few months ago by Pat Buchanan, in WorldNutsDaily, which (to summarize) dismissed climate change because evolution had been proved to be bunkum. His authority for the latter claim was a self-published Creationist tract, Eugene Windchy's The End of Darwinism. Are there not serious books about evolution in every major bookstore in the land that Buchanan might consult? Nope. He picks the loonytoons number and thinks it's the truth because it reinforces his wingnut ideology.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

The reviewer in question is your humbl. and obt. svt. To quote another passage of the review: "The conclusions are no less sombre for all the calmness of the tone in which they are presented: smaller, less-developed countries are at the most risk from climate change, and have the fewest resources with which to confront that change".

Buchanan, being committed to the 1930s version of right-wing Catholicism, has no choice but to pick the nuttiest idea and stick to it. In much the same way that, I was assured, in the primer from which I learned to read and write Spanish, that General Franco launched the Guerra Civil, pardon me, la Cruzada, because a tear came to his eye at the thought that in the secular schools of the Second Republic there were no crucifixes or icons of the BVM to watch over the poor schoolchildren.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

smaller, less-developed countries are at the most risk from climate change, and have the fewest resources with which to confront that change

I'd certainly agree the second half of that sentence, but I'm not so sure about the first. Yes, clearly, places like Tuvalu and Bangladesh are going to get hit appallingly hard, but I don't think one can generalize from there. My guess is that one of the areas that's going to get hit really badly is the US Midwest . . . which will be poetic justice, in a way, because that's where a lot of the AGW denialists come from.

BVM

James Bond drove one of them, didn't he?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

That's the POV of the book I was reviewing, which is about climate change from the perspective of small states, less-developed countries, and vulnerable economies. It was published by that dangerous radical organisation the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Bond, I believe, drove a BVD.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

that dangerous radical organisation the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Sounds a bit Communist and Socialist to me!

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Very, very Communist, since it's headed by a queen, and as we know royalty is inherently socialist.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

it's headed by a queen

Aha! It's the SOSHERLIST GAY AGENDER!!11!!!1!

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Indeed!