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red states rule
02-13-2007, 10:14 AM
Here is how liberals view people who do buy into the global warming crap. If you dare to disagree with the liberal elites you are attacked and savaged


No change in political climate
By Ellen Goodman | February 9, 2007

On the day that the latest report on global warming was released, I went out and bought a light bulb. OK, an environmentally friendly, compact fluorescent light bulb.

No, I do not think that if everyone lit just one little compact fluorescent light bulb, what a bright world this would be. Even the Prius in our driveway doesn't do a whole lot to reduce my carbon footprint, which is roughly the size of the Yeti lurking in the (melting) Himalayas.

But it was either buying a light bulb or pulling the covers over my head. And it was too early in the day to reach for that kind of comforter.

By every measure, the U N 's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raises the level of alarm. The fact of global warming is "unequivocal." The certainty of the human role is now somewhere over 90 percent. Which is about as certain as scientists ever get.

I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

But light bulbs aside -- I now have three and counting -- I don't expect that this report will set off some vast political uprising. The sorry fact is that the rising world thermometer hasn't translated into political climate change in America.

The folks at the Pew Research Center clocking public attitudes show that global warming remains 20th on the annual list of 23 policy priorities. Below terrorism, of course, but also below tax cuts, crime, morality, and illegal immigration.

One reason is that while poles are melting and polar bears are swimming between ice floes, American politics has remained polarized. There are astonishing gaps between Republican science and Democratic science. Try these numbers: Only 23 percent of college-educated Republicans believe the warming is due to humans, while 75 percent of college-educated Democrats believe it.

This great divide comes from the science-be-damned-and-debunked attitude of the Bush administration and its favorite media outlets. The day of the report, Big Oil Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma actually described it as "a shining example of the corruption of science for political gain." Speaking of corruption of science, the American Enterprise Institute, which has gotten $1.6 million over the years from Exxon Mobil, offered $10,000 last summer to scientists who would counter the IPCC report.

But there are psychological as well as political reasons why global warming remains in the cool basement of priorities. It may be, paradoxically, that framing this issue in catastrophic terms ends up paralyzing instead of motivating us. Remember the Time magazine cover story: "Be Worried. Be Very Worried." The essential environmental narrative is a hair-raising consciousness-raising: This is your Earth. This is your Earth on carbon emissions.

This works for some. But a lot of social science research tells us something else. As Ross Gelbspan, author of "The Heat is On," says, "when people are confronted with an overwhelming threat and don't see a solution, it makes them feel impotent. So they shrug it off or go into deliberate denial."

Michael Shellenberger, co author of "The Death of Environmentalism," adds, "The dominant narrative of global warming has been that we're responsible and have to make changes or we're all going to die. It's tailor-made to ensure inaction."

So how many scientists does it take to change a light bulb?

American University's Matthew Nisbet is among those who see the importance of expanding the story beyond scientists. He is charting the reframing of climate change into a moral and religious issue -- see the greening of the evangelicals -- and into a corruption-of-science issue -- see big oil -- and an economic issue -- see the newer, greener technologies .

In addition, maybe we can turn denial into planning. "If the weatherman says there's a 75 percent chance of rain, you take your umbrella," Shellenberger tells groups. Even people who clutched denial as their last, best hope can prepare, he says, for the next Katrina. Global warming preparation is both his antidote for helplessness and goad to collective action.

The report is grim stuff. Whatever we do today, we face long-range global problems with a short-term local attention span. We're no happier looking at this global thermostat than we are looking at the nuclear doomsday clock.

Can we change from debating global warming to preparing? Can we define the issue in ways that turn denial into action? In America what matters now isn't environmental science, but political science.

We are still waiting for the time when an election hinges on a candidate's plans for a changing climate. That's when the light bulb goes on.

Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is goodman@globe.com.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

Roopull
02-13-2007, 02:29 PM
Luckily, thinking people in high places are responding to this nonsense... My favorite is the Czech Republic's president questioning Al Gore's sanity! :laugh2:

What? You don't believe me? Take THAT! (http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2007/02/12/20070212_161315_flash.htm)

Hugh Lincoln
02-13-2007, 05:14 PM
I LOVE stuff like this. Jews go nuts because they feel that the "Holocaust" is special, and that nothing can compare to their suffering. Liberals want to do maximum damage to anyone who questions their orthodoxies by calling them Nazis. Jews and liberals end up splattering on each other, and everyone else... starts to wonder if either group is really right.

Heck, some people might even check into the writings of those who dare to question "the Holocaust."

http://www.ihr.org/

Hooray!

Merlin
02-13-2007, 07:39 PM
Luckily, thinking people in high places are responding to this nonsense... My favorite is the Czech Republic's president questioning Al Gore's sanity! :laugh2:

What? You don't believe me? Take THAT! (http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2007/02/12/20070212_161315_flash.htm)

When other countries sees through the Gore scam, that should tell you something. Society should have a way to remove the Al Gores and people like him from our society where they won't be such an embarrassment.

red states rule
02-15-2007, 06:15 AM
From Fox News:

A House subcommittee hearing on climate change and the warming of the planet was called off today — because of the snow and ice storm that hit Washington. In Saint Louis — a scheduled showing of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" was canceled by Maryville University — because of the harsh winter weather.

Roopull
02-15-2007, 09:12 AM
:poop: :poop: :poop: :poop: :poop: :poop: :poop: :poop:
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g14/roopull/Carnuts/GlobalWarmingIceStorm.jpg

darin
02-15-2007, 09:55 AM
Priceless