EckerNet.Com

LOL

Good to know that the right isn\’t the only one blessed with insanely moronic self-important assholes that like to bloviate on manners that don\’t involve them….apparently the left has their own Pat Robertson, in the form of one Danny Glover.  Mr. Glover apparently believes that this earthquake was caused by climate change….which should come as a big surprise to people educated at a junior high level or greater, who understand how earthquakes work.

Even more amusing is that Mr. Glover gives credit to countries around the world that are helping out and lists Cuba as one of them.  Which as far as I\’ve heard, Cuba is unique in being the ONLY country in the western hemisphere which has NOT contributed to help.  But then Cuba is run by facist dickheads…who Glover is fans of, so I guess they get a pass.

It\’s a debate tactic that probably goes back further than the concept of debate.  If you have two variations of a concept, one of which is universally acceptable and one which is universally opposed, and you are arguing in favor of the latter, blur the line between the two.

This concept got used ad nauseum during the immigration debate a couple years ago.  Most of the public is opposed to illegal immigration but is generally in favor of legal immigration.  If you\’re supporting illegal immigration how do you win the public debate? Blur the line.  Never refer to \”illegal aliens\” or \”illegal immigrants\”, just \”immigrants\”.  Accuse your opponent of hating immigrants.  Nobody listens to them stammer about how they don\’t hate immigrants, they love immigrants, they just don\’t like illegal immigration because blah blah blah.  It\’s lazy, it\’s disingenuous and it\’s false, but it works and it\’s the last defense of those that have no other recourse.

And it\’s being put to great use in the climate change debate, this time by no other than the Obama White House.

Despite the incident, which rocked international headlines last week, climate science is sound, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stressed this afternoon, and the White House nonetheless believes \”climate change is happening.\”

\”I don\’t think that\’s anything that is, quite frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore,\” he said during Monday\’s press briefing.

Did you catch it?  It\’s just climate change, not man-made climate change, or anthromorphic climate change.

Sure I think most people accept that climate change is happening.  In the sense that it\’s happened for millions of years, and will continue happening for millions of years, whether we like it or not.  And more importantly even if we make an attempt to stop it, should we so desire.

When your science is exposed as bunk and your leading minds have been revealed to be fraudulent, blur the line.  Take that which is completely defensible and absorb it to defend that which has no defense.

It\’s especially transparent in this situation, because part of the reason why the Climate Research Unit (CRU) was fudging/hiding data in the first place, is because there is an awful lot of it which indicates that climate change may not necessarily by due to mankind\’s activities.

By why invent new hypotheses? Why see if the data supports that hypothesis? Why see if other minds can\’t poke holes in your ideas?  Why see if your results are repeatable? Why….well, follow the scientific method….when you can just blur the line and be done with it.

The science is far from settled, because what you\’re doing isn\’t science.  And at least parts of it are manufactured.

[Crossposted at True North]

I think I preferred it back when I didn\’t know how government official felt about the citizens of the country.

“The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” [Secretary of Energy] Dr. Chu said. “The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.”

Ok first of all let\’s covered the basics.  This is America buddy, and everyone has the freedom to act like a petulant child if they damn well please.  Some have even made a career of it.

Of course the administration is claiming he didn\’t mean citizens, but rather he was talking about teenage kids.  Just for shits&giggles let\’s say we accept that half-assed spin.  Aren\’t acting the way they should act?? You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of government in America.  See we fight this minor skirmish at least a week ago so we weren\’t ruled by a monarchy.  In other words the government is not our parent.  We are citizens, not subjects. So you can take your opinion of how ANYONE should act and shove it sideways up into uncomfortable places.

I shouldn\’t be too harsh though, perhaps you\’re mentally retarded and was having a bad day.  Heh, we all have bad days, and the mental disorder probably wasn\’t your fault, although you probably could have cut back on eating paint chips.  So let\’s just move on to the point you were very ineptly trying to make, the whole climate change bullshit.

The problem is the \”solutions\” you propose are incredibly expensive, and you offer no proof that they would even begin to address the problem.  And the problem by the way may not even be a problem, as the science on that is far from settled.  We have no idea what\’s even happening for sure, and even if we didn\’t we don\’t know it\’s caused by mankind.  And even if it\’s caused by mankind we don\’t know we can do anything about it, especially in a way that doesn\’t destroy every standard of living.

And as far as how important this issue is, I have a feeling that the American public would take this more seriously if those that claim we should act like they take it seriously.  Take whatever example you want.  Al Gore using 10x the energy of the average household.  Or during the winter, Obama cranking up the thermostat in his office warm enough to grow orchids.  Or environmental activists not throwing extravagant conventions that involve members flying private jets from all corners of the world.

In short, save the lecture Dad.

I was a Boy Scout once, even got my Eagle Scout, and I\’ve learned to \”Be Prepared\” and I try to always follow this but I have to admit that today I was left totally unprepared.  It totally slipped my mind that Wednesday was Earth Day and I was simply not prepared for any traditional Earth Day rituals.  I didn\’t have a single spare tire I could set on fire.  I didn\’t have a barrel of used oil I could dump.  I didn\’t have a tree or shrub I wanted to cut down.

I\’m forced to admit that all I could scrounge together was turning on all the (incandescent) lights in my house Al Gore style, leaving the faucet on and turning the thermostat to a completely unreasonable temperature.  Pathetic I know.  Usually I try to follow Al Gore\’s example and match his carbon footprint for at least one day, but even with those measure I bet my carbon footprint was less than half of what his is.

I apologize for my shortcomings.  I promise to do better next year.

ESPN Outdoors makes the case for hunters being the original environmentalists…

A wild deer, with its bulk built from acorns and clover, supplies some of the most environmentally-responsible protein a person can eat. It\’s a source that requires less water, fossil fuels or carbon emissions than the meat and even the vegetables Americans typically consume.

Hunters often claim to be the original environmentalists. In the case of their diet, a back-of-the-bar-napkin ESPNOutdoors.com analysis suggests they may have a point.

The short version — if you don\’t want to plod through the math below — eating a pound of wild venison instead of a pound of beef may keep roughly a gallon of gas out of industrial food production.

You can read through the rest and all the \”math\” but that\’s basically the upshot.

I think it\’s also missing an important element that many so called environmentalists ignore.  Many (most?) hunters belong to a number of groups.  For example, personally I\’ve donated to the following Pheasants Forever, Prarie Pothole, Ducks Unlimited and the Minnesota Waterfowl Organization.  And those are only a few of the countless similar organizations.  All of these organizations, as their primary purpose, are dedicated to obtaining and restoring wildlife habitat to it\’s natural state.

While it\’s true that Pheasants Forever, for example, is doing it at least in part to provide habitat for pheasants which it\’s members would later like to hunt.  But pheasants do not live in a vacuum.  Every acre of habitat which is provided for pheasant is also suitable for countless other animals.

And really does preserving habitat really change the result depending on what the reason for it was?

Without hunters these groups would not exist.  And given the number and size of many of these groups, I would be willing to venture that as a group hunters give a lot more to environmentalist causes than so called environmentalists themselves.  Instead environmentalists seems to spend most of their time whining about how nobody pays attention to their silly futile efforts to make a difference.

So it\’s left to hunters….who truly think globally but act locally.

Global warming activists, in addition to being gulliable, are apparently also really pessimistic.  Instead of claiming the sky is falling, they are now claiming it has already fallen.

Despite the political rhetoric, the scientific warnings, the media headlines and the corporate promises, he would say, carbon emissions were soaring way out of control – far above even the bleak scenarios considered by last year\’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Stern review. The battle against dangerous climate change had been lost, and the world needed to prepare for things to get very, very bad.

Great, finally a common ground we can settle on.  And by common ground I mean that no matter what you hippies do, it\’s not gonna make a damn bit of difference.  But at least this is something we can move forward from.

You guys go hide in your moss lined bunkers eating tofu and recycling you own piss as water.  Meanwhile the rest of us will be up here enjoying life and a planet that is simply going through it\’s natural cycles.

Let me know if you want us to come get you when the blizzard hits.

The past decade or so, we\’ve been subjected to asinine claim after ludicrous claim of global warming.  These claims have been based upon either no evidence at all or contradictory out-of-context data.  But by repeatedly making the claims, people tend to start believing them.  Quantity tends to take on a quality all it\’s own.

Now the past few years, people have begun to suspect that Al Gore is full of shit.  And lately we\’ve started to see a pretty regular stream of studies indicating, this time based upon actual data, that our current temperatures are part of natural cylical climate cycles.  And many of them seem to indicate that while we have been in a warming portion of that cycle, the cooling portion either begins soon or has begun already.  The latest study indicating that we\’re entering what will be a 23-year period of cooling.

As a man who enjoys snowmobiling and ice fishing, I great this news with great enthusiasm.  But it strikes me that this is pretty much a win-win for the Al Gore drones.  If the globe continues to warm, they can claim they were right.  On the other hand, they\’ve gotten their greasy claws into so many BS programs, that if it starts cooling they can claim their policies have met with resounding success.

We seemed destined to have to put up with Al Gore and his merry band of professional con artists.  It\’s actually fairly impressive coming from a group of people whose collective IQ wouldn\’t amount to a respectable earthquake.  On the other hand they\’d probably be able to blame that earthquake on global warming too.

If California didn\’t exist, we\’d have to invent them….or die of boredom.

California is making it mandatory for cars to be labeled with global warming scores, figures that take into account emissions from vehicle use and fuel production.

The law requiring the labels goes into effect at the start of next year for all 2009 model cars, though its expected the labels will be popping up on cars in the coming months.

Clearly this is meant to work on the scarlet letter principle. By forcing you to carry around this global warming number, it\’s meant to shame people into buying hybrids and other such \”almost-cars\”. Now in elite parties all over California you\’ll have conversations like this:

Pompous Ass 1 : My this arugula is exquisite. And this wine has such a beached whale aftertaste that goes well with the marsupial spunk highlight.
Pompous Ass 2 : Yes it is a fine selection. It always reminds me of New Jersey in the summer.
Pompous Ass 2 : Did you see my new boy toy??
Pompous Ass 1 : Oh yes, so lovely, and at only 12 years old he\’s to die for.
Pompous Ass 2 : Speaking of riding, what are you driving?
Pompous Ass 1 : Oh you\’re naughty, I\’m driving a 7. You?
Pompous Ass 2 : Puhlease! As if I\’d drive a 7, I\’m driving a 9.
Pompous Ass 1 : A 9?? Oh how nice. What is it?
Pompous Ass 2 : A bicycle but it\’s got such a cute basket!

I\’m even envisioning new movies where the global warming number of the bad guys vehicle is used as a plot device. The lunancy of such an idea allows for no end to the idiocy of potential ideas.

Of course I think they are also not considering the other end of the equation. There are people (myself included) who don\’t give a damn what their global warming index is. In fact, some (myself included) might even take a certain perverse degree of pleasure in having a \”bad\” global warming index….if for no other reason that to twist the tails of some of the eco-hippies. It might even work as a selling point

AD : Now announcing the 2009 Hummer, now with a sub-zero global warming index!!

There are people that can be shamed by something like this global warming index. But then again those people have probably already switched to \”green\” vehicles. And then there are people that either don\’t care, or care but for the opposite reasons, that this just isn\’t going to affect…and they are probably the ones still driving those \”bad\” vehicles. In other words, it\’s not only a shitastic idea, it\’s also ineffective.