The Agenda

The more Republicus examines this Global Grilling business, the more sinister the scam begins to appear. For starters, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to get to the bottom line of this (which is that CO2 makes up a piddling .054 of the atmosphere, and a percentage of that are greenhouse gases, and 95% of those are water vapor with only .001% of that caused by humans, with the rest of the manmade CO2 comprising a fraction of the remaining 5% that isn't water vapor), and the pushers of The Agenda can't be so dense as to miss it.

They must know that they're pushing junk science. They must know that manmade greenhouse gases cannot possibly influence global temperature by the premise of CO2 emissions any more than bovine flatulence-- or burps--does (the troll Houstonmod's ignorant heckling notwithstanding, there is actually well-endowed research going on that is trying to figure out which end of the cow--moo or poo--causes our baby planet to get feverish--inconclusive to date, btw), and they admit as much when cornered.

The troll houstonmod unwittingly provides an excellent exemplar of that (and is a fine representative of the overall leftist mindset). He is not an independent thinker (no less a "scientist") and has proven that by mouthing the "Precautionary Principle," a fallback position that has obviously--by its repetition and ubiquitousness--been learned by rote and widely circulated by the missionary disciples of The Agenda (like houstonmod):

What I find scary is the hide your head in the sand attitude of some people when looking at global warming. IF global warming can be prevented, it is in our best interest to stop it. IF global warming goes as some say it will, the repercussions would be truly devastating to the world and the US. Even if this is only a possibility, it would be insane to not fight it now while we may still have a chance to avert this catastrophe.

That is not his own argument. If you Google "Precautionary Principle" and "Global Warming," you will get 360,000 hits.

Note also the "hide your head in the sand" descriptive of those who rationally disagree with the "CO2 Dunnit" crowd. It is a stock witticism that's liberally passed around and always thrown down as if it were a playing-card in some child's game: "'Head in the sand!' Ha ha! Lose a turn!"

If you Google "head in the sand" and "global warming," you get 1,070,000 hits.

(and houstonmod called your one-of-a-kind host a "plagiarist")

The point is that they get their talking points from centralized gurus or the grapevine cultivated by them. They read from the same playbook that tells them how to ridicule skeptics.

It's like a church with priests, choir, and psalm books--if not a cult.

Note also the fear-mongering hyperbole and mischaracterization that leftists unfailingly resort to (before launching ad hominems) in lieu of a strong counter-argument:

"Scary," the "head-in-the-sand attitude" implying extreme denial over rational disagreement, not just "devastating," but "truly devastating" (echoes of Lee Harvey--they all think and argue the same), "Even if it is only a possibility, it would be insane to not fight it now...to avert this catastrophe."

So those who don't obey to "fight" on their terms based on the mere possibility that they're analysis is correct are "insane?"

Note also that the insistence upon action is based on "IF," "IF," and "IF."

That is not the language and practice of science!

Furthermore, he engages--right before your eyes--in exactly the kind of histrionic, fear-mongering pleading and preemptive reasoning that Bush & Co. were incessantly accused of engaging in to justify the preemptive invasion of Iraq (which to this day demonstrably has more destructive weapons in the wrong hands than there is CO2 in the atmosphere).

Hey waitasec. Is all this just some kind of vindictive tit-for-tat rhetoric from environmentalists who are also antiwar types (all of them, for sure) being petty because they felt Bush condescended to or tricked them in that same manner?

They're mouthing the same words and engaging in precisely the same kind of specious reasoning they accused the administration of utilizing to invade Iraq.

Irony, hypocrisy, projection, or simply revenge?

(the troll houstonmod tried this in the commentary of a post on Ann Coulter, trying to use her own words against her in the pursuit of his own cause, but it backfired)

If the Global Warming "Deniers" started being called "unpatrotic," perhaps there would be something to that...

Actually, they have been called "unpatriotic."

These are not scientists. They're political activists with axes to grind, and with an ulterior agenda.

Listen carefully to the proposed "solutions" and recognize that they oh-so-conveniently accomplish what far-left environmentalists, socialists, and communists (all three being birds of a feather) have been prescribing for over a century (but have been rejected under their respective banners): Regulation of the free market and Marxist control of the means of production.

The troll houstonmod gives away the game when he defensively heckles:

John's paranoia about "draconian" industrial limits which he clearly believes will destroy the economy are both baseless and short sighted. In fact, a new industry based on reducing emissions would be a huge boom to the US.(and get us out from under our dependency on foreigh oil).

John's "paranoia...which he clearly believes will destroy the economy?"

Houstonmod's a liar. Nowhere has Republicus written, with any clarity, no less, that Kyoto would "destroy" the economy (nor has he denied warmer temperatures, as accused). Houstonmod is projecting his own hysterical hyperbolics on your well-measured host for the sake of ridiculing the position that such one-sided-- and yes, draconian-- regulations that would be imposed on American industries (especially when other countries like China would be exempt) would be detrimental to our economic growth and well-being. How detrimental is uncertain, but your host did not blather anything like:

What Republicus finds scary is the hide your head in the sand attitude of some people when looking at the economical consequences of Global Warming regulations. IF those consequences can be prevented, it is in our best interest to stop them. IF the consequences of imposed regulations go as some say they will, the repercussions would be truly devastating to the world and the US. Even if this is only a possibility, it would be insane to not fight the regulations now while we may still have a chance to avert this catastrophe.

Republicus respects the intelligence of his readers too much to do so.

And what's this:

In fact, a new industry based on reducing emissions would be a huge boom to the US.(and get us out from under our dependency on foreigh oil)

The illiterate poseur meant to say "boon," not "boom" (another one of many reasons to strongly suspect that houstonmod--like others of his intellectual ilk who troll the blogosphere like orcs dispatched from Mordor to roam Middle Earth--are adolescents), but he was mindful of turning the volume up to 11 to emphasize not just a "boom," but a "HUGE boom".

Note also how he tossed out the red-meat of patriotism to those dumb conservatives by patronizing: "Yes kids! We don't have to worry about giving money to foreigners if we wean ourselves off of oil!"

He himself doesn't care about that. It was simply a condescending aside to simpletons (i.e. "Global Warming Deniers" who must be conservative and who therefore must be xenophobes and so must hate giving money to foreigners). Would he care that the oil industry in Texas would also suffer? Of course not. So why the discrimination?

And look at this: "...the repercussions would be truly devastating to the world and the US."

That slip betrays his leftist, Manichaean worldview: It's not "the U.S. and the rest of the world," but "the world and the U.S."

These aren't first-draft-but-posted typos or errors that are irrelevant to substance (i.e. the kinds of things he attacks your host about by pointing to them and whining "Are facts allowed on this blog?"), but are substantial revelations of his leftist ideology (which always--by its nature-- compromises Reason).

Finally, the new "industry" he refers to will be under the auspices of an envisioned "new and improved" EPA in Washington that would dwarf the DHS by sheer magnitude, by its army of reformers, lawyers, and enforcers.

We should look carefully at the players who decide energy policy in the United States (this carbon credit business came out of nowhere and may very well reach everyone's doorstep soon).

Republicus is not too worried about Bush's people (even though Bush has shown a disturbing tendency to cave since the mid-term elections, beginning with the sacking of Rummy and then paying lip-service to the Kyoto crowd in SOTU), but this new congress is going to make much mischief.

The Facts

Above: The baby sun of Teletubby Land

The facts to keep in mind when being bombarded with hysterical propaganda by the anti-CO2 Global Warming crowd are short and simple:

(1) The premise that increases in manmade CO2 correlate with a rise in atmospheric temperature is a faulty one (if not outright false):

Temperature records and reconstruction show the opposite effect.

"The Planet" began belching out significant increases in manmade CO2 during the economic boom after WWII.

Global temperatures concurrently dropped for three decades.

It should be added that prior to WWII--and the postwar industrial boom-- temperatures had been rising for over a century.

(2) An increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere does trap heat. However:

CO2 makes up .054 (point-zero-five-four)% of all gases in the atmosphere.

Of that .054%, greenhouse gases make up a small percentage.

Of that small percentage, 95% is water vapor (a greenhouse gas).

Of that 95%, 99.999% is of natural origin.

Human beings cause .001% of remaining water vapor and a small percentage (if not percentile) of the remaining 5% of greenhouse gases.

If that's not infinitesimal, then it's negligible (perhaps as negligible as a temperature increase of one degree over a century, which does not discount a correlation per se, but certainly one not worthy of critical mass hysteria; au contraire, warm weather is always cause for celebration).

(3) Earth does not have a "normal" temperature we can use as a standard (unlike human babies). It is subjective to the status quo, and anyone fixated on any one degree and stamps it with scientific "approval" is a humbug.

(4) The "baby with the fever" is the flaring sun.

That's all you need to know.

Enjoy the beautiful, balmy weekend.

Our Cutesy-Wootsie Little Planet Needs To Be Mommied!

Here's Gore pleading with the Congress for emergency intervention to save a sick infant:

"The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, `Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action."

Yes, not Earth, but "the planet," the cute little baby planet that has a "fever." It has the sniffles.

Then, in the next breath, he kicks it up several hundred degrees fahrenheit without missing a beat and bellows: "THE CRIB'S ON FIRE!"

Note how abruptly the language evolved from "a baby's fever" to "THE CRIB'S ON FIRE!!!"

It's a characteristic, knee-jerk tendency of the Left to get hysterically hyperbolic on everything:

We have a two-term president who has been epically consequential, has steadily and with good cheer guided the nation through the successive traumas of 9/11, the collapse of the over-inflated stock market, mega-corporate malfeasance, an ensuing recession, and a reactionary, global war with two fronts, all costing billions and billions of dollars but having earlier pushed for and enacted historically large tax-cuts and so saving many more billions in the private sector and now presiding over the wealthiest nation in the world at the wealthiest time in her history (Behold the real Comeback Kid, ladies and gentlemen) while all along being vociferously and viciously attacked on multiple fronts both by foreigners, enemies we're at war with, and by the shameless Democrats and the implacable left, who hyperbolically characterize him as "THE VERY WORST PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES!"

We have a deficit-to-GNP ratio being not too bad at all (all things considered) described as "DEFICITS AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE!"

Sixteen words in a State of The Union Address (which still stand) are hysterically turned into "THE SIXTEEN WORDS!" that were uttered by "THE LIAR-IN-CHIEF!" and "THE MISLEADER!" and the "LYING LIAR WHO TELLS LIES!" as triggered by the liar Joseph Wilson III.

The quick overthrow of an entrenched dictatorship in the heart of the Middle East, the successful proceedings of three democratic elections with large, national turnouts there, the writing and adopting of the most progressive constititution in the Arab world, and now that very same country an ally in the War on Terror in under four years time and achieved with far less force and casualties than any other operation in history of similar magnitude, all of that hysterically being described as a "DISASTROUS DEBACLE!"

The routine firing of those who serve at the pleasure of the executive is described as being an "UNPRECEDENTED, SERIOUS MATTER!"

And now the increase of one degree fahrenheit over the twentieth century means "The Planet" is like "A BABY'S CRIB THAT'S ON FIRE!"

(And all of that from a crowd who self-righteously howled to high heaven about the High Crimes and Misdemeanors of Bush's "exaggerations")

As for the latter exaggeration (if not lie), such a man who addresses the United States Congress in that manner on such an important and controversial issue should quite simply be laughed off the stage or forcibly removed, but that won't happen because the Democratic Party itself is complicit in all of that.

The way things are going, don't be surprised if "Global Warming"--by the same fear-mongering compulsion-- gets kicked up a notch and is referred to as "Global Heating." All that will need to happen to justify such an increase in volume to a Spinal-Tapesque "11" is a "Record-breaking!" heat wave this summer that can be exploited for that and cause "The People" (i.e. the hordes of inattentive, gullible shmucks who never hold these shameless mountebanks--and their party-- to account) to forget that other people froze to death this very first month of Spring.

Earth is not a "baby." The earth is over four billion years old and has undergone many dramatic climate changes (because capricious Nature, it appears, is indeed a woman, as the hard-core environmentalist Gaia worshippers themselvers would tell you) before mankind even existed.

Those lefty hyenas like to heckle at Creationists for their biblical "young Earth" belief (i.e. that Earth is about 6,000 years old), but it is one of their champions--Al Gore--who is frantically running around with a thermometer because "The Planet" is just a baby, and it--Oh no!-- has a warm forehead!

What is all that, irony?

Or insanity?

Let us indulge the hysterical Gore's position that the Earth is undergoing some kind of catastrophic change (of diapers):

The proper personification--in a worst-case scenario, which would involve giant meteors or solar flares or dramatically abrupt tectonic shifting (neither of which having anything to do with Exxon-Mobil) and not an uptick of one degree fahrenheit (if that) over decades-- is that the earth is having a mid-life crisis, but the associations with that (e.g. implying a long, sordid past of cold spells and hot flashes alike with more of the same down the road) compromises the immediacy and exceptionality of the prognosis (which to succeed relies upon the contrived image of a pre-human Earth being a young, pristine, Eden-like maiden that was doing fine until the human monsters freakishly popped out and began to child-molest and rape the young virgin).

"What?" you ask, "Manipulation of language to mold perception?"

Of course. Where have you been? The leftists have always shamelessly thrived on that (under the belief that they have the best of intentions for all and know better than the average Joe & Jane who can only understand baby talk, and stuff like "If you don't behave yourselves, Children, the bogeyman will come!").

The UN itself admitted as much and so self-consciously toned down the language in the last report with such qualifiers as "Nearly" and "Almost" and "Perhaps" and "Quite Possibly" and "It appears."

That's admitting that the language (along with "the facts") of the Kyoto Treaty was overblown and misleading, and needed to be toned down, and yet you still have them harping about the president's rejection of "the facts" of Kyoto (though that's a mischaracterization, as well).

And that "rejection" was turned into "AN ATTACK ON SCIENCE!"

...while the very same Luddite president (as characterized) gave NASA the greenlight to boldly plan a moon colony and manned missions to Mars.

However, the funding for those missions (which would boldly push technologies to places where no man has been before) was one of the very first things that was slashed by the new "progressive" Democratic majority of the Congress before whining: "The President should propose a new energy policy as bold as JFK's Apollo missions!"

HUH?!?

Anyway, again, Earth is not a "baby" (and even when it was at the stage of its development that could properly be called its "infancy," it's "normal" temperature was volcanic), and so Gore's choice to characterize it as such is not only Mediaeval in a geological sense, but furthermore manipulative in a demagogic one, shamelessly appealing to disgraceful intellects and emotions which have been programmed by Leftists to value cutesy-wootsieness as the ideal state of things, i.e. Teletubbiness.

"Oo, the poor baby Earth! Wet's make it fee-oo bett-oh!"

It's really quite sickening.

"Hold on there, Republicus," you may be asking, "Aren't you making too big a deal about a metaphor?"

No, Republicus is not. The metaphor was Gore's to choose, and his choice speaks volumes about how he thinks, or--worse, and quite likely both--how he thinks we think, or should think:

"Earth is like a sick baby that needs nursing!"

...as regulated by the government.

"Wha-a-at?" you gasp. Of course.

That, after all, comes from a man who is a true believer in the nanny state.

That, after all, comes from a man who believes the State can--and should--see to every citizen's health-care needs.

That, after all, comes from a man who, in his own mid-life, sought the advice of his daughter's feminist girlfriend (i.e. writer Naomi Wolf) on how to dress like an "Alpha Male" for his run to be the President of the United States of America (of course, she recommended "earth-tones").

One more time: Al Gore consulted his daughter's feminist girlfriend to tell him how to dress like a man while he saw fit to assure the American pople that he was "his own man" and well-suited to be the next President of the United States of America and Leader of the Free World.

So you can can understand the choice to use a little baby with a fever when referring to a chunk of rock with a mass of 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms and that plunges and careens spinning through space at 1,113 mph around a star that has a surface temperature of 6000°C and belches flares that interfere with that rock's electromagnetic fields (and also its temperature, it should be added), because babies with fevers are so much easier to understand and manage--and besides, they're funzy-wunzy to handle!

But look what else he does: He describes the far sounder science of those opposed to his take on climatology (which has been debunked by scientists who have not been compromised by The Agenda, and no, they are not on Texaco's payroll, either) as peddlers of "Science Fiction."

Well, the good scientists (and those who agree with the simple logic of their findings) whom Al Gore just maligned should take heart, because being called writers (or readers) of science fiction is a step up from being earlier described as "Mediaeval Flat-Earthers" with their "Heads in the Sand," and "Deniers," but what's depraved is that such a childish attack is bred out of typical leftist projection:

The science fiction is Al Gore's, and he is well aware of his enviro-drama being labeled as exactly such--i.e. "science fiction"-- from sober scientists.

So he was just pettily and vindictively throwing it back (like a baby would).

Also, note his recommendation: "You go see a doctor (when the baby--i.e. Earth-- has a fever)."

There have been many scientists with doctorates in climatology--real doctors--who have indeed explicitly debunked Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth as science fiction, but Gore's prescription to "see a doctor" obviously does not apply to them because they're..."Science fiction" writers! (i.e. "I know you are, but what am I?")

In other words, climatologists with doctorates in that very field who disagree with Al Gore are belittled and dismissed out of hand (and even lose their jobs and receive death threats), and are not the doctors you should "see."

So which "doctor" is he talking about, then, if real ones are dismissed? He can only be talking about the somewhat sizable (but by no means universally consensual, however insistent they are about that) cabal of environmentalist "experts"-- like himself-- as being the only real "doctors" and arbiters of scientific "facts" and "Truth" on the matter (which is essentially that CO2 produced by human industry is the prime culprit for environmental warming, which is demonstrably false by the very premises of what causes the warming--i.e. greenhouse gases of which man-made CO2 comprises very little of-- and which are faulty premises to begin with as other agents--like solar flares-- play a part) and anyone who disagrees is a quack and should be stripped of their license to practice medicine (if not a heretic who should be burned at the stake of censure--if not ostracism).

But that, too, is a projection: Al Gore is the quack.

Leftists love to wave their diplomas and titles when demanding to be recognized as authorities. "I have a PhD from Thornton College in antipodal magnetic variations which means I know more than you about everything else!" they harumph (or whine).

Fine. Let's indulge that one, too: What, then, qualifies Al Gore? Is he a certified "scientist?"

No.

Was his Master's Thesis on climatology?

No.

And does he have a PhD, since he implied that "experts" like himself were the "doctor to go see" and heed?

How can that be? He just compared Earth to a human baby! That is not the language of science!

And remember, he wasn't addressing an elementary school classroom, but the United States Congress!

Who tolerates being lectured to in such a condescending manner?

Who buys that garbage?

Millions of us, astonishingly enough, and even our presumptively-adult representatives.