Why climate change will make you love big government

This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission.

Look back on 2011 and you’ll notice a destructive trail of extreme weather slashing through the year. In Texas, it was the driest year ever recorded. An epic drought there killed half a billion trees,  touched off wildfires that burned 4 million acres, and destroyed or  damaged thousands of homes and buildings. The costs to agriculture,  particularly the cotton and cattle businesses, are estimated at $5.2 billion — and keep in mind that, in a winter breaking all sorts  of records for warmth, the Texas drought is not yet over.

That kind of whining about the weather, which is the fault of Barack Obama cruising the country in 17 car convoys, continues on for a bit longer. Because weather never happened before 1980 (until you cruise Real Science, and see the newspaper headlines from the past)

Such calamities, devastating for those affected, have important  implications for how we think about the role of government in our  future. During natural disasters, society regularly turns to the state  for help, which means such immediate crises are a much-needed reminder  of just how important a functional big government turns out to be to our  survival.

In the past, people tended to rely on themselves. And there is nothing wrong with government helping out: it’s one of the reasons we have government. There is no need for a massive central government with a giant bureaucracy. Of course, that’s not the progressive narrative: to them, we need giant over-reaching and all powerful government for when the wind blows, it rains, and it snows….hey, remember when the NYC public sector unions slowed the snow cleanup in 2010?

Anyhow, the author goes on and on about how great big central government is, and why the private sector can’t do anything, ending with

In the face of an unraveling climate system, there is no way that  private enterprise alone will meet the threat. And though small “d”  democracy and “community” may be key parts of a strong, functional, and  fair society, volunteerism and “self-organization” alone will prove as  incapable as private enterprise in responding to the massive challenges  now beginning to unfold.

To adapt to climate change will mean coming together on a large scale  and mobilizing society’s full range of resources. In other words, big  storms require big government. Who else will save stranded climate  refugees, or protect and rebuild infrastructure, or coordinate rescue  efforts and plan out the flow and allocation of resources?

It will be government that does these tasks or they will not be done at all.

What would we do without Big Centralized Government taking charge? Just because they’ll need to take more and more money while imposing more and more regulations/restrictions on its citizens and businesses is Bo reason to poo poo the idea. Government is just here to help. Despite being incompetent and taking vastly too long to accomplish the most minor and mundane task is no reason to be concerned about Government. Just because the climate change movement is about fascism (for everyone else) is no reason to worry.

(Politico) The issue of race and American politics, never far beneath the surface during Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign, is making a loud, overt and surprisingly early appearance in the 2012 presidential race.

And no one knows — least of all Obama himself — what impact the race card, always a wild card, will have on the president’s reelection prospects.

I’ll suggest it backfires, particularly if Team Obama and their sycophants attack Romney’s Mormonism.

In the past several months, Newt Gingrich has drawn sharp criticism for labeling Obama the “food stamp president” and for suggesting poor kids in New York’s majority-minority school system burnish their work ethic by picking up mops. First lady Michelle Obama bridled at the perception that she’s an “angry black woman.” Obama’s Chicago-based campaign has pushed back against stories that he’s more or less given up on the white vote.

Except, Newt wasn’t just talking about Black people: the majority of food stamp recipients are Caucasian. Michelle Obama is the one who brought up the angry black woman thing in order to create racial division. And Team Obama was the one who said they had given up on the white vote.

But nothing has illustrated the potentially explosive political impact of race — an issue that Obama has downplayed throughout his career — like the firestorm around the image of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer wagging her finger at the first black president of the United States.

If there were any illusion that 2012 would be the post-racial election most Americans hoped for, it vanished with that single shake of a finger and 30 seconds of sniping lost to history in the turbine roar of Air Force One.

Got that? The duly elected Governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, is an evil racist simply because she wagged her finger in the face of a disrespectful half-black President. By that definition, we could call Obama a sexist, since he was disrespectful to Brewer and walked away.

But, what else does Obama have to run on? He certainly can’t run on his record. He doesn’t like to talk about his signature legislation, the Stimulus and Obamacare. He can play with the economic numbers all he wants, but people are hurting, and things are not getting better. The housing industry is still a major mess. Real world prices are rising. Disposable income is very low. Consumer confidence is low. There are historic numbers of people who have given up on the job market. The recession supposedly ended in June, 2009, yet, here in 2012, nothing seems to have changed.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Polk Award-Winning Rolling Stone writer Michael Hastings made a startling set of admissions on CSPAN, recently. Not only did he admit that most “journalists” are liberals, but he implied that they really aren’t interested in just reporting the facts of stories. Instead he said they are filled with a liberal “moralistic righteousness” and their goal is to “afflict” those they disagree with.

In the discussion, Hastings laid out how he sees his work as a journalist. “I think any journalist worth his salt often has a real moralistic kind of righteousness to them somewhere in their soul… and we talk in grand terms about ourselves, you know, afflicting the powerful and comforting the afflicted,” he told the CSPAN host.

Not much “objectivity” going on there, is there?

In the video segment featured by Townhall, Hastings is initially asked about his “prestigious” Polk Award and this discussion led CSPAN’s Brian Lamb to ask Hastings about the ideological mindset of Polk Award winners. This brought Hastings to his admission.

Of course, if one has to explain how “prestigious” an award is, one should suspect it ain’t that prestigious! Prestige is something that others should assign to you, not something you should assign to yourself.

Now, you might recall Mr. Hastings as the man whose 2010 Rolling Stone article eventually led to the firing of General Stanley McChrystal. Hastings caught some off-record carping by McChrystal’s staffers the revelation of which made the General look bad to his political leaders. Even then, many might have questioned Hastings’ actions by actually publishing those unguarded and casual, off-record conversations. It smacked of agenda or gotcha journalism.

But as we see in this interview, as far as Hastings is concerned, that is what journalists are supposed to do. They are supposed to approach their work with a “moralistic” agenda guiding them. They aren’t supposed to just publish the facts and let readers decide. They are supposed to “afflict the powerful” and that with all the left-wing political ideology such a crusade implies.

For those of you not able to see the video, here is the meat of the discussion:

Brian Lamb: “Is it fair to say that the Polk Award winners are usually liberal journalists?”

Michael Hastings: “Um, probably. I mean most journalists I know are liberal.”

BL: “Activist journalists. I mean activist people, would you consider yourself an activist?

MH: “I think any.. no, no… I think any journalist worth his salt often has a real moralistic kind of righteousness to them somewhere in their soul. And I think that’s a, you know, we’re gonna protect the — and we talk in grand terms about ourselves, you know, afflicting the powerful and comforting the afflicted.”

One can just feel Hastings’ discomfiture with his admission as he struggles with his reply. With his first thought that he doesn’t consider himself an “activist,” he seems to have a vague feeling he shouldn’t be admitting all this, but he does it anyway.

Naturally we aren’t surprised by the whole affair.

Finally, I know what many of you are going to say. Many of you are going to be rolling your eyes asking me if I think this is new. Of course I don’t think that the sentiments that Hastings related is in any way “new.” But what is unusual is to see a “journalist” admitting out in the open like this to his and his fellow’s blatant bias. That and it is my job to report on these things, so please stop with the “are you surprised” rejoinders, will ya?

Isn’t he cute? Don’t you just want to hug him and kiss him and take him home where you can make Seal Flipper Pie or Seal Meat Hash? Well, sucks to be you, because baby harp seals are apparently being killed off by globull warming

Climate change spares no one. Not even the adorable. Baby harp seals, for instance, can’t catch a break. After centuries of looking over their shoulders to spot folks who plan to eat them or wear them, the cute little critters now have to worry about Mother Nature. As climate change warms the Arctic, it is reducing sea ice to historically low levels. Since stretches of thicker ice are getting harder to come by, baby seals are now more frequently drowning or getting crushed by broken-up chunks of ice. Though harp seal numbers remain strong, the pace of sea ice melt has hindered the survival of pups. Canada saw a 25 percent survival rate in 2007, and virtually no pups survived there in 2010.

Bummer. I wonder how they survived during the previous warmer periods over the last 10,000 years. Unfortunately, this turns them into juvenile delinquents

One can only hope that a recent case of baby seal breaking and entering (BSB & E) will not prove to be the start of a trend: Rogue bands of thug baby seals, driven to lawlessness by the cruel dictates of global warming. Believe it or not, that premise is not as satirical as it sounds. Polar bears, like our cartoon friend Bebbo, find that global warming has decimated their opportunities to hunt, so starvation increasingly forces them into town garbage dumps for survival.

Got that? It’s not a case of an animal doing something silly and cute, but a dire cause of someone like DaTechGuy daring to drive a fossil fueled vehicle. I suggest that all Warmists everywhere disconnect their power (no more TIVOing The Daily Show and Current TV, because TV boxes are huge causes of wasted energy) and water (there’s only so much to go around, ya know), wash their clothes in rivers and streams (with expensive Gaia friendly detergents), dry them on clothes lines (hey, what’s a little bird poo when we are saving Gaia?), and walk to work. No more fossil fueled vehicle trips for you!

(WCTV) A new campaign, Forecast the Facts (www.forecastthefacts.org), launches Sunday to pressure TV meteorologists to inform their viewers about climate change. The launch coincides with the kick-off of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) annual meeting in New Orleans, LA.

Since then, this new fatwa has been cropping up all over the left-o-sphere. And here’s a fun unhinged one

The requirements to be a TV weather presenter are fairly slack: an undergraduate degree with some training in meteorology is preferred, but not required, and the main skills seem to be looking presentable with nice hair, being able to dance with a green screen, and being glib and cheerful. So I guess it’s not surprising that the “scientists” leading the charge against global warming are climate-denier TV weathermen. That link takes you to a long list of quotes from various television weather personalities — including a couple from Minneapolis — who all deny reality and use their position as frontmen pretending to be scientists to delude the public. Take a look and see if your local television station has a conspiracy nut doing the weather.

Of course, by the standards of the Cult Of Gore, we aren’t supposed to listen to PZ Myers because he doesn’t have a degree in climatology. Anyhow, so far, the Warmists have failed to prove using the scientific method that this warm period is any different from the previous warm periods throughout the current interglacial period. They’ve established a tentative link to CO2 without the benefit of scientific proof, instead, they use simple conjecture more similar to the Underwear Gnomes. And they refuse to abide by the doctrines of their cult and change their own behavior.

I think we can safely say that no Republican should be allowed anywhere near the reins of government. They’re anti-science through and through.

Silly me, I thought the Constitution forbade any sort of religious tests to be elected.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Sydney Morning Herald) THE President of what could be the first country in the world lost to climate change has urged Australia to prepare for a mass wave of climate refugees seeking a new place to live.

The Maldivian President, Mohamed Nasheed, said his government was considering Australia as a possible new home if the tiny archipelago disappears beneath rising seas.

”It is increasingly becoming difficult to sustain the islands, in the natural manner that these islands have been,” he told the Herald in an interview in Male, the Maldives capital.

In other words, a bit of hysterical hyperventilation designed to produce a shakedown, because the Earth has apparently been stagnant for the last 4.5 billion years…..say, how did the Maldives come into creation in the first place? What’s that? You say that the sea level was much higher, thereby allowing corals to create the 1200 islands, then the seas retreated? And have done that many times? Well, blind me with science.

Eighty per cent of the Maldivian land mass – a string of more than 1200 islands, 200 inhabited, running 750 kilometres north-south in the Indian Ocean – is less than a metre above sea level. The highest point in the entire country is 2.4 metres above sea level, and already, 14 islands have had to be abandoned because of massive erosion by the sea.

Well, yeah, they are islands. They erode. The ocean is always doing something. That’s the nature of the planet. Nothing anthropogenic about it.

Tim Blair points out that a) President Nasheed just attended a ceremony to make the construction of a new airport (hey, aren’t planes bad for globull warming?) and b) they sure like themselves some heroin in the Maldives. Also, the Maldives have a rising Islamist issue.

Oh, and as The Hockey Schtick points out, sea level rise is pretty much within the norm of the last 7 thousand years.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Here’s a new way to try and hip-up the boring, ages-old, left-wing idea of tax hikes: link it to reality TV star Kim Kardashian. That is just what ABC News tried to do on the Wednesday, January 4 edition of ABC World News Tonight when the venerable news program helped advertise an effort by a small group headed by a former Democrat operative that wants to hike California’s income taxes. It is a two-pronged approach of hitching a big government, big spending, high tax agenda to the TV reality show star in order to drag younger people into the left’s class warfare game.

ABC highlighted a California Millionaires Tax policy recommendation from a group called Courage Campaign. The group is headed by Rick Jacobs who is the former head of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign in California, a Huffington Post writer, and leader of this admittedly “progressive” group.

ABC reported that the “liberal group” (and kudos to ABC for actually identifying them as a liberal group for a change) is upset that Kim Kardashian, who made some $12 million in 2011, only paid one percent more than the average middle class wage in the Golden State.

Here is what the extremist high-tax group says on it’s website about this:

Kim Kardashian made more than $12 million in 2010, but she only paid 1% more in taxes than a middle-class Californian. That’s not OK, especially when budget cuts are decimating schools and critical programs for children, the elderly, and the disabled. It’s exactly why Courage Campaign and two dozen other organizations are putting the Millionaires Tax of 2012 on the ballot.

Wow, that tiny, little one percent suuuure seems small, right? But let’s look at the actual payment, shall we? Kardashian paid a tax rate of 10.3 percent and 10.3 percent of twelve million is $1,236,000! And those middle-class folks that paid one percent less at 9.3 percent? Well if the average income in California is $47.000, then they paid only $4,371. Why aren’t these middle-class louts paying their fair share? (That’s called sarcasm, by the way.)

Now, it’s not that I care at all for Kim and her brood — I never watch so-called reality TV and have never seen her show — but this is all really just class warfare. After all, let’s look at the tact here. Instead of actually talking about what Kardashian pays, this ABC flogged extremist group focuses on that “one percent” as if that makes her tax remittance tiny. They mislead the public by purposefully avoiding any mention of the amount she actually paid.

Seriously, the fact is we could out right confiscate the millions made by the Kardashinas of this country and it wouldn’t make a dent in the hole of trillions of dollars that Democrats have dug for us.

But there is one last thing to ask about this ABC report. I’m just wondering, but has ABC ever highlighted the tax policy idea of some small Tea Party group that made a video to sell its plan to the people? Why does this tiny, left-wing group in California rate any attention at all in a national news program?

Obviously the answer here is that ABC saw the possibility of exploiting Kardashian and enraging her young fan base in order to drive them to support a left-wing idea. It’s all about branding, you see. If the far left and ABC can leech off Kim Kardashian to sell their creaky old socialist policies, then that’s what they will do.

(The Hill) President Obama ended 2011 by predicting a contentious 2012.

In his final weekly address of the year, the president said he was hopeful about making progress on his agenda in the coming year but warned that it wouldn’t be easy.

“We’ve got some difficult debates and some tough fights to come,” Obama said. “As I’ve said before, we are at a make-or-break moment for the middle class. And in many ways, the actions we take in the months ahead will help determine what kind of country we want to be, and what kind of world we want our children and grandchildren to grow up in.”

And how right Obama is: do we want a country like Greece, which is where Obama and the Democrats are leading us? Or, do we want to have a country which is self sustaining?

As President, I promise to do everything I can to make America a place where hard work and responsibility are rewarded – one where everyone has a fair shot and everyone does their fair share. That’s the America I believe in. That’s the America we’ve always known. And I’m confident that if we work together, and if you keep reminding folks in Washington what’s at stake, then we will move this country forward and guarantee every American the opportunities they deserve.

He forgets that he is part of Washington, and part of the problem. But, don’t forget to sign up for Obama 2012 emails. Team Obama is using whitehouse.gov, the official website of the office of the POTUS, to mine email addresses to solicit campaign donations again.

Fifty New Hampshire scientists Thursday called on the Republican presidential candidates to accept the “overwhelming” scientific evidence behind climate change.

The scientists issued the joint statement just weeks before the Jan. 10 New Hampshire primary, a key early test for the GOP White House hopefuls.

“We urge all candidates for public office at national, state, and local levels, and all New Hampshire citizens, to acknowledge the overwhelming balance of evidence for the underlying causes of climate change, to support appropriate responses to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, and to develop local and statewide strategies to adapt to near-term changes in climate,” the scientists said.

“Ignoring the issue of climate change places our health, our quality of life, our economic vitality, and our children’s future at risk.”

Funny how these “scientists” are worried about our children’s future, considering that the majority of the Believers are left of center and back the huge spending of Big Government, which will destroy the future of our kids through unsustainable debt, deficits, and unpaid liabilities. Also, if they were being precise, they would at least call it global warming, instead of the catch all “climate change”, which allows the Warmists to embrace everything that happens under the banner of someone (else) having driven a car.

And then there is this, as explained by Drew Cline at the Union Leader

It is a funny little bit of propaganda made all the more humorous by its labeling as “scientists” a historian, a sociologist, two political scientists, a professor of health economics, several civil engineers, two medical doctors, and some Ph.D. candidates.

Nothing says “We are serious scientists; heed our doomsday predictions!” quite like the overstating of credentials. If they’ll overstate their credentials, then why wouldn’t they overstate the connection between recent weather events and human behavior?

Nonetheless, the petition got written up in The Hill, which lent it some undue legitimacy. Voters ought to ignore it.

Hence the reason I put scientists in quotes. But, then, the majority of people that bloviate about the need to Do Something about anthropogenic global warming aren’t climate scientists. Al Gore isn’t. Nor is James Hansen. Nor most of the people who work on the UN IPCC panel and write their press releases and documents. Nor most that attend the yearly UN climate change (hoax) conferences in exotic vacation spots, as well as all the other conferences.

But, anyhow, if we are supposed to listen to these 50 “scientists” on the issue, why are we supposed to ignore the 31,000 who signed the petition against AGW?

Smithsonian Magazine has posted some unusual portraits of jolly Saint Nick and asked readers to vote for the Scariest Santa. Here’s my choice:

It’s a 1939 Christmas card from a Hungarian-born American artist named Ralph Fabri. Surely penned against the turmoil of World War II, today it calls to mind the grave dangers of runaway global warming.

Warmists really cannot help themselves, using this old painting to prop up their dying religion, because atmospheric CO2 higher than 350ppm might cause the world to burn. Just like when it was well over 1000ppm during the reign of the dinosaurs, and tiny mammals chowed down on baked T Rex…..what’s that? The temperatures didn’t correlate to the atmospheric CO2? That’s weird.

Of course, Doniger is blaming every weather event of the past year on “climate change”, because weather never happened before. And drones on for the need to kill power plants because of CO2, make cars less safe to conform to “green” initiatives, and save the world from weather events. Yet, the Warmists still cannot scientifically say that the warming during this time period is caused mostly or solely by Mankind. So, instead, they have to attempt to scare people, and co-opt paintings above and try and ruin Christmas.

Some electroshock therapy may be necessary.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.