Quote of the week – meet the new 'deniers'

qotw_cropped

Oh, this is hilarious.

On Monday’s broadcast of “Morning Joe,” New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist argued that “deficit things” aren’t something to be worried about, at least for the time being. But according to Steve Rattner, the Obama administration’s former “car czar,” Krugman’s analysis is the economic equivalent of climate change denial.

On Tuesday’s “Morning Joe,” Rattner reacted to Krugman’s remarks by making the analogy between climate change and the government’s long-term fiscal challenges, and suggested that both are problems requiring immediate attention.

“[T]o me, being a debt denier is the same thing as being a climate change denier,” Rattner said. “We’re putting millions of tons of carbon in our atmosphere every day that we are going to have to deal with, and we’re incurring billions of debt every day we have to deal with.

But which one actually affects people’s lives today? Or, should we just let the grandkids deal with it? Heh. h/t to Chris Horner.

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January 29, 2013 10:45 am

wow…that is going to be a very interesting dialogue in the papers. Krugman has an advantage in that he can formulate his response in an article and blather on and on (as he almost always does).

Mike Bromley the Canucklehead back in Kurdistan but actually in Switzerland
January 29, 2013 10:53 am

A fancy way of deferring it to our grandkids. Pick an enemy you can’t fight (climate change) and equivocate about the national debt. Presto! Another enemy you can’t won’t fight!

Mike Bromley the Canucklehead back in Kurdistan but actually in Switzerland
January 29, 2013 10:53 am

Oh drat. Strike tag is bogus….
[Fixed. Use angle brackets. — mod.]

Alvin
January 29, 2013 10:57 am

If anyone thinks this was an off the cuff remark by Rattner, think again. They never say unplanned things as the goal is always controlling the message. This is their new meme.

Robertv
January 29, 2013 10:57 am

Peter Schiff – Operation Screw The Fed goes all-in on QE

John West
January 29, 2013 11:00 am

There’s one big difference: debt is definitely 100% anthropogenic while climate change is theoretically some percentage anthropogenic.

Patricia Ravasio (@patravasio)
January 29, 2013 11:03 am

[snip]

John F. Hultquist
January 29, 2013 11:04 am

I’ll just dismiss the silliness of the phrase “climate change denier” insofar as its usage is just a sign of the writer being either lazy or stupid, or both. Beyond that, I have developed great concern about my share** of the USA National debt. But if a Nobel Prize winner tells me not to worry, well okay then, I’ll move on.
**
http://www.budget.senate.gov/republican/public/index.cfm/national-debt

temp
January 29, 2013 11:11 am

Rattner has to be retarded or something. Everyone that believes that climate change is real is fooled by socialist propaganda/numbers adjusting to create the warming.
The same is true with the socialist propaganda/numbers for adjusting the debt ceiling. Krugmans “Nobel” is as scientifically sound as al-gore’s.

January 29, 2013 11:17 am

Can’t help but notice the timing of the remark…one day after Holocaust Day…have these people no shame? ….sorry, what was I thinking…

Pull My Finger
January 29, 2013 11:17 am

Krugman would have fit right in at Pravda ca. 1954. There is the Party Line and there is Gulag. That is the mentality Krugman brings to the NYT.

Matt in Houston
January 29, 2013 11:20 am

Hahahaha…one intellectual incompetent (Mr. Rattner) calling out another ignoramus giganticus (Krugman) is pretty funny. Maybe they will duke it out in a free broadcast UFC cage fight. The two sheep could slaughter each other rather than help lead the rest of the world into the darkness.

January 29, 2013 11:21 am

…Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman…
———————————————————————-
Alfred Nobel did not establish a prize category for economics – it isn’t a science.
Then again, what gore and the IPCC are doing is not science, and they were awarded the Nobel Prize.
Never mind…

January 29, 2013 11:26 am

Krugman is an embarrassment to anyone who has studied economics.

January 29, 2013 11:27 am

Forgive my lack of scientific knowledge here. But isn’t the paper in paper money made from forest products? Maybe not. Who knows, these days it could be made out of a new element called, ‘nothingness’. But, if it is made from forest products, isn’t that a hydrocarbon? And, at the rate Washington’s burning through money, isn’t it conceivable that we should tackle that first? Think of the trillions of bits of carbon. Of course maybe we can find some more new carbon sinks like Solyndra. Or, maybe there’s clean burning dollar technology. Maybe a super high speed dollar incineration process that leaves not a trace.

MarkW
January 29, 2013 11:30 am

So far the evidence is that doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has more positive impacts than negative ones.
So why should we want to do anything about it. Much less do so urgently?

January 29, 2013 11:32 am

The temperature has stopped going up for some 16 years. I only wish we could do that with the national debt.

chris y
January 29, 2013 11:35 am

I updated Obama’s climate change paragraph from a few days ago. Glad to see the MSM is starting to catch up.
“We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to our desire for immediate entitlements, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of ballooning debt, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of economists, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging spending, and crippling interest payments on our debt, and powerful special interests demanding their share of my money. The path towards sustainable spending will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot allow other nations to enable our growing debt, as it crushes new jobs and new industries – we must claim the promise of a budget surplus and shrinking debt. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality, for it is economic prosperity that funds the preservation of our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.”
All fixed.

Justthinkin
January 29, 2013 11:36 am

The biggest debt (and growing) of ANY country ever in the world and recorded history,and it is nothing to worry about??? Can somebody please tell me just exactly what Krugman and Oblame did to get a Nobel prize??? Alfred must be doing about 20,000 rpm in his grave.

Tom Jones
January 29, 2013 11:37 am

This seems like another reminder that, although current temperature curves say that there is no or very little correlation between CO2 and global average temperature, the meme that says “CO2 causes Global Warming” is alive and well. How does one drive a stake through the heart of that vampire? It is time for it to die.

RockyRoad
January 29, 2013 11:38 am

“[T]o me, being a debt denier is the same thing as being a climate change denier,” Rattner said. “We’re putting millions of tons of carbon in our atmosphere every day that we are going to have to deal with, and we’re incurring billions of debt every day we have to deal with.

Grow more plants; quit spending!
Two completely effective solutions to these “problems” they’re complaining about–and from a Climate Realist, no less.
But do you think they’d ever consider either solution? Of course not! They’d then have nothing to complain about.

January 29, 2013 11:38 am

It is also a means of creating a belief that the models must be grounded in reality because the debt problem certainly is. Anyone with credit cards gets the problems of debt. It creates a metaphor that can be related to at an emotional level. It also serves to concretise a concept that is not actually concrete in the least.
When I was researching this post http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/now-more-than-five-years-into-an-attempt-to-help-organize-a-near-total-revision-of-human-behavior/ I came across the plans to use education and social science research and what gets funded in the hard sciences to force a belief in climate change. The document involved IHDP and Ehrlich’s Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior. The planners fully intend to track what it takes to change minds and confront any obstacles in their way. I kept thinking of this blog site as what they were alluding to every time they described removing obstacles to belief.
Over and over again it called attention to the importance of metaphors and narratives in selling a story. The even mentioned the Spaceship Earth as a metaphor the typical person could visualize.
That’s precisely what the media is doing here. Remember media and education are just two tools of a desire to control communication politically. No more annoying memes allowed that might undermine Statism.

January 29, 2013 11:46 am

The difference between debt and CO2 is that the CO2 will eventually come out of the atmosphere. Debt, if left alone, doesn’t go away.

manicbeancounter
January 29, 2013 11:47 am

Krugman is a Keynesian. Like with the global warming hypothesis, in Keynesian macroeconomic there are tipping points and positive feed backs (multipliers). Like global warming theorists, there is also the belief that the government can save everything quite painlessly by a few simplistic policies.
There is something that Krugman does not recognize, that is different from climatology. The problem with huge deficits is that there are tipping points that are all too real – and which many Southern European states have now passed. Haven’t heard too much recently about climate tipping points though.

January 29, 2013 11:56 am

Tom Jones says:
“How does one drive a stake through the heart of that vampire? It is time for it to die.”
Comment often across the internet, whenever you get the chance. On blogs, under newspaper articles, on any source that allows comments. The more folks that read what they privately suspect — that the “carbon” scare is grant-fed nonsense — the sooner public opinion will change.

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