This quote from a WSJ article titled Springtime for Warmists (a hat tip to the satirical play Springtime for Hitler in Mel Brooks’ 1968 film The Producers ) is one of those “God help us” moments where we realize higher education has become an abject failure when it comes to teaching reality based science.
Yes, it has come to this. Americans are being urged to submit to “dictatorial” government because democracy is incapable of controlling the weather. “In college classes, climate change is taught as a textbook example of where democracy fails,” Graves asserts in the very first sentence of her column.
Oy!
Springtime for Warmists
Last month Rush Limbaugh remarked that the reason for “the re-establishment of climate change and global warming as a new primary impetus of the White House” is that “it offers the president opportunities to be dictatorial.”
A defender of the president might counter that “dictatorial” is overwrought. After all, whether or not his proposed regulations are wise, they are based on an act of Congress and an interpretation of that law that has passed muster with the Supreme Court. They won’t take effect until members of the public have had the opportunity to make their views known to the Environmental Protection Agency. And Obama will remain in office for only another 2½ years or so, after which his (democratically elected) successors will have the authority to revise the regulations. Congress also retains the authority to change the law.
But National Journal’s Lucia Graves takes a different approach. Instead of denying that Obama’s actions are dictatorial, she disputes Limbaugh’s implicit premise that there’s anything wrong with that. Lest you think we exaggerate, her piece is titled “Obama’s Thankfully ‘Dictatorial’ Approach to Climate Change.”
Yes, it has come to this. Americans are being urged to submit to “dictatorial” government because democracy is incapable of controlling the weather. “In college classes, climate change is taught as a textbook example of where democracy fails,” Graves asserts in the very first sentence of her column.
Well, that settles it. America might have been a noble experiment, but science has proven it a failure. “Science is science,” Obama tells the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman. “And there is no doubt that if we burned all the fossil fuel that’s in the ground right now that the planet’s going to get too hot and the consequences could be dire.” Friedman asked: “Do you ever want to just go off on the climate deniers in Congress? ‘Yeah, absolutely,’ the president said with a laugh.”
Hardy har har.
There are, to say the least, some problems here. Most important, appeals to scientific authority ought to fall on deaf ears unless the science is conducted honestly, which entails acknowledgment of uncertainty and respect for alternative hypotheses. In this regard, the demonization of “skeptics” should raise an alarm for anyone who takes science seriously. Skepticism is the essence of the scientific method.
Read it all here
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It was in this column that Taranto linked to the “Climate Change prevents Alien Contact” piece 🙂
Our use of fossil fuels allowed man to move beyond hunting and gathering. But now hunting is a bad thing in the eyes of many. That leaves gathering. Oy!
We had one last year in Canada from the Liberal party leader:
There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say ‘we need to go green fastest…we need to start investing in solar.’
-Justin Trudeau, quoted in Sun Media report, November 7th, 2013
Ah yes. That must be why the Chinese are so much better at controlling their emissions than Americans…
I’d laugh but it hurts
You think the Chinese will lend us the money to buy the solar panels they develop with their fossil fueled manufacturing base?
THIS is why the entire issue of “Climate Change”, at it’s core, is NOT a scientific debate. It is all about Politics, plain and simple, and nothing but politics.
and Politics, of course, is about gaining, keeping, and using Power.
It is not funny at all. The sort of mental derangement that the climate obsessed are demonstrating is dangerous. Ms. Graves, like all extremists, hate Liberty. She is a living demonstration of the proverb, “To do great evil one must first believe they are doing a great good.”
We are reduced to being led by a President who is incapable of discussing the weather without grabbing for himself the power of a dictator.
Think of how incredibly ignorant and out of control this makes him. He is so deluded by his circle of advisers that he actually thinks that controllilng CO2 is giong to improve the weather. And his judgement is so flawed that he surrounds himself with proven shysters and hustlers like Holdren.
this shallow deceptive talk of ‘climate change’, as if climate did not change always, and ‘weather extremes’, as if weather was somehow benign in some wonderful pre-industrial age are both transparent untruths promoted by people with vested interests in not telling the truth.
It is long past time to psuh back on the likes of Ms. Graves who are calling for our enslavement in the name of her climate obsessions.
(P.S. Only my first comment was sarcastic)
When the supposedly most powerful man on the planet defines one of the two most important gases for life to exist, CO2 as carbon pollution, which is an unscientific and false claim and this claim then is parroted by the MSM, then isn’t democracy and free speech in itself in danger?
A failure of higher education? Definitely not .. these people are inspired by a highly educated Dr. Goebbels.
Bob Tisdale said June 11, 2014 at 8:35 am:
We shall gather from the carbon rich to give to the carbon poor. Al Gore will see how well his fleet of personal vehicles will run when all the tanks are siphoned dry and refilled with the equivalent in carbon credits.
Not news. Contemporary leftism is based around the idea that the masses have to submit to enlightened elites. Google “Slavoj Žižek” for examples.
They are so certain, yet neither has any known education in science.
Re Bob’s comment. If hunting is seen as a bad thing, then I’m one baddddd assssss Irish redheaded lass! She said sweetly as she downs her breakfast of hot coffee, barely fried eggs and tender venison backstrap. Next thought: Fly or worm? Decisions, decisions.
The quote is from the National Journal and was part of James Taranto’s WSJ blog
http://online.wsj.com/articles/best-of-the-web-today-springtime-for-warmists-1402342775
James covers many topics each day. He usually starts with a long bit about a serious issue and then has many odd and funny short things under headings such as “Out on a Limb”, “We Blame George W. Bush”, and “Bottom Story of the Day”, plus many more. Readers submit suggestions from local newspapers and elsewhere. He will sometimes write on a climate story but his emphases are government and politics. One needs to read regularly to understand some of the headings and back-stories.
Pamela Gray says:”…Next thought: Fly or worm? Decisions, decisions.”
Streamer or minnow wannabe around here. Something for a nice fast action 8wt to go fin-wrestle a few smallies with…
____________
“There are, to say the least, some problems here.”
Some problems ?! Yeah, I’d say. Obama demonstrates on a nearly hourly basis these days that a Harvard education is a real waste of money, and the other is “Thomas Friedman…”
A defender of the president might counter that “dictatorial” is overwrought.
————
Okay, use “autocratic” instead.
“If Congress won’t act, I will”
-HRH obama
From Pamela Gray on June 11, 2014 at 9:21 am:
Start the delicious venison stew in the slow cooker before you head out. Have a backup, or perhaps when you get back you’d rather eat first and clean fish later.
When did Obama decide that congress has to pass laws? It seems everything is fair game for “executive action”. Where in the H is the Supreme Court?
“There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say ‘we need to go green fastest…we need to start investing in solar.’
-Justin Trudeau, quoted in Sun Media report, November 7th, 2013”
Note that they’re not actually USING the solar… but if the whole world insists on buying overpriced electronic gear, China wants to be the one selling it to the idiots.
‘Friedman asked: “Do you ever want to just go off on the climate deniers in Congress? ‘Yeah, absolutely,’ the president said with a laugh.”’
Ah, let us take a look at Thomas Friedman’s home:
http://christopherfountain.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/this-is-the-nyts-thomas-friedmans-house-why-would-you-listen-to-him/
And then, let us not forget that US Gov has budgeted for a total of 21 (twenty one) aircraft for use by the President for his, and his wife’s, and his children’s, travels to the Bahamas (for the lil’ uns); to Idaho (for skiing); to Hawaii (standard, middle class, American Christmas Holidays destination); to Chicago (for birthday parties and to investigate non-existent voter fraud); to…
Why do they feel the need to encourage government to be “dictatorial” if they have a consensus on the issue? Apparently, they don’t have much confidence that the consensus is real. Neither do the rest of us.
Pamela Gray says: “Next thought: Fly or worm?”
You even hunt fish? Eeek!
Pamela Gray says:”…Next thought: Fly or worm? Decisions, decisions.”
Fly. A #10 Adams or Deer Hair Caddis.
Love Taranto! And unfortunately he is correct. When the left runs out of ideas, they turn to suppression and force to get their way. We see it even now in the statements by the alarmists.