By Bill Steigerwald
“Polar Bear Manifesto”
U.S. CAPITOL BUILDING
With a bang the Senate hearing room’s double-doors suddenly flew open. A SWAT team of 12 Navy SEALs in full riot gear and body armor stormed in, knelt down and aimed their MP5 submachine guns at Grandpa.
As the SEALs nodded to each other and took aim at Grandpa’s chest, a desperate voice behind them in the hallway cried out.
“Don’t shoot,” shouted Anderson Cooper, as he and a CNN cameraman rushed in. “Not until I get the exclusive interview.”
Grandpa stayed cool. He had a dozen TV cameras pointed at him and he knew they and Anderson Cooper were his best chance to avoid being shot to death.
“Senator Franken?” Grandpa asked over his shoulder without moving a muscle. “Do you really want the whole world to see a talking polar bear killed inside the U.S. Capitol Building on live television?”
“Um, I’m not sure,” Senator Franken said, looking down helplessly at Senator Boxer’s legs, which were sticking out from under her desk. “I’m kinda new here. I’m just an ex-comedian. Um, can I check with my writing staff and get back to you on that?”
“Senator Franken!!” screeched Senator Boxer, climbing to her feet. “The answer is ‘No,’ you idiot. ‘No, we do not want the world to see a talking polar bear slaughtered in the chambers of the United States Senate.’ “
Looking at Senator Franken with a mix of pity and disgust, Senator Boxer pointed to the SWAT team.
“You people put away those disgusting guns. Mr. Bear if that is his real name poses no danger to anyone is this room. We invited him here. Although I’m sorry to say it, we owe him the chance to finish his propaganda speech on behalf of the criminal energy industry. You may continue with your lies, Mr. Bear not that it’ll do you any good.”
Grandpa smiled and winked at Senator Boxer.
“Thank you, Ma’am,” he said. “Unlike most of those who come to Washington, I did not come to ask the government for favors or special treatment for my species. I only ask that you treat us the way your Founding Fathers wanted all governments to treat their peaceful citizens.
“Don’t kill us, enslave us or torture us. Don’t steal from us or unfairly tax us. Don’t tell us which god we must pray to or how we must speak or think. Don’t make us wards of the Nanny State. Let us be free to live our lives as we wish as long as we don’t hurt anyone.
“As for ‘global climate change,’ we don’t understand what all the fuss and fear is about. The climate is always changing. It’s perfectly natural. It’s not a crisis for my species or for humans. We’ve already survived two ice ages 100,000 years long and we’ll survive the next one, which, by the way, has already started.”
“Distinguished Senators, do my species a favor. Do not place us on your Endangered Species list — or any other list. If as lawmakers you feel you must do something positive to help us, follow Thomas Jefferson’s advice and concentrate on protecting our natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And then leave us alone.”
When Grandpa finished no one said a word. The room was completely still.
“Clap clap clap, clap, clap.”
It was Senator Specter. He liked Grandpa’s speech so much he was giving it a standing ovation. So were Senator Inhofe and Senator Franken, who were both weeping but for different reasons. So were 11 other senators on the committee and all the people in the room everyone, except Senator Boxer.
As a dozen reporters stampeded over to interview Grandpa, Senator Boxer was already on her cell phone.
“Al,” she whimpered, “You thought ClimateGate was bad. I’ve got even worse news.”
I’m going to miss these nightly bed time stories.
Nighty, night…
A SWAT team of 12 Navy SEALs in full riot gear and body armor stormed in…
Okay, *that* is unrealistic.
There would have been six SEALs, max…
… and I thought polar bears ate seals for breakfast. Next installment, perhaps?
I am from the southern hemisphere so I may have got this wrong – but don’t polar bears eat SEALs?
Bill, polar bears eat SEALS. A round dozen would feed the whole family.
Peter Pond (23:00:15) : I am from the southern hemisphere so I may have got this wrong – but don’t polar bears eat SEALs?
Yes, but not NAVY SEALs. They are a different species. Very hard to take down and far to tough to bite into them. Oh, and they bite back something fierce too…
OT
Deaths from cold on a rapid rise in UK over last two winters. This winter
the three-month death toll over the current season will be higher than that.
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2010/01/02/liverpool-pensioners-face-cold-weather-death-risk-claim-tories-100252-25507589/
If heating costs ‘necessarily skyrocket’ it will be worse.
OT
Globally averaged temps have fallen 0.158 F since An Inconvenient Truth was released.
http://algorelied.com/?p=3469
OT (last one)
Heaviest snow in Seoul, Korea since their records began.
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2010/01/05/201001050042.asp
But it’s just climate. And yes, I do know the difference between climate and weather. If the earth was warming this is weather. But the earth is cooling. The little bit of extra warm Australia has now is weather. 🙂
Oh, that last line is priceless. 🙂
Franken was staring at Boxer’s legs, then Franken was crying.
Maybe Babs should consult with Hillary about pant suits?
Which is the crux of the biscuit (to sort of paraphrase Frank Zappa).
That paragraph right there is what this country is about and needs to be remembered. We don’t work for the government. The government works for us. Our lives don’t belong to them, our money doesn’t belong to them and our wealth isn’t theirs to “redistribute”.
To Boxer (who is standing for re-election this year) I say, “Mind your business” and I will mind mine.
“UAH Satellite figures in for December”
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/126
December 2009 down to +0.28 degrees C.
OT:
Mount Nyamulagira eruption.
This should be made into a movie, and called “A Bothersome Reality” (Sub-titled “We’re not endangered and neither are you!”), or something like that.
OT…The Met Office chief has been given a 25% pay rise (for promising that this will be a hot winter?) Source: Daily Telegraph)
E.M.Smith (23:26:03) : …Yes, but not NAVY SEALs. They are a different species. Very hard to take down and far to tough to bite into them. Oh, and they bite back something fierce too…
Well I am glad they don’t have NAVY POLAR BEARS – because the bears are like that even before they turn Navy!!!
Must be a little slow in the climate newsroom
I know it’s OT, but Mr Pachauri has an article in today’s Guardian (London, UK) grumbling about ‘climate deniers’. For sheer cheek, the man is hard to beat!
Nice work if you can get it!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6931584/Met-Office-chief-receives-25-pc-pay-rise.html
It reminds me of that scene from”Madagascar” when Marty and Alex are surrounded by swat team in Grand Central, except that Marty and Alex can’t speak human.
Jay Currie (23:00:31) :
Bill, polar bears eat SEALS. A round dozen would feed the whole family.
Heh. Gram’pa would have his paws full with just *one* of the SEALs who used to hang around with us here, Jay…
I was really expecting his speech to end with “protect our rights to life, liberty and and the persuit of penguin snacks”
I really should get out more
Mr. Alex (00:47:45) :
“UAH Satellite figures in for December”
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/126
December 2009 down to +0.28 degrees C.
So, anomaly halved. I wonder if this is the start of the big descent.
The Global Warming is the wrong conception.
I am able to demonstrate that the energy coming to the Earth is changeable in time. This variability is noticed on the Earth as the change of temperature of the atmosphere. I am writing here about the variability, which can be watched as the “Mauder Minimum” or the “Medieval Warm Period”. See:
http://sites.google.com/site/earthquakepredictionbyjac/Home/greenhouse-effect
Jacek Dunajewski
Reply: I’m not quite sure why, but I am letting this through. ~ ctm
Nice story!!
mother bear seeing the threat to grandpa cuts the lights in the room, forcing the seals to go thermal. With all the humans running around they have trouble spotting grandpa, but grandpa having excellent hearing,fabulous night vision,and a phenominal sense of smell,can detect the explosives in their weapons and knows exactly where they are. Going into his silent running mode he sneaks upto the seals and not wanting to hurt them uses the claws of his paws to deftly remove their guns.(details left to your imagination) When the lights come back on he tells the seals he can train them in polar bear hand to hand later but right now is a time for talking not for fighting.
“Thank you, Ma’am,”
Hahaha! That was priceless.
“Reply: I’m not quite sure why, but I am letting this through. ~ ctm”
—-
Reply: It was colorful.
@E.M.Smith
“..Yes, but not NAVY SEALs. They are a different species. Very hard to take down and far to tough to bite into them. Oh, and they bite back something fierce too…”
So it might take more than ONE polar bear? Luckily there seem to be three there, then…
BBB
Botox Boxer Boxed
I realize this is all BS, but at least try to get the military part right. The USN SEALS deserve better than you are giving them in this post. http://www.sealchallenge.navy.mil/seal/introduction.aspx
Another perspective. Seems to be cooling when you change the timeline.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a7a58016970b-pi
gah when is this story going to be over? I dont come to wuwt for entertainment, even though some of the stuff out of AGWers is laughable enough to be considered no more than such.
I think the people most concerned about polar bear extinction from AGW should all adapt one apiece. Maybe open a petting zoo.
Does anybody remember the documentary about the man who lived with the grizzly bears? He thought they were harmless, too.
Thanks for another installment that illuminates the way politics really works.
Best wishes for 2010,
Oliver K. Manuel
Polar bears know more about their lineage than do humans, they arrived as transient brown bears at the edge of the Bering Sea about 250,000 years ago and decided they needed some evolutionary changes, like a white coat so the seals couldn’t see them as easily. They lived there happily since.
And so they became polar ‘brown’ bears. Hey we did it once, we can do it again … LOL
I had 42 degrees of global warming goodness at my house on the gulf in SWFL … We are now seriously concerned that our favorite local sport fish the ‘snook’, will suffer a wide ranging die off due to the very cold local waters. A shame. When water temperature goes under about 60 degrees F the snook suffer, become lethargic, role on their backs belly up and soon die. Only the warm sun can save them, but by then they lack the strength to swim back to the shallow mud flats. Sigh … Hasn’t happened since the great die off of late 70s. Hey isn’t that when everyone was saying “the ice age is coming”…
Jacek Dunajewski (02:51:19) :
The Global Warming is the wrong conception…See:
http://sites.google.com/site/earthquakepredictionbyjac/Home/greenhouse-effect
Jacek Dunajewski
Reply: I’m not quite sure why, but I am letting this through. ~ ctm
Too funny by half! Good one!
I would invite all readers to help improving the climategate article on wikipedia, which has been hijacked by alarmists that have a troop of sleepless zealots that work in conjunction with the aim to keep the page as useless as possible. Please bear in mind the use of reliable sources and read and add your views in the discussion page before changing the main article. We need more people to counter W. Connolley and his troop of alarmists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident
talk page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident
Being a former SEAL, and the first guy in the picture at your link, I find the article quite funny. I do not think any harm was done to the SEALs by this post. But I do understand where you are coming from. Also to point out, the SEALs would not break down that door, the capitol police would. We have no members assigned to Washington.
(The picture was taken in 2000 out at the Desert Training facility at Niland,
CA. We were doing Immediate Action Drills (IAD’s) during the summer.)
The most important part of this whole story, and the one most overlooked by the people of the USA is this:
“Don’t kill us, enslave us or torture us. Don’t steal from us or unfairly tax us. Don’t tell us which god we must pray to or how we must speak or think. Don’t make us wards of the Nanny State. Let us be free to live our lives as we wish as long as we don’t hurt anyone.”
OT Why do all my posts still come up as “awaiting moderation”? is there something I have to do to get rid of that?
Alexander (01:33:15) wrote: “I know it’s OT, but Mr Pachauri has an article in today’s Guardian (London, UK) grumbling about ‘climate deniers’. For sheer cheek, the man is hard to beat!”
That is available at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/04/ipcc-climate-sceptics-rajendra-pachauri
As an aside, in the comments was the following regarding Pachauri’s qualifications:
“North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA: he obtained an MS in Industrial Engineering in 1972, a PhD in Industrial Engineering and a PhD in Economics. He also served as Assistant Professor (August 1974 — May 1975) and Visiting Faculty Member (Summer 1976 and 1977) in the Department of Economics and Business.”
This points out what I consider to be a mistake due to differences in English in various locales (“two countries separated by the same language”, I believe Churchill said). The continual references to Pachauri as a “railway engineers” paints him as someone who escaped from a locomotive cab to become head of the IPCC. The problem is that the English (if they are like Australians) call someone who controls a locomotive an “engine driver”, while North American usage calls the same person a “[railway] engineer”. I suspect that Pachauri wouldn’t have a clue what to do if put into a locomotive. He is an academic.
IanM
gah when is this story going to be over?
Either when pigs fly or we find a way to end the current “Rule by Parasite Age”.
Jason (05:01:38) :
“Thank you, Ma’am,”
Hahaha! That was priceless.
Best line of the whole series — and I missed it. Thanks for pointing it out.
Frederick Michael (09:45:16) : “Best line of the whole series — and I missed it. Thanks for pointing it out.”
Had to look that up (thank Gore for the internet). Yes, it was a great line.
@ Corey (07:51:17) : Pleased to meet you. Knew a few SEALS back in the day (USMC, Ret ’83 ). The series is funny, I agree, and I get the attempt at being humorous in connection with the aquatic mammals.
But I felt it was in poor taste, unimaginative, and showed little respect for this countries finest service men and women. This sort of juvenile “humor” was too reminiscent of some people’s attitudes towards the military in the late ’60’s and early ’70’s to suit me.
In regards to the SEALs…
My interpretation is that it’s just as ridiculous to say that polar bears are threatened by seals as they are by global warming.
It might also allude to the attitude toward seals, in recent memory. So much has been said and done “for the seals”, and that hot air is being used to to do the same to the polar bear. (on the seals, I refer all to the recent WUWT article by Willis Eschenbach. In the many benefit concerts and such for the seals, AGW has been amply been cited for their “extinction” or endangerment. Not habit destruction from global warming, though, probably just hunting (if anything at all).
Or maybe I’m just seeing faces on Mars ;-|
And while Senator Boxer was wailing on her cellphone, in stormed Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, who, according to the Guardian, is “one of the world’s leading authorities on climate change.”
“Mr. Bear,” he admonished, gravely. “You are not a ‘climate scientist’ and you MUST stop this absurd surge of skepticism, immediately. Because if you don’t,” Pachauri continued ominously, “you will exacerbate ‘hardship’ for the planet’s poorest people.” *
[* http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/04/ipcc-climate-sceptics-rajendra-pachauri ]
Grandpa looked at Pachauri very thoughtfully for a moment. Then he said, “Well, I guess that makes us even, because you’re not a ‘climate scientist’ either, are you?”
Pachauri puffed himself up and bellowed, “How dare you?! I am one of thousands of scientists who have studied this matter and we are right.”
“In that case,” Grandpa said calmly, “Could you please show me the data that you and the thousands of scientists have used to arrive at your astonishing conclusion that reducing CO2 – which is very beneficial to me and my grandchildren – will lessen ‘hardship for the planet’s poorest people”.
“Absolutely not,” said Pachauri, “because you will only try to find something wrong with it. Besides, it has been peer-reviewed. And if you were really concerned about the planet, you miserable skeptic, you would encourage your family to eat less meat. Now, please don’t waste any more of my time. I have to catch a plane and go trade some carbon credits for some very important people.”
Ian L. McQueen (08:30:34) :
As an aside, in the comments was the following regarding Pachauri’s qualifications…This points out what I consider to be a mistake due to differences in English in various locales (“two countries separated by the same language”, I believe Churchill said). The continual references to Pachauri as a “railway engineers” paints him as someone who escaped from a locomotive cab to become head of the IPCC.
I believe most of the commenters realize that, but are just having fun with the pun.
And I’m with you — I wouldn’t trust Pachauri in the cab of a locomotive, either. He’d probably come ’round the bend doin’ ninety miles an hour, then engage the brakes to prevent derailing the train when it got to that point in the distance where the parallel tracks met…