And in an unbelievable gaffe, he’s told a whole group of people exactly where they can go:
It is probably the most ugly statement I’ve ever seen from a politician regarding a group of people with ideas that disagree with the politician’s own view. If it were a race or class issue, he’d be vilified. He apparently has lost touch with what it means to be an American.
From The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room:
“An iceberg four times the size of Manhattan has broken off Greenland, creating plenty of room for global warming deniers to start their own country,” Markey said in a statement.
And I thought we were past things like this.
AP, Boston Globe, and WBZ-TV confirm this story. Here’s the story on the calving I broke before any MSM where I said “watch the media” I should have said “watch the politicians”.
Markey, who chairs the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, co-authored the House version of the climate change bill that’s currently stalled in the Senate.
h/t to Luboš Motl
=============================================
I think we, as Americans, with rights to free speech, should all remind Congressman Markey of what that actually means, especially those in Massachusetts who voted this man into office. His email contact form is here.
Below is the contact info from his web page:
Rep. Markey’s Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. Offices:
Rep. Markey encourages residents of Massachusetts’ Seventh Congressional District to contact him via e-mail, by phone, or through a visit to one of his three offices.
His Medford and Framingham District offices can assist individuals on a more personal basis with questions related to federal agencies such as Social Security, IRS, or the Veterans Administration. In addition, they can help with grant applications, service academy nominations, flag requests, scheduling requests for the district and visits to Washington, D.C.
His Washington, D.C. office handles questions related to legislation, agency oversight and general federal policy.
When leaving a message, include your full name, address, city/town, zip code, phone number, and e-mail address. Please understand that Ed receives several hundred letters and e-mails every day.
 |
 |
| Medford
5 High Street, Suite 101 Medford, MA 02155 781-396-2900 |
Framingham
188 Concord Street Suite 102 Framingham, MA 01702 508-875-2900 |
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|
| Washington, D.C.
2108 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 202-225-2836 |
|
I’m glad GM is back, too. His post at 5:31 pm above is a textbook case of cognitive dissonance and psychological projection: “…most people believe what they want to believe, not what is true.”
That is pure projection. Skeptics are looking for the truth here — but GM indicates he already knows what the truth is.
According to the scientific method, skeptics have nothing to prove. The job of skeptics is to question a hypothesis in order to shoot holes in it. In that way we arrive at accepted science; only those facts that survive sustained attack can become part of an accepted scientific theory. Since the catastrophic AGW hypothesis has been repeatredly falsified [not least by planet Earth itself], CO2=CAGW has been reduced to a conjecture.
It is the rash statements of cognitive dissonance-afflicted folks who claim they know the truth, and that their “truth” is the post-normal science idea of a vague, undefined and un-cited “global ecological overshoot” that are questionable.
It probably never occurs to folks like GM that technological progress and increased standards of living — based primarily on fossil fuels — have resulted in an ever cleaner environment. The wealthiest countries are the cleanest countries. GM should simply step across the border from San Ysidro, California to Tijuana, Mexico. Night and day: from clean to incredibly filthy.
I recall in my youth when we couldn’t see across Pittsburgh’s rivers, the air pollution from the mills was so bad. There were constant warnings against eating fish from the rivers. Today, the air and the rivers are clean and clear. Those observations falsify GM’s claim of looming ecological disaster. The situation is the polar opposite of what he believes it to be.
I think GM is sincere, which is scary. Many, if not most believers in the conjecture that catastrophic AGW is right around the corner suffer from Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance: just because the flying saucers didn’t arrive on time doesn’t mean there are no flying saucers. It only means that their arrival was delayed. And when they fail to arrive again, and again on schedule, Mrs Keech finally revealed to her acolytes that the aliens were so impressed with the essential goodness of her followers that they decided to spare the Earth, and therefore they didn’t need to appear after all.
The proof that her followers suffered from cognitive dissonance was revealed when, rather than accepting the evidence that their belief system was wrong, Keech’s followers argued even more forcefully than before that there really were flying saucers.
Believers in runaway global warming and climate catastrophe caused by a tiny trace gas still claim, against all the empirical evidence, that even though the planet has not warmed as they predicted, and even though there is little correlation between a rise in CO2 and a subsequent rise in temperature, that CO2-caused runaway global warming will begin any day now.
It is easy being a believer, and it is hard being a skeptic. Skepticism requires much more mental energy. But it is worth the effort. As the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius observed:
The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
In 179 A.D., the cognitive dissonance-afflicted people were the insane.
GM,
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/al-gore-the-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire/19220501
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/10/03/al-gore-getting-rich-spreading-global-warming-hysteria-media-s-help
http://tribes.tribe.net/globalwarming-thelie/thread/c1d0714b-56b3-4e1d-9d11-08b491857e34
http://www.greencitizens.net/news/article.php?n_id=7954151548
It took all of 5 minutes to find the above: bing search, enter ‘*name* net worth’. Being a private citizen Anthony’s net worth does not come up on searches but if I had to guess my number would be well below the $100 million mark for Gore and astronomically lower than the $$billions of Pachauri.
Really? Nothing in the emails? I’m not going to do all of your homework for you. Read them, find the comments from ‘Harry’ about “…Oh yea, I’ll just make them up…” concerning climate data for CRU and how he was given the leeway to do so.
Again, go into the archives here and at CA, there are plenty of direct links provided to the data sources and claims made.
Your comment about ‘ control of the experimental system’ is almost exactly the point. The difficulty is that it is almost impossible for the scientist to remove bias, this is done many times inadvertantly in disciplines that are much more well known than the relatively new sience of “climate change”, like biology.
Like I said: we don’t want ‘may’, we don’t want ‘could possibly’, we don’t want special interest groups pushing an agenda (see above links). We want the truth in whatever form. We certainly don’t want to have billions of dollars of our tax monies going to mitigation funds that will not produce results. The now infamous ‘Stern Report’ said that it would take over $400 billion GDP annually to confront CAGW. 10 years ago the UN reported that we could eradicate Third world poverty conditions on the globe: sanitation, disease, water shortages, food supply, etc with an investment of $175 billion. I’m sorry but this is not brain surgery (or rocket science). Where do you think we should spend the money? On an unproven theory currently in midst of controversy and debate, which may well be entirely debunked over the coming years (probably sooner than later) due to the predicted affects of the solar minimum we are watching occur, along with other climatological factors?
Hey, I want to save the world too. But lets use hard facts…well established, and lets use it where it will do the most good…for everyone. Not where the underpriviledged suffer and priviledged get richer, which is what will happen with a Cap and Tax mitigation plan.
Oh, sorry about you statistics, but I’m fairly certain they did not include the terms “morbidly” or “dimwits”.
Thanks King!!!!
That was awesome! … need that little shot in the arm!
Thank you!
GM says:
August 8, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Sorry GM, you missed the point. I was not suggesting that they were ALL invented here, merely that we produced those things like nobody else in the world. We didn’t event the car, but can you show me who produced it more than Ford did at the time? Who has brought all of these things to the most remotest parts of the world? eh? … you get YOUR facts straight!
D. King says:
August 8, 2010 at 10:49 pm
King! … your killing me here … ROFLMAO … hahahaha!!!!
No term limits for Markey. This guy can do for global warming what the Hindenburg did for the zeppelin business.
I think that he should be “Congressman for Life”. In that way Massachusetts can be forever punished for having elected him.
Smokey says:
August 9, 2010 at 5:43 am [ … ]
GM wrote:
Smokey, you are good! … I’ve known it all along. You nailed that on the head straight on. I had a gut feeling myself, but man, you nailed it!
Brilliant!
Personally, I am sooooo sick of academic idiots. I have had to deal with so many of them throughout my career. Always thinking they know everything but can’t seem to tie their own shoes in the real world. No concept of reality, not concept of “real” problem solving. Post-normal, that’s all they have. Simply put, making crap up as they go along to sound as if they have the answers. In my own field, I have so easily exposed every one of these that have crossed my path. It is pathetic. The AGW issue as a whole, and this Malarky type of business just doesn’t shock me at all anymore. The key to all of this, is ignore it just as you should the fender-bender you drove past on your way home from work today. Both are just a wreck you should ignore.
Dave Springer says:
August 9, 2010 at 6:28 am
As a long time computer programmer who has spent thousands and thousands of hours sitting in front of a computer, I too could have probably diagnosed your problem. I of course could not have fixed your problem myself, as that takes someone with … wait for it (listen up GM) .. experience .. and real-world knowledge and expertise. But certainly, my own experience could probably have been of use to you as I have suffered the same.
It simply amazes me how little academic’s understand the value of experience. That is, practical, real-world, hands-on personal observation. It is as if they believe, if it doesn’t exist in a book, then it simply doesn’t exist. Or that everything must behave the way the book says it does, my calculations tell me so. I cannot count the number of times, for me in my career, that observation and experimentation has totally obliterated literature produced by the “academics”. I believe that climate research is a perfect example of this phenomena. It seems that the bulk of academic climate scientists tend to believe their literature, computer models, book-works and papers by other academi, rather than empirical, observational information sitting right under their snobby noses. It is truly amazing to me. Now I know, these people aren’t stupid, and I am not suggesting so. But I have often asked myself “how stupid can they be?”. Human nature and human thought can be an amazing thing from both ends of the scale. Just think back to the number of inventions and discoveries accomplished by the “non-academics” in the world. Truly astounding! In fact, most of the technologies that you are using to read these messages and post here, were either invented by non-academics, or in a lot of cases, failed-academics (dropouts, etc..) The very foundation that runs the AGW world (running computer models, statistics, etc…) have all be invented and/or developed by non-academics. Why? Because the academics weren’t/aren’t capable of such. Either by knowledge, knowhow or ambition. I have also found that most academics that I have known, are academics because they are … wait for it … lazy .. As a child, my father (MIT graduate engineer) had a friend and colleague (nuclear physicist) that had acquired 4 Phd’s in various physics disciplines. Knew not a thing about the real world, and consequently was also one of the laziest people I have met (strange and interesting to talk to however). Seem a typical theme in my experience.
What is that old saying? “Those who can’t, teach” … there’s some truth to that.
Smokey says:
August 9, 2010 at 7:10 pm
======================
A blog post tour de force
WOW … you have illustrated precisely what I was just describing. Man oh man. Talk about taking a long walk off a short pier … hahahaha … GM .. this reply was so good, I had to show to my 18yr. old daughter (studying Constitutional (no case) law). She about pee’d herself with laughter.
Thanks for the roll on the floor … hehe .. can hardly get through this reply … hahaha
See folks, this is what academia can do for you! … “and this is your brain on academia” .. ahahaha…. killing me…
Smokey says:
August 9, 2010 at 7:10 pm
It is easy being a believer, and it is hard being a skeptic. Skepticism requires much more mental energy. But it is worth the effort.
====================================
Repeated for effect.
That’s right up there with your typical anti-intellectualism 101 right-wing rant. In fact it may very well be one. It has every stereotype covered – the pointy-headed academic that’s helpless in real life, the “value of experience” (that only applies to everything else but not to what the area of expertise of the academics), etc. Pure BS. You simply can not accuse academics of being lazy because the vast majority of people in academia are working their asses of 18 hours a day to get funding, produce and analyze results, write papers, teach, and if they are at a P.I. level, sit on countless committees and write countless reports and fill mountains of paperwork. It is simply ridiculous to say that it is an easy life for lazy people. Lazy people do not survive in academia, period.
I guess your father graduated from MIT a long time ago, and if it was an engineering discipline, it is not entirely surprising that you haven’t had the primitive distrust of intellectuals educated out of you. It also happens to be my alma matter and it was possible to find that kind of people there too, although not in large numbers at the time. That’s why it is always important to make the distinction between engineers and scientists when the argument from authority is used
Squidly says:
August 9, 2010 at 9:00 pm
=============================
Gettum.
Do you have anything to say to refute my position, or your are just going to continue rolling on the floor laughing? If you don’t, then you will be treated as intellectually inferior, as you have given plenty of justification for that so far. This is the third or fourth time in this thread I have to point out that simply laughing at someone because you disagree with him while having zero solid arguments to refute him is hardly a respectable practice.
And I have to remind you again that anti-intellectualism howlers of the kind your last sentence belongs to by no means help you raise your credibility. That’s kind of thing one would expect from your archetypal IQ-below-60 redneck
GM, you’ve got to lighten up and lose the buzz-kill attitude. Life is too short— you may have noticed that time goes faster with each passing year. Enjoy the gift. Do something positive. Make a difference in someone’s life. Start living. I mean, if there was ever anyone who needed to get laid, it’s you, bud.
GM says:
August 9, 2010 at 9:10 pm
=========================================
The onus (LOL) is on you to produce the evidence.
You won’t becuase you can’t.
You see….laughing is cool….when you are laughed out of the court.
Regardless…all of your horrific ad hominems are duly noted.
The main thing is that you can not produce the argument.
The burden of proof is on you.
But, as true to form, no one should expect much because you can only resort to vicious ad hominem fallacies.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I humbly disagree that this is a waste of time. While I agree we will not convince GM of anything, it doesn’t matter for me, I am learning soooo much from these discussions. I personally don’t give a rats rump about GM, he’s just one of the problems, but, unlike GM, I am not afraid or ashamed to admit that there are many who post here that possess far greater knowledge than I. That is the reason why I frequent here. I love to learn from others, from the “real world”. By-in-large, the vast majority here (99.995%) are some of the most fantastic and thought provoking people I have ever encountered.
Truly grand and amazing thoughts spewing forth from these comments. Great stuff!
This blog, these people and the thoughts, experiences and revelations they share, are exactly why I am so incredibly optimistic, that, in the end, everything will be alright. You see, we are ALL in this together. Makes me proud, and makes me proud to be an American!
Do you have anything to say to refute my position, or your are just going to continue rolling on the floor laughing?
============================
He is rolling on the floor laughing (and appropriately so) because there is absolutely nothing to refute.
Vacuous. A void.
GM says: August 9, 2010 at 5:51 pm
‘As I repeatedly pointed out, we do not have a problem just with AGW (it is not even the most pressing issue), we have a problem with global ecological overshoot. It has to be solved in its entirety, on the global system level. Organized contraction is the only solution to overshoot.’
——————————————————————————-
So AGW is not even the most pressing problem – How about recognizing it as the red herring that it is. CO2 is not going to cause Catastrophic Global Warming. GM you are really a Malthus adherent. How do you propose to ‘solve’ in its entirety this ‘ecological overshoot on a global level. Are you perhaps really a Marxist in drag? World Government led perchance by yourself?
————————————————————————————-
‘And again, this is not my field, so the only sensible thing I can do is trust the people who work in it. Because it makes a lot more sense to do that than to believe in a vast conspiracy involving thousands of PIs, graduate students, postdocs, computer programmers, in dozens of countries all around the world.’
—————————————————————————-
GM, What makes you think that the only alternative to believing the handful of so called climate scientists is to believe that there is a vast conspiracy involving thousands?
Doug
I am just going to continue to laugh …
I need not reply. You have illustrated plenty by this.
I have written computer programs demonstrating a larger degree of creativity.
You have no clue. You began your rants inferring that I am a morbidly obese dimwit who believes our planet is 6,000 years old, I am a creationist, that I believe the Sun rotates around the Earth, I spend my time sitting behind a desk eating junk food and watching TV. You think, and I quote, “I think the “lazy fricken ass” description fits you very well”
And now you are call me “intellectually inferior”. Or, I’m sorry, to quote, “If you don’t, then you will be treated as intellectually inferior, as you have given plenty of justification for that so far.”
I believe I have tolerated your personal attacks, your rudeness and your outright insults long enough.
It is YOU who will be “treating” ME as an intellectual inferior? You have these powers do you? Bring it on cream puff. You have absolutely no clue who I am or what I am about. Step into my arena and I will gladly mop the floor with your flagrant arrogant ass.
To others here, this is a grand demonstration of what you are in for should Pol’s like Malarky be allowed to continue to take us down this dangerous road. Do you want arrogant jackasses like this, proclaiming that “you will be treated as intellectually inferior”. You know, sit down, shut up and be a good little useful idiot. If this doesn’t open the window and show you the light into exactly who GM is, then heaven forgive, you have got to be blind. GM, or may I call you Alinsky Jr.? There is no way your are going to succeed with this tactic, not with me. I may not be the sharpest tack in the drawer, but I didn’t fall of the turnip truck just yesterday.
You have simply expressed and illustrated to me, just how intellectually challenged you really are. You have much to learn dear boy. Be cool, stay in school, it may be the only place that will accept you.
GM says: August 9, 2010 at 5:51 pm
‘As I repeatedly pointed out, we do not have a problem just with AGW (it is not even the most pressing issue), we have a problem with global ecological overshoot. It has to be solved in its entirety, on the global system level. Organized contraction is the only solution to overshoot.’
——————————————————————————-
So AGW is not even the most pressing problem – How about recognizing it as the red herring that it is. CO2 is not going to cause Catastrophic Global Warming. GM you are really a Malthus adherent. How do you propose to ‘solve’ in its entirety this ‘ecological overshoot on a global level. Are you perhaps really a Marxist in drag? World Government; led perchance by yourself?
———————————————————————————
‘And again, this is not my field, so the only sensible thing I can do is trust the people who work in it. Because it makes a lot more sense to do that than to believe in a vast conspiracy involving thousands of PIs, graduate students, postdocs, computer programmers, in dozens of countries all around the world.’
—————————————————————————
GM, What makes you think that the only alternative to believing the handful of so called climate scientists is to believe that there is a vast conspiracy involving thousands.
Doug
Sorry folks, I am done for the night. Unlike GM, I have to go put in my 14hrs. at work tomorrow at a real job .. you know, working in the real world. Nothing spectacular mind you. Just the usual mindless computer programing tasks, systems integrations, source control management, data architecture, process control systems, routing, security and other miscellaneous mundane tasks that us intellectual inferiors do from day to day, just to be sure that the $150mil./year website, commerce system and supporting main frame systems are able to take real money from real customers so we can feed our real employees, their real families and the support of a $billion/year corporation. And yes, I do this almost single handedly, with a very small crew, responsible for a company employing more that 1,000 direct employees with more than 1200 stores and outlets nation-wide, plus outlets in every Target store, Home Depot, Sears and Costco in the nation, besides fully 2/3 of the malls in this country (more mouths to feed).
Again, GM, step in to my world and I will mop the floor with your ass, one had tied behind my back while taking practice swings with my new driver! Your a rather pathetic pooch.
Sean Peake says:
August 9, 2010 at 9:34 pm
GM, you’ve got to lighten up and lose the buzz-kill attitude. Life is too short— you may have noticed that time goes faster with each passing year. Enjoy the gift. Do something positive. Make a difference in someone’s life. Start living. I mean, if there was ever anyone who needed to get laid, it’s you, bud.
======================
Repeated for effect.
Right on!
GM:
And I have to remind you [Squidly] again that anti-intellectualism howlers of the kind your last sentence belongs to by no means help you raise your credibility. That’s kind of thing one would expect from your archetypal IQ-below-60 redneck.
Tut tut, GM, it’s really quite simple: Squidly was simply supporting his previous argument on the basis of your own statement, which Squidly reproduced, such that res ipsa loquiter – the thing speaks for itself, your “thing”, which then constitutes one more case tending to substantiate Squidly’s “this is your brain on academia”
howlerpractical model.And you just did it again, GM, via your defensive appeal to the “archetypal IQ-below-60 redneck”, as though repeatedly defeating your own archetypical fantasy foe proves anything in the real world.
GM: August 9, 2010 at 5:31 pm
You are assuming that people will accept it. They will not because most people believe what they want to believe, not what is true. It takes a lot of training to successfully get rid of this bad mental habit that we all share, and few people go through that kind of training.
That’s an appeal to authority, with you self-selecting as an authority. It’s also self-contradictory, because despite your claim to “a lot of training” and despite a lack of any proof (or even of any convincing evidence) that AGW is real, you obviously *want* to believe it’s true
Sure, it would be nice if global warming was not a problem, but that’s not the case.
No one has ever succeeded in making the case that warming is a problem — it has been significantly warmer during several eras just in *recorded* history, and the catastrophes the CAGW keeps predicting did not occur. Excessive global *cooling* is the killer.
Yet, people still refuse to accept it. As they refuse to accept the much less contentious issue of global ecological overshoot, which, as I will not stop pointing out, is just as true without AGW as it is with, and which is pretty much irrefutable, backed by rock solid data and plenty of historical examples of the growth-overshoot-collapse cycle on local scale.
What is this mystical “global ecological overshoot” to which you refer? I’m sure it has been talked about previously, but I’m unfamiliar with the buzzwords. It reminded me of the kerfluffle raised by the Army Aviation Directorate of Evaluation and Standardization (DES) during the ’90s when examiners would come to various units and ding instructors on our knowledge of aerodynamics because we didn’t mention “overshoot-rebound” in our classes. They were referring to the simple mechanical action of the rotor blades in a fully-articulated rotor system which had *always* been termed “lead and lag” in the textbooks — but someone who was educated beyond his intelligence convinced the DES commander that it was more-properly termed “overshoot-rebound.” All he succeeded in doing was turning DES into a bigger laughingstock than it had been.
So — what is “global ecological overshoot” and what are some rock-solid, historical examples of it?