Senator Harry Reid’s Press Release: Time To Stop Acting Like Climate Change Deniers Have A Valid Point Of View – They Don’t
‘If skeptics had taken a stroll along Potomac River on a 70-degree day this Feb., they would have seen cherry trees blossoming earlier than at any time since they were planted 100 years ago’
Umm, no. Let’s go to the data…
Correction for Reid: Both 1990 and 2000 had earlier blooms:
The National Park Service (NPS) has confirmed Washington, D.C.’s cherry blossoms peaked on March 20, tied for third earliest on record.
In the NPS’s 92-year record dating back to 1921, the only years with earlier bloom dates were 1990 (March 15) and 2000 (March 17) . Three other years in the record matched this year’s peak bloom date of March 20: 1921, 1927, and 1945.
You’d think with a well paid staff at his disposal, Senator Reid could at least do some fact checking before bloviating about how “deniers” have no valid point of view.
How embarrassing it must be that we mere bloggers have to point out his factual gaffes he and his staff miss.
[UPDATE: My friend, nationally syndicated radio show talk host Lars Larson has the ultimate zinger for this where he says:
You know, I think this qualifies Senator Reid of Nevada as an official “Blooming Idiot”. ]
Here is Senator James Inhofe’s Press Release on Reid’s announcement:
“He says ‘the time to act is now’ – yet Reid hasn’t brought a cap-and-trade bill to floor since 2008, & he’s the one who said cap-and-trade had been deleted from his dictionary”
“If it’s time to act on anything, it would be to stop President Obama from implementing these global warming policies that the American people have clearly rejected”
Perhaps the title should have been: Time To Stop Acting Like Senator Reid Has A Valid Point Of View on Global Warming – He Doesn’t
h/t to Climate Depot
@Peeved says:
August 8, 2012 at 9:33 am
“Do you think urban heat island effects have anything to do with later bloom dates in the middle of cities? D.C. is filled with a lot of asphalt and concrete, which contributes to the hot air there.”
There is a far more pervasive source of hot air in D.C. not even distantly related to the asphalt and concrete…!!!
Peeved says:
August 8, 2012 at 9:33 am
Do you think urban heat island effects have anything to do with later bloom dates in the middle of cities? D.C. is filled with a lot of asphalt and concrete, which contributes to the hot air there.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/09/city-uhi-makes-spring-bloom-earlier/
This is what I was speaking of earlier.
JinOH said on August 8, 2012 at 7:44 am:
He is not! It’s a very clever ploy. He just wants people to think all of that so they leave him alone after he retires. If his opinion is worthless then reporters and apparatchiks won’t bother asking for it. Take note that he’s following the example of his old chum and the real boss of the US Senate, Smiling Joe Biden.
And don’t those two make a cute couple! You can just imagine them, sometime after the next election, co-hosting a radio talk show. “Welcome to Long-tooth Liberal Late Night! We’re Harry and Joe, we have coffee but we’re bald. Now sit back and enjoy while we explain how we were always right but everyone else screwed it up.”
Alan the Brit says:
August 8, 2012 at 9:15 am
…. You see, we have them over here in the PDRofEU satellite state of what used to be known as Great Britain, would you like some of ours, please, you can have them for nothing, they’re worth absolutely nothing to us so they are completely free, promise….
===========================
Alan, Why do we not arrange a swap? We will load up all our Politicians and through in our bureaucrats too for good measure and meet you above the Atlantic Trench to sort out the trade…. Well that one’s no good…
Up next,
July, the hottest month ever in recorded history for 2 percent of the world soon coming from a MSM outlet near you!
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
August 8, 2012 at 8:00 am
Good post. In addition, one might consider that drawings and paintings of cherry blossoms, iconic to the Japanese, usually show them in snow.
But read through the rest of Senator Reid’s press release. How many other errors has he made?
” …. Arctic sea ice is also at its lowest point…
….. ice sheet atop Greenland experienced sudden and almost uniform melting – a phenomenon not seen in the modern age…
….. the hottest downpour in the planet’s recorded history… ”
Myself, from all I’ve written about the smear of skeptic climate scientists, I focus on the one where Reid said, ” … despite having overwhelming evidence and public opinion on our side, deniers still exist, fueled and funded by dirty energy profits.”
Much like his accusation that Romney doesn’t pay taxes, Reid quotes a nearly 20 year-old accusation that also does not have a shred of evidence to prove it.
“As Americans, we have the power to choose the kind of world in which we live.”
The press release says to me that the gov’t can provide any weather they want to. Why not just go to the weather control room and turn off the drought and turn up the water in the Mississippi? Why play games?
“it would be to stop President Obama from implementing these global warming policies that the American people have clearly rejected ” Note to the Senator. Obama has already implemented his global warming policies and Green House Gas regs are now on the books. Project are already being cancelled due to this.
Gail Combs says: August 8, 2012 at 8:10 am
Gail, your “conscious media” link doesn’t work. Whoever made the comment you posted, however, is either abysmally ignorant or an outright liar.
The CDC collects and publishes data on suicide. From 1991 to 2009 suicide rates have declined, including in the age 10-24 category: http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/suicide/statistics/trends02.html
It would be interesting to know just which crime rates have “quadrupled”. The only systematic and reliable crime reporting system is the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report which shows both violent and property crime rates peaking about 1991 and steadily declining since then. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
Divorce rates peaked about 1980 at more than double the 1960 rate, but have been declining since:
http://www.thedivorceguy.com/statistics/number-of-divorces-and-annulments-michigan-and-us/
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0133.pdf
I’ll have something to say about the “epidemic of obesity” after I’ve lost a few pounds.
Since we are in cherry picking mode and using the weather as a sure sign of
global warmingclimate change heres another sign.H/t Mike Morano
http://www.tulsaworld.com/blogs/post.aspx?Video_and_photos_of_snow_in_South_Africa/48-16413
The Democratic Party should be embarrassed to have Reid as a Senator let alone their majority leader. This is the man who managed to vote against his own bills multiple times before someone corrected him. What’s really upsetting is that they don’t seem to be.
Oh no, the ungodly apocalyptic catastrophe of early-blooming cherry trees! Harry Reid is a prophet of doom!
… With all of the problems projected by AGW, this is what you bring up? To me, it doesn’t even matter if there is substance behind it, which itself is unlikely. The fact that no one is picking out long term catastrophic trends due to anthropogenic global warming is what is really astonishing.
Next, we’ll hear him complaining about global warming because the ice in his drink melted too quickly.
His math isn’t very good, either. 1921 was 91 years ago, not 100!
The caption under the picture reads that the trees were a gift in 1965. They were actually planted in 1912.
JC
[REPLY: There was a second gift of trees in 1965. See here. -REP]
Gail … aware of it, certainly (wouldn’t be here otherwise). But ignoring it would be like ignoring that oncoming express train behind you …
> Totally agree with your last comment, though, as in:
Q: How can you tell when a politician is lying?
A: His/her lips are moving.
That is true but you don’t clearly distinguish between those trees and the trees that Mr. Reid spoke of. The trees he talked about were planted 100 years ago. If you want to be specific, be specific. Just sayin.
JC
Reid lost me during the budget debate that wasn’t, demanding that funding for ‘Cowboy Poetry Festivals’ not be ended, as our debt approached 16 Trillion…
Exactly right. That is the point of Dingy Harry’s wild and unfounded claims. “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes” (attributed to Mark Twain). It’s the modus operand of unscrupulous politicians, criminals, and ideologues pursuing a agendas (like the enviro-wackos). We spend all our time catching up with the lies and correcting them, while the press is on to trumpeting the next one, and ignoring our entreaties. The honest man can’t win at this game.
/Mr Lynn
It’s no worse than this nonsense from Free Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444320704577569231537988226.html
Krupp repeats the standard, debunked talking points about Muller being a converted skeptic, about climate events becoming more severe and more common, etc.
BTW: The Wall Street Journal regularly publishes opinion pieces like this one, which conflict with their internal editorial stance. I commend them for it.
I would like to remind the senator that the US isn’t the world. I can reliably inform him that wisteria blossom appeared approximately 2 weeks later than normal in the north-west UK this year. It has regularly appeared around May 15 for years, but this year waited until the end of May. I make no claims about this, it is a simple observation.
On another point, has anyone else noticed the complete absence of the usual suspects criticising aspects of this post? It would appear that the trolls have been rendered speechless by this stupidity.
There are many varieties of flowering cherries- early, mid, and late blossoming varieties.
The variety growing along the Potomac now may not be the same variety as the 1921-1945 records.
Anyway of cross-referencing earliest flowering time of a specific variety over this time period?
Oops, just found the 92 year record data.
[Moderator’s Query: Well, you gonna share? -REP]
Gail Combs says
Trade? C’mon, we’re (several miles?) above the Atlantic Trench, we’ve got the whole darn shower FROM BOTH SIDES with us … this has to be the perfect gift from Heaven … Pass the cattle prod … .. … 😀
@Gail Combs
That was an interesting read. It seems that on this list, at least, there is not much support for the idea that we are all citizens of a circumscribed world in which war, in particular, should be permanently abolished by joint defence. The artificial bogeymen raised one after another to scare people into a form of localised unity is not going to work on a global scale because there are too many smart people out there to accept it.
That does not in any way mean that there are not global risks – thermonuclear war being one of them. That is not a fabricated bogeyman and the risk is real. Yes I am aware that there are trumped up cases of helping a country get nuclear weapons then expressing shock then crushing the upstart nuclear club wannabees. But that takes place in the margins.
War and famine are real threats whether CO2 is one, or not (personally I do not think it is). There is no mechanism to prevent war so they are taking place all the time, directly, by proxy and cold wars with real economic and health consequences. If it should happen that some countries are the ‘main problem’ in this regard (continuously starting or funding wars) there are still major, painful lessons to learn before we learn what to do about it.
The desire after the Great War to form a League of Nations with an international Force that would permanently end it with a compact of mutual support against any aggressor was motivated by those who had suffered the most – European countries. Some people learn the hard, hard way. Clearly we are still at risk of those lessons if the general population cannot get it through their heads that war is not good for children and other living things, and that it can ony be banned permanently by an international force made up of soldiers contributed by all the signatory states. If we all lived in the RDC we would favour such a force to rescue us from the endless mini-wars perpetrated by the large nations vying for power, resources and the right to deny those to others. The Great Game they call it. Well, the Great Game sucks if you are not an inhabitant of one of the far-off perpetrator nations. They have no right to conduct their excursive missions of misery and if they cannot control themselves, the victims should unite to stay the hands of their oppressors. As it is said, “The sheep have the right to kill the wolf.”
As the perpetrator nations (there are many) show no signs of acting as good global citizens, then the inevitable consequence will be unified and coordinated action through elected representatives who have the mandate to act on behalf of the globe against errant behaviour. Such an initiative is quite reasonably called global governance. It would include an international criminal court (the ICC was already established), a trade regulation system that is above national authority (WTO), supra-national regulation of nuclear materials (AEC) and so on. There is nothing at all wrong with these ‘departments’ of global governance. They prevent wars, both ‘trade wars’ and hot ones. The ICC’s reach is real and leaders who were once untouchable now spend sleepless nights worrying about getting prosecuted. With time the ICC’s power will grow because in the end, everyone wants justice.