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
@several
“In the end, no one wants justice for themselves. They only want ‘justice’ for others. And there’s the rub.”
That’s pretty funny. Why is it that anytime we talk of sensible management of global affairs, it is automatically assumed that it means the UN and its unanswerable minions? Don’t people have any imagination? Stop looking backward.
The ‘tyranny’ that is supposed to automatically come anything that is not the US Constitution – well, from here a two party system of picking the lesser, rich crook does not look like such a great system either. Perhaps everyone can think a little more broadly than the institutions that have heretofore been cobbled together (like the EU and UN).
It is often said (as Smokey has repeated above) that the UN never stopped any wars. Well, this is simply not correct. The UN was put together to prevent wards between the Big Powers, and it has done that save for trying to scare each other witless during the Cold War. The Security Council was put together with the Big Boys getting permanent seats and the Veto was created to keep them on board. That has worked pretty well. There is nothing ‘from the people by the people for the people’ about that at all. So it is not a representative governance system at all – one country one vote no matter how big is and so on. I to NOT advocate turning the UN in anything like its presently lamentable form into a system for global governance. Save your electrons. I am on your side.
But to say that because the UN has so many failings that it did not serve its primary purpose (to prevent WW III) and to provide a forum where steam can be let off, is not fair to the good efforts that have been made. That it cannot guarantee to prevent war is true, because if one country pursues a war against another without declaring it, there is no international force available to stop them. That is has prevented war is also true. The NK situation suits several of the great powers and so it remains in a state of permanent tension. This is hardly news.
Re the ICC and prosecuting carbon emitters (or banning curved bananas) – that is the sort of nonsense that an elected government would prevent. It is the unelected nature of the current bodies that worries me. Just because I am worried does not mean I look forward to unending balances of terror as the future of humankind. That is a ridiculous aspiration. It is in fact inhuman and only benefits the military-industrial complex. Military-industrial complexes should also not have enough power to start and conduct wars, and the population of the world has the right, as agroup, to democratically and forcibly stop them. The alternative is tyranny, a rather common way of life for many people.
Crispin says:
“It is the unelected nature of the current bodies that worries me.”
That worries me, too, and lots of others. As you can see, with the sole exception of Angela Merkel, no one in the EU was legitimately elected. They are all pals and cronies. Who elected Herman van Rompuy as EU President? Who is Herman van Rompuy?? He is an insider who has never been elected. And now he heads the EU! That is the future you are advocating.
In any world government the ‘proletariat’ will be subjugated. They will never be allowed to elect their own representatives. Never. Human nature will see to that.
Niccolo Machiavelli wrote, “Men are bad unless compelled to be good.” What, exactly, will compel a world government to operate fairly, openly, and honestly? Per Gresham’s Law, the bad will drive out the good. It is inevitable. The only way to avoid world tyranny is with competition between countries.
The best course of action is for sovereign states to make alliances with others for their mutual welfare, protection, and benefit. A world government would have no competition, therefore it would inevitably end up exactly like the UN and EU: a completely opaque, undemocratic dictatorship that will, over time, ratchet up its hold over the citizenrey. Tyranny, plain and simple. Subjects will toe the line – or they will be crushed.
There is no greater danger to the average person than world government. It would use its subjects as revenue generators, taxing the life out of them. History shows that this always happens.
Finally, I disagree with the idea that the UN has ever stopped a war. The UN fought a major war in Korea. MAD [mutually assured destruction via nuclear weapons] is what prevented WWIII, nothing else. The UN used to have some good features, but no more. It has become completely corrupted, as would any successor world government.
Handing our heads on a platter to others for the sake of a mythical ‘security’ would be insane.
My nerf gun has prevented an alien invasion. How do I know? There hasn’t been an alien invasion since I got it.
That’s about the same argument being made about the UN preventing wars. Same thing as with “climate change” – correlation is not causation. Just because we haven’t seen WWIII since the UN was created does NOT mean that the UN has prevented it.
@ur momisugly Smokey
Well, maybe there is some good news out there!
“Deputy district director Don Yowchuang, district director Paul Seewald, district representative Mary Melissa Turnbull and staffer Lorianne O’Brady face charges ranging from forgery and conspiracy to falsely signing election documents. The four are expected to be arraigned this week, attorney general’s spokeswoman Joy Yearout said.” http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/19234130/charges-planned-in-mccotter-petition-investigation
Along with the bad news . . . “I do not leave for an existing job and face diminishing prospects . . .
earnest and thorough investigation, which I requested.” former Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.)
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/242953-staffers-of-former-rep-mccotter-charged-with-forging-ballot-petition-signatures
maybe it is a beginning of a return to some integrity, but, it has quite a price!
@Smokey
“Who elected Herman van Rompuy as EU President? Who is Herman van Rompuy?? He is an insider who has never been elected. And now he heads the EU! That is the future you are advocating.”
It is, specifically, NOT the future I am advocating. I am advocating an elected leadership. Please read what I wrote. There is a statistically significant difference between what I am advocating and whay you write that I am advocating.
My point of speaking up was that anything to do with properly operating the planet is sniped at as some form of ‘handing over power to …..” as if there were only two (stupid) choices. There are lots of choices. The EU leadership is not elected. I advocate the election of leaders. How plainly can I state that? How can there be a democratic leadership if it is not elected? I am not advocating the EU as a model because it is not democratic but it has brought a lot of benefits to the member populations even without being so. It could be a lot better if they fixed up their system. I have significantly criticised the UN structures for NOT being democratic nor elected. What else is there to say the separates my vision of a better world from those two institutions? The UN needs major restructuring – perhaps replacement is a better idea. But the need remains because the countries, operating as unaccountable islands, would sink in a sea of conflict of all types without global coordinating bodies.
Just because I think we need international management of international things does not mean I have to ‘pick one of the existing institutions’.
Did Anthony have to pick one of the existing methods of temperature correction of poorly-placed recording stations and accept whatever the result was? No. He advocated initiating a review of what the stations were like then chose a brand new WMO accepted method of analysing the data.
If someone tells you that in order to do a proper management job of the planet requires ‘handing over power to an unelected Darth Vader’ be a little skeptical and accept that they have a political agenda. My observation is that people are happy to glean the benefits of international cooperation and still complain about the existence of the institutions that coordinate it. That is hypocritical.
Further, what’s the null hypothesis? How would we even be able to communicate using this blog without the coordinating and rule-making abilities of the international institution that runs the web?
@TonyG
“Just because we haven’t seen WWIII since the UN was created does NOT mean that the UN has prevented it.”
Thanks for this, you are quite right if you only look at what has not happened, though some say WWIII was fought on different terms and is on-going. The Blue Helmets have stopped lots of conflicts but they are pretty toothless now, right? How effective were they in Sudan? Not an meaningful deterrent to the Big Boys and that is why I do not advocate the current UN model. It is not working well enough for the small, weak countries and is unfair to countries with a large population.
I would be interested in your view of the null hypothesis as well. What would have happened after WWII if the US had not joined the UN? Their failure to join the League of Nations led directly to the second World War because there was no way (in Europe) to prevent it. The US was critical but still in ‘island America’ mode politifcally. I believe this correlation argument carries about equal weight to yours – both true but neither prove much. We don’t have another planet to use as an experimental control to know for sure.
But, seeing as we have tried war so many times, let’s try peace for a while. If it doesn’t work, it will be easy to start fighting again. It still amazes me how afraid people are of a world that is peaceful and democratic. The two are not mutually exclusive. We have to use our imaginations more and not be bound by the shibboleths of our fathers.
Crispin,
I think we are discussing two different things here. It is my contention that any global governance scheme will devoilve into a dictatorship, because there is no competition to prevent that from happening. I won’t speak for you, but your argument seems to be based on a need for security. Is that right?
All of your examples above can be accomplished through bilateral and multilateral agreements between countries, thus keeping competition intact. Because without competition, a UN-type world government will result. If you think about it, competition is the basis for the universe working. Atoms compete with valence for other atoms; molecules for other molecules and atoms, and so on. Natural selection is based entirely on competition. The free market is based on competition. So is everything else. Without it, things stagnate and ossify. With competition comes much wealth; everyone in society benefits.
If a world government could be reliably devised that protected individual and group freedom, and only provided for fair regulation to set a level economic playing field, and limited its taxes to something reasonable, then I would immediately agree to it. But that is crazy talk, it will never happen in reality. People always want more. And people in government eventually get it, at the expense of everyone else.
Human nature is an inexorable force, always pushing in the direction of serving those in power. There is not the slightest doubt that dictatorship and tyranny would result from a world government. Who would you go to in order to correct the inevitable excesses? There is no competitor. And I am not willing to trade what little freedom I have left for cradle-to-grave security — at the expense of most of my earnings, tight limits on my economic freedom, and being forced to kowtow to the ruling power, or face the certainty of being destroyed. Just look at Chinese or Cuban dissidents who speak out. Illegitimate power brooks no dissent.
The UN is the template for world government. Look at their actions: they demand ever more money, and they hate us for not giving them more. They regard the U.S. as the enemy, there is no doubt. Now they demand a .7% World Tax, to be paid by the G-8. Does any rational person believe that if they get their .7% tax, that it will stay at .7%?? The U.S. income tax was sold to citizens based on the promise that it would never exceed 1% of income. Ha!
A world government and ICC are the worst possible ‘solutions’ to a non-problem.
And for the record, the League of Nations was as irrelevant in preventing WWII as the UN was in preventing the Korean war, or the Vietnam war, or the Khmer Rouge, or the invasion of Grenada, or the Falklands war, or the Balkans war, or the African wars, or the Gulf War, or the Iran-Iraq war, etc. Good intentions, and all that. The Treaty of Versailles had severely punished Germany, requiring Germans to pay mainly France six billion gold marks, an impossible demand. There was not that much gold in the world at that time. That led to hyper inflation during the Weimar Republic, and then directly to Hitler. Can you blame the German people? Germany held more territory at the Armistice than before the war began. They were double-crossed by Woodrow Wilson, and the rest, as they say, is history.
World government is exactly like giving a casual acquaintance signature authority over your checking account. No good will ever come of it.
It seemed like ol’ Harry had been chastened for a while by his last close election, but as one should have expected he’s back to his old tricks again tough the past tough election just a distant memory.
In 1970 or 71, it was so warm during two weeks of January in Philadelphia that the cherry trees blossomed big time; then winter came back full-time. It was probably even warmer in DC. Reid is the poster-child for a walking idiot.
He and Pelosi are showing themselves to be complete imbeciles. Who elected them? Do the people ever wonder how their representatives can be so stupid and delusional?
@Smokey
“Human nature is an inexorable force, always pushing in the direction of serving those in power. ”
I have a different understanding of human nature. We have a very positive side and we are quite capable of controlling ourselves when we choose to. Humanity has been advancing in civilisation organising the fringes into more and large coherent wholes. The fringes met ‘of the far side’ and the only fringes remaining (almost) are in the minds of the globe’s citizens.
I am happy to hear that you would support a reasonable system that is fair. Politicians have so discredited themselves through greed and self-promotion that it is widely believed that they represent ‘human nature’. Well, they don’t represent me, that’s for sure. One of the thigns that makes Canadian towns quite reasonable to administer is that there are no party affiliations at election time. People can be put on the ballot who do not even run, but if they are respected, they are placed in positions of power. That interests me. We are so used to pointing out that politicians are lying weasels we forget that there are millions of perople who are not, but they do not seek power. Were the election processes not tilted towards the weasels getting it, we would choose much more wisely.
Just a small correction: The League of Nations did nothing to prevent WW2. The second Germany started breaking the treaty they should have stepped in, but they did nothing. America being part of that stopped nothing, because as an European conflict it would have fallen to the French especially to stop the escalation. When Hitler moved his troops into the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland in 1936, he stated in surviving manuscripts that he was so nervous that the French would balk and destroy him. At that point, his army despite in the process of increasing in both arms and men, was still so small that the French could have wiped the floor with him.
Instead of doing something, they both complained to “german ambassador’s” and started the process of appeasement. League of nations never could have done anything because the US had gone isolationist by this time and Hitler was never worried about it in the first place.
It was an organization that had no real power to prevent war anyway. So no, the US failing to join the League of Nations had no effect on this. Whether or not we had joined, the organization was toothless just like the UN is.
Name just one war that the UN prevented? WW3 does not count because that was prevented by MAD. What prevented WW3 even more was the detente and the establishment of the red line between Washington and Moscow. What could the UN do to stop the launching of nukes? Tell people they would send in “peacekeepers” after both powers obliiterated each other?
That is a joke. The UN never did anything but serve as a political tool. And today its just gone out of control.
@benfrommo says:
>Just a small correction: The League of Nations did nothing to prevent WW2.
Thanks for mentioning this – I was actually checking in to catch up on that. I suggest that claims about what an organisation did or did not prevent are always a stretch but the importance of the absence of the US should not be overlooked. The LoN had no meaningful way to prevent Hitler from doing what he wanted. Smokey pointed out what Hitler used as an excuse to ‘get revenge’ – the iniquitious settlement of WWI. So one can point to the roots of conflict, but no one has spent much time looking at how WWII might have been prevented, or what it would have taken to guarantee it. My point is that there are always roots to conflicts, but there are also ways to prevent the conflict from taking place, sometimes by force. For that force to be legitimate, it has to be authorised, preferably by everyone. A single-country global police force is not acceptable because it leads to ’empire’.
When industry has such a grip on national politicians that they influence governmental behaviour in favour of wars to get business, that is a very serious problem. When it happens with a very powerful nation, the rest of the world is at serious risk.
So the point I wanted to add today, touched on by you, is that the root of a conflict – any conflict – can be seen, analysed and explained. That is helpful for avoiding future conflict, however it does not address at all what is needed to prevent those valid excuses exploding into war.
One common excuse for war is disagreements over where borders are located. Until an international tribunal with ‘final authority’ permanently fixes all borders, there will continue to be wars just over borders. There are dozens of them on low boil right now. So without any international body both to set the borders and to enforce them, aspirant and grudge-bearing ‘losers’ will reanimate the conflict when it suits them. We can’t just sit back and say, ‘boys will be boys’. That is outdated 20th century BS.
I agree with you that the UN in its present form has become corrupted and is not serving its intended purpose (which was quite a good one). I do not quote for supplying UN materials anymore because of endemic corruption in the projects. I don’t want my company asociated with that. I have never paid a bribe of even $1 to do business, or to stay in business. If no one want my products honestly I will close and do something else. If everyone behaved similarly, corruption would rapidly vanish. Corruption requires more than one participant. That is why one hears so frequently about ‘the best politicians money can buy’.
Brian,I think you grant Harry Reid the benefit of tbheoudt when you claim that he took a pro-life position”due to his Mormon faith.”Back when Reid first entered politics taking apro-life stand was expedient for a Democrat. In practice, he found it amazingly useful indeceiving the electorate about his underlyingliberalism. “He’s a pro-life Mormon…!” lead readers to conclude he was much more conservativethat the facts indicated.His actions of filibustering pro-life judicialnominees indicates that he is not really pro-life.Taking the pro-life position is the safest “conservative” position for liberal seeking coverto take. The courts make such a stance academic, andHarry Reid is making sure that the courts never dochange!Whether, or not, he is a Mormon Christian is purelya matter of speculation. Politicians proclaimingtheir piety is SOP for politicians. Many suchproclaimations are insincere.Why give him the benefit of the doubt?Dave from Reno,I use to call in to your show frequently.