Guest essay by Eric Worrall
President Obama visited Yosemite National Park via helicopter, to demand an end to people paying “lip service” to natural beauty and the climate crisis.
Obama at Yosemite attacks ‘lip service’ to natural beauty amid climate inaction
Barack Obama warned on Saturday that climate change could ravage many of America’s vaunted national parks, criticizing political opponents who “pay lip service” to areas of natural beauty while opposing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
During a visit to Yosemite national park, Obama said climate change was “no longer a threat, it’s a reality”. The first sitting president to visit Yosemite since John F Kennedy in 1962 said the famed glacial valley was already experiencing changes due to rising temperatures.
“Here in Yosemite, meadows are drying up, bird ranges are shifting farther northward, mammals are being forced further upslope,” Obama said. “Yosemite’s famous glacier, once a mile wide, is almost gone. We are also facing longer, more expensive wildfire seasons.
“Rising temperatures could mean no more glaciers in Glacier national park, no more Joshua trees in Joshua Tree national park. Rising seas can destroy vital ecosystems in the Everglades and at some point could even threaten icons like the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. That’s not the America I want to pass on to the next generation.”
…
Obama said: “We can’t treat it like it’s someone else’s problem, it shouldn’t lead to careless suggestions that we don’t get serious about carbon emissions or that we scrap an international treaty that we spent years putting together to deal with this.
…
Obama’s visit to Yosemite via helicopter caused major congestion in a park already heaving with summer visitors. Yosemite advised people to enter the park either before 8am or after 6pm to avoid the worst of the disruption. All parking, trails and climbing routes in the Lower Yosemite Falls area were shut down to allow Obama, wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia to do some hiking.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/18/yosemite-obama-national-parks-climate-change
I mean, seriously? When President Obama demands that we can’t treat climate like someone elses problem, he clearly doesn’t include himself as part of that “we”.
I will start believing President Obama thinks climate is a serious issue, when he finds a way to burn less than a month of my fossil fuel budget, on a single helicopter trip to give a climate speech which demands an end to “lip service”.
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I would not doubt that Obama has the largest carbon footprint of any President in the history of the US. When he uses the Royal, ‘we’, there is no doubt who the ‘Royal’ is.
…except where it comes to his brain, and there I doubt there’s much logical thought at all; he’s being as deceptive with climate change as he was with “Obamacare”.
You can keep your doctor. Your insurance rates will decrease. Everyone will live happily ever after. Obama has spoken.
jtom : from the article: “I will start believing President Obama thinks climate is a serious issue, when he finds a way to burn less than a month of my fossil fuel budget, on a single helicopter trip to give a climate speech which demands an end to “lip service”.
I think that if you include all the security and so on he probably burned up my whole ANNUAL heating bill which is around $ 3500.00. in about an hour!!!! If not less.
No one’s listening to him any more. Quack, quack.
Well as for ” lip service ” have you noticed that when he lies, he whistles. Literally lying through his teeth.
G
if our President really thought that CO2 affected climate and really cared about the climate change ramifications then he would not undergo all of his unnecessary travel at the tax payer’s expense. He just loves to vacation yet there is so much he has left undone like the budget cutes that are suppose to have gone along with the tax hike on the rich and the ACA taxes as part of the President’s balanced approach to deficit reduction.
Budgets tend to be rather ugly… 🙂
Our President has no understanding of budgets. Remember it is Obama who said that deficit spending showed “a lack of leadership”. Apparently “a lack of leadership” has been the Hallmark of the Obama Administration.
Think he was also the one who said it would be “un-patriotic” to increase the debt ceiling when it was back-around $8 trillion.
Michael,
That was before he was president.
Now it’s un-patriotic to NOT increase the debt ceiling.
I saw a figure not long ago of it costing the American taxpayers about $70 million to pay for all of Obama’s vacations. Obama spars no expense when it comes to himself.
Let alone the wife. 2nd plane, but it was only DC to Hawaii.
“But last night, Michelle Obama and her two daughters flew to Hawaii for a 17-day holiday – days before the president joins them.
The separate flights will incur costs of more than $100,000 to the taxpayer.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2075066/Obama-family-jet-Hawaii-separately-cost-100-000-taxpayer.html#ixzz4C9Ir0oYw
This is more for DD More. The plane’s the President’s family flies in costs something on the order of $15,000 an hour or more per flight hour. Even if they fly back on Air Force 1, that plane has to return to Washington. An 8 hour flight, then, costs $120,000 one way, so double that since it flies back.
But please recall that when Bill Clinton was in office, he flew on Air Force One to South Korea while Hillary flew on a different airplane, though not to South Korea. They both then flew on to Vietnam for a statue dedication in their separate planes, and from their they both flew back to Washington on separate flight paths as well.
As is the case of Air Force One I would find it unlikely that the plane with his family flies without fighter escort, which also costs the tax payer considerably more tax money, along with having refueling aircraft meet up with the fighter escorts along the way. Now, do you really think that the separate flights will ONLY cost about $100,000? My guess would be that the family flying ahead will cost, counting the cost of escorts and a return flight, probably between $350,000 and $450,000 by the time all planes are back on the ground and serviced. But hey, nothing is too good for the president and his family, right?
It is worse than you think. The federal government has to borrow the money to pay for the President’s travel. I estimate that the money the federal government is borrowing today will end up costing the tax payers more than 12 times the amount borrowed to repay over the next 170 years. Our President has yet to come up with a plan for the federal government to repay all of its debts. The tax payers have a right to know how much all this federal borrowing is really costing them.
So, he wants us peons to sacrifice to save the planet … gee, I wonder who’s going to be collecting on all our sacrifices?
Let me guess … all those selfless public “servants” from the capitol, where unemployment is never a problem.
no.
he wants you to be misdirected by his sleight of mind so you don’t see the the strings that levitate your wallet and make your productive efforts disappear.
he wants you to be concerned with global warming
the actual game is global pocket picking.
nevertheless, he need not be particularly concerned. he can treat people as if they are stupid because they are.
venezuela shows that people will allow themselves to starve before the bring themselves to contradict authority. once a generation has become dependent- they are never again independent.
it’s the dan pearl generation. selfie tweeting has completely replaced acts of courage.
victims are heroes. sacrifice is virtue. superman is a fag.
and it’ll be gone without a struggle. no bang, no whimper – just mock shock and mutual exhortation.
no resistance; no heroics. and the losers can’t even spell loser.
the outcome is ineluctible.
At least it’s not as bad as when Michelle and Barack use separate airplanes to go on vacation.:-)
..Don’t forget about the dog !!
TH didn’t forget to mention the dog.
Um, wouldn’t you?
🙂 Good one…
Bill was more environmentally friendly – he just took a different woman on his “vacations”.
I can see a lot of forthcoming comments getting “snipped” from that headline !! LOL
You weren’t thinking Larry S, were you?
I think he may have been thinking along the lines of Monica.
MOD! Feel free to snip. Just thought I’d try to give you a little chuckle if no one else. 😎
Here’s an idea: Pull back all the armies. It will save millions of cubic meters of diesel and CO2 emissions. But first you have to achieve global peace. Which should be far simpler than stopping climatic changes
Better still, tell the Bilderberg gangsters who met in Germany this week to plot how to screw us over, they even said they were going to focus on global warming taxes and Muslim terrorists! A two-fer for the rest of us. Watch out, citizens! Oh, and Brexit. They are against the Brits escaping their cage.
Obama tried that in Iraq and the end results was ISIS. A “JV” decision gave us a first-class terrorist state.
Not only a first-class terrorist threat, but Obama’s mistakes in Iraq,Syria and Libya have created an existential threat to European civilization. And Obama acts like he is just an innocent bystander in all this.
Europe of 50 years ago would have had no trouble stopping a movement of mass illegal migration. Angela Merkel and the EU have created an existential threat to Europe. The politics of guilt and shut-up have created a Europe that is an existential threat to itself.
According to the President’s economic “plan” all of our offshore military personnel should have been back home and off the federal payroll no later than the end of FY 2014. Our President has failed to follow his own economic plan. This is expected from a President whose administration’s Hallmark must be “a lack of leadership”.
A lack of leadership but a surplus of lip service toward the UN agenda.
Why doesn’t Obamao do something useful and tell us what the Hildabeast did with her emails, who gave Susan Rice the offensive video talking points regarding Benghazi, what he really meant when he said “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. PERIOD.”
Feel free to add to list.
According to our President’s economic “plan”, all of our offshore military personnel should be back home and off the federal payroll. Half the savings is suppose to be spent on infrastructure and the other half should be enough so that we are in our second year of running federal surpluses. According to Obama’s economic plan the National Debt should be falling.
I am still waiting for the President to go over the health care bill “line by line” with my congressman on C SPAN as our President said that he would. And our President always keeps his word.
The President once said the the White House dog would be a mutt “like me” from a shelter yet the dog they got was a purebreed who had never been in a shelter. The President is suppose to be the most powerful man in the free world yet he could not keep his word on something as trivial as the White House dog.
Gitmo is still closed as the President promised it would be is it not.
The President once said the deficit spending showed a lack of leadership. So apparently “a lack of leadership” is the Hallmark of the Obama Administration.
“The President once said the deficit spending showed a lack of leadership. So apparently “a lack of leadership” is the Hallmark of the Obama Administration.”
Include the Republican Congress in on that. They signed off on every dollar. The cowards.
They complain about Trump not being conservative enough, but where are the conservatives in the Congress? I don’t see many, and certainly none of them are in the Republican leadership. Those guys are definitely Democrat-lite.
The Republicans are scared to death of being called racists, which paralyzes them into inaction and capitulation, when it comes to confronting Obama. That has trumped conservatism, for the last seven and one half years, and for the next seven months.
After Jan. 20, 2017, the Republicans might get a little braver if Hillary is elected, but who knows, they might be spooked by being called women-haters. The Republican congress will definitely get braver if Trump is elected.
These Republican elite “conservatives” don’t represent me, or you, and we should seriously consider getting rid of them in the next election. They have proven their worthlessness.
If it were me, I would check my representatives votes and if they were not conservative enough, I would vote for someone else. Fortunately for me (and you), my representatives have voted against giving Obama a blank check, so we will keep them. 🙂
@TA
As I have said before, the only major difference between the two parties is the speed of the handcart, not its final destination in the nether regions.
@ur momisugly TA:
The Congressional Black Caucus admitted during the second or third year of O’s first term that they were giving him a full pass because of his race. IIRC, the leader said that if a white man were in office and African-Americans were having the difficulties they were having due to O’s policies, the CBC would be picketing the White House.
I refuse to take environmental-related advice from someone who believes it is acceptable to fly from DC to NYC for a date night (on the taxpayer’s dime). Particularly when such a flight also requires plane escorts, substantial security, a motorcade of SUVs, and ANOTHER flight home, complete with plane escorts.
Politician, heal thyself.
“The Congressional Black Caucus admitted during the second or third year of O’s first term that they were giving him a full pass because of his race.”
Do you have a cite for that?
“Barack Obama warned on Saturday that climate change could ravage many of America’s vaunted national parks”. If Obama studied geology and read the Yosemite website, he might realize that climate was part of why those beautiful parks are there in the first place. To help Obama, I provide a link for him to read before his next golf game:
https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/geology.htm
He also invoked what I call the “plight of the pikas” that now has been thoroughly debunked. He only uses the story that supports his position and ignores the rest.
What, he didn’t fly in a huge private jet with three other jets following???
Yes, he did. His helicopter was in one of the jets following Air Force 1. He flew his helicopter from the airport to Yosemite.
You know you’re important when you’re in one aircraft and you have another aircraft inside another aircraft following you while you’re being escorted by at least one other aircraft with guns and missiles. Trump can’t trump that, yet.
Trump can, he just doesn’t see the point of it.
And I am sure Air Force Two was in the parade, since no one is supposed to know for sure whether the President is in One or Two. Oh yes, and probably a flight of at least 4 fighter jets in case some Africanized Bees get angry for all the jet fuel fumes.
There are always two other helicopters flying with Marine One, to “hide” which actually carries the president.
One could start a new jump rope chant:
President Obama flew to Yosemite, used so much gas, it was a calamity! We gotta conserve posthaste, but he’s in a different caste! How many gallons of fuel did he waste? One, two, three, four…
Excuse me while I jump on e-bay to get a new irony meter. Mine just went SPROING!
The needle wrapped around the pin at least twice.
I wonder how many people under 20 would get the reference. ;^)
Yup. Pegged the needle so hard it wrapped around twice.
Not many would get that, MarkW. I’m not certain they even know the definition of analogue. (And nobody dials up someone anymore.)
By the way, Obama and his gang know nothing about the climate of California. Most people there know little since virtually no one lived there after the Great Drought 500 years ago, Arizona cleared out, too, it nearly totally destroyed thriving native civilizations and yes, they built cities in Arizona and New Mexico.
California was sparsely settled with Father Kino came northwards and converted some of the tribes (but not the Apaches or Comanches!). He saw the ruin of farming in these places right after the Great Drought finally ended.
This Great Drought also happened when the Little Ice Age began! This is rather scary news. Very scary. I would suggest, a cooling planet has many lurking dangers.
Maybe the President would like to convert Yosemite valley into a huge water storage facility to help protect California from the ravages of drought.
“Rising temperatures could mean no more glaciers in Glacier national park, no more Joshua trees in Joshua Tree national park. Rising seas can destroy vital ecosystems in the Everglades and at some point could even threaten icons like the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. ”
Maybe so but there is no empirical evidence that any of this can be attributed to fossil fuel emissions or that any of this can be attenuated by reducing or even eliminating fossil fuel emissions.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2794991
see also
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2642639
So what?? Obama has spoken!
Rising seas won’t destroy the everglades, they will just be moved inland a few miles.
Is there anything that this president knows that is actually correct?
I think the Burmese pythons and the surrounding development (and resulting decline in habitat) are causing the native flora and fauna more problems than supposed sea level rise. Regardless, from what I understand, the sea is not rising around Florida so much as Florida is sinking/dissolving.
I suspect Yosemite is probably undergoing more degradation from all the visitors tramping around than anything else. From what I have seen at every national park I have visited, people rarely stick to trails, ignore signs that prohibit climbing, and otherwise wander all over the area with little to no thought about their effect on the natural environment. I am all for enjoying nature and the parks, but for the love of heaven, stay on the trail and do not pick the vegetation!!!
Also, “at some point” is a weasel term, not a scientific one.
The forests of California have evolved to cope with wild swings in weather thanks to the many Ice Ages we have had so far. This Interglacial is no way as hot as the previous Interglacial and redwoods we see today are trees that started growing during the present Interglacial.
They evolved to reflect a warming environment not a cooling one. They are utterly indifferent to long droughts, this is what they have evolved under for the last 20,000 years! Ditto, all the cactus out west and animals. Mastodons used to stomp around LA and fell into the tar pits there and native people hunted them in Arizona, too. Then they were all gone, 10,000-5000 years ago or there about.
Any politician, for that matter.
Obama said climate change was “no longer a threat, it’s a reality”.
The only threat is Obama and his warmist goon squad, now that’s reality!
Parse that again, you could read it the other way also, no? “Climate change is a reality, it’s no longer a threat.” We already all acknowledge that climate change is a reality. So there’s no threat/danger.
Additional CO2 in the atmosphere has enhanced plant growth worldwide, and increased foodstuff production and estimated 15%. Apparently, those knobbing for climate change don’t like more food for hungry people; it’s against their primal intentions, obviously.
We make up for the increased crop production by diverting a large portion of it toward biofuels, which keeps the price high enough that the nations that need the food can’t afford it.
http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/corn_production_usda.png
Rocky, their population bomb isn’t as threatening when it is accompanied by an agricultural boom.
Well, if a President ever wanted to show the world just how selfish and immature a president could be, the POTUS just did.
Anyone who desires to stay overnight at any of the popular National Parks during their premium seasons must start planning months ahead of time.
POTUS decides to make a political statement. What better place to spout environmental nonsense than in John Muir’s favorite spaces?
Grab a helicopter along with a horde of secret service agents and their air and electronic support staff and drop in unannounced to make false climate pronouncements.
Yup, that’s the POTUS… Inconsiderate, uncaring, ignorant, gullible, …
And the park probably was closed while he was there a well. Had a reservation? Sorry, you can’t come in.
All parking, trails and climbing routes in the Lower Yosemite Falls area were shut down to allow Emperor Obama, wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia to do some hiking, away from the inconvenient citizens who pay the bills.
How lovely!
When you think about it, this is the most outrageous affront of all. To the ordinary citizen, his ‘climate change’ rhetoric is just more dismissible balderdash, but wrecking the vacations of people is inconsiderate and arrogant beyond belief. Can you imagine Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan acting like this? I can’t.
/Mr Lynn
Mr. Lynn, even the Clintons had the good grace to trade political access for the use of a (palatial) home on Martha’s Vineyard.
The government of Canada has a climate change website where you can make suggestions on what to do about climate change. I suggested that the Federal and Provincial governments including all employees disconnect from the energy grid and make their own energy with non tax payer dollars. I also suggested that they all use methods of transportation that use renewable energy like electric cars, bikes, walking, sailing. I would suggest it to the government of the USA if they had a website.
Well, with the metro exposed as criminally unsafe, a whole lot of federal workers are telecommuting for the next several months. The current idiot-in-charge will probably try to take credit for being “eco-friendly” or some such nonsense. Of course, all the people who cannot telecommute and now have to drive or rely on buses/shuttles are likely increasing emissions. Perhaps they can conserve idiot-style and get their own helicopters.
Obama said: “We can’t treat it like it’s someone else’s problem…”
So why then is he treating it as if it’s my problem and not his? If he really wants the country to get serious about carbon emissions, he should set the example by lowering his emissions instead of choosing to merely “pay lip service” to the issue. Has he even tried to lower his carbon footprint? I’ve seen no evidence of it. Do any of the people who preach to us about the evils of carbon dioxide ever try to practice what they preach? I’m not aware of any. They all gleefully jet off to the next climate conference without even a thought about staying home and using video conferencing. President Obama could have given his speech in the White House. Instead, he goes to Yosemite with a private 747, several helicopters and a motorcade of a few dozen vehicles. This one trip probably released more carbon emissions than I will release in my entire lifetime, and he thinks he can guilt me into lowering my emissions even further? Is this hypocrite even self-aware?
Because he has no intention of giving up his life style. A $7M home in Hawaii and a $4M home in DC are needed so the elite can deliver the messages of wisdom to the masses.
Pat CH:
“[…] A $7M
homedacha in Hawaii and a $4Mhomedacha in DC […]”Sorry. Had to fix those typos. Comrade Commissars don’t have homes.
“Obama said: “We can’t treat it [CAGW] like it’s someone else’s problem…”
But Obama can treat radical Islamic terrorism as if it were someone else’s problem, or no problem at all.
Not to mention the “carbon” emitted by Airforce One getting him to the local airport for the chopper ride.
And, presumably, the helicopter from the White House to Airforce One’s base (?Andrews AFB).
Do not forget the motorcade transporting all the support staff and security…
Easily the most scientifically, economically, and statistically ignorant President in the history of the nation. His degrees in grievance studies simply are inadequate. He is an embarrassment to all except idiots and those that would use the ignoramus for their social experimentation.
Pro-choice (i.e. selective) forevermore.
Yosemite Park is doing just fine if you check their webcams:
http://www.skimountaineer.com/MtnWebCams/Yosemite-MtnWebCams.html?size=med
Don’t ask the Park Rangers though, as they have been brainwashed like all the ones in National Parks and National Monuments.
To each according to their needs…
Meaning no offense at all, Mr. Worrall, I prefer John Kennedy. “My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”
I prefer to think that, at 60, there are still things I can do for my country, as well as fellow humans everywhere, other than just die and get out of everyone else’s way. 🙂
Got no problem with charity and voluntary effort, unless it is compulsory 😉
Maybe obama can fly that helecopter and go look for that terrorist he let go in south america!
In his first Presidential acceptance speech he gave reference to “wealth redistribution” and no one paid attention to it. It will take a drop in global temperature to even get people listening to natural variability and we’re blathering about his ‘carbon footprint’.
It seems to me the blab here is about his monumental hypocrisy . .
He lost me at redistributive change coupled with a pro-choice religious/moral (i.e. selective principles) philosophy that denigrates individual dignity (e.g. [class] diversity), debases human life (e.g. reactive parenthood or abortion rites, planned parenthood or clinical cannibalism), and compensates for evolutionary dysfunction and social corruption with anti-native policies (e.g. excessive immigration — refugee crises) and democratic disenfranchisement (e.g. multi-trillion dollar for-profit welfare schemes or opiates).
Still, the conflation of logical domains (i.e. science, philosophy, faith, and fantasy) has historical precedents that should not be overlooked or the consequences underestimated. The fantasy of spontaneous conception or a punctuated evolutionary process that rationalizes mass abortion under the selective-child policy is a notable aspect of his pro-choice religious philosophy that marks an unprecedented corruption of science and violation of human rights.