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Huckabee And Thompson: Global Warming Is 'Overblown'
thinkprogress.org — Tonight on CBS, each of the 10 leading presidential candidates will be asked, “Do you think the risks of climate change are at all overblown?” According to an advance transcript, every single candidate acknowledges the threat -- except Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson. Thompson claims that "entitlements" are teh real problems.
aterkel- 38 diggs
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- jkbowman, on 12/12/2007, -2/+4And these two are qualified to make that statement because...?
- minoss, on 12/12/2007, -2/+5About as qualified as Al Gore is to make his.
- mightydavefish, on 12/13/2007, -1/+2In case you hadn't notice, Al is a spokesman.
SCIENTISTS think the climate is changing and man is impacting that change.
If you think otherwise you must give a reason why your opinion should carry more weight than people who study this.
But the right wing never bothers to refute with facts or even links to someone else who did some research.
But you managed to push out your right wing talking point of "Al Gore isn't a climate expert".
I guess for March of the Penguins Morgan Freeman had to earn a doctorate in arctic marine waterfowl biology to narrate it.
I know it's fun to slam Al, but your lack of intellectual honesty is depressing.
- mightydavefish, on 12/13/2007, -1/+2In case you hadn't notice, Al is a spokesman.
- minoss, on 12/12/2007, -2/+5About as qualified as Al Gore is to make his.
- elvisB, on 12/12/2007, -2/+2Who gives a ***** about these two assclowns. I've never even heard of these guys. Ron Paul 08!
- natedouglas, on 12/12/2007, -1/+2An article Fred Thompson wrote earlier this year about global warming:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTQzYWY1MGM5N ...
"Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto. NASA says the Martian South Pole’s “ice cap” has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto. This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle. Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn’t even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There’s a consensus. Ask Galileo."
Naturally, it relies on the same human flaw that most of these anti-environmental arguments do: that most people are laypersons and largely incapable of critical thought, so if you present a simple scientific argument against a larger, far more complex scientific argument, you can convince a large percentage of intellectually hapless voters that they're somehow being scammed. You can lay the blame at the feet of big business, big government, and big science, since there's almost no one in the country who doesn't distrust at least two of those three organizations.
Here, Fred Thompson mentions Mars' localized warming and compares it to the Earth's global warming. Presented with these observations, the scientific approach would be to ask two questions: "What is making Mars heat up?" and "What is making the Earth heat up?" Instead, he makes a number of implicit statements with obvious logical flaws, the most profound (and breathtakingly stupid) of which is that Mars and Earth just have so daaaaamn much in common that if they both show a temperature transient, it's guaranteed to be for the same reason. Or that the reasons for Mars' localized heating are uncomfortable mysteries to the scientific community (that has forgotten albedo, orbital eccentricity, dust clouds, and so forth).
This reminds me of the old argument against banning CFCs (that I actually saw again on Digg just the other day): that since CFC molecules are heavier than nitrogen and oxygen, they can't possibly reach the stratosphere in any significant quantities. Like Thompson's argument, it appeals to the intellectually frail. "I remember learning about density in Science class!" And they cease almost immediately to apply any critical thought or lessons learned from more advanced science classes (atmospheric gases are constantly being mixed and redistributed), because it's more personally satisfying to believe that the damn granola-eating hippies are trying to establish a Scientofascist state and take turns sodomizing your daughter while singing that terrible song by the Youngbloods.
Maybe he won't win a Nobel Peace Prize, but Fred Thompson is surely in the running for a Michael Creighton Fellowship.
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