I am feeling despair...
"they said there were some conservative citizens who didn’t want me to speak."
Scratch conservative, insert lunatic. Hell, even damn George W. Bush, the fucking "president" himself, talked about global warming in his SOTU. But the kids shouldn't be allowed to hear about this in school? Wtf? Are those lunatics for real?
:-|
There be witches in this humble hamlet.
What I find interesting is how the discussion about global warming got so damn...weird. The oil and gas industries including the old guard at ExxonMobil were producing videos in the early '90s about how global warming was a good thing. And then suddenly and abruptly the PR game changed. The "scientists" they paid for started talking about how there was NO global warming at all, that it was a big hoax perpetrated on the people by the ancient guild of conspirators called climatologists and the issue of believing in a process that was already happening became a DEBATE.
Republicans had been pushing some variation of an idea needed by certain people in this country to get more wealth and power. The idea is this: there are no such things as facts, only opinion, and no factual evidence changes a debate because it is not how knowledge is received. This is a very irrational view supported heavily and deeply in theocratic societies of the past and present. The sky may be blue but I will say it is red and I am supported by the authority on the sky being red. We all experienced these absurdities being purported as fact on the lead up to the Iraq War. The administration AT THE TIME could easily be shown to be lying constantly about what they said they knew. Scott Ritter, the Chief weapons inspector on the ground in Iraq went around to any news source that would accept his presence to deny it, and he got repaid by being smeared as a child molester.
And thus we have the entire strategy unraveled. Reality is what we think of it. This is the very definition of Orwellian and the very scary side of the Bush administration that is oft ignored when rightfully lampooning him. The creation of a world where facts are just another point of view. The very rejection of knowledge derived via observation and experimentation with "gut feeling" and received knowledge from on high being so easily substituted instead.
Any high school should be very honored to have a Nobel laureate speak at their graduation ceremony(Kissinger excepted). That a cadre of conspiratorial wingnut lunatics can derail it speaks very badly about the level of ignorance in the community and maybe the country as a whole. Ignorance Is Strength was supposed to be a warning not a motto. I find it difficult to accept even debating these crazies because they don't have nor do they cite any observational evidence to support their views.
I have to give them one thing, melting projections for the Northern Hemisphere were wrong. It is warming far faster than predicted. But these idiots wouldn't believe it when you have the picture in hand proving that there is NOW a Northwest Passage clear of ice and soon people will be able to take that leisurely cruise across the North Pole just to say they done it.
"...Authoritarians attempt to squelch
debate about FISA in the Senate. Authoritarians cancel talk on global warming in Montana. Authoritarians don't like facts discussed..."
From "A Children's Guide to the Republican Party"
The March of the Luddites continues ...
Enslaved to a fading vision of The Good Old Days, blinkering themselves from all evidence to the contrary.
I wonder if anyone asked these "conservatives" if they supported ID or the Young Earth? Either way, they're doing a disservice to their children, who may one day be quite irritated with their elderly parents. "Why didn't you warn us about global warming, Dad? Why didn't you DO something about it, instead of just trying to ignore it? You know, I had the hardest time trying to explain to little Timmy what snow was ..."
Umm.
Jesse, if I remember correctly, the Dark Ages had quite a bit to do with the ascendancy of these guys.
But now that I come to think about it, that proximate root cause was itself a rather direct consequence of the failure of certain other people to hold these.
Yeah, there are parallels. The major difference is that our barbs aren't swarming a frontier. They don't speak a different language, nor are they part of a different polity.
Instead, they are internal and self-generated.
Now that's really frightening.
we are allowign the neaderthals to cause a failure of our schools and as such we are failing the best and the brighteset in our nation. this is PC gone to far...because we don't want to threaten the villiag idots beleifes we refuse to teach facts...thsi is a major problems and needs to stop.
You can see the effects of global warming in Montana with your own eyes. Shorter winters, smaller snowcaps, higher treelines, and disappearing glaciers.
But "we need to hear both sides of the 'debate'" is the rallying cry of the willfully ignorant. Biologists have been dealing with this bullshit for years, as have, to a lesser extent, geologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, and cosmologists. These lunatics have the mental development of five-year-olds. They hear something that's discomfiting, they stamp their little feet and pretend that, if they don't hear it, it can't affect them.
Kind of like patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, "we need to hear both sides" is the ultimate fortress of the deniers of reality.
"The Republicans legacy leaves our children further and further behind every first world country"
makes it easier to keep the American serfs in their place
Oh, actually, anti-intellectualism is a fine old American tradition. Remember the "Know-Nothing Party"?
Have fun, be smug in your lack of learning, and start learning how to say "would you like noodles with that?" in Chinese, you little Montana brats.
Stupidity == karma, and I guess a whole bunch of nitwits will have to learn about reality all over again....
Found this on Slashdot yesterday:
Whenever I hear some cretin going off about the "junk science" of climate change, the conversation goes something like this:
"So, would you care to comment on the search for the Higgs boson?"
"Uhh...what?"
"Okay, what about quantum computing? How about those BQP problems, eh?"
"Um, I don't know what you're talking about."
"So you know you aren't qualified to comment on particle physics or computer science, yet you think you're somehow qualified to comment on climatology?"
[Silence]
I like doing this to creationists, too.
Little Gator, I'm not feeling despair at all. I'm excited. Shit like this was coming, a mile down the road. It's perfectly appropriate.
This is going to be a "stand up and be counted" election. The progressives vs. the flat-earthers. Winner take all. It's time, and we couldn't be in better shape for the brawl. :o)
As long as we don't put someone in the ring who's been "training" with the other side for a few years, and who will have one hand tied behind her, every step of the fight.
The republicans of Choteau, are, as usual, piss-poorly informed, and they are merely saying:
"And we don't want anyone ELSE informing us, or our children."
But they, and that 30% mouthbreathing base, are juuuust sharp enough to know, in their little bone-marrow alarms, that their entire conservative worldview/construct, is at risk in this election. When that first Abrams M1A1 rolled across the Kuwait border nearly 5 years ago, that was george bush putting ALL of their chips on one, fucked up ju-ju number. And by god, the carnivorous chickens are coming home to the white house roost.:o)
All we have to do is nominate a candidate who hasn't sold out to them, and who is willing to bring up the issues that we on the blogs have been ranting about so accurately, for lo, these many moons, and we're in like Flynn.
This is no time for compromising with the bastards. If we put up Obama (who needs to stop prattling about "bi-partisanship") or if Edwards can pull a rabbit out of a hat next Tuesday and somehow go on to take the nomination, it will be the stake in the heart of the corporate Draculas, and they fucking well know it. Their best chance to skate out the responsibility for what they've created, and to hang on to power, is not on team-troll.
Her name is Hillary Clinton, and if we're brick-dumb enough to nominate her, they won't HAVE to talk about the issue-turds hanging around their necks. Clinton will be the issue, and that's what they will run on, and repubs and conservatives and a ton of independents will have instant knee-jerk, and will come out of the woodwork like roaches, to vote against her.
So. Let them raise the drawbridge
and hold their book-burnings.
They are dinosaurs; and they may not believe in the meteor, but the meteor sure believes in them.
And if we pick either Obama or Edwards, instead of Hillary, then the impact date is fore-ordained, next November.
The Noble prise is just some furrin gay award issued by the UN. Stand fast Amurka.
Yup. The US is going to become like some Third World country which people visit for the scenery but make sure to never stray too far from the tour bus for fear of encountering some drooling moron screaming about Darwin or the Earth being 6,000 years old. Come away, dear, stupidity is catching.
God, how sad. I was born in Montana. I have photos of myself as a little kid, standing on the glaciers that used to come right down to the roads in Glacier Park - you know, the little specs of white you can now see only in the distance from the road, if you squint just right? Montana is showing the effects in a rock solid, easily comparable manner, and yet still they jam their fingers in their ears and yell rather than listen.
tanbark the righting was on the wall for more tehn 5 years. bush was there last desperate act to grabe teh brass ring..every thign he did was abotu that. every gambe more risky...unfortunaitly this is end game and they are very desperate.
look you are dealign with folks who thinks that the END times are NOW. who cares about the enviroment as its tiem for the rapture.....they know that global warmign is happening but dont' care cause the end is neigh...they feel that its there god givin right to use up whats left.
Let's all take a moment to remember what happened to the school boards in Kansas and Pennsylvania that inserted themselves and their superstitions into the kids' education on behalf of "creation science."
The townspeople did not appreciate either their attempts to dumb down the kids, nor the national shaming they took at the hands of the media. Dumb shit like this is bad for business. It discourage investment. It makes them look like a bunch of fucking rubes.
And they voted accordingly. The idiots were summarily thrown out of office at the very next opportunity. Reality-based people came forward and organized and took their town back. It was a good day for the forces of Enlightenment.
Based on the history, I hope the gutless wonders on the Choteau school board didn't have any higher political aspirations. Because this one single dumbfuck call is, almost certainly, the end of their political careers.
If I were on that school board, I'd have told these WATBs: "When you guys come up with a Nobel-Prize-winning climate scientist to 'offer an opposing view' on global warming, you can have your turn."
"Is that fair and balanced enough for you?"
prof fate,
The Nobel Prize Committee is part of the massive Global Warming hoax conspiracy. Can't you see that?
"(...)shame on Choteau, Montana for being so out of touch with basic American values."
Really?
As a matter of fact, they are in touch with basic American values. We are not.
Sorry to rain on your parade...
Wrongo, 'Goy.
Those people are in the 30%-and-shrinking snaketwirling minority.
And as long as we don't nominate a Clinton tweedle-dum, to run neck and neck with a McCain or Romney tweedle-dee, the evidence of it will be seen like never before, this coming November.
So, do we have email addresses and phone numbers for the gutless wonders in Choteau?
I think if they have the balls to keep a Nobel Laureate from speaking, then they should have the balls to be identified for their "courageous" stand. Otherwise, they're just chickenshits in sheets... and don't deserve the anonymity.
So, how about it... some contact info anybody?
Asimov has a short story from way back titled 'Nightfall' that should be read by anyone unfamiliar with it.
As for the "English First!" groups (i.e. republican scum), I have this to say:
"If English was good enough fer Jesus, then it's good enuf fer me!"
tools.
I consider Tanbark to be excessively optimistic, although I will grant that I tend to consider ANY optimism to be excessive.
I think ANY Democratic nominee is going to have a hard time, because the Corporate Holodeck Media will carry water for the Elephascists, as usual.
Also, let's not forget the proven Elephascist mastery of voter suppression and vote fraud.
Also, unlike Tanbark, I think Obama would face legions of irrationalists who will never vote for him no matter what, just like Hillary would face them. Don't forget the "Bradley Effect"--lots of palefaces are racists, but they have enough wits to be ashamed to admit it, so they tell pollsters they'll vote for a non-white candidate, then default on that promise in the privacy of the voting booth.
Also, if Obama is nominated, Diebold and friends could throw actual Obama votes to the Elephascist nominee in November and then BLAME the Bradley Effect.
The Cancer will find a way. It always does--assuming, of course, Obama hasn't already sold out to the Cancer, just like Hillary.
If Obama IS the genuine article--well, then it'll be RFK time, whether through a "lone racist nut" who will be "shot trying to escape" or through a "tragic plane crash".
"The Cancer" has many names: the Establishment, the Deep Government, the Secret Government, the Military-Industrial Complex, but maybe the best one is plain old Plutocracy.
I call it "The Cancer" because it grows by stealing from its host--"the host" being the USA, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the world--and it doesn't give fuck-all if it kills its host in the process.
Probably all the fault of them punk Easterners at Choate.
What's happening right now in the Arctic is a tragedy. The Inuit are losing their habitat by leaps & bounds along with their already-weak connection to their traditional culture. The rest of the world has gone from ignoring them out of greed, to ignoring them out of shame.
What we have now isn't global warming (an organic component of a healthy climate cycle), it's global climate DESTABILIZATTION. We could probably do okay with normal global warming - & have many times in the past. But we're literally monkey-wrenching the underpinnings of the planet's climate system, wholesale. The planet will seek a new equilibrium, whether we want it to or not. Global HEATING is indeed occurring, but the effects of this are as complex as the climate itself.
So, as the harvest of our collective negligence, in temperate latitudes we're getting both hotter summers & colder winters - not to mention more destructive storms & hurricanes, & more severe floods & droughts.
All these things are drastically exacerbated when you keep putting more & more energy into the biosphere, then locking it in with CO2 & methane.
What terrifies ME is the possibility of a hard late (circa April) frost affecting large amounts of agricultural land ... or flooding ... or hail. Hail can wipe out a whole year's crops in 5 minutes flat, & there's not a damn thing you can do about it once it starts. If crops go down too late, you can't just start over. They're a writeoff.
We ALL need to learn to use less, make what we use cleaner/greener, to keep on doing it, & to help others to understand the importance of doing likewise.
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