A few days ago, an environmentalist who thinks Climate Change is big problem got an opinion piece in the Washington Post. His name is Bill McKibben and I think he managed to get it pass Fred Hiatt with snark. For example:
Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history).
No, that doesn’t mean a thing.
It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas — fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been — the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected. [snip]
Better to join with the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted 240 to 184 this spring to defeat a resolution saying simply that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” Propose your own physics; ignore physics altogether. [snip]
It’s very important to stay calm.
Somehow, this shrill attack on Fred’s pals managed to slip onto the editorial pages, but it was a few days ago and nobody really noticed. We do not have to think about Climate Change anymore because Al Gore is fat, and also too, Ayn Rand dreams of magic metal. Bill McKibben is just shrill. He rejects wingnutopia talking points in favor of science and we all know that science and reality have a liberal bias.
Sure, there are some shrill folks who worry that these extreme weather patterns are in sync with the predictions of climate change, but we do not have to worry about them because George Will said so.
I think Hiatt was drunk and a copy boy slipped it in.
And with that let’s go to an Open Thread.
Cheers
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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As Fred Hiatt also notes, a President is strong and wise indeed who fiercely disregards unreasonable firebagger demands and does not question the sovereignty of Israel’s government over United States policy and action.
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ruemara
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
Dude, go fuck yourself. It’s a motherfucking article on climate change and you’re the first fucking post with a whine about the President and Israel. 1 note bigoted bastard.
Drouse
Kinda like all these incidents of right wing violence.
DeeLoralei
DennisG, don’t you mean …”got past Fred Hiatt…”?
Dennis SGMM
I think Hiatt was drunk and
a copy boyslipping it to a copy boy.FTFY
Drouse
It probably went right over his head. Wingers are notoriously humor impaired.
James E. Powell
It could be WP policy to publish the occasional serious, fact-based op-ed about climate change. Editorial balance and all that.
Of course the WP also knows that the occasional serious, fact-based op-ed will have no effect since it’s working against daily waves of corporate propaganda and considerable public inertia against changing the way we live.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Drouse:
I think this. It’s just ever so slightly possible that everyone else at the paper read this and didn’t recognize that it was sarcasm.
Yutsano
Can I just say FTFY? The Mariners are tied 4-4 with them in the 10th.
flukebucket
@Yutsano: Sometimes I get confused as to whether somebody is fixing something for somebody else or if the Yankees are getting fucked.
Malron
Also too: pay attention to the fact there are rarely any prophetic announcements/condemnations from curmudgeonly coots like Pat Robertson when natural disasters occur in areas/states that are either 1) populated by insufficient numbers of brown folks or 2) known to vote Republican in national elections.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Yutsano:
Hello, young man. How are you?
Sarah Proud and Tall
@flukebucket:
You’re not alone, dear. I spent weeks wondering why people kept swearing at the Yankees in the middle of otherwise perfectly normal threads.
Yutsano
@Sarah Proud and Tall: Grumpy in general, emotionally interesting in ways I described to you privately, and burping up Indian food like mad. Amazingly delicious and the restaurant is run by Sikhs so I will definitely support them in the future. Otherwise I think I’m slightly argumentative. How are things on the other side of the hills?
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
I think you’re supposed to say FTMFY (or, as Sister Rusty Pitchfork of Decency would say, FTMFYWAVRPF) rather than just FTFY.
hilts
Bill McKibben Rules
democracynow.org/2011/5/26/bill_mckibben_from_storms_to_droughts
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
appropos of nothing, but i think college football deserves a dust bowl. i am sure that with enough money up front, and the promise of tourist dollars i could make it happen if i won the lottery, but only if it was really really big, because winning ten or fifteen million would be a waste of paper work.
also, too, i would want oregon st, and south carolina to play in it.
fucen tarmal +9
jimbob
@flukebucket: Ha ha. Now I am aware of all internet traditions +1.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
May I strongly recommend cleek’s pie filter? UCT never says anything worth reading, so it’s not like you would miss anything by blocking his comments. It’s done my blood pressure a world of good.
Yutsano
@Roger Moore: In that case, please to let me quote wifey by saying FTMFYWAVRFPF. 12 innings to defeat those ebil fucks. I hope Pay Fraud kicks something and bruises his toe.
shecky
Snark is fun, but it’s a shitty op ed. May as well have placed the blame for all these apocalyptic events on the Bible prophesy. Nobody is going to be convinced. It’d be nice to shore up the case for climate change without all the speculation. But it’s oh so fun to stick a finger in Fed Hiatt’s eye.
NickM
At least, that’s what Fred’s telling his wife.
magurakurin
@Yutsano:
one time for the late Steve Gilliard
Fuck the Fucking Yankees
MikeJ
@Yutsano: Let’s go for a sweep! Two wins over the fy in two days is a nice start. I like it when my secondary team (the Mariners) win, I love it when anybody beats the Yankees, and when those two things combine and help put my primary team 1.5 games ahead in the AL East, everything is wonderful.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: I get the feeling this one stung for them. And us sweeping them always sticks in Pay Fraud’s crop. And I am never above contributing to secondary effects like that. I even have a guess who the secondary team is. :)
Cliff in NH
The big driver of these low pressure systems tracking much farther south than they did 20 years ago is the much much higher sea surface temperatures on the gulf of Mexico.
Unf those higher surface temps in the gulf in addition to sucking the lows farther south, have also produced much greater wind shear from the temp differentials, while also pumping more moisture into the air… this combo is what causes the massive winter storms in the mid latitude states in winter and greater strength to the summer thunderstorms … this time of year, and I fear into the summer this overtemp in the gulf will produce even greater wind shear than normal in a similar area to the last tornado storms.
Also any hurricanes that pass over the gulf will be much stronger than they were historically due to the increased heat/shear available..
Jim C.
I’m old enough to remember a time when the Washington Post wasn’t populated by complete asshats.
Damn I miss Froomkin.
But I think the thing that really bothers me the most is not the fact that WaPo is rightwing now. It’s the fact that nobody KNOWS it is rightwing. It’s like if the New York Times or MSNBC got bought out by Rupert Murdoch and transformed and nobody knew about it.
WaPo does more damage with it’s name than it does with anything that the people who work there write.
Spaghetti Lee
@Jim C.:
It stuns me when I talk to people who think the Post is some liberal breeding ground. Have they even taken a look at the editorial page?
Jim C.
@Spaghetti Lee:
Reputations linger.
Look at the reputation of the “liberal media” as an example.
You see the same thing with corporations. A corporation will get a reputation for something – such as reliability – and then they’ll start cutting corners and coasting on their reputation for a decade or so before the public catches up to the fact that their reputation is crap.
But really, video games are my thing and I think you’re starting to see Bioware coasting on their reputation lately. Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age: Awakenings, Witch Hunt and The Arrival have all been pretty poor releases by Bioware standards. Sure they’ve had a couple of good releases during the period, but they’re no longer the consistent gold standard for RPG goodness that they used to be.
I digress into a personal pet peeve. Sorry folks.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Jim C.: If you want to talk about vidya game companies coasting on reputation alone, you have to talk about Square-Enix, or more specifically the Final Fantasy series. Anything with the name Final Fantasy slapped on is a guaranteed million+ seller, and that’s almost solely because of the lingering good will from their releases in the flippin’ 90s.
You find me someone that doesn’t deeply regret spending $60 on Final Fantasy XIII, and I’ll call that person a damn liar right to their face. That game was awful in every way except the pretty graphics, and who really gives a damn about shiny graphics anymore? Yes, good graphics are always nice, but we’re way past the point of diminishing returns on those. I think the vast success of Minecraft proves that.
/nerd
Clark Stooksbury
Not the first time that McKibben has appeared on the Post op-ed page before.
Southern Beale
And somehow this has got past the Teanuts and the Luddites in Congress: the US Fish & Wildlife Service’s Climate Change news blog.
OMG. Mah tax dollahs. The horrah.
Cermet
@Cliff in NH:But you forget that it takes “cold” air to create the proper wind shear, so any good ass wipe will then add – see?! More cold air is required and that proves no AGW!
Of course, all the cold air exists at thirty to fifty thousand feet where it is always subzero even in the tropics (and for some strange reason, a two to three degree surface rise has no real impact on air temps that high up.) But no matter, the deniers will raise that point … stupidity is a hallmark of these feffers – which makes me wonder? Where are the BJ deniers about the link between AGW and the record deaths from all these powerful tornados this season?
One BJ’er a few days agao even tried to say tornados before 1950 were just as powerful even through they have zero data/proof. Deaths in the past (pre 40’s) were estimates, not confirmed. See, facts are only used if they are not facts and then they prove what the deniers want – current proven data is not to be used since it proves AGW.
2liberal
@Yutsano:
It should go without saying that you can ALWAYS say FTFYs! Thanks for the Mariners for beating the MFYs (Y stands for Yankees) and keeping the Sox in first!
arguingwithsignposts
This is just an excuse for Hiatt to bring on another noted climate change specia1ist like Sen. Inhofe for “balance.”
arguingwithsignposts
This is just an excuse for Hiatt to bring on another noted climate change specia1ist like Sen. Inhofe for “balance.”
dedc79
Bill Mckibben’s The End of Nature is one of the must-read books of the past 20 years.
Svensker
@flukebucket:
Thank you. I was so confused.
Clark Stooksbury
Sure climate change is real, but Bjorn Borg says that we should devote our resources to sending iPads to Bangladesh.
Pongo
@Drouse: Agreed. It’s not really subtle, but for people primed to believe their own propaganda and who rely on faith-based physics, it probably seemed like a well-reasoned scientific explanation against climate change.
El Cid
None of you libruls even want to consider that the reason there’s all this hype about worse and worse tornadoes is that so Obama can use the anti-tornado hysteria to make us all register our guns.
Villago Delenda Est
@El Cid:
Not to mention force low-flow toilets and fluorescent bulbs on us.
shortstop
@flukebucket: Bwa ha ha, me, too.
shortstop
@Sarah Proud and Tall: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
shortstop
@El Cid: I’ve thought of that. Plus, a few tornadoes are an excellent pretext for setting up internment and reeducation camps “for our own safety,” doncha think? Camps that will be patrolled by predatory homosexuals, it goes without saying.
uptown
As long as it allows me to ski on Memorial Day weekend near Seattle, why should I worry?
guest
Hey, just wanted to give a heads-up that I’m still getting some errors here… HTML code appears under the header. I posted about this a week ago, and one of the commenters told me to clear my cache. That did work for the comments page, but not the home page.
Looks like this:
imageshack.us/f/197/errorsx.png/
Using Safari 5.0.5, Mac.
Terry
We have had McKibben speak to our campus planners. He is great.