Climate change - it's not real, but all a European plot!

[mandragora]

Was listening to the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning whilst getting ready for work.

Amongst the matters being discussed with the Bush re-election was the impact on the environment. The Bush Government spokesperson who was trotted out was very dismissive of climate change. It's not going to be at all damaging you see. The vast majority of the world's scientists have greatly exaggerated the effects, including the British Chief Scientist who isn't an expert on the climate. Although no doubt he's very competent in his field...

And the reason why the vast majority of scientists have been exaggerating the effects of climate change? Well, it's because none of them are independent. They're all in the pay of their particular government, who fund their research. It's only in the good old US of A where you get truly independent scientists who are in the pay of Big Business.

And, when asked by a somewhat bemused interviewer what all the other countries in the world (assuming that they *all* have scientists who are *all* funded by their respective governments, of course) could possibly hope to gain by exaggerating the effect of pollution, climate change, global warming etc, given that it's going to be bloody expensive, difficult and damaging to the world economy to counteract. Assuming that we even can counteract it. What do you think the response was by the Bush Government spokesman?

Go on, take a wild guess.

It was... it's all a plot by those nasty Europeans to do in the American economy. Presumably because, as America is the world's biggest polluter, it's going to have to spend the most money to try and improve the situation. And that will divert precious money from going where it *really* matters, into the pockets of the obscenely rich who own most of America-- Ahem. I mean, away from the deserving American voters. Presumably, all of those who voted for Bush.

And that's why the vast majority of the world's scientists, in fact pretty much all of them who aren't funded by Big American Companies, are lying to us about climate change. They all want to ensure that precious monies are diverted from the innocent God-fearing American taxpayer into the pockets of the scheming, nefarious Europeans.

Yes, all of the scientists. They're all lying to us. Even the ones from Japan and Canada and Russia and Chile and Argentina and South Africa and Australia and Egypt and-- oh hell, you get the picture.

God. The insanity.

Comments

[eleanorb.livejournal.com]

Yep, non-US science is just one big conspiracy run by god hating gay pinko scum - especially those damn Europeans with their Old World culture :-)

What's worse is of course there are US scientists saying the same thing but they tend to lose their funding, their reputations and eventually end up taking their expertise to places like Canada. In international terms it's damaging US scientific research massively but they can't see it.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I do not have the words...

[filenotch.livejournal.com]

Kerry wins, by state, correlate to the education level, by state.

Need I say more. We have a faith-based presidency, and "reality" need not apply.

[keletkezes.livejournal.com]

Half of it's natural global warming anyway so I say we all shut up and get on with trying to do away with money in the first place.

Maybe that's my Commie-Stuident attitude coming in...

[suilven.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that Mandragora. I missed that as I was flying back from the good old US of A on that morning. I did have many, many wonderful conversations with Americans leading up to the election. However, safe to say that any time I raised Kyoto...I got a puzzled look in return, similar to the kind of look you might find in a patient who had been unconscious for fifteen years and didn't know it. Oh, that thing, the majority would say, as though dimly in their minds they remembered hearing something about this thing called Kyoto... Some were very open to discussing it and some were, well, best that can be said, very 'Bushlike'. But, given that you are referring to a government spokesman, well it is just stunning, stupefyingly stunning.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

...which totally explains why the liberal college professors in America want to do in the American economy. Right. So do the environmentalists (because really, people WANT to believe we're destroying the environment! They do this because they're contrary pinko scum who hate America!).

(Granted, the professor I had who was most doom-and-gloom on the environment also thought the world would end last Easter -- sort of the Hopi equivalent of the Rapture. But he did bring up valid points, albeit in a wacko manner.)

[msagara.livejournal.com]

No, it's not insanity.

You, you understand, are just part of the reality-based world. Whereas the Bush administration isn't.

Just in case you don't read on-line papers, or Making Light, where most of the article was discussed, let me quote (sorry for taking up the space)

… In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend—but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

So. What else could you possibly expect? Reality?