It's cold out

It's a banner season for climate change denialists. With God deciding to take a look at the Mid-Atlantic and go "what if the Great Flood was frozen this time!", that unequivocally proves once and for all that because it is cold and snowing in one area, climate change is a sad, deluded, clinically disproven myth. Except, you know, when the science says the opposite. But who listens to science?

But we already knew that the science for global warming dries up the second someone, somewhere feels slightly colder than usual. But what happens when places where it's supposed to be cold are warmer than usual during periods when it's supposed to be cold? Like places where they're supposed to be holding wintry athletic competitions in the outdoors? And these places are theoretically are having to push back events, refund tickets, and helicopter in snow because of seasonal temperature highs, rain, and melting ruining said wintry athletic courses?

What ever could be the reason? Tim Gayda, the vice president of sport for the Vancouver organizing committee, do you have any idea?

Warm, wet El Niño winds from Hawaii that occasionally bring unseasonably warm weather around the region are known locally as the “pineapple express,” but the effects rarely last more than a few days.
...
“We really shattered the all-time record,” he said. “It’s El Niño, and there’s something else that nobody understands at this point. It’s El Niño Plus.”

Yes. What ever could it be? I'm assuming the proper winter Gods were not placated, or perhaps Apollo was over placated. Anyway, while Vancouver might not understand why it's events are melting or why the Olympic Committee is now openly talking about having to take climate, temperature, and other planetary heating trends into account for the future, former Olympic Games host Utah knows what it isn't.

Utah's House of Representatives apparently has at least. Officially the most Republican state in America, its political masters have adopted a resolution condemning "climate alarmists", and disputing any scientific basis for global warming.
...
The original version of the bill dismissed climate science as a "well organised and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate "tricks" related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome". It accused those seeking action on climate change of riding a "gravy train" and their efforts would "ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty".
...
By the time the final version of the bill came to a vote, cooler heats apparently prevailed. The bill dropped the word "conspiracy", and described climate science as "questionable" rather than "flawed".

It's all magic, unknowable weather, angry deities, or just patterns that somehow seems to mystically link up with the deluded conspiracy theories of crooked scientists looking to bamboozle the public and thieve money out of the lucrative endless cash pile that is climate science. Funny how it always works out that way.

I'm just glad we learned two important climate facts. Cold and snowy here means global warming is a myth no matter what actual science says. Unseasonably warm weather in a wintry place means... LOOK OVER THERE!!! *runs away*

Pride

It's been cold out recently, so you may have thought that climate change wasn't happening. I mean after all, if it's cold right where you are, right at that very moment, how can the planet be warming on a year to year basis? But still, magazines, liberal actors, and scientists continue to claim that not only is there some sort of climate problem, but that people who actively deny it and work against it are somehow bad people. The most recent of which was Rolling Stone, who published a list of the planet's 17 worst enemies from big businessmen to elected leaders to phony scientists.

Well some people aren't happy with that list. People like international laughingstock Sen. Jim Inhofe, fresh off a failed trip to Copenhagen where he was ridiculed by the foreign press and made an ass out of himself. He's mad people aren't respecting the breadth and depth of damage he's doing to this planet.

"I should have been number one," Inhofe told KFAQ radio in Tulsa. "I guess [Warren] Buffet has a lot more money so he went first."
...
"My first response was I should have been No. 1, not No. 7," he said. "I am serious about that. I have spent now literally years on this thing, and it has been a long, involved thing.''

That's pride, baby. Granted, Rolling Stone did dub him "God's Denier", but chronicling his actions does leave him a little light on accomplishments. Sure he acted like a dangerous idiot, makes claims that CO2 isn't a pollutant, thinks God will bail everyone out if he's wrong, and makes petulant stands in committee meetings. But where's the concrete action? What's he actually done? Unless he's got a massive tire fire burning out behind his Senate office it's hard to place him against billionaire industrialists and oil company execs.

But one does appreciate his commitment. Most people would be dangerously unnerved by the seeming disconnect between their statements and recorded fact, but either Sen. Inhofe was able to tamp down that conscience with industry money or he wasn't born with it in the first place. Still Jim, there's always future Rolling Stone articles on the worst climate change offenders. You can try to increase your ranking for next year, two years from now, ten years from now, or... well I'm not sure how many years we can count on either the publishing industry or the planet not collapsing, so you might have to get a move on.

Quote of the Day

The Copenhagen conference is over with a weak, toothless, non-binding, low target, do little climate agreement as our elected world betters (stop me if you've heard this one before) failed to heed obvious warnings, listen to experts, or take necessary action due to short term political calculations. The US Senate was blamed, China was blamed more, Gordon Brown claimed the talks were "held to ransom", Banksy unleashed snarky art, and Thom Yorke was apoplectic. Hope you like a Radiohead album full of melting arctic ice references and climate statistics.

But still, in Copenhagen we found out that there were still things we can learn from our European brethren that could be applied back here in the States. Oh, not about climate change. No, we're all fucked horribly. No, I'm talking about the way their press deals with horridly regressive and embarrassing climate change deniers like Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) who went to the Copenhagen conference to enact his "one man truth squad" and ended up bumming around Copenhagen for about two hours, before calling a press conference and getting heckled by the few press that bothered to even cover him.

A reporter asked: “If there’s a hoax, then who’s putting on this hoax, and what’s the motive?”

“It started in the United Nations,” Inhofe said, “and the ones in the United States who really grab ahold of this is the Hollywood elite.”

One reporter asked Inhofe if he was referring to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another reporter — this one from Der Spiegel — told the senator: “You’re ridiculous.”

Ouch. That cold shoulder was so cold that might have proved that global warming is a hoax... if the snow in Copenhagen during the summit didn't already prove that global warming was a hoax.

So, American press, would it be too much to ask that when a crazy person starts yelling bullshit about science that you'd speak up and go "You're ridiculous"? Or are will still doing that whole "Some people say that they have facts, figures, numbers, decades of research, and scientific analysis, while others say they have a notion about what God will or won't allow the planet to do. Who can say who is right?" thing? Ah well, thanks Germany for shaming Inhofe, however little his capacity for shame is. Thanks for treating him like a buffoon. Here he's treated like an important man with considerable power... which he is. It's incredibly sad.

Dance, Tuvalu, dance. We are displeased!

The Copenhagen Summit has certainly been an entertaining event. I mean where else can you see God strike down climate change denier Henrik Svensmark with a pacemaker malfunction... on live TV? Sorry Henrik, that rejection of science is going to have to include all science, including medical science. The Lord doth command it.

Or how about Africa standing up to developed countries to preserve the Kyoto protocols? Just for that we're going to ignore the next three genocides, you guys.

I mean where else are you going to get to witness a country beg for it's life?


Tuvalu delegate Ian Fry:

It appears that we are waiting for some senators in the U.S. Congress to conclude before we can consider this issue properly. It is an irony of the modern world that the fate of the world is being determined by some senators in the U.S. Congress.

Quit bitching. If you didn't want Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson to control whether your and other low-lying island nations slowly drown to death or not, then you shouldn't have elected them Global Climate Overlords. Frankly what have you offered them other than an impassioned plea that "The fate of my country rests in your hands"? That talk doesn't fill up campaign coffers with cash.

Call us when you get some people, Tuvalu. But because we are generous and benevolent in our negligence, we have requisitioned some very nice life-vests for you in the likely event the Senate fails to act. You're welcome.

Chart of the day

As if you needed a reminder, the Awl looks at major newspaper circulation since 1990 and finds that airplanes fall flaming from the sky in less deadly trajectories than the American print news industry. But hey, I'm sure they'll fix everything somehow and get those numbers moving up.

Not pictured: the Boston Globe. Because a chart can only be so tall when describing horrific downward spirals. Just know that the Globe started out on the bottom of the chart and quickly fell of the fahkin face of the fahkin earth. No one denies this! Also of note: you can see your house from the top of the LA Times circulation in 1990.

Let it go, James

Anyone else notice how much better Jim Cramer is at responding to Jon Stewart's criticism when Jon Stewart isn't in the room? Here's The Jimmy on today's Morning Joe, telling his buddy Scarborough how badly he totally whooped that misguided satirist's ass and shit.