QOTD: Talk About Arrogance . . .

(((John McCain, conservative? Tom DeLay, when did he get out of prison? Climate change is a political position.)))

Watching Tom DeLay talk to Chris Matthews, right now, about McCain's address to CPAC, and DeLay says,

It is arrogant to presume that man can effect [did he say affect? lol. benefit of the doubt.--jf] climate change.

This came out of DeLay's observation that McCain today did not apply conservative principles to, among other things, the issue of climate change. So Matthews couldn't resist asking, "[w]hat is the conservative position on climate change?" To which DeLay responded, "Man is not responsible for climate change," going on to say that "no science suggests" that man [sic] causes climate change, which he later adjusted to say science hasn't "proven" it.

But this is just the point. The arrogance is presuming that one can have a political position on climate change. It's like saying, the conservative position is that gravity does not exist, or that the earth is flat, or the round earth sits unmoving at the center of the universe. The mere fact that you've got some industry and ideological hacks out there obfuscating the truth about climate change, much like they do with evolution, does not make acknowledging reality arrogant. Elevating your ideological biases above sound science might be the definition of arrogance.

Being a whacko postmodernist, I'm the last person to say that science is ever free of ideology or that it is ever "pure." But there's reasonable and there's stupid. Tom DeLay is either stupid or the apotheosis of cynicism.

The upside is that he's made John McCain sound almost bearable: supports the ICC, believes we need to do something about global warming (as DeLay put it, introduce staggering regulation using global warming as an excuse), wants to shut down gun shows, etc.

And if I heard him right, he said at the end of this interview that McCain might be worse than Obama or Clinton in office. I need to check the transcript when it's out.

What a fruitcake, that guy. Jesus. And here's Chris Matthews giving him airtime. Might as well talk to Ralph Reed.

Viva Vivoleum

Sez "Shepard Wolff:"

"We've got to get ready. After all, fossil fuel development like that of my company [Exxon] is increasing the chances of catastrophic climate change, which could lead to massive calamities, causing migration and conflicts that would likely disable the pipelines and oil wells. Without oil we could no longer produce or transport food, and most of humanity would starve. That would be a tragedy, but at least all those bodies could be turned into fuel for the rest of us."

"We're not talking about killing anyone," added the "NPC rep." "We're talking about using them after nature has done the hard work. After all, 150,000 people already die from climate-change related effects every year. That's only going to go up - maybe way, way up. Will it all go to waste? That would be cruel."

And, as Exxon's Kenneth Cohen points out, with respect to Exxon's concerns about climate change, "We're very much not a denier, very much at the table with our sleeves rolled up."

tags technorati : science environment Yes Men Exxon global warming vivoleum