GOP’s “inane” war on science: Plasma physicist congressman takes on the denialists
“Millions are already dying, or have died, as a result of changes in the climate,” Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., told Salon.
I got some criticism last year, when I said “millions will die” as a result of climate change. And they said, “Oh, you’re being hysterical.” And I showed them the World Health Organization figures, and because of droughts, and agricultural disruption, and changes in diseases – disease patterns and epidemiology — millions are already dying, or have died, as a result of changes in the climate …
“I wish we could get more Americans and, hence, their representatives thinking like scientists, which means basing our conclusions on evidence.”
GOP’s “inane” war on science: Plasma physicist congressman takes on the denialists – Salon.com
A good place for scientists to start is by actually looking at the evidence. Disease wiped out most of Europe during the Little Ice Age. The Anasazi were wiped out by an 80 year drought in the 13th century. Millions of people in China were killed by a drought in 1960. The entire population of Greenland was killed by climate change during the LIA. Half of Oklahoma fled the state in the 1930’s due to heat and drought.
Holt is a typical scientific dolt, arrogantly jumping into a field he knows nothing about, and reaching nonsensical conclusions based on a half-baked examination of data he doesn’t understand the first thing about. Climate is cyclical. Only a scientific dolt would believe that he controls the climate.
more people die in January than any other month. can you guess why?
Because the deep ocean is sucking all the heat out of the atmosphere?
It’s because January has 31 days, but they are much longer days
Because it’s summer in Australia?
in the US anyway, don’t know which month down under!
Most people live in the Northern Hemisphere?
That’s a raw number. After proper adjustments, more people die in August.
Saw a stat for a large casket making company a few years ago complaining that 1st quarter profots were down because it was a milder winter! Guess they will have record profits this winter!
Tax purposes, obviously. Probably an uptick in November for those who have to file quarterly.
Steven,
Stop rocking Warren Buffett’s boat! He is grateful to climate scientists for hyping the extreme weather scare, because he is riding the gravy train …
“Buffett told CNBC March 3, that extreme weather events haven’t increased due to climate change, saying that weather events are consistent with how they were 30-50 years ago. Buffett, who is heavily invested in various insurance markets, said that climate change alarmism has simply made hurricane insurance more profitable, driving up premiums without increasing risk.”
http://cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/sean-long/warren-buffett-supposed-increase-extreme-weather-hasnt-been-true-so-far
Anybody notice the “evidence” of the Pineapple Express pounding California this week, certainly not the MSM, not a peep. Big reservoirs like Shasta and Oroville ,are rising at 1-2K acre feet per hour right now, snowing 1-2 inches and hour in the Sierras, not a peep. More to come it appears:
http://www.intellicast.com/Storm/Hurricane/PacificSatellite.aspx?animate=true
Farmers will get absolutely no water however, because O has declared drought as a matter of policy.
Oprah has that much power?
Is there a more noble cause than saving the world?
People like Dolt Holt are either deluded or so lacking in self worth they need the nobility of a world saver to feel good.
I’m thinking deluded.
I see dead ppl 🙂
“I see dumb people. Some don’t even know they’re dumb…”
How do we get scientists to think like scientists?
I got nothing. It’s a paradox.
Not with crap like this: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-giant-virus-revived-20140302,0,4662287.story#ixzz2uvwls53Y
India has a long history of drought and famine. They handle it better now because of technology, better transport, global trade, etc.
Steve,
Slight amendment required. The Norse population in Greenland perished due to the decline in temperatures during the Little Ice Age and armed conflicts with the Inuit. The Inuit remained.
Diamond, Jared M. (2006). “Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed.”
The change in climate forced the Inuit to move south. During the MWP they lived in northern Greenland, nowhere near the Norse.
Be careful of this guy. I don’t know about his Greenland story, but his account of the decline of Easter Island in the same book is a complete crock (as shown by Terry Hunt & Carl Lipo in The Statues that Walked).
With science being used as a religion, the answer boils down to separation of church and state (i.e., dogmatic consensus science and radical politics). And impeachment and criminal indictment of the radicals now ascendant in both.
This comment leads me to the idea that we need a separation of science and state.
This is to be expected, coming as it does from the “inane” co-author (along with Colorado Congressman Jared Polis) of H.R. 5101, the Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act of 2010:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h5101/show
Obviously, they saw it as their opportunity to help save us from ourselves in honor of Earth Day. And by using the government-orchestrated theft of private property, they get to save the animals, too. How warm and fuzzy!
http://www.cfact.org/a/1756/New-Congressional-initiative-to-create-wildlife-corridors
This guy is simply the latest in a long line of academic elitists-turned-politicians that aren’t satisfied to leave their ideology in the trash bin of history where it belongs. Dr. Michael Coffman warned us in 2005:
http://www.rangemagazine.com/specialreports/05-fall-taking-liberty.pdf
For the shorter version of Dr. Coffman’s work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntmyc8Ia7hA
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations. They’re the same outfit that ranked the US health care system as 37th worldwide behind coutries like Bolivia, Morrocco, and Costa Rica. They are active in forwarding the agenda of the UN, which is pedal to the metal lefist and warmist. They have no credibility on this issue.
Droughts have been around for the entire recorded history of mankind.
I spent a fair amount of time with plasma physicists over the last decades, debating the relative merits of tokamaks, laser ignition, polyhedral magnetic wells, inertial electrostatic confinement, dense plasma focus, field-reversed configurations, LENR, etc. Try discussing inertial electrostatic confinement with a tok guy and they immediately make a whole bunch of mistakes because they start from assumptions that don’t apply to the quasineutral limit, like claiming the electrons will collapse into a Debye sheath, or that ions and electrons have to move through cusps at the same rate to preserve quasineutrality.
So I don’t place a lot of faith in their ability to speak with dispassionate perspicacity on other subjects, especially issues that have a major impact on their funding.
Virtually all of the fusion money has been sucked up by tokamaks — at one point in the 1980s Livermore shut down a $300M mirror machine on the day it entered operation in order to save a tok concept that only existed on paper at the time, and was never actually built.
Tokamaks do make for a great analogy to AGW data tampering — over the decades of failed predictions of net power production, the old joke was that tokamak theory always matched experiment, but for some reason they both changed every year.
Dear Mr Holt: Did anyone starve to death because of the United States’ policy to burn 40% of its corn in its cars? Maybe that “agricultural disruption” can be fixed by feeding those affected with surplus grown in other regions.
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