This is so fucking tragic.
Blogger posts parody global warming denial video. The Heartland Institute, the premier global warming denialist outfit, posts it – in all seriousness – on their website. I don’t know whether to bawl or lawl.
Understand the position these people are in: 18 months after the fucking American Association of Petroleum Geologists gave up pretending there was any serious doubt about the issue, with “no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate“, they still have to put up something to justify their existence. Gregg Easterbrook has given up. Ron Bailey can’t go on … well, alright, obviously Ron Bailey can go on, but at least now he’s all super-defensive about it. Alexander Cockburn is still manning the ramparts, but yeesh. So, you take what you can get. And what you can get is, mostly, abuse. It’s quite sad, really.
February 5, 2009 at 2:30 am
Magic.
February 5, 2009 at 2:57 am
The average Republican will except a snow storm in New Orleans as incontrovertible evidence that Global Warming is just a conspiracy to __________.
February 5, 2009 at 8:03 am
Actually, when I saw my video being put up on Heartland’s site, for a moment I considered adding some annotations to the video just to confuse them. In the end however, I decided to simply leave it as is, and let the video say it all.
February 5, 2009 at 9:29 am
A thing of beauty.
February 5, 2009 at 10:57 am
Well, they still have award-winning funny man Steven Crowder, so there’s something.
February 5, 2009 at 11:06 am
frankbi with the strong bid for today’s internet win.
February 5, 2009 at 11:27 am
Well played, frankbi!
February 5, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Yeah, well those “scientists” laugh at the idea that dinosaurs walked with men, but the Bible says it’s true, so there!
February 5, 2009 at 12:54 pm
So, THI is having a conference, which will be attended by “approximately 1,000 scientists, economists, policy experts, elected officials, and civic and business leaders.” I wonder what the ratio of scientists to civic/business leaders will be?
And I am in awe, frankbi….
February 5, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Cockburn’s being an absolute idiot here. He thinks he’s being more revolutionarily leftist by being all “Ha, Global Warming from Fat Rich Man Al Gore,” when the real leftist would be calling for a transformation of the world economy to ecological revolutionary socialism to stop the plague of destruction wrought by mindless industrialism.
But then, he’s probably stuck in stupid-ass “Marxist” mode where you fetishisize capitalism and industry for its transformative power, on the theory that it will remake the peasantry into the proletariat and then the proletariat into the class which takes over once it is properly led into class consciousness.
Not that I ever read stuff which talked like that.
February 5, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Algore is fat,man….
That was a real knee-slapper frankbi, lemme tellya. I was truly LMAO, even if I wasn’t you know, actually, technically, ROF.
February 5, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Without a raspberry tongue emoticon at the end, how could they possibly know it as a spoof?
February 5, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Best. Pwned. EVAR.
February 5, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Excellent use of Holst’s “The Planets.”
Man’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in man’s soul. And without considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible and says: “This is the cause!” In historical events. My unkle Vasha used to say.
February 5, 2009 at 5:18 pm
http://abbott.thefreelibrary.com/Flatland
February 5, 2009 at 5:58 pm
“My unkle Vasha used to say.”
Thus spake Vashathustra.
February 5, 2009 at 6:13 pm
– Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, in an interview with The Hotline.
You know they can dig themselves a nice little hole if their insurgency is as eloquent as that statement.
February 5, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Maybe they’ll go all in, and start calling themselves the Republiban.
February 6, 2009 at 2:37 am
secondharmonic, blogenfreude, Grace Nearing, et al.: Thanks all!
Todd:
The music I used was actually from Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. But Mars is one really cool piece too. :)
Grace Nearing:
That’ll be a really good question, I think…
February 6, 2009 at 6:56 am
Gore the Fat will be most pleased!
February 6, 2009 at 1:47 pm
This message is a test of the proxy system. Sorry to bother all ya’ll
February 6, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Wow that is the first time I have successfully commented in, like, six-plus months.
In light of the fact I might not be able to post for another six months, could anyone please tell me what the name of the Mooni (i.e. Korean-father crazed religious leader) media outlet is with a Pan-Asian name?
I saw a comment some time ago with this info, but sadly neglected to memorize the name…its important, could someone help me out?
February 6, 2009 at 4:44 pm
“These people need our help”?
They’re not getting anything from ME.
February 6, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Other species : we’ll miss them after they’re gone.
Cf: Chad Oliver, “King of the Hill” in Harlan Ellison’s 1972 Again, Dangerous Visions
February 6, 2009 at 8:39 pm
God Dammit That Todd is one ignorant, pompous, asshole.
February 6, 2009 at 8:45 pm
My Senator Jim Inhofe shouldn’t be left off the list of those still fighting the bad fight on this one. He’s the only thing standing between us and a vicious Weather Channel conspiracy to jack up their ad revenue!
February 7, 2009 at 12:34 pm
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February 7, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Magic. Yes indeedy. Time is sort of magical, and I guess time will only tell on the g. w. thing. I guess we have to wait untill the history books are written. (‘Cux, I can’t ruin that for y’all, you know time pairadoxousness and all.) Hopefully you are all right and we don’t go and spend 1.6 trillion in less than a year back in ‘aught nine. ‘Cux if we did and we’ze still paying for it in the fabulous 50′s and our 20/20 hindsight is still working we’d feel pretty stupid… But then what is 1.6 thillion dollarz when, you know, incontrevertible evidence that we all agree is correct says that something bad will happen if you know, we like venture out into the luminiferous aether of outar spaaaace to observe the tiny holes in the crystal roof of the sky that allow the rain to fall on the flat earth, as everyone knowingly agrees is the way the Lord’s Created Universe works, in a scientifical manner, anyhow… That luminiferous aether is scientifically proven to be the way electrical stuff works and such. Anyhow, everyone who’s anyone agrees… I have once again come back from the future to warn you all of how great it is in the future. You’re doing great! Hey, I just Wiki-ed ‘luminiferous aether,’ what’s this stuff about ‘superseded scientific theories?’ I must be in the wrong pan-demonshinal time-line… Where I come from, science is always right, all the time, especially when we all agree on how it works. It is difficult to explain… But then I am a scientist, and it is frequently difficult to adequately explain these things to non-scientists. Which is unfortunate for you stuck here in this pan-demonshinal time-line, where I come from (and where I scientifically created my PBR powered time-machine) anyone with an opinion is qualified and doctorfied whith an PhD of Scientificness and is thus allowed to vote on the reality we form and exist in. It is truly wonderful where I come from, we don’t have this separation of science into ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ (althogh our porn like yours is split this way). We don’t have your strange political mating dances where you pretend to hate each other but secretly pine for each other when you are apart… But anyhow, I’m going back to my reality now, ‘bye! Oh, crap, I think I said something that fowled up the pan-demonshinal time-line, and now I am stuck here… THis is going to suck… I hope you can understank my futour speek, I cain’t quite seem to master your quaint dialecht. But seriously, this is going to suck.
February 7, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Film at eleven.
February 8, 2009 at 1:52 pm
I haven’t bothered to look lately, but not that long ago Hinderaker was still pushing the “winter weather means global warming is BS” line.
February 8, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Feel the Heat
February 9, 2009 at 3:45 am
The latest Reagan Administration weirdo blog
http://valsword.spaces.live.com/
February 10, 2009 at 8:28 am
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/02/10/dodds_approval_sinks_to_new_low.html
Haters. What are you going to do? I can’t remember the last time a long-time multi-elected Senator came back from a Presidential campaign less popular then when he started, but the people in CT know the financial services industry, and perhaps they think Dodd has been deficient some how as chair of Banking, because the American Banking system went down with a massive circulatory aka heart failure, and time is muscle. I’m sure Geihtner has it on lock down. If the bond market goes, we all go. Mommy!
February 10, 2009 at 3:39 pm
When dumb videos are meaningful:
When Lee Geddy wasn’t, no, not everywhere, but sounded like he was out there between Rush and Supertramp and the 80s gleaming in the eye of 77-78, pouring fear and hope in the unsuspecting and the yearning (you know who you are, o yearners)
Ken owes me now. A snippet of sideburn DNA will do.