Colbert Now Accepts Science of Climate Change, But ‘Problem is Too Big to Cure, Just Give Up’

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On Monday’s Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert brilliantly exposed the core of the Rightwing’s denial of climate science. Once you accept the scientific evidence, he suggests, you might feel compelled for a minute to do something about it, but there are just too many people who are profiting off what we are doing now. Plus, it all sounds very hard.

“Sure, I know America beat Tojo, we crushed Hitler, we put a man on the moon. But incrementally reducing C02 emissions? That sounds like a lot of work.”

Colbert has a better idea. Just have another piece of “cheese cake, crawl in to bed, and wait for death”…

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Colbert Now Accepts Science of Climate Change, But ‘Problem is Too Big to Cure, Just Give Up’

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5 Responses

  1. 1)
    John Farnham said on 2/1/2013 @ 9:31am PT: [Permalink]

    “Rightwing’s denial of climate science”
    I don’t think it is possible to more bluntly state that the ‘Denier’ epithet has to do with politics – not science. If you wanted to note actual science, then you would know that science considers a range of possibilities and conditions rather than a “go – no go” meme. Nor would a model with real world application ignore background conditions.
    Have some decent articles to criticize.
    http://www.wnd.com/files/2012/08/moncktonCO2.pdf
    http://science.nasa.gov/science...an_sunclimate/
    http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/ice...f_climate.html

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    2)
    Brad Friedman said on 2/1/2013 @ 1:38pm PT: [Permalink]

    John Farnham @ 1:

    You have the temerity to claim to want to “note actual science” and then you offer those three links to support your argument for “background conditions”? Really?

    Okay, let’s go one-by-one in order of credibility of each link.

    –> http://science.nasa.gov/science...an_sunclimate/

    Did you even bother to read the story you linked to? It specifically says that the 11-year solar cycle referred to is not believed to have an effect on Global Warming:

    The NRC report suggests…that the influence of solar variability is more regional than global.

    “If there is indeed a solar effect on climate, it is manifested by changes in general circulation rather than in a direct temperature signal.” This fits in with the conclusion of the IPCC and previous NRC reports that solar variability is NOT the cause of global warming over the last 50 years.

    –> http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/ice...f_climate.html

    This older report by Richard Muller, the Koch-funded scientist and former Global Warming skeptic is belied by his own more recent study, published last year, finding, among other things (in his own words):

    CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

    My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

    Finally…

    –> http://www.wnd.com/files/2012/08/moncktonCO2.pdf

    Now, it’s not that I don’t believe a pretend “news site” (WND), which makes it money off of claims that the President is not an American citizen and that his birth certificate is fake, can’t offer credible information once in a while. Or that the man (Monckton) who authored the paper you cite, and who previously declared, “there is only one way to stop AIDS. … quarantine all carriers of the disease for life. … all those found to be infected with the virus, even if only as carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently”, and who is funded by mining and coal companies, and who (literally) compares climate scientists to Nazis in his presentations, is a discredited climate science denier. The problem here is none of those.

    The problem with the link you cite by the discredited Monckton at the discredited WND, is that it has nothing to do with “background conditions” for Global Warming as you present in your comment above.

    If you bothered to even read the abstract for the article you cited (or, hell, even just the title of it!) you’d see that the paper is about whether or not CO2 mitigation policies are cost effective.

    Seriously, you denier folks need to try much harder. Or, you can just keep copying and pasting shit that someone else told you to copy and paste without even bothering to spend 30 seconds actually looking into any of it.

  3. 3)
    Ernest A. Canning said on 2/1/2013 @ 2:33pm PT: [Permalink]

    Oh, come on Brad. Why do you try to confuse John Farnham with all those facts?

    Why disturb the cozy feeling he gets from already having his mind made up?

    After all, isn’t the whole purpose of swallowing the climate science denial propaganda pill to be found in the fact that it provides comfort in the belief that all is well?

  4. 4)
    tom rogers said on 2/2/2013 @ 12:54pm PT: [Permalink]

    My b-day is on the 5th, but the take-down performed on the first commenter is a wee giftee, indeed. I wish we had more Brads calling out mindless parrots like this.

  5. 5)
    leftisbest said on 2/3/2013 @ 4:03am PT: [Permalink]

    Funny how Farnham hasn’t responded to your comments. I guess he’s just in a stupor after reading your excellent take-down on his stupid references. Thanks for everything you do to call people on their act – especially on such important topics.

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