Americans are willfully ignorant. If you give any credence to science whatsoever, you know global warming is happening. If you have eyes and nerve endings, you can see it and feel it. And yet, we somehow dismiss this crisis, this global emergency, as something we'll either think our way out of or Jesus will take care of. But what if Jesus' way of taking care of it is to slowly turn up the thermostat until we take a hint and get off our asses?
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 65 percent of America's mainland is experiencing some form of drought. In Michigan, hay has gotten so expensive people are abandoning their horses. In Colorado, Parks and Wildlife officials have had to destroy 30 "nuisance" bears because they've encroached on populated areas looking for food. In Missouri, over-dry soil is shifting, causing homes to crumble and crack. In New Mexico, ranchers are cutting their neighbors' fences so their cattle can graze. In Texas, water is so scarce Rick Perry’s been forced to grind up and snort his painkillers.
"Droughts, floods, hurricanes and other extreme weather cost the U.S. economy at least $55 billion in 2011, according to NOAA, with 14 separate events exceeding $1 billion. The devastating drought and associated wildfires in Texas and Oklahoma alone cost American crop farmers $7.6 billion and the cotton and cattle industries around $5.4 billion."There's a real, measurable economic cost. You'd think, for no other reason, greed would compel us to adjust how we live and make money in a way that would allow us to, well, continue to live and make money.
12 comments:
Would it be possible to meet you in person for a half hour or so to discuss some of your views and opinions on some prominent topics with which our country deals. I know you are a very busy person, but I watch your show and like your ideas and wanted to get your input on some issues I am trying to better understand. If so, please respond via katia31984@yahoo.com.
Once again you said it perfectly. I think the global warming deniers are directly descended from the sun goes around the earth people.
But why do you continuously invite these anti GMO fools onto your show, Bill? How about for once you bring a scientist like you do for global warming...you know maybe one who works for the NIH or a Geneticist from UCLA. No, that's crazy to ask somebody who actually studies the things...instead bring on the guy from whole foods who stands to make millions from the ridiculous "warning."
Going after biotech, drug, and chemical companies as a whole is an attack on science much worse than what the global warming people do. Please make a distinction between the executives at these companies who are only out to make a buck, and the people who dedicate their lives trying to develop technology that has the potential to save millions of lives.
Americans are willfully ignorant. If you give any credence to science whatsoever, you know global warming is happening. If you have eyes and nerve endings, you can see it and feel it. And yet, we somehow dismiss this crisis, this global emergency, as something we'll either think our way out of or Jesus will take care of. But what if Jesus' way of taking care of it is to slowly turn up the thermostat until we take a hint and get off our asses?
Dude...
This is just all entertainment to be exploited by your show. If it wasn't why in the fuck would you give Ann Coulter time spew her unadulterated ignorance?
Seriously, don't bitch about the things that are making you rich...
...either that or clean up your act so that those of us who are not "willfully ignorant" can take you seriously, and get a show on PBS.
All that said, you're a great entertainer... but then, so was Dennis Miller and Rush Limbaugh.
Bill,
I enjoy your show, and I agree with you on political and social issues. Americans are not only ignorant about climate change, they are ignorant about politics, and most everything else. Those that support the GOP are either wealthy and selfish, thus protecting their interests, or they are pathetic and fucking moronic ignorant fools, that will vote away their future just to stick it to the black guy. That round faced moron that was on your last show is a fucking idiot. Between religion and the GOP, America is bound to screw itself into a self induced state of class-ism. As a member of the Democratic Central Committee, I would love to be on your show, and tell the GOP (factually)just how fucked up they really are. Keep up the good work, you are a voice of reason.
You made us aware of the republican bubble. Now imagine a religious fundamentalist republican... a double bubble!
Bill, I wish you knew what you were talking about.
It's true that co2 is a greenhouse gas. Do you understand the greenhouse effect? If you did and we were speaking, Id ask you how an invisible gas causes the greenhouse effect, and you'd be stymied unless you knew something about the nature of light. If you could justify your beliefs that far, I'd ask you how scientists could go about proving climate change definitively, and you'd be stymied again unless you knew something about the scientific process and statistical analysis, which are the things that prevent scientists from putting an end to this debate once and for all. It's just too big of a system, we don't have enough past evidence and it's not possible to rule out all other possible causes. You laugh at the mention of sunspots, but that's an argument that defeats climate change theory in the forum of scientific debate, because it prevents a statistical analysis that excludes absolutely all other possible causes of warming. You can't be an honest scientist and make the leap from correlation to causality until you do exclude all other possible causes, and we think it's the damned sun that causes ice ages. The best evidence we as humans have is from the Little Ice Age, which you probably know from the cover of Led Zeppelin IV. Basically, the best you're going to get is a pile of evidence that would be sufficient to prove through the scientific process that climate change is real, but you're not going to see the exclusion of all other possible causes in your lifetime. You might see evidence on a global scale that a reduction in the release of co2 correlates to a slowing of warming or even a turnaround.
So, for those of us who refuse to believe anything we can't see for ourselves, at least on a professional basis (for me a personal philosophy), it pains some of us to have an ally in the opinion that climate change is real who came to his beliefs by way of blind faith. I don't understand why people believe things they haven't brought themselves to believe through logical deduction. Once you leap to faith your beliefs become nothing but dogma. If you believe in evolution but you don't understand it, you're no different than those people who don't believe in evolution because they don't understand it or because their priest says it's not fact. Your priests are scientists, but you don't understand their process and because of that you demand more from them than the scientific process and statistical analysis allows, like some dumb farmer praying for rain and going to see his priest to ask why god isn't answering.
But I'm a fan and I agree with you on most things. The difference is I know why.
Bill
This may be more philosophy than science (not sure because I know very little about philosophy), but it seems that it is mostly the people who believe in heaven, those who intend to look back some years in the future to see the world they left behind, that care the least about that world.
Conversely, we godless liberals seem to be the ones who care about the effects of global climate change even though we are confident that we will never have the temporal Hubbel telescope experience.
Perhaps a more salient rebuttal might be "your great grandchildren will be knocking over your tombstone and dancing on your grave, praising their current god that people like you no longer walk the earth." Or "there exist at least 50 people that I know of that are keeping a list of names and a database of clips of everyone that is publicly denying gcc, so that when the shit really starts hitting the fan in about 8 years, and the sheep really get pissed off and want to kill someone, there will be a handy list ready."
and while I'm here...
Dear Liberal 'Scientist':
it is not an attack on science, rather it is an attack on the 'busy-ness men' that control what they discover. GMO Can be safe, but when under the control of people that know more about Exxon and exons, they almost certainly Won't be.
Dear Anonymous 'Its not real until all other possibilities have been dis-proven':
Thanks for sharing your profound lack of understanding of how science and society coexist- there is currently a greater understanding of how gcc works than how gravity does; but i suppose we should stop pretending that gravity is real until we've dis-proven the invisible string theory. But you really miss the point, if the science is wrong on this (currently believed to be around 1%)- GREAT!! But if it's right (the other 99%) and we do nothing, well, at least idiot bloggers will die too...
(* Exxon than exons...)
John McNeil,
If you can't spot the internet moron who thinks he's debating on a national stage...
check this out http://climaterealityproject.org/
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