Or…
Can Joe Barton and his peer group be really that Stupidparty
or is something else going on?
“It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.”
(OK so for some it is pure stupidity)
When I was a teenager, and sometime prior to 1980 – I remember that a scientific consensus had emerged that certain products were most likely very harmful to the Ozone layer. I quickly learned why the Ozone layer was so important. Evidently this was a relatively simple problem to fix. Apparently one Company, DuPont was the primary culprit and I guess regulations were eventually necessary to prevent DuPont from initiating a worldwide Catastrophe. At the time I immediately did what I could – Instead of using aerosol deodorant I switched to roll on. Hardly a big sacrifice.
Sometime in the late seventies I became aware that Scientists (in this case Climatologists) had reached an overwhelming consensus that increasing levels of various Greenhouse gasses was leading to Global Warming that would eventually lead to awful consequences for all living creatures. Many if not most of these actual and projected increases in such gasses were being produced as a result of human activity.
At the time Jimmy Carter, being a President with an impressive intellect, tried to get this issue some traction. He also realized that US growing dependence on Middle Easter oil would pose serious long term problems for the US economy (The Oil Cartel nations had already experimented with holding the world economy hostage). But now tragedy strikes, a tragedy that would doom the American economy to suffer from various Wars, the radicalization of Islam and Trillions of dollars of US taxpayer dollars being diverted away from important needs such a Education, Healthcare and basic Infrastructure.
The tragedy in question was the Iran Hostage Crisis. Jimmy Carter did eventually resolve the crisis, the hostages being released safely and with out having to declare war on Iran – their release came politically too late for Jimmy Carter. Carter was blamed for the military’s botched rescue effort. I am not a military man, but as I understand it helicopters can be quite unreliable, especially under stressful conditions. Evidently the mission failed as result of not having a spare helicopter after one crashed. This was a lesson that the military (or the Presidency) had learned by the time of the Bin Laden take down. The military had screwed up, but Carter lost the election and so set off a chain of the Catastrophic Economic and Climate warming events.
If the United States had adopted an intelligent energy policy then all such wars would have been unnecessary, the US taxpayer would not have had to fund the very parties that would seek to terrorize America. America would not have needed to have a military presence in Saudi Arabia, which eventually turned Bin Laden from being an ally of US foreign policy to a sworn enemy. After Jimmy Carter, it was the Oil Companies that were in charge of energy policy – to such an extreme that when George Bush Jr. tasked Dick Chaney (an Oil executive) to revamp an energy policy – the committee met in secret and only oil executives were invited to the table. Putting the oil Industry in charge of Energy policy would be the equivalent of putting DuPont in charge of Ozone oversight.
Of course this is all fine with the Stupidparty. They see no problem. Stupidparty don’t care. So before analyzing the Stupidparty (non) thinking on this, by spending some time looking at Congressman Joe Barton – lets just look at some very simple facts:
First let’s go back to the comments about heat trapping gasses that cause Global Warming:
Now remember that decades ago Climatologists predicted that this would happen and also predicted that would cause global temperature to rise.
So what happens next? These are the predictions using various scenarios, the scenario’s are dependent on the level of Stupidparty we are all willing to tolerate.
So how will our planet change?
Projected changes in global average temperatures under three emissions scenarios (rows) for three different time periods (columns). Changes in temperatures are relative to 1961-1990 averages. The scenarios come from the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios: B1 is a low emissions scenario, A1B is a medium-high emissions scenario, and A2 is a high emissions scenario. Source: NRC (2010)
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/future.html
Articles supporting Global warming v Articles Rejecting Global Warming:
Joe Barton, is the longstanding Congressman for the 6th Congressional district in Texas. In 2012 144,892 of the residents of this district once again decided that Joe was their man.
Of passing interest is that fact that this district was going to be the site for the super conductor collider, the world largest particle accelerator, to look for stuff such as black holes. The project was cancelled in 1993 as a result of budgetary problems (deficits) created by eight years of Reagonomics – the Stupidparty godfather of fiscal discipline. Either that or why spend $12,000,000,000 (having already spent #2,000,000,000) to look for objects that exist right next door. Now Geneva is the host of the Hadron collider.
Joe Barton is the Ranking member and former Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee.
Steven Chu. At the time of his appointment as Energy Secretary, he was a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where his research was concerned primarily with the study of biological systems at the single molecule level. Previously, he had been a professor of physics at Stanford University. He is a vocal advocate for more research into renewable energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combating climate change.
While it is highly unlikely that any one in Congress is quite as smart as Steven Chu, this was never going to daunt Joe Barton, who has a staff of researchers at his disposal. Joe Barton is desperate to please his Stupidparty disciples and his oil Industry paymasters. It is worth noting at this point that Joe Barton has received $1.7m for Oil and gas plus $1.5m from Electric Utilities*. So Joe and his people must have been so excited when they came up with there dream gotcha question for public enemy number one, a supremely smart Nobel prize winning Scientist occupying a key cabinet seat in the Obama administration: *http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cid=N00005656&cycle=Career
Barton: Dr Chu, I don’t want to leave you out. You’re our scientist. I have one simple question for you in the last six seconds. How did all the oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic Ocean?
Chu: (Laughs) This is a complicated story, but oil and gas is the result of hundreds of millions of years of geology and in that time also the plates have moved around. And so, it’s a combination of where the sources of the oil and gas…
Barton: Isn’t it obvious that at one time it was a lot warmer in Alaska and on the North Pole? It wasn’t a big pipeline that we’ve created from Texas and shipped it up there and put it under ground so we can now pump it up?
Chu: No, there are continental plates that have been drifting around throughout the geological ages.
Barton: So it just drifted up there.
Chu: Uh…That’s certainly what happened. It’s a result of things like that.
Chairman: The gentleman’s time has expired.
Remember that Chu had six seconds to explain tectonic plates to some one who had no interest in listening. But he did actually manage to fit in the answer, immediately and gracefully. Does this answer help Joe Barton and his team? Evidently not, as he later tweeted the following: “I seem to have baffled the Energy Sec with basic question – Where does oil come from?” So oblivious did Joe Barton remain that the YouTube video of the exchange was proudly headlined on his webpage. This of course makes sense if you are seeking the votes of Stupidparty disciples.
But do not think that such intellectual prowess is a mere flash in the pan.
At a 2007 House hearing, Barton explained to Al Gore that global warming increased greenhouse gases, not the other way around. He added: “You’re not just a little off. You’re totally wrong.” At a hearing in 2009, Barton dismissed Gore’s warnings about climate change as “alarmist predictions.”
At a hearing last year, as Time‘s Jay Newton-Small and Katy Steinmetz remind us, Barton suggested that wind is a “finite resource” and that trying to harness it could “slow the winds down” and in turn “cause the temperature to go up.”
At another hearing a few weeks later, he argued that the best way to deal with global warming is to adapt to it, like the Brits and Vikings did when the Ice Age came along. Here, thanks to Aaron Wiener, writing for the Washington Independent, is more pure Joe including an example of humans adapting to climate change being that Congrees speaks English rather than Norwegian.http://washingtonindependent.com/35892/rep-joe-barton-global-warming-no-problem-well-adapt
(Barton is the person behind a political action committee called the Texas Freedom Fund that funnels campaign contributions from oil execs and lobbyists to candidates who’d rather not be seen taking money from Big Oil. One recent recipient of Texas Freedom cash is a Republican named Tim Griffin, who’s running for Congress in Arkansas. Howie Klein, writing for The Huffington Post, provides some background 🙂
“Most of us became familiar with Griffin around the time of the 2000 election when he worked as an opposition research director for Bush. His job, to smear Al Gore, was covered in Peter Marshall’s BBC documentary Digging the Dirt, and viewers got the impression, which over the years has proven correct, that he is one of the slimiest and least trustworthy rogues to mount the political stage in our lifetime.”
Elsewhere I argue that places that are heavily religious tend to be less fact driven. The following is a good example of why this correlation probably exists.
Barton then cited the biblical Great Flood as an example of climate change not caused by man. (May be Barton should spend more time pondering how Noah and his family crew of seven would have had time to feed, clean out the pooh, and water all those animals every day, animals who must have been living in quite cramped conditions)
And of course once you start talking gibberish and start getting plaudits from Stupidparty disciples, then there is no stopping ever more absurd analogies.
“So if you put 20,000 marathoners into a confined area, you could consider that a single source of pollution, and you could regulate it,” Barton says. “The key would be whether the EPA said that 20,000 people running the same route was one source or not.”
http://grist.org/article/2010-06-24-gop-has-forgiven-joe-barton-six-reasons-not-to-forget-him/
Fred Upton.
In 2010 Fred Upton is the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. What is notable about Fred Upton is how is views on the Climate had suddenly changed. Even though he is from Michigan and receives significant funds from the Auto Industry, he always appeared to have a reasonable position on the Climate and on Energy issues. His Website once stated “I strongly believe that everything must be on the table as we seek to reduce carbon emissions.” In April 2009, he maintained that “climate change is a serious problem that necessitates serious solutions. Everything must be on the table.”
In 2007 he co-sponsored the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. This act mandated phased-in energy efficiency standards for most light bulbs. This act was signed into Law by George Bush. Fred Upton said that that the legislation, would “help preserve energy resources and reduce harmful emissions, all while saving American families billions of dollars on their electric bills.” (Hard to bicker about that).
But by 2010 he was quickly becoming a full fledged loyalist to the Stupidparty. By late 2010 he was co authoring a Wall Street Journal editorial saying he was not convinced that “carbon is a problem in need of regulation. He starts trying to weaken EPA regarding the clean air act. He is the co-sponsor, with Ed Whitfield, of the “Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011”
Due to this U-turn on his environmental beliefs, the Los Angeles Times wrote in 2011 that Upton “represents one of the biggest threats to planet Earth on planet Earth.
So what could explain this? Perhaps the following:
1) The further you sink into the belly of the Stupidparty the less light you see.
2) Hate Radio etc: Upton has been criticized for not being conservative enough by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, FreedomWorks, Right to Life of Michigan, and the Southwest Michigan Tea Party Patriots. (WIKI)
3) Political pressure from the really silly arm of the Stupidparty In 2011, Hoogendyk met with the Club for Growth, a fiscally conservative 501(c)4 organization, about running against Upton in a rematch in 2012
4) The corrupting power of money:
Follow the Money Fred Upton received from Oil and Gas – by 2010 he is persuaded.
This might be a good time to temporarily remove tongue from cheek. It is only fair to point out that people like Joe Barton might not be quite so stupid – even if that label does give them an ethical escape clause. You see before Joe Barton’s stint consulting for Atlantic Richfield Oil and Gas he had actually earned a B.S. in Industrial engineering, which would indicate that he can put $2 +$2 together. As hinted to, the real reasons may simply be more
related to the corrupting power of money, with out which he can not win elections. So if Joe Barton is indeed quite smart, let’s look at the likely morality /motives for his actions.
Top Industries during Career:
The discussion regarding the corrupting and destructive power of money and its ability to negate Democracy is something that I will only touch on tangentially at this point.
But perhaps being morally corrupt about the planet is the second largest sin that can be committed by a politician – (the largest crime being to mislead a nation into a War that could have been avoided) the costs of an absurd energy policy are massive and the key point is that the Stupidparty is caught in a circular argument. “Well we want our Freedoms to rape and pillage the planet, but we want to be free to not pay the consequences – thus we must deny that there are consequences”
2010 Stupidparty Congress and the Environment
Database of Anti-Environment Votes in the 112th Congress
Committee on Energy and Commerce, Democratic Staff
In the 112th Congress, the House of Representatives voted 317 times to block action to address climate change, to halt efforts to reduce air and water pollution, to undermine protections for public lands and coastal areas, and to weaken the protection of the environment in other ways.
Click here for a report released by the Democratic staff of the Energy and Commerce. See below for a searchable database of the anti-environment votes.
Total Anti-Environment Votes Under GOP House Majority in the 112th Congress:
317
Votes targeted at the Environmental Protection Agency: 145
Votes to block actions that prevent pollution: 137
Votes targeted at the Department of Energy: 55
Votes to defund or repeal clean energy initiatives: 57
Votes to promote offshore drilling: 47
Votes to dismantle the Clean Air Act: 95
Votes targeted at the Department of the Interior: 81
Votes to undermine protections for public lands and wilderness: 67
Votes to block actions that address climate change: 53
Votes to dismantle the Clean Water Act: 38
http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?q=legislative-database-anti-environment&legislation=All&topic=All&statute=All&agency=All
Last Updated November 14, 2012
97% of Climatologists believe in human – caused global Warming.
Koch backed non think thinks tanks have tried to discredit this notion, relying on splitting hairs about how to define how certain such climatologists are, knowing that 100% certainty is not a trap Scientists fall into.
“As if the backing of NASA, 18 independent American scientific societies, and the intergovernmental panel established under the United Nations weren’t enough to quell the protests popping up in comment sections across the Internet, a new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters confirms — once again — that climatologists almost unanimously believe that climate change is directly related to human-made carbon emissions.
Researchers pored over nearly 12,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers from 1991 to 2011. These papers, according to Michael Todd at Pacific Standard, represented the work of 29,083 authors and 1,980 journals. The conclusion could hardly be stronger: 97 percent of scientists agree that anthropogenic, or human-caused, global warming exists.”
http://theweek.com/article/index/244345/scientists-climate-change-is-real
Before voicing an opinion against Global Warming, one should consider what it takes to become a Climatologist.
Climatologists typically need at least a bachelor degree in climatology or other related field. Some employers prefer applicants with a master or doctorate degree and extensive experience. Prospective climatologists often complete courses in climatology, atmospheric science, meteorology, physics, mathematics, astronomy, and oceanography. Many aspiring climatologists complete internships while pursuing their education to gain practical experience in the field. Most employers provide some on the job training to enable new climatologists to learn the policies and procedures. Climatologists must complete continuing education throughout their careers to keep their skills current and stay up to date with advancements in the field.
But Joe Barton on behalf of the oil Industry and the 148,000 people who voted for him; they say no. Fred Upton, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy he says no as do a large majority of Stupidparty disciples. Even Stupidparty disciples who accept Science, who vote for the Stupidparty, well they, by allowing the Stupidparty to exercise power on a national level, they are also a threat to humanity.
Ed Orcutt.
Washington Representative Ed Orcutt (R – Kalama) responded to an email in order to support a new tax on cyclists, stating that bicycling is not environmentally friendly because the activity causes cyclists to have “an increased heart rate and respiration.” The email exchange between owner of BikeTech in Tacoma and Orcutt is perplexing:
“Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.”
Michele Bachmann (R- MN).
Bachman in on the House Intelligence Committee.
“[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she’s just trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet — we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that.”
Dana Rohrabacher (R- CA).
“We don’t know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?’
& one big Stupidparty….
Until quite recently thirty-one Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee —the entire Republican contingent on the panel—declined to vote in support of the very idea that climate change exists.
http://gawker.com/5782364/not-one-republican-on-energy-committee-will-admit-climate-change-is-real
Several years later and as the world bakes, and now a congressional minority, Florida sinking, unseasonable tornadoes, hurricanes ratcheting up and America being alone outside of the Paris accord—the first signs of such crooks (taking money to ignore the nations needs) being forced to change their stance might be beginning the emerge.
Leave a Reply