Or, waaaaaaaaaaah.
Really, I don't mean to pick on Don Young, RFAA, but he just keeps saying stuff like this, in this case re: global warming.
"What concerns me the most is the possibility of a fear tactic being implemented in the warming threat."
(Yeah, let's not govern by fear-mongering. Nope. Fear-mongering is baaaad. Not gonna see any of that from the Bush Administration, nope.) But I interrupt Mr. Young:
"Let's have a good study. "
(Oh yeah, this hasn't been studied. It's a brand new idea, and no groups of internationally renowned scientists have studied this issue or come up with any opinions as to, say, whether global warming exists. It's all just an opinion.)
But back to Mr. Young:
"Let's have a debate and division of what is occurring by scientists. Let's look at the model. Yes, the Earth is warming, in some areas. I just read a report, in fact, that Greenland is cooling. The thing I think strikes me the most is if you will take the time to study the globe, the world as we know it, and look at what has occurred in the past and possibly will occur in the future, we are now pumping 1 million barrels a day from Prudhoe Bay. Prudhoe Bay, the most northern part of this continent, we are pumping that oil.
Now, I ask you, my friends, if you studied science, where does oil come from? What occurred on this globe at that time to allow mastodons, ferns, tree stumps, a tropical atmosphere to be there to create that oil? And that is the reality.
I ask you, secondly, if you go back to the Ice Age, and we have had four ice ages, three majors and one minor, if you go to New Mexico 12 million years ago, there was 287 feet of ice in New Mexico. I won't ask you what created that ice. But I will ask each and every one of you and everybody watching and everybody talking this fear tactic what melted that ice all the way to the North Pole before mankind set foot on this continent. It certainly wasn't hair spray or freon or automobile emissions. It melted, 287 foot of ice, before we set foot.
I am a little bit concerned when everything that is wrong is our fault, that the human factor creates all the damages on this globe. That is pure nonsense. That is nonsense.
And so I am asking you, let's have the hearings, let's have the scientists, let's have some debate about really what is occurring here instead of having hysteria and saying it is all our fault.
And, by the way, it is always the fault of the Americans. It is never the fault of the bigger countries that burn as many barrels of oil as we are doing today, not per capita but as many barrels of oil, and burn the coal as we are trying to do. It is never their fault. It is our fault.
So let's have a sound debate about this issue and not be caught in this attitude that we must do something right now because we are the Federal Government. Let's do it the right way."
To which Rep. Obey replied: "Mr. Chairman, I knew we still had charter members of the Flat Earth Society walking around this country. I didn't realize there were quite so many in the United States Congress."
The Anchorage Daily News, which I often fault for not calling bs, and just writing 'he said, she said' type articles, did a very nice job or reportage on Young's, shall we say... non-factual arguments against global warming, particularly his assertion that other countries burn anywhere near as much oil as we of the Big F---ing SUVs.
Check it out at in its entirety at : http://www.adn.com/news/environment/warming/story/7744525p-7656597c.html
1 comment:
Excellent excerpt. Puts his position right out there for everybody to see--too bad they don't consider this kind of public exposure to be as obnoxious as the nude-body kind. It's about the same level of clarity of thought.
What Representative Young apparently doesn't realize is that Alaska was somewhere near the equator back when all those tree ferns (now disguised as coal) were growing. He also doesn't apparently get that a natural cycle of warming and cooling isn't the same thing as, say, a potentially irreversible and artificially created accelerated heating trend. Mastodons and whatnot had time to evolve into big hairy beasts--we, and all those little microscopic beasties in the sea that we all depend on, may not have time to adjust to a 5-degree average increase in temperature. Venusian atmosphere, here we come! (maybe--who knows what'll happen--but it won't be pretty)
Well, Florida isn't his district anyway. But I betcha Shismaref isn't too happy with his attitude right now. And Barrow. Think Anchorage might get a bit peeved when the Ted Stevens International Airport is under water?
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