Palin Global Warming Fiasco Highlights Republican Absurdity (Flop Sweat Alert)

Political Cortex ^ | December 15, 2009 | Bill Hare

[2ndDivisionVet]

The latest running debate between Al Gore and Sarah Palin reveals once more the absurdity behind today's Republican Party, which looms increasingly as a far right pressure group rather than a viable political entity.

The Republicans indicated the direction where they were heading when Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele dared to speak of right wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh as an "entertainer," which was construed to mean that he was undermining his stature as a serious political analyst.

A furious Limbaugh demanded an apology. The blustery talk show host had declared himself to be the titular head of the Republican Party. Generally that title is conferred on the party's last presidential nominee, in this case Senator John McCain of Arizona.

It was soon learned how much clout Limbaugh wields on the Republican Party as a penitent Steele issued an apology. This prompted Limbaugh to reiterate his claim as titular party head.

An over the top, self-admitted drug abuser who engages in perpetual name calling rather than policy analysis laid claim to intellectual leadership of what used to be called the party of Lincoln without so much as a whimper, much less a protest, from the ranks of the Republican Party hierarchy.

The aforementioned contretemps prompted many political analysts to conclude that the Republicans had degenerated into a far right, insulated pressure group with an accent on insults and opposition to any form of constructive change with no concern about developing policy.

This charge and the concern registered within it was recently substantiated by comments from Sarah Palin on global warming. As Republican vice presidential nominee Palin and her supporters alleged that gentle interviewer Katie Couric had engaged in ambush journalism by asking her which newspapers she read, to which she had no answer.

Could she not have thought of her own Alaskan newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News, or perhaps the New York Times?

The same Palin who could not think of one newspaper she read issued an instant challenge to a unified contingent of some of the world's most brilliant minds, some 47 Nobel Prize science winners along with scores of others in the international scientific community.

A few e-mails from East Anglia University that involved more spleen venting than intellectual substance were presented by Palin and her allies as refutation of Al Gore and others pleading the case for immediate action in global warming policy before it is too late.

Demagogues took the Palin critique and ran with it. At a recent Gore book signing one critic of the angry tea bagger variety was seen being escorted out of the store after shrieking that the former vice president was a proven fraud.

As Gore and other rational analysts have pointed out, the melting Arctic polar ice caps provide proof positive of ongoing global warming. A report on the December 15 edition of PBS' Jim Lehrer News Hour revealed more such evidence with melting ice caps in Nepal's Himalayan mountains.

Needless to say, the "scholars" of the Palin community, including Republican titular head Limbaugh, who has contended for years that global warming is a made up scare tactic of far left political extremists, will never consider melting ice cap evidence.

That is what the school of Palin-Limbaugh-Fox adherents love, accepting what they wish without devoting a scant second to factual analysis. These are the adherents that dominate the current Republican Party.

[kcvl]

This Bill Hare aka FRAUD?!!!

Hare was a Lead Author for the IPCC’s Climate Change 2007

2002 Greenpeace International Adviser

Bill Hare from the Intergovernmental Climate Change Panel

Bill Hare is a physicist and environmental scientist attached to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany since 2002. He was a lead author of the IPCC's working group three on mitigation of climate change. He is also an adviser to Greenpeace International.

BILL HARE: Well, the loss of ice from Greenland and the west Antarctic ice sheet in particular is already raising sea level quite significantly. If the losses of ice from these ice sheets continue at an accelerating rate then it's very hard to predict the overall consequences.

I would say that we only have five or 10 years now in which to actually stop the rise in global emissions before we run out of the chance of limiting warming to two degrees or below. We're simply out of time.

[kcvl]

Greenpeace activist co-authored a key economic report in 2007. Left unreported by most of the media was the fact that Bill Hare, an advisor to Greenpeace, was a lead co- author of a key economic report in the IPCC's 4th Assessment. Not surprisingly, the Greenpeace co-authored report predicted a gloomy future for our planet unless we follow the UN's policy prescriptions.

[moehoward]

Yes Fred, that is one steaming heap......

[American Constitutionalist]

Ohh my, I didn't need anymore acid reflux for the night....

[gwilhelm56]

**“The same Palin who could not think of one newspaper she read”**

All together now ....

DUH!!!!!

I must be EXTREMELY UNinformed... I glanced at our local Weekly FREE rag today... other than that, I haven't read a newspaper in MONTHS.. But ... Majority of all libs probably have NO IDEA of the BOGUS INFO on their SACRED GloBULL WARMING.

[TheVitaminPress]

Yeah that whole “she can’t name a newspaper she reads” narrative has always bugged me and -IMHO- reveals far more about them. This is the 21st century. I couldn’t name a newspaper that I read with any regularity . . . I scan the net for interesting stories and try to get a bead on what is not on the American MSM radar by listening to the shortwave. . . one news source is clearly not enough anymore, if it ever was.

BTW, I like the results of your nolan chart!