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Tony Norman: Paving paradise for fun and profit is the point! (Joni Mitchell & 10.23 years left)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | July 22, 2022 | Tony Norman

Posted on 07/22/2022 9:11:43 PM PDT by DoodleBob

“They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum / And they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see them.” — “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell.

Many of us are old enough to remember a time when triple digit temperatures outside of Death Valley was considered freakish and a threat to the long term prospects of humanity.

These days, 111 degrees in Lawton, Okla., or 110 degrees in Abilene, Tx., or 104 degrees in London is the price of maintaining a robust economy.

While a fossil fuels-based economy always privileges profits over people and nature, most Americans go along because gas prices are the ultimate determiner of happiness. We have to be practical even as we’re baking to death. If we’re not mindful of the importance of markets in imposing reasonable limits on industry excess, the climate alarmists and the liberals will win.

...

I know I’m an old boomer ranting on and on about how relatively enlightened the music was when I was growing up. That’s because it was. In 1971, Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)” was on every radio station. The year before, Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” raised our environmental awareness.

Fifty-two years ago in “Big Yellow Taxi,” Joni Mitchell commented on the ecological folly of her day in lyrics that have permanently etched themselves in our collective memories: “Don’t it always seem to go / that you don’t know what you got ‘till it’s gone / They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

...Even as the day of our extinction approaches, we’re mostly convinced that we’re here to dominate the Earth and exploit its resources “until Jesus comes.”

(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: globalwarming; wereallgonnadie
Even as the day of our extinction approaches, we’re mostly convinced that we’re here to dominate the Earth and exploit its resources “until Jesus comes.

Mr Norman gets high marks for employing boomer rock songs, and the woke verbing of the word "privilege." But he stumbles on the dismount by quantifying the deniers as "mostly," tacitly admitting that the environmentalists are in the minority, thereby garnering weak scores. What could have been a great piece of propaganda, it ultimately fails.

1 posted on 07/22/2022 9:11:43 PM PDT by DoodleBob
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To: DoodleBob

Most of these “record breaking temps” are from areas where the weather stations were once rural in nature but urban sprawl has taken the once push, green areas and turned it to concrete and asphalt heat sinks.

Airports are the most notorious.

Asphalt and jet engine exhaust, anyone?


2 posted on 07/22/2022 9:30:31 PM PDT by RedMonqey
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To: DoodleBob

Tony Norman is an idiot if he believes that the US can destroy our way of life and “save the Earth”, while China, India, Russia, Africa etc just keep chugging along.


3 posted on 07/22/2022 9:30:52 PM PDT by PghBaldy (12/14/12 - 930am -rampage begins... 12/15/12 - 1030am - Obama team scouts photo-op locations.)
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To: DoodleBob

I call bullshit


4 posted on 07/22/2022 9:38:22 PM PDT by Repeal The 17th (Get out of the matrix and get a real life.)
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To: DoodleBob
I've run into Tony Norman a few times at the Squirrel Hill Giant Eagle. He's a friendly guy.

I believe that burning fossil fuels does cause some problems. But I also believe that the benefits outweigh the problems. Much of our first world standard of living is attributable to our use of fossil fuels.

Sri Lanka recently chose to ban fertilizers made from fossil fuel. Anyone who’s not an idiot could have predicted the results.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4080267/posts

5 posted on 07/22/2022 9:40:40 PM PDT by grundle
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To: DoodleBob

Ironically, pollution is shade. We removed much of it by reducing coal use, controlling forest fires, high bypass jet turbines and catalytic converters. So now it gets warmer.


6 posted on 07/22/2022 9:56:03 PM PDT by cicero2k
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To: DoodleBob

10.23 years left?


7 posted on 07/22/2022 10:20:27 PM PDT by SaveFerris (The Lord, The Christ and The Messiah: Jesus Christ of Nazareth - http://www.BiblicalJesusChrist.Com/)
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To: DoodleBob

IT’S. EFFING. SUMMER!

CC


8 posted on 07/22/2022 10:31:33 PM PDT by Celtic Conservative (My cats are more amusing than 200 channels worth of TV.)
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To: Celtic Conservative

(IT’S. SUMMER!)

Follow the science! 😜

C’mon man!

The 1970 Ice Age Warning came true, didn’t it?

🥶🥶🥶


9 posted on 07/22/2022 10:43:52 PM PDT by SaveFerris (The Lord, The Christ and The Messiah: Jesus Christ of Nazareth - http://www.BiblicalJesusChrist.Com/)
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To: DoodleBob

When cable TV first hit, we had over the air stations, a few public access channels, and special primitive text crawls slowly revealing the baseball scores, stock numbers, and weather.

When I babysat, I would watch those numbers run through. I live in Phoenix now, and even then I remember the Phoenix numbers touching 120.

I also remember Connecticut hitting 100+ every so often (one time in the ‘90s, my girlfriends employers scooted back to FL because CT got too hot). I remember 70 degrees in early January in CT in the ‘80s. It is no hotter now on average than it was then.

Think about this. Every so often, you will hear an announcement that this was the hottest June whatever in 100 years. Think. There are 365 days in a year. Random chance alone would dictate that 3-4 days a year will be the “hottest” in the last 100 years. It means nothing.


10 posted on 07/22/2022 11:47:12 PM PDT by Dr. Sivana (What was 35% of the Rep. Party is now 85%. And it’s too late to turn back—Mac Stipanovich )
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To: DoodleBob

This is bull****. I am pretty old, and we have had triple digit temps in Texas all my life. The hottest summer ever in Texas was 1980.


11 posted on 07/23/2022 3:13:49 AM PDT by EastTexasTraveler
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To: DoodleBob

I was growing up in Lawton, OK in the sixties and I remember 3 digit temperatures every summer for at least three weeks of the year.

We didn’t have air conditioning for a good portion of that time.


12 posted on 07/23/2022 3:39:46 AM PDT by sonofagun (Some think my cynicism grows with age. I like to think of it as wisdom!)
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To: DoodleBob
Re: "Many of us are old enough to remember a time when triple digit temperatures outside of Death Valley was considered freakish..."

Not quite old enough...

The hottest decade in USA recorded history was the 1930s.

Dust Bowl, terrible drought, and also the worst Depression in USA history.

13 posted on 07/23/2022 3:54:58 AM PDT by zeestephen
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To: DoodleBob

Speaking of Joni Mitchell, don’t forget one of her other songs...”Twisted”...with the following lyrics;

= = = = =

My analyst told me
That I was right out of my head
But I said dear doctor
I think that it’s you instead
Because I have got a thing
That’s unique and new
To prove it I’ll have
The last laugh on you
‘Cause instead of one head
I got two
And you know two heads are better than one


14 posted on 07/23/2022 5:38:56 AM PDT by moovova
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To: sonofagun

Even in Portland, I personally remember several days of 100+ temperatures every summer since the early 60s. A/C was very rare then, but somehow we survived.


15 posted on 07/23/2022 5:45:56 AM PDT by HartleyMBaldwin
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To: DoodleBob

“ Many of us are old enough to remember a time when triple digit temperatures outside of Death Valley was considered freakish…”

He says he’s a boomer. If so, he has serious problems with his memory.

Growing up in Iowa, the state fair was always accompanied by 100 degree days.


16 posted on 07/23/2022 8:50:04 AM PDT by VanShuyten ("...that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals)
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