What Are They Up To?

I'm starting to feel like I finally achieved my dream of moving to Edmonton or Alaska, only nobody told me. If you live in the northeast or mid-atlantic, you know what I'm talking about. There's snow everywhere, it's like some kind of Dickensian frozen hellscape out there. The sun doesn't help, it just makes the blinding white snow even brighter. Yesterday I felt like Forrest Gump. There was big snow, little snow, sideways snow, upside down snow. I'm thinking of investing in some cross-country skis, or a plow for the front of my car. I'm not complaining, I like winter, I like snow, I love the cold.

The best part about all of this is the reaction of climate change deniers. Hannity, Goldmember Beck, Big Fat Rush, other conservative pundits and commentators on Fox, lots of Republican Congressmen and Senators. They believe, because it's cold right now, that this completely destroys all theories of global warming and climate change. That's pretty dumb. These people are suggesting, with straight faces, that snow, in winter, means climate change is just a big liberal myth. How dumb is that?

Sometime in our infancy, after birth but well before we learn not to fear the toilet, we develop our understanding of object permanence. That is, the understanding that things we've seen before continue to exist even when we cannot see them. So basically, when you say that climate change is all a myth because you're cold right now, even though you know, say, that last decade was the hottest decade we've ever seen, you're making an argument that even a 1 year old would find implausible.

I saw Olbermann and Jon Stewart, among others, hammering the deniers pretty hard for this. That kind of insane stupidity is right in their wheelhouses. But see, I'm not buying it. I refuse to believe that all of the people I've seen mocking Al Gore this week because it's snowing are actually that stupid. Rush maybe, Jim Inhofe definitely, but not all of them. No way. Take Beck, he's not a dumb guy. He plays dumb for his audience sometimes, but he's a master manipulator, pretty funny (sometimes intentionally) and he knows a lot of big words, like communist and eugenics and oligarchy (although that one took him two tries) and woodrowwilson (that might be two words, I'll have to check that). Anyway, my point is, I'm positive Glenn is at least as smart as, say, a four year old, or a chimp.

Hannity too. He doesn't play dumb on TV so much as he plays willfully ignorant. But Hannity also knows big words, like propaganda and hyperbole, and I've seen him use his opposable thumbs to throw a football and hold a piece of paper. He too, is definitely at least as mentally capable as a toddler or a lower primate.

That brings us to my question. What are these people up to? Are they just trying to bait Democrats into a climate change fight so it looks like they're not paying attention to the economy and terrorism? Are they just trying to kill that idiot-ass cap and trade bill? I still say my argument against cap and trade (that it's stupid and won't even do much for the environment, you can read all about it in one of my earlier posts) is better than any other argument I've heard. Are they just trying to make Democrats look generally silly?

I don't know, this seems like kind of a stupid way to do any of those things, and Democrats can look silly all on their own. Is it just because ignoring science is generally good policy in the Republican party right now? This time, I'm really just asking questions. I honestly don't know. But I want to know. Conservatives everywhere spent the last two days saying incredibly stupid things on TV, and I honestly believe many of them know better. What are they up to?