Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Resolved: Whatever

West Virginia mountain stream.

Finally, there has been some great progress made in the US Senate to address climate change, in much the same way progress was made on the Great Wall of China when King Zheng of Qin turned to his minions and said, "you know, if we had a wall here, we could hang pictures."

Yes, the US Senate has addressed climate change ("hello, climate change"). Led by the new Republican majority, it passed a measure in which global warming was alluded to as a thing that might actually be happening after all, not that we had anything to do with it. It is a Sense Of The Senate statement, a declaration of consensus with all the impact of "we like long walks along the beach" or, in this case, "what-ever." The climate changes all the time, it was pointed out, which is why we have both galoshes and tube tops and the freedom to choose, God bless America.

W. Va. stream downhill from coal mine.
Because sober minds do not believe it makes any sense to suggest that anything mere humans can do could possibly affect something so vast as the planet's atmosphere. In fact, it's arrogant. It's an insult to God to suggest that man can repaint the heavens.

And it's certainly beyond the pale to intimate that there is any correlation between the observed current global warming trend and the fact that over three hundred million years ago plants developed bark and got absolutely huge and sucked massive amounts of carbon out of the air and pooted out oxygen and made life just fabulous for giant cockroaches and termites while vast expanses of shallow seas and swamps flooded and drained over and over again for, like, sixty million years, and ultimately buried all that solar energy that was stored in the big plants and fossilized it so that the carbon was tucked neatly underground, while the atmospheric concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide settled into percentages that were not maybe as ideal
New, improved, engineered ex-mountain stream.
from the point of view of the giant cockroaches and termites but ultimately worked out better for other folks like salamanders and dinosaurs and, golly, us too, which is really good because that's how we were able to thrive and develop big wrinkly brains and figure out where all that sixty million years' worth of sequestered carbon was hiding and begin to haul it out of the ground where it had been for the last 300,000,000 years and burn almost all of it right the fuck up in about 200 years at a geometric rate that just happens to perfectly mirror the rise in the planetary temperature and the carbon load in the atmosphere because, Junior, there is such a thing as coincidence. Coincidence. Which means completely unrelated events that happen at the same time from which there is no reasonable conclusion to be drawn.

Yes, my darling Republicans in the US Senate, absent divine whimsy, there's no explaining coincidence. Nothing to be made of two things that happen at exactly the same time and track each other as precisely as stink and roadkill, or disco pants and John Travolta. Or your agenda and the Koch Brothers'. You ignorant sluts.

32 comments:

  1. Denial of obvious reality is a natural outgrowth of the religious mentality. When "faith" -- the ability to believe something with no evidence or even in the teeth of contrary evidence -- is treated as a virtue in one area of life, it inevitably affects how people approach other areas of life. Republican politicians who are cozy with fossil-fuel-industry lobbyists have a lot of money at stake here. They have a lot of incentive to reject all the evidence and logic and the testimony of those who have actual knowledge of the subject. And they've been taught from childhood, in another area of life, that believing what you want to believe even when mountains of evidence contradict it is actually virtuous and noble. Why are we surprised at the result?

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    1. I wouldn't say surprised, exactly. Grumpy, yeah. Just thinking about how the universe revolves around us makes me dizzy.

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  2. I don't know...,maybe sluts is too harsh a word, coal whores for sure... yea.. well ok,.. bunch of sluts works.

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    1. See? I was going to use a different naughty word, but no.

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  3. OK...don't hold any punches. Tell us exactly how you feel. Get it all off your chest...Now do you not feel so much better? No? Neither do I? I didn't vote for these coal heads and I will not go to their pool parties if I get invited.

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    1. I won't go to their pool parties because there will probably be little measles in the pool.

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  4. Oh. Ouch. Nevah mind "clams got legs"....Murrs got fangs. I wish you weren't preaching only to the choir...cause I'm afraid none of those sluts are reading you. Too much sense and science here for their taste. But don't stop, OK? We all need to keep fired up over this, and luckily we don't have to burn coal to do that.

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    1. I deliberately spend most of my time not thinking about this, but every now and then I have to go off like a rocket. Thanks for indulging.

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  5. Someone argued to me that the temperatures on earth have always been cyclical. Well sure. But not to extremes while HUMANS have been living on earth. But I guess we're meant to experiment and see how long we humans last. Right?

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    1. I do think it's a shame we have to take everything else with us, though.

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    2. I know! Think about the kittens people!

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  6. I can't believe the sky-fairy worshipers in the senate did this! I just HAVE to look that up! I'll bet most of them still think it's coincidence, though. They're just going along with it because they think it will keep them in office.

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    1. Sen. Inhofe, who famously declared climate change a hoax, introduced an amendment that stated climate change was NOT a hoax. Because it happens all the time! La de dah!

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  7. No need to give 'sluts' a bad name, now...

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    1. True, especially 'cause most of them don't make near as much money.

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  8. There is so much wrong in this world. But your writing is one of the good things that help to counter-balance. That is an awesome sentence there in the middle, by the way.

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  9. A sentence which would make G. Washington green with envy.

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    1. The only picture of Washington I have handy, he's sort of green.

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  10. I recently bought the book, The Sixth Extinction, which reviews the past extinction and describes the one we are currently experiencing - and this just will be the largest extinction EVER. About a third of the book are the source material references. Excellent for those interested in what is actually happening to our plants and animals and in working on saving some of our animals. Here is the link: http://smile.amazon.com/Sixth-Extinction-Unnatural-History-ebook/dp/B00EGJE4G2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423075193&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Sith+Extinction

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    1. Maybe I'll slam that sucker on my e-reader. I'm not sure if I can take it, though.

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  11. How I wish the rusted on coal freak who leads my country (hopefully for not much longer) could read this. And absorb this.
    He won't, but I am cheering.

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    1. Just read something about that dude slipping in popularity. Well, we're always slipping in something!

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  12. Ego centricity, There's a lot of it about, but you guys seem to have a terminal case.

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  13. I have an extremely intense dislike of that new, improved, engineered ex-mountain stream. That photo actually brought tears to my eyes. Such a beautiful forested mountain stream, ruined forever.

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    1. Unless you're up to date on the practices of mountaintop removal coal mining, that "stream" is way, way worse than you're even imagining. It's going through the terraced remains of the mountaintop that got shoved into its own valley. It is pure evil.

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  14. I passed a train recently with a tanker car that advertised "eco-friendly fuel" or some-such absurdity. And then there is all that "clean coal" that's saving jobs and the country and … God Bless America. The Republican sluts and their clientele are hoping to win the battle against climate change with patently ridiculous semantics.

    If only the registered Republicans in this country would/could grasp the utter disdain their chosen elected leaders have for their (lack of) intelligence. They might feel a little sheepish.

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  15. THIS is one Pat Lichen would jump on and preach to the choir! She is my Wonder Woman!! So, Pat, gonna say something??? I sure hope so!

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  16. I'm gonna say I love Murr and I love the way she has with words. And that it's good to preach to the choir--you want them to keep on singing.

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    1. Now I'm blushing clear down to my...well never mind where. I love Pat Lichen too. And not just because she's a hottie.

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