It's rare that I will use this blog to make an opinion post not written by myself. This is one of those rare times.
A few weeks back, when the political and scientific fall-out from Hurricane Katrina was still in the air, I was fortunate enough to tune into The Rush Limbaugh show (on Wednesday, August 31st) just as "el Rushbo" was commencing one of his passionate diatribes.
This particular one addressed several issues, especially the theory of global warming and its impact on human thought and belief. This soliloquy came as a response to a caller (Paul, from Burlington CT) who agrees with the theory of global warming and its "cause of" hurricanes, and who believes Bush and America are to blame for its "role" in the process.
Rush made some magnificent points in his reply, and I'd like to pass this monologue along to the readers here as a service to my fellow Americans and International brothers and sisters so that they might better understand the Conservatives' stance.
"[Global warming is] not obvious that it's happening in the sense that you guys mean it. The only stipulation I've made is, "There may be global warming, because I'm not an idiot. There have been warming cycles of the earth and freezing cycles, ice cycles, for as long as the earth has been around. We may be in a naturally warming cycle." Where I part ways from you is that man is causing it. There is no evidence of that, zilch, zero, nada. There's nothing more than a 25-year shrill campaign to create subconsciously the idea in everybody's mind that when it gets hot in July and hot in August it must be global warming; when it gets cold and a snowstorm happens in January, and happens to be a little bit more intense than it was last year, it must be global warming. Nobody can prove it. Nobody can prove that man is causing it. To me the proof that man is not causing it is there's nothing we can do to stop it. This hurricane was said to be caused by global warming. Well, this hurricane weakened right before it hit and it had nothing to do with the ocean temperature. It had to do with some dry air that it had encountered and pushed it further east.
But the problem that I have with you guys on global warming is it's become a political issue by which you seek to advance the liberal agenda. It's nothing more than a platform for you. Whenever I see anything designed to advance the liberal agenda, I'm going to oppose it because I hate the liberal agenda. I disagree with it. It's destructive; it's damaging, and it doesn't do anybody any good -- other than if you define it by spreading misery equally as the New York Times accurately headlined today in their coverage of the hurricane. If you want to believe it, go ahead, but I'm not going to accept your premise that there is man-made global warming. And therefore what's the conservative solution? Everything does not have a solution. Everything is not a problem. Everything that happens on earth is not a manmade problem, nor an American-made problem. If it's hot one day and not hot the next day someplace where it's cool, it's not man made. It's not our fault. And I'm not going to sit here and accept the premise that somehow we are to blame for this. And that's what worries me the most about you liberals. Why can't you just accept that there are powers greater than us, greater than we have that may have influence over this over which we have no control? There's not one climactic event that we can stop, that we can alter, that we can detour. We cannot stop it raining harder; we cannot move thunderstorms; we cannot weaken hurricanes; we cannot steer them out of the way; we can't stop snowstorms; we can't stop drought; we can't do diddlysquat about all this, so in my mind there's no way we can cause it. You can't have one without the other. If we're causing it, then we can stop it. We can't stop it.
And this fossil fuel business, burning fossil fuels? It's absolutely nothing more than a theory, and there are countless scientists who disagree with it. There are countless scientists who oppose it. Why do you think we haven't signed Kyoto? Because we still have some sanity left in this country in the scientific movement. The Kyoto Accord, if you want to know the details, the Kyoto accord claims that the Celsius temperature rise over the next hundred years will be three degrees without Kyoto. With Kyoto it will be 2.86 degrees. So we're talking about four-tenths of a degree centigrade if we sign Kyoto. Do you know what that's going to matter to a hill of beans? Zero, diddlysquat, and it wouldn't have had a thing to do with stopping this hurricane or making it less intense. There are forces greater than man, Paul. There are forces far greater than man that created all of this. We do not have dominion over it all. The idea that we do is a descent into vanity that I can't relate to. On the one hand you people on the left claim we're no different than rats; we're no different than any other animal that's on earth. In fact some of you say that this would be a far better place without us. On the other hand, when we're no different than rats, and no different than other animals -- who certainly don't do anything to cause global warming -- we all of a sudden still are more powerful than they are because we can stop this, because we're causing it?
The focus in this disaster ought to be on the destruction and the lives and the people, and the rebuilding and everything that we see on TV. But the focus with the left is on affixing blame, affixing blame that cannot be proven, cannot be established. Global warming, if the listen to Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center, he's an expert, William Gray, they're getting tired of the question. There's no relationship to hurricanes and global warming. It's a natural cycle that these storms go through, and the cycles are 40 years long, and they're irrelevant to global warming. The question that I have for people like you, Paul, is: "Why are you so gullible? Why are you such a sponge? Why are you so willing to soak up news and information that blames your country, that blames your lifestyle, that blames your species? What is it about you that wants to sit here and accept all the blame and then after you've accepted it transfer it to Republicans who disagree with you?" That's what I want to know. What kind of life must you live, to have to want to sit here and accept all the blame for these things? There are countless disasters the world over. To blame America, to blame fossil fuels, when these disasters have happened throughout time. When you understand that a volcanic eruption will spew more destructive pollution into the atmosphere than all automobile pollution since the history of the invention of the car combined, you have to understand that we are pretty inconsequential when it comes to the climate system and the ecology system of this planet. We are residents. Yes, there are things that we can do, and I'm not opposed to keeping things as clean as we can -- and we do a better job of that than any country in the world. We clean up our messes better than anybody in the world, and we spread that assistance and the technology that we have developed and the things that we have learned, and we have shared this with the rest of the world that has the ability to incorporate it. The idea that it all comes back to us, that it all comes back to be our fault, and it's all Bush's fault? Do you realize how absurd this all sounds, particularly when you say it next to the pictures we all see on TV?
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[Liberals] don't offer solutions. They don't fix things. They only make things worse -- and that's why I oppose the liberal agenda."
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