OT, We Had 5-8 Inches Of Rain Last Night

A good friend of mine posted this on Facebook today.

Per gonjah:

That brings to mind a recurrent thought that I have: how ironic it is that global warming denial is on the so-called conservative turf.

I self-identify as a hard-core conservative - but maybe I have a semantics problem. Spending money we don't have? Hardly even open to debate. OK, if the car needs a transmission to get me to work or I'll lose my job: borrow the money. But if the furnace is broken in winter... drain the pipes and learn to live in the cold until I can scrape up the money.... period.

In my mind, conservatives have insurance on their homes. Even though the probability of a fire in a given house is vanishingly small, anybody with half a brain who cannot afford to lose their home has insurance.

The opposite of conservative is the guy who says "What the hell...it probably won't happen so I'll spend the money on beer instead."

But here we have a global catastrophe unfolding and the so-called conservatives say "Well, it isn't a slam dunk.... after all, the Koche brothers and Exxon have trotted out at least seven guys with degrees in climatology who disagree with the other 1,200... so we'll spend the money on beer instead."

I do not see that as a conservative thought process.

In my mind, a conservative thought process would be something like "Geeze, this is actually happening, the end-game is catastrophic, and there is a chance we can mitigate it... so let's try to mitigate it - even if there's a chance we could have spent the money on beer instead and not gotten burned.".

Personally, I don't think anything significant is going to be done. The Tragedy Of The Commons and all that. Maybe some technological black swan will come forth... but I wouldn't bet on it.

It really pisses me off that I can't live another hundred years and see how all this plays out.

WTF is a "Climate Scientist" and who determines just whom is? Of course your claim could use a little backup from an unbiased source. Hell, I could claim to be a "Climate Scientist" too. I remember reading something interesting some time ago (no I don't have a link) from a Russian scientist who claims that the temperature of Mars is rising at the same rate as the temperature of Earth. Of course, it must be due to all those SUV's and coal fired power plants on Mars that mankind has built over the years. ^_^

TDD