May 22, 2014

The Party Of Stupid (Texas Edition)

It's the campaign season, you know.  And in a number of states a number of different races are being one - one of them for Lt Governor for the great state of Texas.

In a recent debate among the republican candidates for that seat, the question of how much money could or should be spent to "cool the environment" was raised to the front runner in that race, state Senator Dan Patrick (who's a republican, of course) and he delivered the stupid - three times over.

Time one:
Patrick said he would spend "zero dollars" to combat climate change.

"I understand why Obama thinks he can change the weather — because he thinks he’s God," he said, as recorded by Raw Story. "He thinks he is the smartest person in the country. He thinks he knows better in Washington what we do in Texas. He thinks he’s the one, through all of his executive orders, that Congress isn’t even up to his level, so I’m not surprised that he also thinks he can change the weather."
Time two:
"First of all, when it comes to climate change, there’s been scientific arguments on both sides of the issues," he said. "But you know, if you want a tiebreaker, if Al Gore thinks it’s right, you know it’s wrong."
And finally, time three:
"I’ll leave it in the hands of God. He’s handled out climate pretty well for a long time," he said.
This is what passes for intelligent discourse among Texas republican candidates regarding the warming climate.

Meanwhile, in reality, NOAA declared that globally, the month of April tied for the warmest April on record.  Some details out of NOAA:
The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for April 2014 tied with 2010 as the highest on record for the month, at 0.77°C (1.39°F) above the 20th century average of 13.7°C (56.7°F).
Meanwhile, in Patrick's own state of Texas, they've been experiencing a massive drought:


See all that brown and reddish brown in the northwest of Texas?  That's what NOAA's calling "extreme" and "exceptional" drought.

So I guess God hasn't been handling the climate very well in Texas.

1 comment:

  1. And the rank and file of Texas buying into all this is reinforced by the arrogant forces of media. Your post and the comments on Scaife's health from earlier this week has been troubling my mind since.
    Here, Texans are willfully blind to their own demise. On the cost benefit analysis, a paycheck today trumps water and air tomorrow. So, heckle Obama and Gore and find any reason to dismiss even the slightest possibility that science is correct, and leave it all to the hands of god. All reinforced every day by "fair and balanced" reporting.
    Maybe nobody deserves cancer, but I'm having a really hard time stomaching the bamboozling impact. These bad apples are willfully or blindly going to sink the ship BUT THEY'RE GOING TO TAKE THE LOT OF US DOWN WITH THEM! What about my life and liberty?

    ReplyDelete