TRUMP'S NEW CLIMATE CZAR: CARBON DIOXIDE HAS BEEN TREATED JUST LIKE "JEWS UNDER HITLER"
Last year, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, the Trump administration released a terrifying report about climate change, which might as well have been simply titled, You Should Be Shitting Your Pants Right Now. The second volume of a federally mandated assessment, the 1,656-page investigation laid out the devastating costs associated with not taking immediate steps to combat climate change: $141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from rising sea levels, $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century, and so on. At the time, Donald Trump simply brushed the whole thing off, telling reporters, I dont believe it, even though, by his own admission, hed only read some of the report and his mind was probably elsewhere during the relevant sections (i.e. wondering if all the turkeys he didnt pardon were going to rise up and peck him to death) But with certain lawmakers, irksome citizens, and, um, the director of national intelligence insisting that climate change is the most imminent threat of our lifetime, the White House knew it needed to do more to convince people this whole thing was a hoax. And reader, the administration has truly outdone itself this time.
The Washington Post reports that the White House is assembling a panel to assess whether climate change poses a national security threat, headed by a guy who makes coal lobbyist-turned-Acting E.P.A. Administrator Andrew Wheeler look like a radical environmentalist. Yes, the administration has hired some real crackpots before, but this guy laps those suckers by miles. So, just who is William Happer? According to the Post, hes a former Energy Department staffer under George H.W. Bush who joined this White House in September to work on emerging technologies, and, naturally, has no formal training as a climate scientist. But what he lacks in relevant knowledge he makes up for in a deep and abiding love for carbon dioxide, which he said during a summit in December 2016 is not a pollutant at all and is actually a benefit to the earth, despite having been unfairly maligned by decade after decade of abuse, for no reason. And, of course, he thinks that abuse has some historical parallels.
The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler, Happer explained to CNBC in 2014, after yelling at Andrew Ross Sorkin to shut up about him supposedly being a climate-change denier. In January 2017, he added in an e-mail to a Jezebel reader that the vilification of carbon dioxide also differs little from . . . the Soviet extermination of class enemies or ISIL slaughter of infidels. (Upon learning that Jezebel would be writing an item about the correspondence and his views, he responded, If I understand the thrust of the article you are writing, your organization is well named. The original Queen Jezebel had an innocent man, Naboth, smeared and stoned to death so her husband, King Ahab, could steal his vinyard [sic]. You can smear me, as the original Jezebel did, but if you want to physically destroy me, you may find it [a] bit harder.)
(snip)
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the N.S.C., the Pentagon, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all declined the Posts requests for comment. In an interview with the paper, Francesco Femia, chief executive officer of the Council on Strategic Risks and co-founder of the Center for Climate & Security, called the Happer-spearheaded panel the equivalent of setting up a committee on nuclear-weapons proliferation and having someone lead it who doesnt think nuclear weapons exist, which, presumably, is exactly what the administration was going for.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/william-happer-climate-change-panel
I do believe the asset is intent on destroying our nation.
duforsure
(11,882 posts)Along with the Republican Party. They never stop using hate and fear as a weapon against us.
Zoonart
(11,750 posts)OMG those poor persecuted, imprisoned, and murdered carbon defenders and climate deniers. Scientists are Nazis!
Aristus
(66,096 posts)Pachamama
(16,875 posts)The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,280 posts)CO2 is necessary for plants to photosynthesize, but as everybody but the numpties in the Trump administration understands, too much of it in the atmosphere is a bad thing. "Idiot" is too mild a term for this guy.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go persecute another chemical compound, NaCl, by screaming insults into my salt shakers.
ExciteBike66
(2,281 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,112 posts)Ah, nice to see you planet 2. How are you doing?
Not so good, said planet 2.
I've got Homo sapiens.
Oh dear! Sorry to hear that, said planet 1.
Don't worry about it.
Doesn't last long!
ExciteBike66
(2,281 posts)mn9driver
(4,412 posts)And Russias oil and gas exports are important to his pocketbook.
Trump is doing what he is being ordered to do.
Qutzupalotl
(14,230 posts)LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(12,539 posts)This is the first time I have heard Hitler's name used in conjunction with climate change.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)There are many corollaries to Godwin's law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself)[3] than others.[1] For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that, when a Hitler comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever made the comparison loses whatever debate is in progress.[8] This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's law.[9]
Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate.[10][11] Similar criticisms of the "law" (or "at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes" have been made by the American lawyer, journalist, and author Glenn Greenwald.[12]
Godwin's law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics," Godwin wrote, "its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler to think a bit harder about the Holocaust."[13]
In December 2015, Godwin commented on the Nazi and fascist comparisons being made by several articles about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump, or any other politician."[14] In August 2017, Godwin made similar remarks on social networking websites Facebook and Twitter with respect to the two previous days' Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, endorsing and encouraging efforts to compare its alt-right organizers to Nazis.[15][16][17][18]
In October 2018, Godwin said on Twitter that it is acceptable to call Brazilian politician Jair Bolsonaro a "Nazi."[19][20]