Wingnut Erick Erickson is on the verge of toppling the proverbial chess board entirely as, once again, he finds himself on the losing side of both the factual and political game when it comes to the “debate” about global warming.
In a rant this week headlined “I Simply Do Not Care About Global Warming”, Erickson, who has a long petulantly violent history of not only being obnoxious and offensive, but of being wrong on just about everything, writes that even if climate change is killing us (which, he wants you to know, it couldn’t possibly be) he just doesn’t care. It’s just too late or too difficult or too expensive to do anything about it.
Seth D. Michaels at TPM accurately describes the tantrum as “somewhere on the fine line between ‘putting his foot down’ and ‘stomping his feet.'”
The reason for Erickson’s latest embarrassing bluster is that the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is about to release yet another well-sourced, meticulously researched, stark assessment report on the deadly effects of global warming, warning once again that while it’s still not too late to take action to avoid the worst effects of climate change, the window of opportunity to do so is quickly closing. The new report is described in this AP story about a leaked draft.
“It’s easy to overstate Erickson’s importance (he’s perfectly capable of doing that on his own) but his climate tantrum shows a lot about the psychology of climate change denial,” writes Michaels. True. And it’s particularly useful as a barometer to help us understand where the bleeding edge of the mainstream, right-wing, dead-ender denialist movement finds itself now, as breathing room becomes harder and harder to gasp for, and mountains of science about the deadly effects of carbon pollution continue to suck the oxygen out of the fossil fuel-funded propaganda machine.
As a “thought leader” on the Right, Erickson is at the forefront of the clown show that has either bought into, or knowingly lies about, the ridiculous notion, put forth by a tiny handful of fossil fuel industry profiteers, that taking action to mitigate the man-made climate change crisis will lead to nothing less than total destruction of the global economy.
“If they are right and the world is warming, there is nothing we can do short of economic Armageddon to stop it,” blathers Erickson, either deceptively or ignorantly (take your pick).
“We should not now tell [third world countries] they have to turn off their electricity and never improve their existence because of global warming,” he responds to an argument that absolutely nobody is actually making. “Likewise, we should not need to shut off our power grids or stop harnessing the power of the natural world, including fossil fuels. Adapt. The amount of money we would have to spend, if they are right, to stop the inevitable is obscene and better spent adapting us to changing times.”
In the meantime, actual grown-ups, even from the pinnacles of capitalism, such as UBS, the largest private bank in the world, are letting investors know that increasingly abundant renewable energy presents a fantastic economic growth opportunity. And academics, like those at MIT, are detailing how cutting deadly carbon emissions actually pays for itself, “in some cases, more than 10 times the cost of policy implementation.” But, of course, Erickson is too willfully ignorant — or just ignorant — to bother educating himself about those things when he’s got a long-held ideological policy position to protect and defend at all costs.
“I think many of those involved in the science of global warming oppose capitalism in general and the United States in particular,” Erickson writes in the very same week the two reports cited above came out. “I think they are manufacturing a panic and their solutions are designed to hinder economic progress.” Whadda jackass…
As Michaels explains at TPM…
For his story to be true, Erickson has to tell himself that people make up the underlying scientific principles, make up data, even make up visible existing effects, requiring a coordinated plot of James-Bond-villain proportions.
Maybe Al Gore has teams of Gaia-worshipping mountaineering commandos who take blowtorches to the Teton Glacier at his command? Maybe, using a time machine, he’s been personally chipping away at tens of thousands of glaciers for decades?
The point is, confronted by the unpleasant need to acknowledge climate change and make policy choices to deal with it, Erickson deliberately chooses to retreat into a more-pleasing fiction.
Business Insider’s Rob Wile said recently that “it’s hard to discern what lies at the root of climate deniers’ logic.” But I don’t think it’s all that difficult. Erickson all but says it outright.
Manmade climate change is upsetting. It is already certain to have negative effects, and the path to mitigating it will require policy changes. Even if you don’t build a castle-in-the-sky explanation like Erickson, it’s easy to find ways to reject this fact, to see it as more contested than it is, further off than it is, less bad than it seems.
I, too, would like it to be the case that reliance on fossil fuels for energy isn’t causing future catastrophe and doesn’t need changing. That would be a better outcome!
Dealing with it will mean some level of disruption. The impulse to reject it instead, as an ideological fiction, is understandable.
In the end, Erickson’s blustery aggression against his dreamed-of malign conspiracy blustery aggression is just a paper-thin layer of toughness over a sad, scared core.
…
“Let the seas rise. Let the wind blow. We can adapt,” Erickson says. Great! Tell us how we adapt, and what it will cost, and then compare that to the costs of policy change now. That’s a much more productive conversation than trying to conjure up a scary U.N.-Al Gore collaboration to attack America and markets.
Michaels goes on to add that “Erickson’s defiance against the phantom Gaia-worshipping armies would just be delightfully weird if it wasn’t held by people in positions of power and influence.” And that, of course, is why, although it’s hilarious, it’s also a very serious problem. Erickson is not an outlier. He actually leads the way on these issues for many in his once-respectable, now completely-discredited — but for their continuing death-grip on democracy — political party.
“We are all going to die. Just not today,” Rightwing thought-leader Erickson concludes, voicing the latest primal scream of the impotent, fading movement he leads. “And in the meantime, I simply do not care about this issue.”
Yes. He’s losing, he’s lost, and he’s taking his ball and going home. Sadly, as usual, we — and his children and his grandchildren — will be left to clean up the selfish, ignorant, fact-free, desperate, dangerous mess that Erick and his friends are leaving behind, long after their deaths, which I may mourn. Just not today.
Brad,
Thanks for calling out another pitiful denier who is infected with the Oil-Qaeda parasite.
He articulates what a lot of those now in power claim not to believe.
They may say we have to do something about climate change … as they support efforts to drill baby drill in the Arctic.
Gives new meaning to “cold war” as Shell and ExxonMobil team up with governments to prepare for cold oil wars.
Oil spills there will not be cleaned up.
An additional large part of the problem that even those on the left don’t want to talk about is that there are FAR too many of those children and grandchildren on this planet. Human overpopulation is the root cause of just about all of our major problems, and needs to be addressed. I don’t know why humans keep wanting to come up with high-tech solutions to a problem that can be solved with admitting it exists, and using proven methods and technologies – birth control, sterilization, abortion, sex ed, women’s rights, etc. – to solve it. Actually, I do know. The same economic interests who benefit from continuing our polluting ways also benefit from the lie of perpetual economic growth.
This is not Journalism.
Your science is not science, it’s an excuse for a NEW WORLD ORDER under Agenda 21.
delusion is what you preach.
NotJournalism –
You are just darling!
BTW, you may want to actual read Agenda 21 some day. When you find out why it’s soooo skeery, I hope you’ll get back to us with the specific quotes and URL so we can all stay safe! We’re counting on ya! Don’t let us down!
Until then, buy lots of gold, arms and survival seeds! You’ll need them any second!
Notjournalism, right out of 1984 doublespeak.
Brad, I find your article fairly interesting but definitely not unbiased. Count me among those who haven’t been sold on the supposed AGW. In fact I put together a blog of facts which seem to dispute any such warming at all, and forwarded it to Pres. Obama. Here it is:
Fletch92131, I find your comment fairly interesting, but definitely neither “unbiased” or informative. I do find it kind of hilarious, though.
If scientists tell us gravity exists, and I believe them about it, does that make me “biased” on the issue of gravity? Do you believe in gravity? Does that make you biased if you write about the known scientific facts related to gravity?
Of course, you’re right, I am “biased” on the issue of climate science and never claimed otherwise. My bias in climate science is towards the mountains of evidence presented by climate scientists (thousands of them, independently working, in hundreds of countries and dozens of disciplines, with virtually every single one come to the same general conclusions over the past 3 or 5 or more decades).
Thanks for the link to your blog. But I’m gonna go with the actual EVIDENCE presented by those climate scientists, rather than the opinion of a retired Defense procurement worker. I’m sure you’re a very nice guy, and if I have a question about military industrial complex armament issues, I’d probably go to you before I go to an earth scientist. Similarly, your biased opinions about climate science are swell, but I’ll defer to actual climate scientists on this issue, rather than a military expert.
Thanks anyway, though! And good luck on your anti-science crusade! Someone is bound to agree with your unscientific opinion, just not folks who care about and have respect for actual science.
I have a message for “Not Journalism”. Get ready now…BOOGA, BOOGA, BOOGA!
You are a fine demonstration of delusion.
Please seek help.
Temperatures are rising.
Sea levels are rising.
Polar ice caps are melting.
Climate is abnormal.
Marine organisms are dying.
Methane release is on the rise.
Probably a hundred reasons why all of this is happening but I am sure CO2 is one of them. Last time we were at 400ppm the sea was +100 ft higher.
For you people out there with a few more decades in front of you you will most certainly be living in interesting times.
The really sad thing is that the American people are even more stupid than this denier, and will believe every word this clown utters.
Michaels hits it exactly right – what lies at the root of climate change denialism is the fact adherents don’t want to accept the changes accepting the mountains of scientific evidence from multiple disciplines, from scientists worldwide points to as a very inconvenient truth.
I totally understand denialism, because I like my comfortable North American, car-centric lifestyle (and I don’t want to be told I will have less opportunity to leave chilly Canadian winters to visit LA or Hawaii!). But the fact I don’t like those implications doesn’t change the fact I understand a good bit of the science myself – and trust the scientific method and peer review process that validates the findings of groups like the IPCC.
What is truly breathtaking is that deniers can believe a massive conspiracy exists among tens or hundreds of thousands of scientists and researchers to falsify climate change data, but they will accept that a small cadre of oil corporations and people like the Koch’s are funnelling a lot of dollars to “research” from a handful of “think tanks”, and that isn’t just self-interested. Of course, that again comes back to the fact accepting the overwhelming scientific consensus means needing to change, and change is precisely what conservatives by definition resist.
Greg J –
On your point about the silly idea of a “massive conspiracy” in light of the “small cadre of oil corporations and people like the Kochs”, it should be noted that that small cadre is made up of the wealthiest, most profitable corporations in the history of mankind.
So, what make the notion even more ridiculous, is that if such a “massive conspiracy” of “tens of hundreds of thousands of scientists and researchers” exist, in which they falsify climate change data, you’d think that ONE of them might be willing to step forward and take the massive money they’d be paid by the fossil fuel industry to expose that massive conspiracy!
Moreoever, the fossil fuel companies certainly have enough money to buy scientists who could prove that climate change was a hoax. And yet, the fossil fuel companies have not only produced no such science, they even admit climate change is happening, but claim we’ll all just have to adjust to it.
Those companies pay others to look like assholes, because they are too chickenshit to do it themselves, since they know climate change denial is bullshit.
As to the point about needing to change lifestyles, I’d disagree with you that that’s what any of this is about. In fact, while conservation helps, the truth is the technology exists to not only stop burning the amount of fossil fuel that is killing us, but that would actually improve our lives (cleaner air, more jobs, less central control etc.)
It’s not the lifestyle change they fear — cause that doesn’t really need to happen to any measurable extent — it’s the loss of profits for the owners and shareholders of that “small cadre of oil corporations and people like the Kochs” who will lose some money. Everyone else, the pretend “conservatives” are just shilling for them — and most, I suspect, don’t even know it. They are dupes. Period.