The Limbaugh Institute: Why We're Losing the Global Warming Argument


RUSH: Now, this is from The Australian. "A friendly word of advice this Christmas: relax and enjoy it. Don't feel guilty about taking home your Christmas turkey in a plastic shopping bag or turning on the lights on the Christmas tree. They aren't acts of environmental vandalism or likely to accelerate global warming. You could, of course, be forgiven for thinking otherwise, since the publication of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, global warming hysteria has reached fever pitch. It's not surprising, as the review was presented in terms carefully calculated to engender alarm. It warns that climate change 'poses risks on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the twentieth century, and it requires immediate action.' There has been something of a political and media frenzy ever since, but surprisingly, little publicity has been given to a paper by a recognized authority on the economics of climate change, William Nordhaus of Yale. "Nordhaus is not a climate change skeptic. He starts out with academic courtesy for the work of another toiler in the in the vineyard of climate change economics. The Stern review, he says, 'is an impressive document,' and although he questions some of its modeling and economic assumptions, he says its results 'are fundamentally correct in sign if not in size.' However, that seemingly modest qualification about the size of the economic effects of climate change in fact hides a fundamental disagreement. Before he's done, Nordhaus punches a huge hole before the water line of the whole analysis. What immediately strikes Nordhaus, who has built his own models of climate change, is how radically different Stern's policy recommendations are from earlier economic models that use the same basic data and analytical structure. In other words, policies to slow global warming tighten or ramp up over time... The truth is the debate about the science of global warming has been taken over by the politicians and their (associates)." That's evidenced by the most recent outrage, which was the letter from Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe to ExxonMobil saying basically you will cease testifying or funding any people who do not believe global warming. This is representatives, high officials, senators, elected senators, demanding of a US corporation that it cease its right to free speech because it's not saying what Senators Rockefeller and Snowe want to hear! Any time a movement's in trouble, they can't handle dissent, and that's where the global warming crowd is today. Now, let me get to this point that I made earlier. Here's Patrick Michaels in the AmericanSpectator.org today: "Sealing the Fate of Antarctica -- The scare de jour on global warming is a massive inundation of our coast, caused by rapid loss of ice from Antarctica. It's a core point in Algore's science fiction movie. It continues to be thumped by doomsayers around the world and the echo chamber of the alarmist media. It's also a bunch of hooey. "If you could take the boredom, you could have read hundreds of news stories from this since 'An Inconvenient Truth' debuted on May 25th but I'll find very little mention of a paper that appeared a mere six weeks later in the proceedings of the National Academy of Science which should have stopped the whole show cold," meaning Algore's show. "The work is by Brenda Hall from the University of Maine and several coauthors. First, Gore's science fiction." Have I not made my point? I don't have time to read this whole thing to you. Even with the skills and the talents I have to draw you to this program as a magnet and keep you here until I leave, this would be a challenge to read this in a compelling fashion, because it's scientific data. Basically what it says is that if you want to put the kibosh on the whole they're the Antarctic is melting, study the seal population down there.

The seal population, based on years and years of study and knowledge does not indicate Antarctic is melting. Now, that's my synthesized version of this. On the other side what it's competing against? It's competing against Gore's movie, which he properly refers to here as "science fiction," but look at who's watching Gore's movie. We had a woman call yesterday. Her ten-year-old kid saw the movie, came home, "Mommy, mommy, Greenland's melting," or whatever it was, "and the East Coast is going to be flooded, and the earth is going to end in 30 years unless we do something." It's an impressionable mind, a little kid like that, a tenth-grader, ten-year-old, whatever, adults, teachers are authority figures, you believe them at that age -- particularly when they're not your parents. So she called and said, "What should I do? Should I complain to the school?" I said, "No, it's not going to do any good. Teach your son to be a critical thinker. Tell him not to accept everything he hears and sees, in things like this." But they're putting it in pictures. So the question becomes: all right, how in the world are the skeptics of global warming -- who have just as much science on their side as the other guys because the science on the other side is 'consensus' science -- after you read Patrick Michaels' piece, which, believe me, a certain group of people in the country will read it and understand it. I could read it and understand it, but taking what he's read and passing it along to you -- and you'd understand it as well, but in a mass market situation, everybody could understand New York flooding. Whether it's true or not isn't the point! They can see it, and Gore's got a movie which visualizes it, portrays it. You take young, impressionable little skulls full of mush -- and not coincidentally, a bunch of adult skulls full of mush. The primary believers of global warming are liberals and Democrats, and again, the reason to explain it, is their guilt! They believe that we are just so big and selfish and powerful that we have the ability to cause this, and that it is our unfair and discriminatory, racist, bigoted, sexist, homophobic lifestyle that is leading to the excess use of precious resources, leading to pollution in the world. We are causing it, and as such, we have a duty to stop it. It's the same crowd that's constantly running around, never happy. They never smile. They're wringing their hands and are in angst all the time, and they love being miserable. You've heard the phrase: these people are "happily miserable." It's a way of deflecting attention from their own lives and getting involved in the cause as a way of saying, "I matter! I'm doing something important! I'm saving the planet!" There's not one bit of intellect that's gone into their decision. It's total emotion based on good intentions. Who is against saving the planet? Who in the world wants New York flooded? (Wait, that's the wrong question. Some people probably would.)

It's like the environmental movement right now: Who in the world wants dirty water? They've set it up, if you oppose the environmentalist wacko agenda, "Why, you must be for dirty water. You must want to breathe polluted air," and of course this masks what this whole movement is about. These movies on global warming and so forth are all about having as many Americans admit that we are all at fault, leading to a path of global destruction, planetary destruction, not just damage, not pointing out that even if this happens, there will be plenty of good and there will be plenty of benefit from it, and that the world -- by the way, over which we have no control. How many hundreds of thousands of years ago do you think the landmasses and the continents were the same then as they are today? But everybody's historical perspective begins with their birth. They think no longer than when they think they're going to die, and they think that New York City is going to be New York City the way it is for the next hundred million years, and they've gotta get a clue: it won't. Even if the earth survives that long something's going to change, and the people that live a hundred million years from now, whether they're robots or whatever, they're going to be reading about us in history just as we read about the cavemen. There'll be minor differences, of course, in technological advancement. It's understandable, but you add the baby boom generation to it with all these narcissism and self-focus and self-absorption, and everything is about me, me, me, me, me. They and their kids can be made to believe that they are the cause of all of this pestilence and all of this destruction, and then accompanying it, "Of course we must fix it! Of course we must atone. Why, we must make amends. Why, we have destroyed the planet, and in the process, we're causing malaria and AIDS and destruction and starving and thirst in Africa, and we're destroying the Middle East and we blew up Japan with our atomic weapon! Oh, we are horrible people." There's a collective guilt that is assumed. So all this stuff plays. You say, "Who's behind it?" People that want to control government and people who want to get their democratically. The idea is to get as many Americans as possible accepting the notion that the US is guilty, that we are causing the major environmental problems, challenges or whatever, and that they will then vote for these liberals to put them in power so they don't have to take it over. They'll just vote for them, and in so doing make the statement, "Yes, weren't qualified to live our lives as individually. Yes, we can't do it by ourselves. Yes, we need your help and guidance. We need you, Algore, and your ilk to protect us from ourselves and to protect the planet and to protect us from enemies around the world." That's where it's all headed. It is sinister. (interruption) What are they going to do when China surpasses us in emissions? Well, China can't be guilty of anything! The question: "What's going to happen, what are the Algores and these types going to say when China becomes a greater polluter than the US is in just three years?" In 2009, if everything stays the same, that'll happen. China will have a right to! They're a poor country. Have you seen the way their people live, and why? Because we have stolen their wealth! Bamboo steamers, where do they sell? Here! Chinese laborers make what, 75 cents to make Nikes so Michael Jordan can become a multimillionaire. That's how it's all played out. The Chinese are the ultimate victims, not of their government but of us! They have a right to pollute! We deserve this. We have caused this. Three-eyed fish in the Soviet Union? We caused it because we threatened them with nuclear weapons for 40 years in the Cold War, and we forced them to ramp up militarily instead of feeding their people, and their streams had no choice but than to get polluted and leave the three-eyed fish and ten-feet frogs and so forth. This is how it plays out. They're all in there laughing, and I know it sounds funny because I say it in a humorous way, but this is exactly the thought. Why is China not subject to Kyoto Accords? Even though they're worthless, why were they exempted? It's precisely because of what I just said! BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Adam, Bloomfield, Michigan, thanks for your patience, and welcome. CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Mega dittos, and Merry Christmas from one who's above the influence of the Drive-By Media. RUSH: Same to you, sir. Thanks very much. CALLER: My comment today is a response to those people who believe that New York and places like that will be under water if the Greenland ice cap melts. Viking chronicles all state that Greenland was farmable back in 900 and 1,000 AD, and if it's farmable then obviously less ice than there is now because it's unfarmable now, and places like Iceland and lower Great Britain weren't under water then, so why would they be under water now, even if you accepted that people like you and I are wrong and global warming existed and Greenland is melting? RUSH: Yeah. Exactly right. You know, the bottom line is it may happen. New York was under water. If you go back and look at ancient globes of where we think the continental landmasses were, there used not be a North America -- well, there was, but... There are theories that Antarctica. They're looking at ice cores and finding fossils of things that could not possibly have lived at the North Pole to become fossilized. It had to be somewhere else. Who knows what's happened? Folks, we are so insignificant here; this is the point. Can you imagine if the global warming movement, instead of global warming was, "You know what, the continents are moving! Oh, no! Do you realize if this keeps happening, New York is going to be at the equator!" What could we do? What could we do? Nothing! It's no different than they tell us that the atmosphere is warming. We're so insignificant here, it boggles my mind. There's just no concept of history. There's no historical education about things that deals with really ancient things. This is frustrating, because people are gullible. Everybody wants to believe crisis. Every generation, without fail, thinks it's in the last days -- or members of it -- that it's never been as bad as it is now. "We're going to hell in a hand basket, Rush! I don't care what you say. I might have been bad, but it's worse now." People think this, and when they have that attitude, they're susceptible to all kinds of doom and gloom scenarios -- and then certain among us are eager to accept the blame for whatever happened. I'm not a shrink so I can't analyze that to a great extent.