Wednesday, February 07, 2007

The First Rule of Comedy.

20, 27, 22, 30, 30, 24, 14, 9, 11, 17.

Those, my friends, are the high temperatures for Pittsburgh, PA, for the last ten days. January 28th was the last time Pittsburgh experienced above-freezing temperatures at a balmy 33. The average high for this time of year? 35-36 degrees.

(Source: here and here.)


And what's Rod blogging about today? Global warming.

"It's hot. Get used to it."

Because even someone like Timothy Bell, a climatologist deeply skeptical of the claim of man-made warming, agrees that the planet has been generally warming since 1680, I won't argue that there is global warming.

(Bell asserts, "These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun.")

But, as in comedy, in rhetoric timing counts for an awful lot.

How obtuse does one have to be to bleat about global warming when over a dozen Americans have died since this past weekend because it's too damn cold?

5 Comments:

Blogger kathleen said...

Nelly's "Hot in Herre" would make a great global warming theme song. Imagine if obama cut a track? as rod would say, that way "[Obama] can move this country past the same old stalemated and stale battles over race and poverty [and global warming]. what a gift to America that would be".

6:45 AM  
Blogger Pauli said...

I should move back to Pittsburgh; it's warmer there than NE Ohio presently.

[Crybaby off]

What's ironic to me is that most of the US (I said most, not all) has gotten past the stale battles over race and poverty. The people who keep propping that stuff up are liberal politicians and the mainstream media including his beloved NPR.

7:08 AM  
Blogger Clark said...

Oh I get it. Since it's cold in the Northeast, in February; Global Warming is bunk. We should ingore those whiny scientists complaining about melting permafrost, rising sea levels, etc. From now on, I'm gonna ignore science and put all of my faith in the rightwing pundits, bloggers and talking heads who helped sell the wildly successful invasion of Iraq.

10:15 AM  
Blogger kathleen said...

I love how it's only the anti-global-warming scientists that are said to have an agenda. There's no profit-making motive on the part of global warming proponents what*so*ever. one group is virtuous, one is not. kinda like the difference between crunchy and non-crunchy.

hey clark, are you talking about those scientists who want to fly to the sun with buckets of water to cut back the solar flares so we'll have less global warming? that sounds promising.

10:58 AM  
Blogger Pauli said...

I'm short on details with this, but there was a scientist on Bill Bennett's show about a week ago when Steve Malzberg was filling in for him. He talked about how all the most hysterical scientists had been backing a study having to do with warming antarctic waters causing ice to melt around Antarctica. Until the last release of the study. It turns out that the newest computer models showed that once the waters warmed up a certain amount that the evaporation would cause ice mass to actually increase! Good news, right? The scientists immediately said DON'T TRUST THIS STUDY! IT'S WRONG! Since when? Since it didn't fit in with their fear-factor-funding agenda, I guess.

11:13 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home