In Krauthammer: Climate Change Is 'Superstition' Like 'The Rain Dance Of Native Americans,' Catherine Thompson of Talking Points Memo exposes Charles Krauthammer's primitive lack of understanding of basic science and climate models as well as his insensitivity to Native Americans. With a video and selected comments of his appearance Tuesday night on Fox News' "Special Report" Krauthammer offered himself up as an example of the prototypical "climate denier" rejecting the latest series of major scientific reports from the White House and IPCC indicating that climate change is real, here now, and caused by human activity. Others have castigated him for speaking of Native American culture in a such a derogatory way to make this point.
"It's always a result of what is ultimately what we're talking about here, human sin with pollution of carbon," Krauthammer said. "It's the oldest superstition around. It was in the Old Testament, it's in the rain dance of Native Americans -- if you sin, the skies will not cooperate." ...
"Ninety-nine percent of physicists were convinced that space and time are fixed, until Einstein working in a patent office wrote a paper in which he showed that they are not," he said. "I'm not impressed by numbers, I'm not impressed by consensus."
"These are things that people negotiate the way that you would negotiate a bill, because the science is unstable," he added. "Because in the case of climate, the models are changeable and because climate is so complicated, the idea that we who have trouble forecasting what's going to happen on Saturday in the climate could pretend to be predicting what could happen in 30, 40 years is absurd."
Most people who are upset with Krauthammer about this appearance focus on his insensitivity to Native Americans and their culture, and I do agree with this view, however, I ask people to also keep in mind the service Krauthammer is doing for us by documenting his primitive mindset about science, and his viewpoints on both topics on videotape so schoolchildren of the future will be able to see how primitive pre-scientific climate deniers thought.
Perhaps, future psychologists will develop a theory linking climate denial with bigotry as the two attributes seem to show up so often in the same people, who also demonstrate an excess proclivity to arrogantly lecture to us about how we ought to be thinking about both topics. Do you remember Cliven Bundy? I don't know Donald Sterling's thoughts on climate change. He has certainly treated us to quite a few "lessons" about race and religion.
Soon these kinds of "reality deniers" will become extinct as this sad generation dies off and the realities of climate change become impossible to ignore, even for those appearing to be lacking fully developed cognitive capacities and be lacking empathy for other people different from themselves.
Even zoos of the future will not be able to find sufficient numbers of exemplars of these extinct "climate deniers" for education programs to teach youngsters how it could be possible that humans beings could have ever had thoughts like this in the 21st century. So those of us that survive that long can look forward to exciting new career opportunity as zoo animals.
We are also going to probably be the last generation that undergoes the indignities of aging, losing our hair, and teeth, and becoming frail. In the zoo, we can wave at the children and the might even through use candies and treats, although, the zoo keepers will chastise them for "spoiling" our diets.
Without videos like this children of the future will not believe us when we try to tell them about "the climate deniers" and will just laugh at us thinking these stories are more "tall tales" us grandparents make up to make them laugh - like many of the other stories I'm planning to tell that might not be quite as grounded in science or reality. Like that one time when I caught a fish three feet long when the ocean got so hot the fish jumped right out of the ocean into my boat to cool off.
4:23 PM PT: I'm using this post as my Friday Night Sillies Open Thread as several humorists have already started my laughing for the first time in several weeks. I think the dismal depression that has depressed me for the last several weeks has just lifted. Just in time to have a good time for Friday night. Also, I am on a special protest tonight and refuse to put any snark or humor label in this post. It is 100% true, and or reflective of my true beliefs about what the future will be like so I don't see any reason why I should have to put in any diminuitive labels humor, which around here is like the "kiss of death." (Snark alert: well alright, I'll admit this last sentence, as true as it is, might be tinged by the slightest little touch of snark. I only admit this so as to make my case for not putting in the main post all the more credible.)