If Sean Hannity was searching for the least qualified person to help him attack Earth Day and global warming concerns, he could not have done better than high-school dropout and Rush Limbaugh substitute Mark Steyn last night. Between the two of them, there wasn’t a credential or bona fide to be found. But that didn’t stop either from playing climate science mavens on the Hannity show last night.
Let’s just review the resumés of these two.
Steyn’s own bio describes his career as follows:
Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human rights activist. …His human rights campaign to restore free speech to Canada led to the repeal by Parliament of the notorious “Section 13” law...
…Over the years, Mark’s writing on politics, arts and culture has been published in almost every major newspaper around the English-speaking world.
Notice anything missing? Besides any mention of education? Like an interest in climate science or any science at all?
Here’s what Steyn doesn’t mention: He’s a high-school dropout about whom The Guardian wrote in 2006:
Apart from predicting that George Bush would win the 2000 presidential election in a landslide, Steyn said at regular intervals that Osama bin Laden “will remain dead”. Weeks after the invasion of Iraq he assured his readers that there would be “no widespread resentment at or resistance of the western military presence”; in December 2003 he wrote that “another six weeks of insurgency sounds about right, after which it will peter out”; and the following March he insisted that: “I don’t think it’s possible for anyone who looks at Iraq honestly to see it as anything other than a success story.”
This same “brain” was whom Sean Hannity called up to help him “prove” that global warming is a liberal plot. Check out Hannity’s profile and you’ll find that he’s, “Known for his provocative style and free-wheeling, passionate commentary on politics and the American agenda.” What you won’t find is any interest or credential in science, either.
But “we report, you decide” Fox News didn’t see any reason for its viewers not to think they were watching real experts.
In a segment FoxNews.com called, “Mark Steyn debunks the alarmism behind global warming,” Fox promised us in its subtitle, “Exposing the truth about climate change.”
Hannity’s scripted introduction was as follows:
Today is Earth Day and as we all know too well, many liberals love to pretend like they’re saving the planet with their job-killing environmental policies. Especially when it comes to their concept of global warming. Now, earlier, I debunked that myth and addressed the real politics that’s driving these issues with author Mark Steyn.
In fact, there are serious, economic ramifications of climate change. But what would scientists know compared to Hannity and Steyn?
As a large graphic on the lower right of the screen blared, “Climate Change EXPOSED,” Steyn explained how those who believe in climate change are just being selfish. “I think it’s a very elite thing. It’s anti-consumerist, it’s anti-industrial, it’s anti-innovative. So if you live in a nice little neighborhood, it’s nice to pull the drawbridge up and say, in the interests of the environment, we’re not having any more development.”
This from the “non-elitist” “humanitarian” who smeared Virginia Tech students for being too passive when a shooter went on a rampage on their campus, who pushed for tax breaks for the wealthiest 1%, and whose idea of witty insight is to say that Obama would have focused on the economy more if it had a “gays in the economy-ish angle to it.”
Steyn continued with his summation on global warming: “The fact is, the fact is, that as science – a science! - it’s nonsense!”
You can watch the segment yourself for Steyn’s “scientific” argument. Which Hannity ate up without question.
Well, actually, Hannity did ask one penetrating question: "How much of this is rooted in anti-capitalism?" He asked. (“That’s it’s appeal, it’s an appeal to rich people,” Steyn advised)
For the piece de resistance of confirmation that global warming is a hypocritical-liberal hoax, we got some (2007) footage of Al Gore getting off a private jet and getting into a limo.
That's all the proof Fox News thinks its viewers need.
Since the earth, at present, has not had warm periods equal to what was seen in the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm period….and the computer models can’t explain why they happened – perhaps we should not be as worried as they claim we need to be. Also consider the general living conditons between warm periods and cold periods – maybe a bit warmer might be a good thing.
So until the computer models are more accurate and can properly model the past 2000 years, I will remain unconvinced that we need to spend trillions of dollars to avert a 0.5 degree increase in global temperatures….since the temperature increase might not occur, and the spending might do absolutely nothing.
I hope no one to take YOU seriously.
Incidentally, no one has answered one specific issued that was raised in this interview: there has been no global warming in 17 years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/10/neil-degrasse-tyson-media-climate-change_n_4933814.html
http://youtu.be/_Nr630Qbdz0
Hannocchio loves drilling as long as it’s not in his backyard. This Long Island Lolito would have a hissy fit if companies started drilling near his home in Oyster Bay. The Town of Oyster Bay Supervisor John Venditto would get an earful from this aging hack.
With all the hot air coming from Hannocchio’s mouth it’s not helping the environment.
I don’t think the scientists are backtracking, actually. Rather, they have realised that allarmism is causing lots of people to stick their heads in the sand.
He also seems to ignore that the scientists who are currently denying the reality of rising global temperatures are receiving funds for their research from the companies with a vested interest in fossil fuels. When the latter finally run out, those companies will withdraw their funding and those scientists will probably alluvasudden “discover” the reality of climate change.
By then, however, a major chunk of the world’s present-day coast lines will be underwater and huge areas inland will have become uninhabitable due to fracking, oil-sands exploitation and the like. My brother visited the fields up in the north of Canada last year and says the “landscape” was lunar, the work of lunatics. It will take decades, perhaps even a century or two, before those lands become inhabitable again.
Far as I can tell, Steyn imagines himself as a bit of a proudly sophomoric comic. He’s pretty much a British equivalent to Tucker Carlson.
Anyway, as I’ve written numerous times in these comments, Hannocchio is probably one of the greatest dangers to the world’s environment! If he had his way, and his drill-everywhere, frack-everywhere, mine-everywhere wacko ideas were taken seriously, we’d be at minimum quadrupling our consumption of dirty fosil fuels, spewing tons more CO2 into the air every day. The equivalent of nuclear winter would rapidly descend upon the globe. Hey Sean — who needs to wait for Obama to launch the Minuteman missiles at Teheran or Moscow!
Even worse is Hannity’s almost total disregard for the countless victims of climate change; not just the millions of animals and birds, but all those who’ve perished these past few years in killer hurricanes and typhoons, tornadoes, and floods. All those who are starving and dying from hunger as crops fail. (Wait until the cost of beef — even the crap they use — causes the price of a Big Mac to go up to $10, then we’ll hear some real Slanthead whinning!)
Even the avalanche the other day on Everest that tragically killed the 16 Sherpas may have been the result of climate change (despite the obvious fact that their jobs are probably the most dangerous and certainly the most underpaid in the world). Just a one or two degree rise in average temps can loosen some of that treacherous ice on that mountain (which, IMO, should be off-limits for all humans). I didn’t hear Hannochio express any regret over this accident — did anyone?
Getting back to animals, Slanthead has for years displayed total disdain for all four-legged or winged creatures. A perfect example is the Snowy Owl, normally found in Canada. Most likely due to climate change, flocks of them were coming south, with some disrupting flights at Kennedy Airport last fall. Authorities wanted to kill them, which triggered protests from those who wanted a more humane solution.
In several long rants on the radio, Hannity — who apparently felt his “travel” plans were in jeopardy — volunteered to go out to Kennedy and shoot down the owls. The idiot never quite explained how he would do that, but one can presume he’d bring along his three (and counting) AR-15s (fat chance of hitting a bird with them), as he has publicly admitted on air, that he can’t use a shotgun — “It knocked me over.”
That’s Slanthead’s prescription for any endangered or out-of-place animal or bird — SHOOT IT! The North American moose is dying off due to tick infestation, most likely caused by climate change. Hey Sean… you’ve got thousands of rounds of ammo in your North Shore bunker, let’s load up and go kill all the moose!
I couldn’t play your embedded clip Ellen, but found the segment on YouTube. Gee, I didn’t know Steyn was a climate expert. When he needs support denying climate change, Slanthead usually turns to so-called meteorologist Joe Bastardi (former wrestler and bodybuilder, aka “Pinhead”). I’m still laughing at the time the Pinhead had to correct the Slanthead, and tell him, “No Sean, there are no polar bears in Antarctica.”
Between their ignorance and outright hatred of real (meaning “librul”) science, those like Hannity would, if they got away with it, end life on Earth as we know it!
Prove that science “believes” as much as you do because science has NEVER “believed” beyond; 95% in THIRTY TWO YEARS! Why so eager to “believe”?
97.6% of all scientists are 95% certain it “could be” a crisis and have NEVER “believed” the end is near as much as they “believe” smoking will cause cancer. The earth is not flat and 95% is not 100% certainty. Deniers demand a real warning for a real crisis.
Deny that.