Edward Markey, a Democratic U.S. Congressman, told a group of high school students that “climate change” was responsible for the famine in Somalia and hence for the 1993 “Black Hawk down” battle between American troops and Somali rebels. He also told the students, who were from the Gulf states, that hurricane Katrina had been caused by global warming.
As if there hadn’t been famines, wars, and massacres..and hurricanes…for thousands of years.
Markey’s comments seem to me to be more than a little unhinged. Neptunus Lex:
To call this sort of thinking “muddled” is to do disservice leftmost tail of the intellectual bell curve. “Fantastic” might be a better description. As in “magical”.
Unfortunately, this quality of thought is pretty common on the Democratic side of the Congressional aisle. If these people were businesspeople, and applied this kind of thinking to running their businesses, they would quickly go broke. If they were tribal leaders, their tribes would wind up dying of famine or killed/enslaved by enemies. If they were ship captains, they’d run aground or be sunk by typhoons.
Pretty scary to think how much influence they have on our collective future.
Update: Corrected Markey’s title–thanks, BobC.
Something to ponder: Environmentalism as the opiate of the masses.
The world is just too complicated to comprehend, so we ascribe all unfavorable things to a wrathful Global Warming…er…Climate Change god.
Global Warming = A crisis manufacatored to keep the mind of the alarmist from having to process the threat of Islam to their life.
A highly complex planetary scale adaptive system that we do not understand well enough to make accurate computer models is a handy “magic cloud” for ppl on the Left to justify the exact same misanthropic and/or anticapitalist and luddite attitudes and policy prescriptions that they once demanded for the betterment of “the working class”.
Real science would only get in the way here.
Worse, it obscures the real source of the famine, ethnic conflict.
While watching the local news on evening back in the late 70’s when Texas suffered a catastrophic drought, my grandfather quipped that a politician would take credit for god’s rain and blame the drought on his opponent. Of course, this was back in the day when blaming any human agency for weather or climate was regarded as lunacy.
I’m ashamed to say that Edward Markey (D) Massachusetts is from my state. He is, however, a Congressmen, not a Senator. Two other dufai – Ted Kennedy and John Kerry – hold those offices.
In the case of global warming, it is always useful to check the underlying physical facts. Somalia is in the Sahel region and that region, including Somalia is greening (becoming wetter) not drying. Markey or his staff really should have known this if they gave a hoot about the actual science. The greening of the Sahara (good google search term btw) is both predicted by computer model and observed by satellite photo so it’s independent of any judgment on anthropogenic global warming. It’s a real phenomenon and most are missing it.
I’ve read somewhere that plant life all over the world is just feasting on all the CO2 in the air.
Markey got even better today – his answer to high gasoline prices was (1) release the strategic petroleum reserves (should last 1/2 hour, max) and (2) “stand up to OPEC” (is that Democrat for “invade someone and take their oil”?). The way he talks about drilling, you’d think they meant his teeth instead of the most godforsaken parts of Alaska.
I remember when Markey was supposed to speak at a meeting for the financial services industry, a major employer in his district (Fidelity, Putnam, Bank of Boston, John Hancock, Prudential, Scudder, State Street Bank, etc.). He canceled at the last minute and sent an aide who gave a sermon on greed (he was against it). Maybe there was some confusion about the venue, since he was talking to people who are supposed to make money on the behalf of others.
At least he’s not my congressman anymore, after the last redistricting. We traded up to a nonentity (Tierney).
Drawing down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would make it very difficult for us to take any effective action against Iran (or any other oil power) and would also make it hard for us to encourage or support any such action by Israel.
From the standpoint of the Democratic leadership, this would clearly be a feature not a bug, and I wonder if it might not be a primary motivation for the Democratic position on the SPR.