The Week in Denialism

Henry Payne stares into the abyss, and vice versa:

If Kempthorne just ruled that global warming is an imminent danger to the polar bear’s habitat, then, how long will it be before greens take the next tactical step and sue to limit industry from producing carbon dioxide?

Something like this actually happened, he explains:

Joining with the environmental-racism movement and backed by a Clinton executive order, [EPA chief Carol Browner] Browner argued that locating industries near black populations created a “disproportionate impact” by exposing them to pollution — therefore violating their civil rights. Naturally, activists found courts willing to uphold this nonsense....

What makes this especially charming is that Payne doesn't dispute that these industries are disproportionately sited in minority neighborhoods (which is just as well) nor even that this causes health problems for residents (ditto). As far as I can tell, what qualifies as "nonsense" here is the idea that any sensible person should care (along with the democratic principle that allows citizens to agitate for a redress of grievances). To paraphrase Brecht, perhaps American industry should dissolve the people, and elect another.

Incidentally, there was a time when restrictive covenants impeded even a clean and articulate darkie like Nat "King" Cole from living among his betters; it doesn't take much effort to see the connection between ownership restrictions in white neighborhoods and forced accommodation to industrial pollution in minority ones.

Patrick J. Michaels says that global warming stopped in 1998 (as long as you ignore what's happened since). Also, polar bear populations are at a record high (as long as you take their drastically diminished 1950s population as your starting point). All of which demonstrates that Michaels is a genius (at least when compared to a flatworm).

Don Martin complains that people only care about polar bears because they're "majestic," and only get choked up about seals because "they graphically gush blood all over ice floes" when you slaughter them. If they really cared about endangered animals, they'd destroy Western Prosperity for the sake of the Vancouver Island marmot, instead. Polar bears are mere symbols, don't you know, which is why it's so offensive that the Bush Administration has given them "mostly symbolic protection." Besides, they eat seals. How you like 'em now, hippies?

Hell hath no fury like Cal Thomas scorned. John McCain has "joined the warming cult," and this leads Thomas to conclude that "the era of big government is so not over" (like, totally!).

This is a fine column, really. It's one of Thomas's best. For proof, I direct you to this remarkable piece of political jiu-jitsu:

[T]he apostle of global warming, Al Gore, and his new disciple, John McCain, want us to believe in a 2008 version of the Pete Seeger anti-war lyric: "we were — knee deep in (carbon monoxide) and the big fool said to push on."

He neglected to call Seeger a Commie, but other than that, I'd give it a 9.8.

So what should McCain have done? I'm almost too excited to tell you:

Mr. McCain would have done better to push back against the global warming cult and conduct a raid on the cultists similar to what Texas authorities did to the FLDS polygamists.

Oh, hell yes. Just imagine the look on the cultists' faces when The Man comes down on their crash pads and communes! I can honestly say that I'll be at least as disappointed as Cal Thomas if McCain doesn't take this excellent advice to heart.

(Illustration via The Sietch Blog.)