Insanity at 1600: Secrets, lies, and the “public health benefits to climate change”
Oct 26th, 2007 | 13 responses
You want to know just how crazy the Bush White House is? Do you?
I know, there’s already an astonishing amount of evidence to back up that assessment, so much delusion, so much apparent insanity, but consider what White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said on Wednesday in response to allegations “the White House ‘eviscerated’ Center for Disease Control director Dr. Julie Gerberding’s Senate testimony on the ‘Human Impacts of Global Warming,’” as TP put it.
First — and I take this from the transcript posted at TCR — she said that “the decision was made on behalf of CDC to focus that testimony on public health benefits,” a decision made by the White House. “Well,” she continued, “there are public health benefits to climate change, as well, both benefits and concerns.”
Second — back to the transcript posted at TP — she said this in response to a follow-up question regarding her claim, the supposed “health benefits to climate change”: “In some cases, there are — look, this is an issue where I’m sure lots of people would love to ridicule me when I say this, but it is true that many people die from cold-related deaths every winter. And there are studies that say that climate change in certain areas of the world would help those individuals. There are also concerns that it would increase tropical diseases and that’s — again, I’m not an expert in that, I’m going to let Julie Gerberding testify in regards to that, but there are many studies about this that you can look into.”
No, she’s not an expert, but neither she nor the White House in which she works is about to let Gerberding testify truthfully about global warming. And her own argument — and she speaks for the president, remember — is that global warming would reduce “cold-related deaths,” a supposed health benefit. She pulled a face-saving 180 at yesterday’s briefing, asserting that “climate change is real” and that “humans are largely responsible,” but the crazy comments of the previous day, along with the evisceration of Gerberding’s testimony, reveal where the White House stands on global warming. It is not “working on a way to solve the problem,” it is working to block efforts to address the problem” at every step, both domestically and internationally, and doing so by controlling what government officials say and by misrepresenting the facts, by lying about the climate crisis.
What, after all, are these “many studies” Perino mentions. Has she read these studies? Do they even exist? And, if they do, who wrote them? Furthermore, although climate change means aggregate global temperature increases, or what is generally referred to as “global warming,” it is not exclusively about temperature increases, and different parts of the world would be affected differently. Melting ice and rising seas would lead to mass flooding, and perhaps millions of deaths, but it could also mean dramatic changes to the earth’s hydrologic cycle, including to the so-called Ocean Conveyor, which regulates the Gulf Stream, the flow of warm water up into the North Atlantic. If the Conveyor slows down significantly as a result of more and more fresh water coming down from the north, temperatures would cool significantly in Europe and elsewhere in the region, and, more dramatically, much of the Northern Hemisphere could be plunged back into another ice age. Researchers have already discovered remarkable changes in oceanic salinity levels. It is real. It is happening. No matter what Perino and the White House would like to believe.
You know, maybe they’re not crazy, maybe they’re not delusional. Whatever the appeal of a psychological explanation, let’s not be too easy on them. They’re insane in a broad sense, but what this all amounts to is both willful ignorance born of unmitigated self-interest, and, where they do know what’s really going on, a propensity for evil. Although I generally object to such terms — the Manichaean categories of “good” and “evil” that so influences the child-like thinking of the president and those like him — I can think of no better word for it.
13 Responses to “Insanity at 1600: Secrets, lies, and the “public health benefits to climate change””
“You know, maybe they’re not crazy, maybe they’re not delusional.”
Stupid. Stupid is the word you are looking for. That was hands down the stupidest answer I’ve heard from the White House to justify its stance on Global Warming. It shows that not only does she not have a clue what she is talking about, she will adamantly defend her uninformed opinion with theories she pulls out of her ass. These are our leaders, dear god.
i wouder if their [Bush-Cheney administration] opinion is influence by the oil industries, afterall, Bush-Cheney did invaded iraq, so that oil industries can steal the iraqis oil.
Dr. Julie Gerberding claims that the editted testimony presented didn’t alter her actual testimony. I hope she’s telling the truth, but her boss would be happy if she pushed the testimony that some idiot removed. This sounds like the Texas A&M hack influencing NASA policy, and that didn’t turn out so good for this administration.
“afterall, Bush-Cheney did invaded iraq, so that oil industries can steal the iraqis oil.”
Actually, you don’t have to invade Iraq in order to steal its oil, thats just silly. Merely causing the price to go from $25 to $80+ causes every barrel pumped from anywhere in the world to generate record profits. Which is exactly what has happened. Oil companies can get three times what they used to for the same stuff without lifting a finger. Now thats a bargain.
The Bush administration’s foot-dragging, which doesn’t outrage normal people, is sane compared to the truly crazy alarmism we have seen here.
Bush Derangement Syndrome, meet eco-nuttiness.
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Sam had it close. Stupid? Maybe. I prefer “inept.”
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Aside from Shaun Mullen, who has fulminant “BDS” but also claims to be a critic of Hillary Clinton, what will y’all do when Bush is gone and the liberal media treat Saint Hillary as they did in the past, the way FEMA employees masquerading as reporters can be expected to treat a FEMA official during a “news” conference? (Katie Couric, meet St. Hillary. Don’t rub your knees raw from worship. We’ve seen liberal Democrats masquerading as journalists, even “crusader” journalists, all the time.)
Well, we’ll point out her mistakes too. I seriously doubt they’ll even be in the same pallbark as Bush’s, but you never know. She may start a totally unnecessary war and blow the budget to all hell too, as well as screw over middle and lower income families. And appoint total douchebag incompetents or worse to key executive branch positions and make us look like short sighted cowboys to the whole world. And try to suspend pillars of the American legal system like Habeus Corpus and make torture of prisoners standard operating procedure. Whose to say?
DLS – The WaPost went after all the Clinton transgressions. I believe the WaPost broke many of the Clenis stories. While the WaPost may have a left of center slant, it doesn’t pander like the Murcoch News. Didn’t Murdoch give money to Hillary? I guess Bob is hedging his bets.
This site went down when posting the “before” and “after” versions of the testimony. Will try again.
Draft (before editing)
Submitted (after editing)
What was chopped was a long portion that diverged from true public health discussion into environmental discussion (the second paragraph of “Background” on page one and all of pages two through nine). Also removed was the last part of “Modeling,” about modeling and forecasting. Then the phrase “are likely to” got changed to “may,” and I forget the one, maybe two other small changes that were made.
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She’ll be a better speaker, and more competent, but could be more dangerous and repellent. It will depend more on how far left she goes after election than on how goony her inside circle turns out to be. No doubt while the public has become accustomed to her, she has learned lessons from her early 1990s arrogance, conceit, and overreach. (Hopefully, anyway.)
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Just like Andreas with Archer-Daniels-Midland. And, for that matter, the pharmaceutical industry and others.
Arrogance, conceit and overreach are qualities in the current president that I find impossible to believe will be exceeded by whoever follows.
Normal people that Bush administration censorship and misrepresentation doesn’t bother:
DLS
Rabid sufferers of BDS who pick on the administration for petty offenses:
Everyone else posting and commenting at TMV
LOL
Next we’ll be told that the EPA has stopped doing it’s job porperly becasue polluted water is healthier than clean water, and I’m not sure I’m kidding.
Well no point in recapping all of the times the WH and its media allies have substituted spin for substance-none of which is grounds for any public outrage except for the totally paranoid according to DLS— but I’ll give a partial list anyway:
After the Plame leak—the Press Secretary assured us that no one at the WH was involved. Bush promised to fire anyone who was. When it became evident that at least 3 at the WH were involved, no one was fired. (Libby had already resigned)
When hearings were held about the fired US attys, the administration claimed it was all a political witchhunt by the opposition party in Congress. All of the top appointees at the Justice Dept have now resigned or been driven out, and Gonzales has had to hire a criminal attorney for possible charges that he lied to Congress.
After the scandal at Abu Ghraib broke, Bush promised to hold those responsible accountable. But no senior officers or Pentagon officials paid the price for the abuses.
The administration knows that it has a major problem with credibility in these press conferences. Yet they send Perino out to make ridiculous and dangerous statements like that. I guess next she’ll claim that the lead in toys we import from China is beneficial because it makes them sturdier.
Everyone here does know that climate change won’t actually result in less cold-related deaths, right? That cold-related deaths tend to happen when poor people have no heat, and/or when places not used to cold get hit by a cold wave?
There is really nowhere in the country that’s the second part except maybe Miami. Everyone has heaters, our problem is the other way around when we get a hot snap and not everyone has AC.
And the first thing is completely unconnected to the actual temperature, less the WH is suggesting that the climate will change so much that parts of the country will change so much that they will no long get cold enough to endanger people. Which would require them going up to at least 60 at all times, even at night in the middle of winter.
And such a change would kill a lot more people from the heat, as making South Dakota 60 at night in winter would require it to be something like 150 during the day in the summer. And while they have heaters, they do not have AC.
If you were to magically drop the temperature 10 degrees in this country, most people would be fine, although heating costs would go though the roof. If you raise it 10 degrees, you’re going to end up with a lot of death people in the summer in parts of the country where it didn’t get above 80 and they made do with fans, or it didn’t get above 90 and they made do with a window AC.