Detroit News duo vie to pen most outlandish, spiteful tirade against all things environmental

Editorial columnists gone wild!

Pointing out errors, inconsistencies and tortured logic in Detroit News editorial writers’ ugly screeds against environmentalists and all they stand for could be a full-time job. Since Mitten State is only part-time – and because the News tells us that environmentalists hate jobs – we valiantly resist the urge to spend too much time playing Whack-a-Mole with them. Alas, pair of jaw-droppingly stupid columns this week are too irresistible to let pass by.

First, News editorial board member and cartoonist Henry Payne invoked the visage of Nazis in his column titled Sieg Heil, warmingmongers!. He warns darkly of coming “civil unrest” and “grim war” in the United States because of President Obama’s “radical green vision.”

Yes. Civil unrest and grim war. From the radical green vision of a president who’s backing so-called ”clean” coal; expanding oil drilling in previously off-limits areas of the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska coastlines;  and authorizing massive taxpayer subsidies for new nuclear plants.

(Aside: The News’ editorialists rail constantly against taxpayer subsidies for clean energy like wind and solar. On the topic of taxpayer subsidies for coal, gas, oil and nuclear power they are as quiet as church mice.)

Feeling challenged to up the ante in their game of  batshit-crazy, Payne’s colleague Manny Lopez ginned up an incomprehensibly inane blog post incorporating climate change with lunatic murderer Charlie Manson, Koran-burning Pastor Terry Jones and Al Gore. 

On a junior high schooler’s Facebook page the post would be judged a failed attempt at clever. From the Opinion Page Editor of the state’s second-largest newspaper, it’s just embarrassing.
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Climate conspiracy theories fall like snowflakes from Detroit News columnists' keyboards

On Feb. 2, Detroit News Opinion Page Editor Manny Lopez took his favorite whipping boy, Al Gore, to task for Gore’s suggestion that the recent Midwest snowstorm may have been intensified by climate change. He lectured “Goreacle and his lemmings” that the storm had nothing to do with climate, but was “part of that pesky little thing called weather.”

Only two days later, Detroit News cartoonist Henry Payne, who sits on the News’ editorial board with Lopez, wrote that, because of snowfall in Dallas, “global warming” had been “debunked on the grandest stage of all: The Super Bowl.” It was, he wrote, “an embarrassment of Janet Jackson-like proportions” for Gore.

Discerning readers may be puzzled how the News’ braintrust can simultaneously declare both that the snowstorm had no bearing on climate change theory and that it debunks climate change in a most humiliating way. But regular readers of the News’ editorial columnists and bloggers are not surprised.

 

In a  Feb. 3 column, Payne tells us that the only people left supporting climate change theory are "the elites and their crony capitalist backers" who are sucking up taxpayer subsidies for windmills (presumably they, not the poor little coal and oil industries are calling the shots in Washington now), asserts that a cold spell in parts of America has climate change adherents “in a panic” and spins the usual climate conspiracy theory involving thousands of crooked scientists worldwide. Plus, there’s a bonus conspiracy theory! A worldwide coordinated cover up of "the scientific scandal of the century"  by the world’s media.

Possibly the frenzy has something to do with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s recent data showing that 2010 tied the  warmest year on global record. Or, perhaps someone is angling for an invitation to a guest spot on a Fox News pundit shoutfest. Either way, News readers deserve less hysteria and more level headedness from their opinion leaders. 

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Biblical stewardship of the earth and its creatures? Not in Rep. John Shimkus' truncated Bible

Rep. Shimkus: Don't worry

Not sure how I missed this, but Congressman John Shimkus of Illinois wants to be the next chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee. And Rep. Shimkus has a rather unique perspective

on climate change.

He believes that mankind is incapable of harming the planet because the Bible declares God, not man, will destroy the earth. “The earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth,” he said.

Now careful readers will note that the previous link was to the left-wing, Soros funded, Huffington Post which is part of the failed Pelosi-Huffington agenda and a tool of Statists, ecoterrorists and Communists. But Shimkus’ views were also chronicled in the New York Times, which is simply part of the liberal drive-by media and therefore more trustworthy. I guess.

Anyway, Rep. Shimkus declared that the conservative and Tea Party victories in the 2010 means that “The climate debate has, at least for two years, has ended with this election.”

In open defiance of Rep. Shimkus’ decree, climatologists across the nation apparently plan to continue to do research for the next two years. Some of these climatologists have never even slept with Al Gore. So, you see, technically the debate really isn’t over.

It also may be news to Rep. Shimkus that religious leaders across the nation and the world have called for action on climate change, through organizations like the Evangelical Climate Initiative.

Even within the modest environmental coalitions in Michigan, there are faith-based groups working toward sensible responses to climate change. Groups like the IHM Sisters in Monroe; the Michigan chapter of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life out of Oakland County and  Michigan Interfaith Power and Light in Royal Oak.

These groups have bizarre ideas about the Bible teaching us that we must be stewards of the earth and the creatures that inhabit it. Stuff like: Lev. 25:23-24. The land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.

 I don’t know where Rep. Shimkus’ gets his laissez faire Biblical interpretation. But I sure as hell hope he does not inflict such dangerous nonsense on our nation from the pulpit of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

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Al Gore: Crazed sex poodle?

A woman accusing Al Gore of sexually assaulting her described him as “crazed sex poodle,” http://bit.ly/9TydL1 and told him to “get off me you big lummox" http://bit.ly/b6bUMF which has the right wing Gore haters in a fine lather.

Al is definitely a big lummox. And could be a crazed sex poodle. But none of that has any bearing on climate change science. The latest from NOAA: “The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for May 2010 was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F). This is the warmest such value on record since 1880.” http://bit.ly/ZYxCn