Once again, the Crank has reduced all eternal truths into someone else’s stock options. So everything is wrong in my last post, eh? Let’s assume he’s right for a moment, ha ha ha hahahaa.  Sorry, that was funny.  Mr. Crank, you have a singular ability to misrepresent all of my positions and points.  Some would call that consistency; I call it something else.

As I mentioned in my last post, and many others, global warming has been politicized and to some degree fudged.  So I’m wrong about that?  But if that’s wrong, then you must be wrong when you mentioned that very point.  But if you’re wrong and I’m right about being wrong, er, you must be…wow.

Oh, and my statement from Ken Wilber, “The data just isn’t there to support global warming” must be wrong too, which means the facts do exist, so you’re wrong and I’m vindicated somehow, right?  I’m right for being wrong…right?

I also relayed in my last post this possible ice age scenario:

Stage 1: Polar ice caps melt

Stage 2: Oceans lose salinity (salt)

Stage 3: Ocean currents stop

Stage 4: No warm water currents circulating = ice age

Wrong again.  Sean Hannity was right!  Damn, I’m going to kick my 7th grade science teacher’s ass.  He’s old now, so I should be able to do it. Damn you Mcgraw-Hill textbooks and your pathetic over reliance on the scientific method!

I have had the same basic themes throughout my climate change posts.  Here’s a recap from my first post on the subject.  For those of you who already clicked on that thing, sorry, it’s right here:

1) There are Earthly cycles we don’t fully understand.

2) Man’s impact on this phenomenally complex system is not fully understood.

These first two can be treated as one. So if I’m wrong on this, Mr. Crank, then we fully understand these Earthly cycles.  Wow, it’s amazing what you can learn by watching Fox & Friends.  For instance, last week I learned I can reach my flat screen with a focused stream of vomit.

3) Pollution = Bad.

My mind is officially blown.  You’ve outdone yourself, Mr. Crank.  You think you know something and then pollution forms a protective ring around the Earth, in essence, saving us from those harmful UV rays.  So give a hoot and keep polluting. Wow, Crank, you really…forget it…I can’t do this.  If you go line by line from my last warming post, which I sadly did, here’s the crux: I don’t really claim to know what’s happening with the climate, or even how to fix it, but at least I understand that something’s happening.  My three global warming posts are essentially a list of what we do know thus far and some common sensical advice for the future.  Yet, everything is wrong?  So we can’t even agree on the basics?

Have you ever wondered if your blogversary is huffing carb cleaner?

I had two more pages of this shit, which, to save our last few readers, I tore out of my hard drive with a pair of forceps.  You’re welcome.  So there’s no Pacific garbage patch, Crank?  We’re not overfishing our oceans, Crank?  The coral reefs are healthy, Crank?  We’re not heading for a high period of solar activity, Crank?  Bush didn’t roll back forty-years of EPA regs?  Sanjaya should have won American Idol, Crank?

Hey, I got it!  Let’s try looking at every potentially subjective line from my post.  He couldn’t possibly mean all of my—well, actually, I don’t know what the fuck he means.  Do you?  But let’s look at every point that can be argued:

Found three potentially subjective quotes from my last, totally wrong post!

1) “Republicans don’t and won’t give a shit until it impacts their stock options, which is certainly part of why people with foresight think they’re dangerously shortsighted—the rest involves Sarah ‘the British are Irish’ Palin.”

Actually, you’re right, Crank. This Paul Revere/Palin joke from my other post is much funnier.

2) “Hearing you, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity espouse wisdom on the subject of Earth Science is kind of like getting your medical advice from Dr. Demento (which I do…so bad example). But Dr. D, am I really going to need to have my dead puppies Yankoviched?”

Maybe bringing up Weird Al just muddied the debate. I’ll give you a point here as well (that’s two!).

3) “When have you, Mr. Crank, ever left even the faintest hint you might be wrong about something? I haven’t seen it…well, I’ve seen the results…but, don’t worry, your defense mechanisms are cleaning up your messes, almost instantly, through the magic of cognitive dissonance.”

You started off your last post saying everything in my last post was wrong, soooo I think I’ll stand by this one.

Whew. You know what would have been easier?  If you would just take off your Foxeteer filter, Mr. Crank, which seems to hinder blood flow to the brain, maybe then we can discuss a whole bunch of topics based on something I like to call reality.

I have understood for years there’s a difference of opinion about how warm it’s actually getting in the last decade. Of course, NASA says it’s the warmest decade on record, but for that article you have to go way back to last Saturday.  And, as for your own backyard, you only need look at Phoenix’s record breaking 118º last week (with cloud cover).  I know, history is a bitch…actually a single instance is meaningless.  It’s a Drudge tactic, but at least I know when I’m employing one.

Sure, some say there’s been a halt in the century-long warming trend.  This is the Crank channeling Sean I-Never-Studied Hannity again.  In Earth time, even if there is a decade long lull in an otherwise century-long increase in temperature…ummm, how do you ignore the other 90-year trend?  That’s a metaphor for the Foxeteers.  This should be their mission statement:

Fox News: let’s focus on that one flimsy shred-of-a-fact that supports our tenuous ill-advised position and repeat it ad infinitum.

I think I can coin a new phrase debating the Crank, selective cognition.  Yes, American Psychological Association, you can use it, but only if you defer my student loans.   Shit…it exists.  Damn you Google!

The Crank plan is this: America, please don’t lead on this issue, wait for China and India to address pollution control in the hopes that ever-thickening ring of pollution around our planet will stave off further global warming—er, which according to you doesn’t exist.  That’s quite a position.  Oh, and if attempting to save the planet is gap-toothed stooped, what’s not even trying?  Hmmm.  That gap is getting bigger, Cleetus.  Sorry, but I’ll take my chances with less pollution, Einstein.  Roll them dice, baby! Come on protective pollution cloud.

Check out this outrageous Stuart Davis dialogue with his clone: Foothill in the mouth .  It mentions both arguments and that pollution shield back in 2005.  Yes, what I remember in 2005 is apparently news to the Crank today.

The main points of my last article did little to dent the Crank’s inherent programming, so let’s put this into a Crank-worthy analogy (CWA): the evil educated and liberal professor on Gilligan’s Island says, “We need to leave the island now.  The volcano is going to erupt and drown us all in lava!”

Really, the professor understands it’s probably the ash, not the lava, that will get them, but he’s trying to encourage the Skipper and Gilligan to stop whatever they’re doing on that hammock and start toward the exits in the quickest possible fashion.  I have condemned the doctoring and politicizing of global warming, but a few bad apples do not change the main premise of the episode: the volcano is erupting.  So picture Gilligan taking a fifty from Thurston Howell III and fanning Lovey as the pyroclastic cloud hits.  Great job, Crank.  You could have gotten a hundred if you had only agreed to feed her grapes.

Don’t worry, I don’t really understand that either.  But according to the Foxeteers (and by proxy, the Crank), no scientists are right, no media is right, and no statistics are right—yet the Crank has figured everything out through the power of Greyskull.  What a Heman Master of the Universe!  So what do you base any of your conclusions on then, Sparky?  Probably those few scientists, media, and statistics that support your position.  

We can’t even have a rational conversation about anything anymore, which is also why we might default next week as a nation.  Thanks.  Nicely done.  What do you do for your next trick?  Wait, I don’t want to know.

For a related example, one has to go all the way back to today when a CNN reporter tried correcting a Teabagger: 

CNN reporter: “Umm, but raising the debt ceiling is about money we’ve already spent.” 

Teabagger congress someone: “No it isn’t.”

Why didn’t that reporter just bitch slap him with his microphone?  Why stand there and let people misunderstand the basics?  We can’t even agree on basic facts anymore because the Foxeteers don’t know any.

It’s like people calling Obama a liar all week for saying, “Hey, if we default we might not be able to pay for shit like social security.”

The Right: Liar!  There’s plenty of money to pay for social security.

The Zano: Er, well what about paying our military personnel?

The Right: Liar! There’s plenty of money to pay the military. 

The Zano: Umm, where’s that microphone?  The point is we need to pay them both at the same time, you morons.  How do Foxeteers fall for this shit?  It’s a like playing that shell game with one shell and they keep picking a nearby lamp.

As I have said before, I am a tard when it comes to the economy, so what the hell are they? In nearly ten years, one of the only valid points the Foxeteers have even identified is our deficit issues.  Apparently, if our deficit dollars were all stacked on top of one another the pile would reach the stratosphere.  And they’re now very proud of themselves for identifying this tower of debt.  Ummm, it reaches to the stratosphere, dude?  Very observant.  And this is the only good thing we can say about the Foxeteers? In the last decade?  It’s like a kid bringing a dead animal into the house shouting, “Look at this! Look at this!”  I never thought I’d have to say this to nearly forty percent of our population but, “Put that thing down, wash your hands, and go play.”  You really should all go play, because you’re no help whatsoever, and I’m only saying this because you haven’t been any help since I’ve been interested in politics.  So go play.  It’s all right.  As a matter of fact, don’t vote.  You can vote in your world.  Heck, maybe in that other dimension your arguments will actually make sense.

I’m kidding, of course, it wouldn’t make sense there either!