If you care about your children’s future, if you believe other species have a right to exist, if you believe that clean air, clean water, and a livable planet are the minimum that we can pass along to our heirs, then you are now, and have always been, a communist.
That’s the message from New Mexico’s new chairman of Natural Resources, former Apollo Astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt.
An Op-Ed page war over Schmitt’s crackpot science broke out in the Sante Fe New Mexican last week, and the climate denial chorus, including the tobacco and petroleum fueled Heartland Institute, where Schmitt is a board member, rushed to defend his extreme views. Schmitt was the topic of this week’s Climate Crock video, for his dishonest use of cherry picked statistics to claim that Arctic Sea ice extent had “returned to 1989 levels”.
Now, scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data center have weighed in. Since NSIDC data was part of the discussion, they felt that clarification was needed.
Senior NSIDC Scientists Mark Serreze and Walt Meier signed the message, which ever-so-politely suggested that Dr. Schmitt was smoking crack.
Regarding Mark Boslough’s Jan. 25 My View, “Climate-change deniers ignore science,” and in subsequent responses, there was discussion of Harrison Schmitt’s statement in 2009 that Arctic sea ice had recovered to 1989 levels. Since data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center were cited, we feel it worthwhile to clarify the issue for readers.
Sea ice conditions can vary from month to month, but overall we see the continuation of a strong downward trend. You can read our 2009 season analysis at http://nsidc.org/news/press/20091005_minimumpr.html.
While 2009 Arctic sea ice extent did briefly exceed 1989 levels in April and May, it was substantially less than 1989 the rest of the year. The 2009 maximum extent, minimum extent, and annual average extent values were all well below 1989. Based on these facts, it would be incorrect to suggest that 2009 represented a recovery of Arctic sea ice to 1989 levels.
NSIDC posts the most recent data and regularly updated analyses of conditions at _http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/._
end quote
The most important measure of ice is not “extent” in any case, it’s total volume – shown here:
Dr. Schmitt has apparently melded Tea Party politics with cold war fanaticism and an ferocious anti-science bias. With more appointments like this, New Mexico will be well on the way to becoming an technological backwater of the new energy economy.
http://climateprogress.org/2011/01/27/denier-harrison-schmitt-holdren-communists/
http://www.koat.com/news/26645379/detail.html
http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/nm-energy-secretary-harrison-schmitt-frozen-in-denial/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Articgate-perpetuating-myth-Arctic-sea-ice-recovered.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/misrepresenting-climate-s_b_819367.html
http://www.grinzo.com/energy/?p=2351
http://climateprogress.org/2011/02/07/harrison-schmitt-climate-science-denier-arctic-sea-ice/
Well, if you recognize that everybody owns the air, water and other natural resources, you might see what’s bothering him.
He wants private ownership of everything!
Gone are the days where we laugh off stupid stuff wingers and crackpots say. The next thing you know they become mainstream.
Schmitt should be incessantly scorned for his intellectual laziness.
Oh, and I guess I’m a commie to.
http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/talkin-john-birch-paranoid-blues
Have he and his fellow conspirators fessed up to the moon landing hoax yet? How are we supposed to believe him?
Will it be the Climate Commies versus the Carbon Combusters?
my fabourite rw drooling numbnuts site is
http://commieblaster.com
whoever runs this site is convinced their are reds under everyones bed, what pisses me off is his crappy stuff about UK NHS of which
A: he’s never been to the UK and B: he gleans his crap from every rightwing idiocy site most of which are hugely discredited
if i was to write a bogus article about KGB soldiers in the corridors of Britains hospitals , he’d add it..