Krauthammer: Climate Change Is 'Superstition' Like 'The Rain Dance Of Native Americans'

[DonViejo]

CATHERINE THOMPSON – MAY 8, 2014, 11:11 AM EDT

Charles Krauthammer believes climate change is a mere superstition, just like the "rain dance of Native Americans."

Appearing Tuesday on Fox News' "Special Report," the conservative pundit rejected the consensus of between 97 and 98 percent of scientists who believe climate change is real and is fueled by human activity.

"It's always a result of what is ultimately what we're talking about here, human sin with pollution of carbon," Krauthammer said. "It's the oldest superstition around. It was in the Old Testament, it's in the rain dance of Native Americans -- if you sin, the skies will not cooperate."

Krauthammer further shed doubt on the White House's newly released climate change assessment by arguing that climate science is too unstable to predict weekend weather forecasts, let alone global trends several decades out.

-snip-

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/charles-krauthammer-climate-change-superstition

[Prophet 451]

1. It's conservative dogma now

An article of faith to them and about as open to change.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. Faith in deed. A man who does not understand science

proclaiming it to be all about 'sin'.

It really irritates me that that clowns like Krauthammer are paid to spout nonsense in national papers and on regular news channels, rather than being forced to peddle their idiocies on the Pat Roberts Network or whatever.

[Fred Sanders]

6. Really, they all need a national Christian Taliban Channel where they can stroke themselves

as they please with their fears and superstitions in a massive circle jerk of anti-science religiosity.

But wait, Fox News already is that, my apologies.

[Gothmog]

2. People who watch Fox News are less well informed compared to people who do not watch any news

Fox News lies to its viewers and as a result all viewers of Fox News are ignorant. Only stupid people watch Fox News.

[n2doc]

4. The Krauttosser has been a cheerleader for mass murder all this century

Why should he stop now. He'll be dead and forgotten when the crap really hits the fan.

[Fred Sanders]

5. Which are both totally not like the Pray For Rain vigils of good old white evangelcial Christians,

because that stuff works.

[deutsey]

7. I might take him seriously if he actually addressed what's in the report

with, oh, an actual analysis and critique supported with evidence.

[LittleBlue]

8. Krauthammer reminds me of

Nothing to worry about, folks. Ignore the crazy weather. Just more nonsense like a raindance.

[mn9driver]

9. The physics of radiative forcing have no interest in Mr. K's opinion.

It all comes down to money. The world's major oil, gas and coal producers have trillions of dollars of assets in the ground. Those trillions of dollars guarantee that Krauthammer and his heirs will continue to spout nonsense while the consequences of inaction play out.

I expect that in 2200, Charles Krauthammer XIV will be telling the residents of coastal Oklahoma that climate change is all a hoax.

[ladjf]

10. Has Krauthammer ever attended any schools that taught science?

If he believes what he is saying, he must have cut classes when the topic was science.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

11. I thought he was a physician at one time.

[DonViejo]

14. He is and was....

In 1970, he graduated from McGill University with First Class Honors in political science and economics.[5] The following year, he was a Commonwealth Scholar in politics at Balliol College, Oxford, before returning to the United States and entering Harvard Medical School. During Krauthammer's first year of medical school, he was paralyzed in a diving-board accident[2][6] and was hospitalized for 14 months. He continued his medical studies at Harvard, however, and graduated with his class, earning his M.D. in 1975. From 1975 to 1978, Krauthammer was a resident and then a chief resident in psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1984, he became board certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.[7] During his time as chief resident, he discovered a variant of manic depressive disease which he called "Secondary Mania".[8] He also co-authored the path-finding study on the epidemiology of mania.[9]

In 1978, Krauthammer moved to Washington, D.C., to direct planning in psychiatric research under the Carter administration.[1] He began contributing articles about politics to The New Republic and in 1980 served as a speech writer to vice president Walter Mondale.[1] In January 1981, Krauthammer joined The New Republic as both a writer and editor.[1] In 1983, he began writing essays for Time magazine, one of which first brought him national acclaim for his development of the "Reagan Doctrine".[10] In 1984, his New Republic essays won the "National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism".[1] The weekly column he began writing for The Washington Post in 1985 won him the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1987.[11] In 1990, he became a panelist for the weekly PBS political roundtable Inside Washington, remaining with the show until it ceased production in December 2013. For the last decade[vague] he has been a political analyst and commentator for Fox News.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Krauthammer

[ProfessorGAC]

21. Proof That Getting An MD Can Be About Grades Not About Smarts

Lots of smart doctors, but he's proof that the grade mongers can become doctors too.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. Charles Krathhaumer has no clue of the difference between

Climate and weather. Some of us actually bothered with both documents that came out of the WH on the same day. Sadfly, very few of us.

[exboyfil]

13. April Scientific American has a good article

summarizing the modeling behind AGW.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mann-why-global-warming-will-cross-a-dangerous-threshold-in-2036/

[Vogon_Glory]

15. Krauthammer Living Down To Progressive Expectations Of Right-Wing Pundits

Charles Krauthammer is living down to progressive expectations of right-wing pundits. He not only fails to check his polemics against reality, he fails to perform a basic "cui bono" test as to who would benefit and who would lose from climate change denial, he refuses to check the scientific credentials of who argues that man-made climate change does exist, he fails to check the credentials and financial ties of climate change deniers, and he fails to even think of the negative consequences if those "rain dancers" might actually be right.

This is corrupt, wishful thinking at its worst, wishful thinking that doesn't pay even the slightest heed to reality, and is pandemic to Movement Conservatism inside and outside the Republican Party and its Tea Party faction. To paraphrase George Orwell, Krauthammer is one of many right-wing pundits with a talent for refusing to face unpleasant facts.

I am disgusted, and not for the usual reasons most DU'ers would be disgusted. I came from a fairly conservative family, a family that often supported right-wing candidates and the Republican Party, at least as the Republican Party was back until the mid-1980's. One of the memes my right-wing family members believed in was that they were clear-eyed individuals willing to allow facts about weather, climate, geography, and human behavior to inform and shape their political opinions and the political policies they then supported.

I followed my family members' intellectual guidelines; those guidelines led me away from Republicanism and into the center-left of the Democratic Party.

Today's Republican Party and its Tea Party Siamese twin have rejected such thought processes. Like the Maoists and Stalinists of the 1950's and 1930's, they place ideology over unpleasant reality and refuse to check their policies against the unpleasant and inconvenient shoals of real life.

PT Barnum once argued that there was a sucker born every minute. I would amend that by saying that with the exception of the 0.1 %, most of them vote Tea Party.

[Johonny]

16. So he's given up faking a science explanation against climate change?

Now he's down to the tired argument that science fact is just another religion... seriously this basically says to me, I Charles Krauthammer have lost on this issue in the forum of science argument and now instead of saying I lost, have decided to retreat to pretending this is superstition. LOL. He at least used to try and fake an intellectual argument. Oh how the mighty (small brained) has fallen.

[justiceischeap]

17. Not only does he insult 97-98% of scientists

but the entire Native American population. Nice!

[jwirr]

18. I detest Krauthammer but he may be onto something. Pollution can be seen as a sin against mankind.

[TheCowsCameHome]

19. He's always whining and moaning.

He has nothing better to do.

[AverageJoe90]

20. Are you kidding?

And on top of the science denial he ends up being rather insensitive towards Native Americans, too. Is he trying to troll the public with this shit?

[Paladin]

22. Krauthammer, referring to part of the Old Testament as "superstition"?

My, my, my. Wonder what would happen if a prominent liberal spokesman made that same claim?

[yellowcanine]

23. Krauty is confusing weather prediction and climate science.

"Krauthammer further shed doubt on the White House's newly released climate change assessment by arguing that climate science is too unstable to predict weekend weather forecasts, let alone global trends several decades out."

Climate scientists do not make predictions about the weekend weather Krauty. You should know better, supposedly having some kind of education in the natural sciences.

[Faux pas]

24. Sorry krauthammer

the rain dance works. Ergo, climate change is real.