John Stewart takes on.....get ready.... Global Wobbling

[zebonaut]

starts at 3 minutes in:

[zeemike]

1. LMAO funny.

John Stewart is gold or platinum, I can't decide which...

[Gothmog]

2. Jon was in great form

[NoMoreRepugs]

3. inconceivable the (R) Representative believes one word he himself is saying

I'm 65 and the transition of half this country to an alternate reality in the last 20-30 years makes me shake my head so hard my eyes jiggle....

[radiclib]

4. My favorite comment is from Rohrabacher

"Red herring". He's making a strong case for front-runner Gohmert's "Dumbest" title.

[adirondacker]

5. Hilarious, but yet so sad. Thanks for posting.nt

[Iwillnevergiveup]

6. Every one of these idiots

needs to be voted OUT!

Thankfully, over 150,000 people have watched this on YouTube.

K&R

[tclambert]

7. How do people so scientifically illiterate get to be on the Science and Technology Committee?

Yeah, yeah, I know: Republicans. It's just such an outrage. If I were that scientist, I could not have kept a civil tongue dealing with such idiocy. They would no doubt have held me in contempt of Congress for my blatantly insulting tone in answering these elementary school questions:

"Representative Stupidman--I mean, Stockman--if ice melts in your glass, it doesn't overflow because the ice was floating in the water. This does apply to ice in the Arctic Ocean. When that ice all melts, it doesn't raise sea levels one millimeter. However, ice SHEETS, that sit on the ground--like on Greenland and Antarctica--when those melt, the water runs off land into the ocean and does raise sea level. For instance, when the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melts, it will raise sea levels at least four feet, enough to cause serious flooding in Miami, Boston, New York, and Galveston, and we can no longer do anything to stop the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from melting. We waited too long to take any action, largely because people like you and your major donors have fought to delay any action, trying to protect the business models of fossil fuel companies like Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries. In order for them to make a few dollars more profit for a few more years, you and your kind have put the environment at risk, have put coastal cities around the entire world at risk, and possibly even put the continuance of human civilization AT RISK."

"No, dumbass--I mean, 'sir'--I am not being alarmist. We are right now making a change to the environment of the whole world on a scale not seen since the Permian-Triassic extinction event, when 95% of all species went extinct."

"Where climate scientists have made mistakes have almost all been in the opposite direction of what you claim. They have been surprised, shocked really, to find out climate changes can happen this fast. Just a few decades ago, scientists thought climate change only happened very slowly, over thousands of years. What has stunned them over the past few decades is finding out it can happen, and is happening now, so quickly. Every time we learn something new, it paints a more dismal picture, as we find effects are worse, changes happen faster, and tipping points are crossed that make it much harder to take any remedial action."

"And all our grandchildren will ask, 'Why didn't our grandparents DO ANYTHING about this? They all knew it was happening. The scientists told them over and over. How could our grandparents be so irresponsible?'"

[Uncle Joe]

8. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, zebonaut.

[panfluteman]

9. There's Only One Thing They Might Understand

These Republican assholes of congressmen are being paid a lot of money to be stupid, or at least to act that way, and they are dutifully and probably skillfully obliging their big oil donors in this respect. They have sold their souls to Big Oil.

Looking at things within a larger context, beyond the confines of this idiotic charade of a house committee, but still within the context of our terminally materialistic, dollars and cents oriented Western civilization, it may be reasonable to assume that the only thing that will make sense to the bastards who run our system is to reduce things into purely economic terms. The crucial question would be this:

Does any single sector of the economy have the inherent right to ruin or spoil things for other sectors of the economy?

Because Big Oil is given a carte blanche do do whatever it wants in the pursuit of its own profits, which are all too often at the expense of other economic sectors and their own economic self interests, these other sectors of the economy have to suffer huge losses. The Gulf oil spill happened, to the huge detriment and financial loss of the fishery and tourism industry. And insurance company CEOs are starting to take the huge actuarial risks of climate change and its extreme weather events, like Hurricanes Sandy and Hayan, duly into account, and are beginning to wonder: When is enough enough?

After all, what the words "economy" and "ecology" have in common is the prefix "eco", which refers to the joint sharing of power, niche and influence within a larger and all inclusive system. The economy as a whole works best when all its sectors are able to be productive and powerful within a larger system of balance and integration.

Perhaps we have obsessed too much solely on the climate change and global warming aspects of our wasteful and environmentally damaging lifestyle. Perhaps we need to bring back an additional awareness of basic environmental degradation and pollution that was at the forefront in the good ole tree hugging days of the environmental movement back in the '70s. Even though climate change may pose the most urgent and critical threat that we face to our very existence and survival, these other aspects of the environmental problem are also serious, and deserve consideration as well. Over-reliance on fossil fuels hurts us, and our quality of life, in so many more other ways than climate change alone, no matter how serious of a threat that it poses. By reducing carbon emissions, we also reduce disease and morbidity and make the air easier to breathe as well as saving the planet and all life forms that dwell upon it.