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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

A Cry for Help? The State of Utah Declares Itself Insane

Guardian h/t James Fehlinger.

The State of Utah, "a major oil and coal producing state" is also "[o]fficially the most Republican state in America," and members of its House of Representatives recently "have adopted a resolution condemning 'climate alarmists,' and disputing any scientific basis for global warming."
The measure, which passed by 56-17, has no legal force, though it was predictably claimed by climate change sceptics as a great victory in the wake of the controversy caused by a mistake over Himalayan glaciers in the UN's landmark report on global warming….

The original version of the bill dismissed climate science as a 'well organised and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate "tricks" related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome'. It accused those seeking action on climate change of riding a 'gravy train' and their efforts would 'ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty'.

In the heat of the debate, the representative Mike Noel said environmentalists were part of a vast conspiracy to destroy the American way of life and control world population through forced sterilisation and abortion.

By the time the final version of the bill came to a vote, cooler heads apparently prevailed. The bill dropped the word 'conspiracy'…

However, it insisted –- against all evidence -– that the hockey stick graph of changing temperatures was discredited. It also called on the federal government's Environmental Protection Agency to order an immediate halt in its moves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions 'until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated'.

Let us set aside the flabbergasting lunacy of the whole climate change conspiracy dot connecting to plans for a liberal forced sterilization and abortion festival, about which it is hard to know what to say, except, you know: "Dude."

Quite apart from this, it should be needless to say, but in this call for a halt to regulations by the EPA concerning continuing industrial carbon pollution the terms "full," "independent," "investigation," "data," "science," and "substantiated" are being deployed in a manner somewhat divorced from their, you know, dictionary definitions.

But also, more to the point, I have to think these Utah representatives are using these concepts in their resolution in a way that is also divorced from their usage by the very same people who are misusing them here in more everyday contexts. I am thinking here of contexts such as the ones that inspire them to direct their inquiries to doctors rather than crystal healers when they want medical advice; or, likewise, to travel agents rather than to lunatics who think humans who leap off of cliff faces can fly by flapping their arms when they want to make a long distance trip.

Has the state of Utah gone stark raving mad? Or is all this possibly a cry for help?

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