Religious nutter Pat Robertson now bases his conversion to global warming believer on a single heatwave.
Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has said the wave of scorching temperatures across the United States has converted him into a believer in global warming.
Yeah I know what you’re thinking, his whole belief system is based on a second coming so why should this come as a surprise. But this is the Christian Taliban we’re talking about, with this mob greater certanity has been built on less evidence.
Of course this is one guy the environmental movement will feel less than comfortable having onside, but as Robertson will soon find out, this movement (unlike his own) is a broad church. So, let’s welcome Pat to the fold as he discovers that this is one truth that really does lead to planetary salvation.
So, what’s next for Robertson on his road to rapture? – dinner with Hugo Chavez of course.
Update: And quick as a flash Tim Blair throws Robertson the first anvil. You’ve gotta love the loony right.
This is a surprise given that Robertson, Falwell and their ilk have, in the past, deemed global warming to be of little consequence as The End of Days is imminent. We may as well get as much out the planet as possible before the big guy takes it back.
This from the Chavez press release:
Anyone else find this a strange turn of phrase? And Patrick; maybe the end of days is just not imminent enough.
I loved this comment from the Blair thread:
Now kiddies, gather around for Kaboom’s science lesson of the day.
Wind turbines INCREASE global warming. All of these bloody great fans cause atmospheric resistance, which slows the earth’s rotation. Slower rotation means longer days. Longer days means more sunlight. More sunlight means it will be warmer.
Uh… where to begin? Should I point out the ridiculousness of asserting that wind turbines make a real difference to the rotation of the earth? Or should I cough and point out to our slightly deranged friend that if days were to suddenly become longer, then nights must become longer, too?
Nah, I’ll just laugh at him. Oh, Blairites, you crack me up.
PS You might be happy to be rid of Robertson on this one; but he’s on your side on everything else…
A lot of the evangelicals in the US have woken up to the fact that they have to make their political agenda broader than sex and abortion. So there’s been increasing emphasis placed on the environment. This is probably Robertson’s typically extreme way of jumping on the bandwagon.
Can you believe people thought this guy was a serious GOP Presidential candidate in the 88 primaries?
He might have actually been convinced by the whole weight of evidence and scientific opinion, IMHO. But then, he couldn’t tell his fellow nutjobs that – it would oblige him to give credence to scientific work with regard to certain other articles of faith – so he claims that his own empiricism has convinced him.
Uh, that sounds like a joke to me, Mr Lefty.
Michael G.
I don’t mate, I read NewsWeek’s interview with Tim “The End is Nigh” LaHaye and he is convinced that all the shananigans in the Mid East is the precusor to The Rapture.
Robertson does have a habit of saying very stupid things see here http://weekbyweek7.blogspot.com/2006/01/pat-robertson-hamas-idiotarians.html
As a card-carrying member of the Greens and the Australia Institute and an environmental studies academic, I’m far from comfortable when people of an authoritarian mindset convert to environmentalism. This is because the big environmental issues (i.e. those, like global warming, which entail an element of systemic and/or global crisis) are lush paddocks in which discourses which justify breaching the contraints of democratic process and democratic civility can graze. Two of these discourses are the Discourse of Emergency and the Discourse of Defending the Defenceless.
The Discourse of Emergency holds that there is some clear and present existential danger which is so urgent that it justifies governments removing or restricting long-established citizen rights and freedoms, and releasing executive government and state agencies from the constraints of democratic accountability and the rule of law. We see this discourse at work in relation to the War on Terror, but it is not difficult to imagine its application to perceived environmental emergencies. Indeed, it appears in a significant strand of authoritarian ecopolitical literature from the late 60s and early 70s, and has cropped up in some on-line discussions I have taken part in on Peak Oil.
The Discourse of Defending the Defenceless holds that democratic processes in which adult human citizens participate tend to disregard the interests of purportedly morally considerable entities which cannot participate in such processes. This leads the self-appointed Defenders of the Defenceless to regard as illegitimate the outcomes of democratic processes when those outcomes are perceived to adversely affect some or other category of the Defenceless. Feminists will recognise the D3 in many statements by the right-to-lifers, e.g. Richard Egan from WA Right to Life proclaiming that elected parliaments do not have the right to pass laws which allow the “killing of unborn babies”. The D3 is also at work in some family values conservatives’ complaints about “children not having a voice” in debates about gender and work-family balance.
Now there are two very large categories of “the Defenceless” whose purported Defence could be a driver of eco-authoritarian and eco-fascist discourses. These are non-human species, and future generations of humans. There is already evidence of the D3 at work on the wilder fringes of the environmental movement in the methods of some “animal liberation” activists.
What irks me is that one thing presented to someones face (that may (or may not) just be a statistical anomaly) can prove something to someone, whereas oodles of papers and tonnes of analysis is regarded as meaningless mumbo-jumbo.
Does this mean he know believes in the scientific basis of evolution now too, or does he have to see before his eyes a bird evolve the ability to speak and tell him he’s a dolt first.
How hard is it to give people a basic scientific education?
Will – see my comment above. As long as he’s “trusting his own judgement”, the science still doesn’t necessarily get a look in.
Two of my favourite Robertson quotes:
and
Ah yes. Christians in the USA are more persecuted than any minority in history, and it’s all the fault of lesbian witches.
Yes! Look who is there now.
Oh, wpd! Zing!
It wasn’t the heatwave. It was the shares in nuclear wot did it.
Robertson recently reaffirmed his support for Israel, but reminded them that they will still be going to hell.
I went and had a look at Tim Blair’s site, and I’d rank it in the top 5 most disturbing experiences of my life.
Alex, I’d be disturbed, too, if I found that my beliefs were nothing but a joke.
But then again, most Lefties lack the self-awareness to realise it.
Mr Lefty, are you familiar with the concept of “taking the piss” ?
It’s your blog and all, but I wish you’d come up with some form of abuse a little more original and a little less obscene than “Christian Taliban.” Thx for considering.
Patrick Norton: That’s very well said; I’m borrowing that, with credit.
Good point. If you’ll fall for global warming hysteria, you’ll probably believe that Hugo Chavez is a good guy.
Paul, Good comment.
Aaaah, I see that some of Tim’s spokesmonkeys are in the room. Lost your pastor boys?
Phil,
He’s not one of ours. Since he believes in global
warmingcoolingsomethingorother, he’s probably more like one of yours.Ha ha!
Looks like you caught us. Guess we can’t put anything past you, Phil.
And I’ve just noticed why. Tim’s miffed.
Paul Norton is “far from comfortable when people of an authoritarian mindset convert to environmentalism”. “Convert to environmentalism”!! Phew, and some people think envonmentalism as currently espoused is not a religion. Paul, give me a break, your’re a theist, not an academic.
And your first sentence in its entirety is a gem. Rule of thumb – anyone who is pompous enough to describe himself as an academic, isn’t.
envonmentalism = environmentalism. Sorry, unlike Paul, I’m a lesser mortal and not an academic.
But you’ve said you are an academic, so perhaps you are. What are your academic credentials Paul?
Phil,
I am not sure as my Aussie (Ozzy?) is far from fluent, but the “miffed” mean amused down there?
Miffed means a bit annoyed, I think.
Oh, I see, Tim is “miffed” that he was not the number one most disturbing thing to intrude upon Alex’s apparently exessively sheltered life.
Yep!
A reliable indicator of limited intellect is the inability to recognize irony.
Hmmm. “Throwing an anvil” generally means one is ditching someone whom one formerly supported. However, the libertarian/conservative wing of the VRWC (which Blair tends to represent) has always mocked and despised Robertson. Blair’s blog has a search function thast can confirm this.
Dave S – I think Mr Lefty has missed a crucial point in his excellent rebuttal of the wind turbine terrestrial slowing hypothesis. It very much depends on whether the turbines are facing east or west. One will slow the rotation and the other will speed it up.
I personally think they should be pointed directly upwards but with about a 10 degree inclination to the south so that with enough of them, the Australian continent could be lifted up and be deposited nearer the equator. Tropic of Capricorn round about Byron Bay say. This would solve our water problems in SE Queensland.
Over to you Mr Lefty for a scientific rebuttal of this one.
No need to tell us you’re an academic, Paul Norton. The stilted, preening verbosity of your prose announces that fact like a 20-foot flashing neon sign. You indeed may have some good points, but they get lost in the prolixity.
LOL
Whale Spinor, you have completely failed to take into account the Coriolis effect. Your plan would create a countervailing force nullifying Southern hemispheric inertia, which would tear the planet in half at the Equator like a giant grapefruit twisted by a giant bruncher.
I expect Mr. Lefty will be skeptical of our respective theories.
I think maybe this Norton chap is an academic – who else would talk such bollocks?
Aha! Paul Norton’s ripped away the mask. Talk of “defending the defenceless” is a cloak for a secret agenda when “authoritarians” (scil. people who are so insufficiently With The Program that they think puncturing an eight-month-old unborn’s skull with surgical scissors is more “problematic”, as they say, than calling the Chairperson “Chairman”).
Well done, Paul, Now, encore! I want your expose of the following secret agendas:
(1) Those “animal rights” activists whose supposed opposition to the “cruelty” of halal/kosher slaughtering is really based on their deep Islamophobia and hatred of Jews.
(2) Those “anti-child-abuse” activists who persecute adults for inducting consenting children into “one of the most pleasurable and interesting of all human activities” (That’s a not-verbatim quote from some ISO splinter group’s newspaper in the mid-1980s… it was pre-Hollingworth, though, so maybe that particular Eurasia has no longer Always Been At War With Eastasia)
(3) and the real biggie… the whole “Abolition of Slavery” movement as a front for the British Empire to, ah, disrespect traditional cultures and for Lincoln to impose rampant industrialism on the idyllic, agrarian South.
You’ll find plenty of material to support all of the above if you Google the right websites. Just be prepared for purple type on orange background.
Thank you, Larvvies, for reminding me of why I’ve gone from subscribing to “Socialist Worker” two decades ago to giving Howard my operative preference today.
Oh, alright. He may well have been taking the piss.
It is Blairville, though, so it’s still possible that he may have been serious.
You keep telling yourself that Lefty. Whatever you do, don’t give any thought to the possibility that you may be a gigantic dipshit.
Having just take a quick look at your respective blogs, Yobbo I’d say the above comment is a classic case of Pot. Kettle. Black.
Or maybe it’s just a case of commentus jealousus.
I’m honoured that Blair felt it necessary to start a post about a part-time commentator. He really needs to get a life.
And as for my mother, tim, my Oedipus complex was a reality back then, so far from being disturbed, I was actually aroused.
By curious coincidence, Jonathan Adler wrote this today at The Volokh Conspiracy:
Given that TVC is one of the websites that Karl Rove has authorised to broadcast the secret frequency that causes all us wingnuts to nod our heads in hypnotic assent, this means I must now agree with Comr. Norton and retract my earlier sneer at the Beret’d Avenger’s hypothesis, above.
Alex, I had to come here, from Tim Blair’s site, just to meet someone of such limited experience that reading a blog of any type would be one of 5 top disturbing things in their life. You must be very young or have a very charmed life.
“this is one truth that really does lead to planetary salvation.”
Are you using such language tongue-in-cheek or do you really believe this?
More evidence that environmentalism = a new, nature-based religion, that will take us God knows where.
Jeez, how stupid is Blair going to feel in a couple of years time when even he has to admit global warming is real and anthropogenic – it’s bad enough being so comprehensively (and agressively) wrong. To be beaten to the truth by Robertson really shows you’re on the far side of sanity.
Here’s further food for thought on Cmrd. Norton’s concerns… One for, one against.
vs.