Wonks Shouldn't Joke

David Weigel | June 12, 2006

"In this baseball game, nature bats last. And because of the steroid-like effect of global warming, nature will swing a mean bat."

- National Wildlife Federation President Larry J. Schweiger at Take Back America

Comments

|6.12.06 @ 2:10PM|#

I don't get it, is he implying that global warming (of say a degree or 2 in the next hundred years) will have an equivalent to the prevalance of steriods in MLB?

|6.12.06 @ 2:14PM|#

Truly craptastic.

|6.12.06 @ 2:22PM|#

Baseball itself bats last in this game of baseball. Okay. We have here a meta comment on the state of baseball. Only baseball can determine its own fate.

Nature has been taking steroids in the form of global warming, and she swings a mean bat. By inference, she plays for baseball itself.

Clearly, then, even though global warming enhances Nature's ability to win it all for baseball as a sport, it is not a natural enhancement to Nature. Such a victory for baseball would forever have an asterisk.

Crystal clear ...

Timothy|6.12.06 @ 2:24PM|#

WOW.

|6.12.06 @ 2:30PM|#

Finally!

A metaphore that Bush lite can appreciate!

|6.12.06 @ 2:37PM|#

"in this baseball game, semi-informed PAC shills bat first. And due to their self-inflated egos, they think a one-run lead is good enough for the win."

michela|6.12.06 @ 2:38PM|#

I saw March of the Penguins. In spite of the DVDs attempts to sway me with the pictures of the 7 dead baby penguins, I think those little guys, the bigger group who actually knew where to go, those guys need the 5 degrees of relief. Who could watch that film and not think, hmm, maybe the world would be better off warmer than cooler...

We should all thank our lucky stars the weather change didn't go the other way! The last ice age was none too fun a place to be, I'd say.

|6.12.06 @ 2:38PM|#

"Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival- now she wants to quit because she's losing. Well I say, hard cheese."
- Montgomery Burns

|6.12.06 @ 2:43PM|#

Just to be clear, the original version posted was even worse, opening with "In this baseball game, baseball bats last." My previous post was supposed to be nonsense, but relevant nonsense. Now it is just nonsense. Blah!

In this baseball game, web editors bat last ...

|6.12.06 @ 2:57PM|#

Does this mean that there will be an asterix put next to the record-breaking 2005 hurricane season?

|6.12.06 @ 2:58PM|#

"We should all thank our lucky stars the weather change didn't go the other way! The last ice age was none too fun a place to be, I'd say."

Global warming, due to changing ocean currents, may spark the next ice age. I guess you pick up these things when you listen to scientists instead of John Stossel.

|6.12.06 @ 2:58PM|#

"In this baseball game, nature bats last. And because of the steroid-like effect of global warming, nature will swing a mean bat."

So what we'll need is an effective closer. Good pitching usually beats good hitting.

Timothy|6.12.06 @ 3:06PM|#

Unless that pitching is from the Astros bullpen.

|6.12.06 @ 3:07PM|#

Global warming, due to changing ocean currents, may spark the next ice age.

That way all the bases are covered. Warmer, colder, whatever. Gotcha.

Of course, I could have sworn the ice cap and all the glaciers were melting. Not sure how we're going to have an ice age with no ice, but I'm sure science will find a way.

By then, of course, driving an SUV to keep the coming glaciers at bay will be a civic duty. I plan to drive mine to Costa Rica.

|6.12.06 @ 3:18PM|#

RC,

Right now, it is so cold over the polar regions that they very rarely get precipitation. What warming -> ice age proponents argue is that slightly warmer temperatures could bring about more precipitation (ie, snow) in those regions, kick-starting another round of glacial expansion.

|6.12.06 @ 3:24PM|#

Libertarians and a baseball metaphor? This could go on for days.

|6.12.06 @ 3:31PM|#

I'd like to point out that my client has only been absorbing CO2, which is merely a precursor to global warming, and something which has clearly not been outlawed up to this point.

|6.12.06 @ 3:42PM|#

Does this mean that there will be an asterix put next to the record-breaking 2005 hurricane season?

Well, there already should be an asterisk next to it, considering that there have probably been millions of hurricane seasons that topped 2005, but unfortunately there were no humans around to keep track of them.

It's sort of like when people note that "10 of the last 14 years have been the warmest in history." Of course, "history" really only encompasses the last century or so, since it was impossible to get the data necessary to compute an average global temperature before then.

|6.12.06 @ 4:16PM|#

How does Nature do against left-handers on the road?

|6.12.06 @ 4:17PM|#

It makes perfect sense once you let your mustache of understanding grow out a bit.

If nature bats last, especially a unnaturally steroid-enhanced nature, that means we need to establish a solid lead on nature beforehand lest we end up loosing, so we need to start burning tires - the sulfur from the vulcanization combined with the CO2 should at least be a double, driving home the temporary nuclear waste storage on second and third.

|6.12.06 @ 4:26PM|#

Speaking of golden oldies:
Anyone seen the ozone hole lately?
Weren't we all supposed to be dying of skin cancer by now?
Paging Al Gore.

|6.12.06 @ 4:35PM|#

crimethink,

Of course, "history" really only encompasses the last century or so, since it was impossible to get the data necessary to compute an average global temperature before then.

I'm no climate change advocate, but we do have data for the time before the last century. For the 19th century is a decent record temperature readings from the mid-century onward (though there are some problems with this data due to how it was measured, what it was measured with, etc.) Prior to that we have data from proxies - tree rings, ice cores, coral growth, etc.

|6.12.06 @ 4:38PM|#

My favorite anecdote was when Al Gore was giving a speech on global warming, and was hampered by... blizzard conditions outdoors.

No doubt Karl Rove ordered in the storm just to make the point.

|6.12.06 @ 4:54PM|#

I'm swinging a big bat right now!! Get it, a "big bat".

I kill me.

|6.12.06 @ 5:20PM|#

"How does Nature do against left-handers on the road?"

Generally not so good, but for some reason it does fantastic in interleague play.

|6.12.06 @ 5:28PM|#

"Global warming, due to changing ocean currents, may spark the next ice age. I guess you pick up these things when you listen to scientists instead of John Stossel."

That scientist wouldn't happen to be Dr. Roland Emmerich, would he?

lunchstealer|6.12.06 @ 5:31PM|#

The only bat I've seen nature swinging in the last little while is the Mexican Free-tailed variety, and they're not mean! They're kinda cute. Little mice with wings!

|6.12.06 @ 5:52PM|#

crimethink, don't bother. I have made that same point about a dozen times to RC over the years. He prefers to play dumb, because "How can global warming make the weather colder?" is a cute rhetorical quip.

Timothy|6.12.06 @ 5:58PM|#

Generally not so good, but for some reason it does fantastic in interleague play.

Odd that Nature should do so well at something that's a crime against it. World's a weird place, I suppose.

|6.12.06 @ 6:25PM|#

"crimethink, don't bother. I have made that same point about a dozen times to RC over the years. He prefers to play dumb, because "How can global warming make the weather colder?" is a cute rhetorical quip."

But it is really so simiple. The Greenland glacier melts, changing the hydrodynamics of the gulf stream which keeps Europe warm. When the Gulf stream no longer makes it North, the Glaciers grow quickly. Last time it happened it took just a few decades to get large glaciers over much of Europe.

There is a reason that Europe takes this shit more seriously than we do...

|6.12.06 @ 6:33PM|#

The basics:
http://www.feasta.org/documents/feastareview/climatechangepanel.pdf

|6.12.06 @ 7:28PM|#

MainstreamMan,

Yeah, that too. I remember someone saying that if you're an angry terrorist trying to get back at those infidel Westerners, you'll get the biggest bang for your buck by loading a bunch of barges with all the salt you can muster, and sinking them in a strategic location in the North Atlantic. If done properly it could totally break up the Gulf Stream, and next thing you know, Europe's climate starts bearing a strong resemblance to northern Quebec's.

|6.12.06 @ 7:42PM|#

And then there's global dimming, which may actually be counteracting global warming, in addition to causing problems of its own...

|6.12.06 @ 7:45PM|#

And then there's global dimming

Is this the reason people seem to be getting stupider and stupider?

|6.12.06 @ 8:54PM|#

Actually Stevo,

IQ tests have to be re-normed fairly frequently due to the increasing scores over time. Just as libertarians like to point out that we are richer than our ancestors, we are also smarter (as far as IQ tests are concerned).

Crimethink...The barge thing is hilarious. We are talking about the impact of the Greenland Ice sheet (1.7x10 to the 6th km2 in area) on Ocean current... I think people would notice that many salt barges.

"From 1996 to 2000, widespread glacial acceleration was found at latitudes below 66 degrees north. This acceleration extended to 70 degrees north by 2005. The researchers estimated the ice mass loss resulting from enhanced glacier flow increased from 63 cubic kilometers in 1996 to 162 kilometers in 2005. Combined with the increase in ice melt and in snow accumulation over that same time period, they determined the total ice loss from the ice sheet increased from 96 cubic kilometers in 1996 to 220 cubic kilometers in 2005. To put this into perspective, a cubic kilometer is one trillion liters (approximately 264 billion gallons of water), about a quarter more than Los Angeles uses in one year."

So that's as much water as 220 cities the size of LA.

http://www.space-explorers.com/internal/common/offsite.asp?link=http://www.cresis.ku.edu/flashindex.htm

|6.12.06 @ 8:55PM|#

And that's just the increased loss, remember.
Not the total locked up in the ice sheets.

|6.12.06 @ 8:58PM|#

And make that 275 LA's.

Andrew Bissell|6.12.06 @ 10:37PM|#

I'm surprised Schweiger just stopped at Mother Nature's batswing ... what about the massive species loss (shrunken testicles) and rising ocean levels (increased facial hair) that will be brought on by Nature's greenhouse steroids?

Five bucks says this guy wears a beard and has seen less than five baseball games in his entire life.

|6.13.06 @ 8:31AM|#

I never knowingly took steroids.

|6.13.06 @ 9:16AM|#

If done properly it could totally break up the Gulf Stream, and next thing you know, Europe's climate starts bearing a strong resemblance to northern Quebec's.

Barely related trivia.

Some Senator in the 19th century proposed building a causeway from Cape Hatteras to disrupt the flow of the Gulf Stream. He thought that if we could just cool the Europeans down they' stop fighting among themselves. Euro-bashing has a long tradition, don't ya know.

Also when Henry Flagler built his Overseas Railroad to Key West he originally wanted to simply fill in the channels between the islands. Concerns that this would disrupt the flow of the Gulf Stream and affect the salinity of Florida Bay led to the construction of the bridges, some of which are engineering marvels. Environmental concerns are not so new after all.

|6.13.06 @ 9:41AM|#

"I never knowingly took steroids."

The leaked grand jury testimony says otherwise, Nature.

|6.13.06 @ 9:44AM|#

Also, given that Nature is about 4.5 billion years old, shouldn't it start thinking about becoming a designated hitter in the American League if it's still swinging well? That should prolong its career.

|6.13.06 @ 11:24AM|#

Nice to see that when it comes to global warming, Reason bases its stance on whether or not the person making the argument is cool enough to sit with in the cafeteria.

|6.13.06 @ 2:57PM|#

Europe is concerned with global warming because they are an aging group of withered do nothings, who have nothing to face the future with except fear and loathing.