Religious Broadcaster Pat Robertson Says He's A "Convert" To Global Warming

This summer's heat wave has convinced the Christian broadcaster that man-made global warming is a problem. According to Reuters:

"We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels," Robertson said on his "700 Club" broadcast. "It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a buildup of carbon dioxide in the air."

The rumor that Roberston declared that the temperature outside his Norfolk, Virginia headquarters is "hotter than hell" is not true.

Comments

[John]

An alliance between the original idiotarian and his followers and the enviro wackos. I just got a chill up my spine. UGH!!!!!

[phocion]

I'm sure the believers in anthropomorphic climate change are thrilled to have him on board.

[joe]

Oh my God. He changed his mind because...drum roll...it's been hot out in Virginia.

I suppose we're fortunate it hasn't been a rainy summer, or he might have decided that the Flood had returned.

[thoreau]

I hope he never gets infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. He'll jump sides and then we evolutionists will have the embarassment of counting him in our camp.

[John]

Don't worry Joe. The Farmers' Almanac says that it is going to be a cold winter in Lynchberg this year. That should get him off the global warming bandwagon.

[the other Mark]

Since Pat is such an outstanding indicator of how not to think, we can now be pretty sure that global warming isn't actually happening.

Seriously though, has anyone come across any data that shows the sun's strength over time? I've never seen any such data in any global warming discussion, and intuition suggests that it should be pretty important.

[R C Dean]

This summer's heat wave has convinced the Christian broadcaster that man-made global warming is a problem.

That's as good a reason as any, and probably basically the reason why most global warmenizers are true believers.

Repeat after me: "correlation is causation. correlation is causation. correlation . . . .

[Shawn Smith]

thoreau,

If that were to happen, I'm sure he'd call it microevolution, say that all bacteria are of a "kind," and move on.

[joe]

RC,

Sorry, but the latest NOAA study, the one that Ron Bailey declared to be his own tipping point, addressed that exact issue, and determined that natural cycles cannot explain the dramatic warming we're experiencing.

Turning a skeptical eye towards the data is one thing. Assuring yourself that the date doesn't exist isn't skepticism, it's denialism.

[thoreau]

As somebody who is receptive to the idea of anthropogenic climate change, but who has always lobbed my share of insults at Robertson, I will be very fair-minded and say the following to the global warming skeptics:

Have fun today! What's good for the goose is good for the gander, so have as much fun as you want in mocking anthropogenic climate change today!

Today I won't put up a fight. Fair is fair.

[crimethink]

I have a feeling wherever Pat Robertson goes there's a buildup of carbon dioxide in the air...coming straight out of his big mouth.

Seriously though, between this and the article a few weeks ago about evangelicals worrying about pre-Rapture warming, I wonder if global warming is becoming for evangelicals what the death penalty has become for Catholics. That is, an issue they can look progressive by focusing on, as opposed to abortion and gay marriage where they are cast as bigoted dinosaurs.

[joe]

So, uh, is "look at the looney who agrees with them!" really a road libertarians want to go down?

[John]

"So, uh, is "look at the looney who agrees with them!" really a road libertarians want to go down?"

Joe, I can't imagine anyone thinking Pat Robertson relevent enough to make that point. I am sure some of the street people in DC in between yelling at fire hydrants are probably concerned about global warming. Their opinions are only slightly more significant than Robertson's.

[thoreau]

joe, that was funny.

[Evan!]

Leave it to ol' Joe to take a tongue-in-cheek statement and "play dumb" by taking it quasi-seriously. Oye.

Seriously, though: why the fuck would old man BatShitInsane have a care in the whole wide world whether Global Warming is "real" or not? I mean, this is the same looney cocksucker who attributed 9/11 and Katrina to an angry, vengeful god hellbent on punishing the fags and nonbelievers. Why draw the line there? Just throw your hands up and proclaim, "It's gawd's will, folks!"

See, that's why I love religion: it's so bloody ambiguous and unverifiable. If I want to declare that a hurricane was sent by god to kill the queers, but that global warming is a manmade problem, then who are you to disprove it?

[R C Dean]

Sorry, but the latest NOAA study, the one that Ron Bailey declared to be his own tipping point, addressed that exact issue, and determined that natural cycles cannot explain the dramatic warming we're experiencing.

I didn't read the NOAA study that way, joe. What I saw was a statement that recent data (finally) confirmed that we are in a warming trend and that this data was consistent with anthropogenic global warming.

Its a long way from the data being "consistent with" a given explanation for the data to having a definitive statement of causation. I think I beat this to death once already.

Back in the original May 5 post on this issue, I repeatedly asked if anyone could point me to the language in the NOAA report that addressed causation. No one ever did, as far as I can tell.

As for the notion that natural cycles can't explain the current warming trend, I would only point out that we can't explain the natural cycles themselves, so I certainly don't see how we can explain what they can and can't do.

[joe]

RC,

The NOAA study didn't attribute causation to manmade effects. It looked at the question of whether the entirety of the warming trend could be explained by longterm climate cycles, and determined that it could not.

It determined that the warming is "consistent with" anthropogenic warming, true. But far more important, it determined that the warming is inconsistent with entirely natural warming, as you suggest it is.

"As for the notion that natural cycles can't explain the current warming trend, I would only point out that we can't explain the natural cycles themselves, so I certainly don't see how we can explain what they can and can't do."

Biologists still can't explain the exact mechanism of evolution, either. Just as you are doing, intelligent designers point to this as proof that science cannot have an informed opinion on whether it occured. They are wrong, for the same reason you are wrong - you can most certainly understand the behavior of a phenomenon without understanding all of its internal mechanisms. My ability to tell time is completely unhindered by my lack of knowledge of watchmaking.

[Ammonium]

Whenever the weather deviates from averages, people will inevitably start blaming global warming for these fluctuations. "After this weather, I don't know how anybody can deny there's global warming!" I've been hearing it quite a lot lately because of the heat wave, and especially after Al Gore's movie.

It's always interesting to look at the actual weather statistics. Our July was 0.6 degrees warmer than 2005, but our June was 3.6 degrees cooler than 2005. Reality doesn't help their cause. The truth is that global warming results in only a small variation in temperature over a long period of time. Normal weather deviations are much more drastic. The news media always makes a big deal about when we set a new high temperature, new low temperature, or even a "low high" or "high low". Just the highs and lows result in 730 records a year. Many weather stations have less than 100 years of data. Simple randomness means that several records should be broken each year, on average.

[MUTT]

No doubt theres a climatic change going on. Stare into the Grand Canyon sometime, & contemplate the changes that reveals. What percentage is man made is up for debate.....but Batshit Pat on the case.....will he advocate for the assasination of Big Oil CEO's?? Declare GAWD told him to buy a Pious? Call off fag burnings?? As SecDef is fond of saying "Who knows".

[Clean Hands]

I've felt that the media is playing up the "heat wave" story on a "global warming" angle - never mind that weather is not climate. Thuh peepul is too dumb to make that distinction, right?

On topic, Pat whothefuck?

[happyjuggler0]

We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels," Robertson said on his "700 Club" broadcast. "It is getting hotter.

This is a link to a step towards a possible non-nuclear, non-fossil fuel method of generating electricity. At the bottom of the article is a link to a longer version of the article that includes a very tiny answer to the question of: What about night time?

It also would be pretty cool to have these things around right about now. The hotter it is outside, the more electricity this thing would seem to generate. It is also the time when we most need added electriciy....

[Patrick]

Oh my God. He changed his mind because...drum roll...it's been hot out in Virginia.

But you have to admit, that's a big step in the right direction for Pat. Normally he just squints his eyes a little, and says "God told me . . ." or "scriptures say. . .". At least on this issue he's putatively forming an opinion based on empirical evidence, i.e. the temp in his yard.

[kmw]

[sarcasm]
Damn those cyanobacteria, they polluted our precious natural resources with their harsh oxidized byproducts all those years ago. Our planet just hasn't been the same since.
[end sarcasm]

As for Pat, his sudden change of heart can be easily explained. I've been seeing a lot of fundies I know lament the fact that our economy is dependant on the Arab oil teat, and so they want to embrace non-fossil alternatives to cease the flow of cash to the middle east. So it's mostly out of hate for Muslims.

[Stormy Dragon]

>Biologists still can't explain the exact
>mechanism of evolution, either.

Uh, they can't?

[biologist]

we can explain the mechanisms that lead to evolutionary changes, but it depends on what joe means by "exact". rather than mechanisms, the exact forces that cause evolutionary changes in any given population aren't universal, they are highly conditional on the population's particular circumstances

[Schempf]

I wonder what the priest of the middle-ages attributed the rapid warming of the medieval warming period to - Ox flatulence?

[D.A. Ridgely]

I'm just glad that Robertson and Bailey finally see eye to eye on this one.

[Patrick]

"I wonder what the priest of the middle-ages attributed the rapid warming of the medieval warming period to - Ox flatulence?"

Witches, of course. All that wood it took to properly heat their cauldrons and roast all those eyes of newt . . .

[Paul]

Thank God. Global Warming now has the religious support it really deserves.

[Barry]

For those who have comments about whether this or that was included, when investigating global warming, there is an actual site called 'RealClimate' (http://www.realclimate.org/). It's worth perusing it. I don't know if they have the equivalent of Talk Origins 'Index to Creationist Claims', but they'll probably have one soon, since I haven't seen an original anti-global warming claim in the past six months.

(break)
Their Index is worth persuing; http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/index/

[sam]

Barry,

http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-talk-to-global-warming-sceptic.html
is about as close as we'll be for a little while now to a Climate-Science version of TalkOrigins.

Scientiffic American is Working on it's own version, but it's a bit too disparate for the moment.

The Other Mark wrote:
Seriously though, has anyone come across any data that shows the sun's strength over time? I've never seen any such data in any global warming discussion, and intuition suggests that it should be pretty important."

not hard to find IMO:
The Ill-Considered Blog has an article on the subject, but too many links gets monkey poo tossed on my posts by the server monkeys here; and the Blogs author, Coby, suffers from mild snarkiness.

But here fromt eh Max Planck Institute for Solar Research:
http://www.mps.mpg.de/images/projekte/sun-climate/climate.gif
... a graph whcih combines proxy data from Beryllium isotopes IIRC, surface observations, and later satellite data; and then compares it with the (more or less) recorded global temperature record. It's not great but it's the best we have. It shows a rise of solar irradiance during the middle of the century, and which then levels off, and the Earth's temperature more or less follows untill the 70's, when Something Else? takes over.

[the other Mark]

Much appreciated, sam.

[Lamar]

Little known item: he's a convert to bed wedding also.

[thoreau]

Maybe the people who think anthropogenic global warming is real should offer to trade Robertson back to the skeptics in exchange for a Cato guy and a shortstop to be named later.

[sam]

Treehugger.com has a new word for this: Climatism

[sam]

Climatism
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/rationality_and.php#perma

my attempt at linking neatly didn't work. /shrug

[joe]

Stormy Dragon,

The original Darwinist theory of "survival of the fittest," which bases evolutionary changes on normal rates of mutation, with the most beneficial mutations being selected over less beneficial "ordinary" phenotypes has lost some of its luster, as the rate of degree of change and the time available don't seem to be sufficient to produce all of the biological diversity in the world.

So scientists are looking at something called "puncutated equilibrium," which involves periods of much greater change than normal genetic drift can explain.

[joe]

sam,

Well, yeah, but what about the Earth's Core? What about the the erosion of the Himalayas?

I'm so incredibly wise and skeptical that I'm going to reserve judgement on the reality of human induced global warming until Big Climatology can explain these not-at-all-made-up-stalling-tactics, er I mean holes in their theory.

Let's just follow the data. Environmentalists are religious fanatics. Al Gore is weird.