I’m noticing that Texas Governor Rick Perry’s effort to pray for rain has not had the desired effect. The state is now on fire. This is obviously terrible for the people of Texas, and in recognition of that Rick Perry is skipping a Jim DeMint-sponsored forum in South Carolina to race home and try to show some leadership. Texas is obviously a hotbed of climate change-denial, but I wonder how long the people there will tolerate such nonsense in the face of the evidence. The oil and gas industry is extremely important to the Texas economy, but so is not having your whole state be a tinder box.
The largest of the fires is in Bastrop County, southeast of Austin, said Lexi Maxwell, a spokeswoman with the Texas Forest Service. The blaze has so far scorched some 14,000 acres and is threatening about 1,000 homes, she said.
It forced parts of state highways 71 and 21 to shut and additional road closures are expected, Maxwell said.“It was like a storm coming through. You could smell the earth burning,” said Ochoa, who doesn’t know yet whether his home is OK or not. “All of Bastrop is a giant smoke cloud.”
Fires were also reported in Travis, Leon, Colorado, Burnet and Caldwell counties. About 190 homes were evacuated in Travis County.
A spokeswoman at the American Red Cross said it had opened four shelters and anticipates opening more.
The temperature in Austin has topped 100 degrees fahrenheit eighty times this year, which is an all-time record. Not only does that make for a miserable existence, it isn’t remotely normal. I don’t see how the fiction that climate change is debatable can be sustained much longer, even in the Lone Star State.
All it will take is for an oil field to go up in smoke or a natural gas pipeline station to explode. Then the oil companies will be interested in the state providing fire suppression services “to reduce uncertainty”.
Get wise to global climate change? Texas? Read Steven D’s sig again.
Two points.
First, eventually it will again rain in Texas. As the climate there changes rain will be more infrequent but will tend to come in great deluges when it does come. At that point, no matter how far in the future and no matter how many unsuccessful “prayer” events were held in the interim, the true believers will point to the rain and say “see, this just proves the power of prayer”. There is no cure for the rank stupidity of the true believer.
Second, another bastion of climate denial is in homeland of the religious right – here in El Paso County, Colorado, home of Colorado Springs, Focus on the Family, over 100 other right wing organization headquarters, Fort Carson, two air force bases, NORAD, and the Air Force Academy. The local Gazette has an editorial board that makes the WSJ look liberal by comparison.
Our temps this summer blew the doors off of every previous record. The Gazette documented it without mentioning climate change, but then mysteriously pulled the article from the web site – you can still find it on Google cache:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tL1-KdG5hCcJ:www.gazette.com/articles/fans-1242
82-need-pushes.html+colorado+springs+gazette+temperatures+higher+than+record&cd=2&hl=en&
ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari
The lesson is that the wingnuts are in such denial that they are now suppressing normal news if it reports fact consistent with global warming. I gather this also happened on Fox and other right wing outlets during the major heat wave in the east this year.
Given this I am not optimistic that the wingnuts will admit the earth is warming anytime in the near future. First, this year is probably an outlier – as 1998 was – more of an indication of what normal summers will be like in 10 years than of what we can expect now. Second, even after 5 or more summers like this the wingnuts will then embrace some alternate theory pushed by the energy propagandists, such as moon phases or sunspots or astrology, as the cause.
James Burke (the BBC “Connections” guy) did a series back in the 1990s about global warming. It was a scenario of the future.
In his scenario, nothing helpful happened until 2015 when some favorite vacation islands were lost to ocean rising and Japan experienced a major typhoon. At that point, Japan led a global consensus that set up a UN Environmental Administration with headquarters in Tokyo.
It was a good series, even pessimistic for the time.
But that 2015 date is looking more and more likely. The response, however is looking less likely.
The UN Secretary General is visiting Kiribati, one of the first island nations likely to be forced to move. The hotels there already supply life vests with the room. Not just his room. All rooms.
You hardly ever see the nation mentioned.
I’ve actually been there (1999). There is only one hotel to speak of – the Otintaai (+ a couple of guest houses and pensions).
Don’t be fooled; the ‘crystal blue lagoon’ is a sewage. Rude awakening one morning (literally); looking out the hotel window I noticed that the lagoon front – as far as I could see – was used as a communal latrine at ebb tide. Then the tide would come in and clean up…
And yes, it will be among the first to be submerged. There is hardly a spot higher than 10 feet above high tide. And hardly a spot where you are more than 100 feet from the water (ocean side or lagoon).
Speaking of which, I just got into Houston today after spending the summer in NYC. In the small Amtrak station, poorly served by two trains a day (one of which is a bus connecting with the Texas Eagle at Longview over 4 hrs away), I didn’t notice at first, but then I heard some nonsense emanating from the TV, about how every federal stimulus plan, ever, had failed. You guessed it, it was Fox News. Well, why should I be surprised, in this state it’s usually Fox News in public places. Except this was Amtrak, a federal corporation grossly underfunded by congress. So I said to the agent, “It’s funny you’ve got Fox News on, they’re the worst enemy of Amtrak.” To which he replied, “No they’re not.” To which I replied, “Oh yes they are.” At that moment my cab arrived but I don’t think the discussion would have gone much further.
Well, come to think of it, Texas’s senior senator, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, conservative republican, is a strong supporter of Amtrak in the state of Texas. So maybe that’s got something to do with it. However, she will finish her third term in 2012 and is not seeking reelection.
A funny thing seems to be happening with places that show Fox News all the time. Some people seem to be speaking up about it, and change is happening. Even here in Wingnut County, Colorado.
People complained and managed to get Fox News out of the DMV. They complained at a local car dealership and got them to switch to something else. Then, to my surprise, a local sit-down restaurant chain stop showing Fox. At one point I asked a long-time waiter why, and he said that many people asked to be seated at the side of the restaurant that wasn’t showing Fox, and the manager decided not to offend anyone (now they just show sports unless there is an ongoing critical news even, in which case they show CNN or MSNBC).
I found that last point interesting because I’d made that same request myself a couple times. I didn’t ask them to shut down Fox – just that I didn’t want to watch it while eating.
I do think one minor bit of progressive action we can take is to complain about Fox. All stations have bias of some sort, but Fox takes lying for the cause to a new level.
Yes, I’m glad to hear it. Few things remind me more of Orwell’s 1984 than Fox News in public places. I’m glad to know people are speaking up about it.
There are only two possible explanations: either the climate is changing, or God hates Texas.
Or both.
God doesn’t hate.
But he doesn’t suffer hypocritical stadium-praying fools gladly. The governor of Texas can’t even tell the legislature what to do, so why does he think he can tell God what to do.
And he definitely does not like the GOP elephant god.
Well, I don’t really believe any of it anyway. That was just my tongue in cheek way of saying that I don’t expect to be hearing from Pat Robertson or Michele Bachmann that God has an issue with Texas.
That being said, humor me for a moment. How can you know that God doesn’t hate any more than Pat Robertson can know that God sends hurricanes as punishment for our sinful ways? To me it all sounds like a matter of perspective and seeing what one wants to see through our own filters.
Was God paying any attention to the stadium pray-for-rain-fest? And if so, what does His decision to send Lee east of Texas, not a drop of all that tropical downpour goodness to fall upon the parched firepit of the Lone Star State — what does that say about what The Big Guy thinks of that whole schemozzle?
If my Southern religious training serves me right, it says:
God will not be mocked.
Or one could go into the Third Commandment here, the one that folks like Perry thinks prohibits “cuss words”.
The fall-back answers for them are pretty predictable.
And then you recite Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
King James Version, of course.
Do does this mean that Perry is not politically dead because he did not kiss Jim DeMint’s ring?
As they like to say, “God works in mysterious ways”.
I double-dog dare Rick Perry to take the Eric Cantor approach to federal disaster aid.
in the power of prayer will not be eliminated or even reduced by mere empirical evidence.
Before the advent of lightning rods the only building hit by lightning in small communities was often the church. There is little evidence that anyone interpreted that as a message from above.
I wonder when we’ll get Pat Robertson’s righteous condemnation of Texas?
You won’t. He’ll blame all the gay people in Austin.
Exactly. When my wingnut uncle, who lives near San Diego, was complaining about the fires near there in 2003 he said it was God punishing America for having a pervert as president (Clinton).
Right. Let’s suppose for a moment we accept the invisible-man-in-the-sky-who-punished-random-people-for-the-sins-of-other-people bullshit. So a nasty event happens in 2003. Is this a penalty for electing a President in the distant past, or the current President who at the time happened to be leading mass slaughter in a war based on lies? For some reason my wingnut uncle resisted the latter interpretation.
Of course the wingnut true believer interpreted the event, as they always do, as “this just proves what I’ve been saying all along”.
“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”
Susan B. Anthony
Seems about right. These people make me sick. It’s their projection of how God would act. If your God is that maniacal, count me out; I’ll take a date with the Prince of Darkness as my soul burns for all eternity, thank you very much.
Speaking of which, did anyone catch Curiosity with Stephen Hawking? It’s a must-watch (the entire series is actually very awesome, too).
“The temperature in Austin has topped 100 degrees fahrenheit eighty times this year, which is an all-time record”
But the conservatives all say that the earth has been cooling since 1998, and they never lie!
Rick Perry has been praying to his god, the god of hatred, fear and selfishness, and the results have been predictable. If Rick Perry had been praying to the god of selflessness, love and joy, well, then…
Damn I miss Molly Ivins. 600 homes toast now and counting.
outside of austin, a reliably left-wing city, i care very little about the trouble the texans brought on themselves.
very very very very very very VERY little.
how much you wanna bet the closeted little turd begs for federal aid?
Yeah, but you know it’s going to work out so that the rich Texans are going to be just fine, and poorer, darker ones are going to take the brunt.
So it’s no good thinking like that.
Are both just as reliably left wing? Heck the sheriff of Dallas county right now is a Democratic lesbian. Sure the source of that left wing support is minorities instead of white college educated liberals so maybe it doesn’t count in the progressive blogosphere or something like that as I see sentiments like yours all the time.
by the way, the topic of global warming, it is FASCINATING that there is not one front page article here about Obama and smog.
not one.
pravda.
Perhaps that’s because the Ozone Season NOx regs in the Interstate air pollution rules passed by Obama’s EPA this summer are going to do a lot more to reign in smog than lowering the standard to declare an area in non-attainment would have done anyway.
If you don’t understand every single word I just wrote, then you need to stop deluding yourself that you have an opinion about the Obama EPA that is worth sharing.
Joe, you are correct that the EPA has passed a lot of regulatory improvements under Obama.
Of course, that is what the EPA is supposed to do. That is their legal directive – to study environmental issues and generate new regulations as data is obtained. Granted, they were pretty much stifled by the Bush administration and prevented from doing their jobs. So, yes, having an administration that allows them to follow their legal directives is a good thing. And after 8 years of Bush they still have a lot of catching up to do.
But it’s not really correct to credit Obama for allowing the EPA to do its job. I mean, yes, it is nice that except for a number of high profile cases he hasn’t stepped in, as Bush often did, and overridden the recommendations of his own EPA. But that’s not the same as taking positive progressive action to help the environment.
You have to weigh those positive EPA actions that Obama hasn’t overridden against the number of negative actions he’s taken – from opening off-shore drilling to having the State Department step on the EPA recommendation on the tar sands to his recent actions.
“Better than Bush” is like saying your team’s Super Bowl record is better than that of the Detroit Lions (the only team in existence continually since the time of Super Bowl I to not have ever played in one). After 30 years of Reaganism dominating American discourse and politics, our environment needs more than “Better than Bush”.
Talking about the EPA as if it were some kind of entity on auto-pilot that operates outside of politics is misleading.
There is a wide range of positions that could be described as “the EPA doing its job,” and where actual policy falls within that range is a consequence of the political orientation of the administration, and the Administrator.
“Better than Bush” is a grossly misleading and inaccurate characterization of Obama’s tenure.
They’ll find some way to blame the strange weather on black people.
This is what you get when you lower mortgage standards for ’em.
And Barney Frank. In the end everything is also Frank’s fault too.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/texas-cut-fire-department-funding-75-percent
Texas cut funding for Vol. Fire Dept. by 75%
Now they want the federal govt. to pay to put out their fires