Last updated on February 10th, 2013 at 03:53 am
I want to declare an early winner in my idiotic statement of the week award to Fox Business host Neil Cavuto for saying Tuesday that we should drill more in response to our historic heat wave. Even through crude oil production is at its highest levels since 2002.
Yes, because drilling always brings down the temperature. I mean, it hasn’t worked so far, so why shouldn’t we do more of it?
I mean, if you want to drill baby drill, we are already drilling, baby.
I’m sorry, and look: I know it’s only Thursday, but it doesn’t get more bargain-basement stupid than this. Even though the Republican Party has been setting new historic lows for stupidity since 2010, I defy any Republican to outdo Cavuto between now and next week.
Go ahead. I dare you. I double dog dare you. Romney, you got something?
Watch Cavuto’s award winning performance on Fox Business Network:
The new king of stupid says his butt is burning. Clearly, nothing is burning in that head of his – unless it’s a guttering candle:
“There’s nothing like a heat wave to burn my energy butt. This country is roasting. It’s screaming for energy, and we’re still blocking so much energy. We got no drilling, right? Just spending more green on green that invariably comes up red.”
Screaming for energy, yes. Screaming for better regulated less greedy and corrupt power companies even more. Not to mention a little thing called infrastructure – money to build a better, more efficient power grid. One that doesn’t shut down if a bird craps on it. Cavuto is too stupid to comprehend that it wasn’t a lack of energy that troubled us during this heat crisis but the ability of power companies to provide that power to us, the consumer.
Yes, we can respond to the disease’s symptoms by creating more power for us to consume in our air conditioned homes and cars and boats and planes but we could also attack the disease itself by combating the cause of it: man-made carbon emissions.
But Cavuto, like all Republicans do lately, sees drilling as a panacea, a cure for whatever ails you. Gas prices high? Drill. Economy slow? Drill. Too hot for ya? Drill. Maybe drilling even cures drought. We already know prayer isn’t a solution and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack admitted as much when he said “If I had a rain prayer or rain dance I could do, I would do it.”
Be thankful Rick Perry didn’t get that job.
Ignoring record oil production, Cavuto, in true Fox fashion, resorts to outright dishonesty; he simply invents facts:
“To be all in on energy, you have to consider all forms of energy, and I’m with the [Obama] administration on that. What fries me is I don’t think the administration really is in on that. [They’re] talking a very good game about expanding fossil fuels but stopping them at every pipeline pass and favoring untested fuels.”
First, Obama hasn’t put the breaks on fossil fuels. Remember that thing about the highest levels of crude oil production since 2002? And liberals aren’t upset because Obama has blocked the Keystone XL Pipeline. He hasn’t. Far from it. We are concerned about high levels of Republican corruption where the pipeline is concerned. And about the little fact that the pipeline will raise the price of gas.
Second, global warming has already screwed up the weather. We’re suffering from the worst drought since 1956, with 55 percent of the continental U.S. enduring moderate drought or worse, says the National Climatic Data Center. We have drought disasters in 26 states.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Joe Glauber, chief economist at the Agriculture Department opines that “The drought could get a lot worse before it gets better”
Yes, drilling is certain to fix that! Let’s lay waste to the lower 48.
Cavuto’s expert opinion is that the global economy has been “very sucky” but what about the climate? With the weather already shot, why not crap in our water and in the air as well?
I don’t think it’s going too far out on a limb here to say Cavuto has shit for brains. I mean, sure, I’m no neurologist but the symptoms are all there. If we drill at all, it ought to be into his skull to see what’s inside. My guess is you’ll get a sewer smell.
Now some of you will say, why are you launching ad hominem attacks against Neil Cavuto? Aren’t you always against ad hominem attacks?
Well yes I am. But an ad hominem attack is by definition an attack on the person rather than one addressing the argument itself. I am also addressing the argument; it’s just that the argument is stupid. Just look at what Cavuto says about global warming: Revealing a typically conservative understanding of science as something you can “believe in” or not, he says that the “problem” with global warming theories is that people believe them.
The problem wouldn’t be that it’s getting hotter. The problem isn’t with fact. For Cavuto, as for all Republicans, facts are something you can believe or not.
The real problem seems to be, from the outside looking in, that as Stephen Colbert said, reality has a liberal bias. NOAA, the folks who keep track of this sort of thing, point out the inconvenient truth that 16 of the last 17 years have been the hottest on record. According to NOAA’s State of the Climate in 2009, “Each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the decade before. At the time, the 1980s was the hottest decade on record. In the 1990s, every year was warmer than the average of the previous decade. The 2000s were warmer still.”
NASA, home to another bunch of scientists (rather than business analysts), agrees, pointing out that according to their Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), ”January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record” and that “In the past three decades, the GISS surface temperature record shows an upward trend of about 0.36 degrees F (0.2 degrees C) per decade. In total, average global temperatures have increased by about 1.5 degrees F (0.8 degrees C) since 1880.”
Despite this preponderance of factual evidence, Cavuto had a few things to say about those of us who point to global warming in relation to our record heat wave just a few days ago on July 5:
Watch the latest video at <a href=”http://video.foxbusiness.com”>video.foxbusiness.com</a>Watch the latest video at <a href=”http://video.foxbusiness.com”>video.foxbusiness.com</a>Cavuto goes after Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist Eugene Robinson like I’m going after Cavuto here. But Robinson’s claim isn’t actually stupid. Cavuto, having the usual GOP counter-argument ready to hand, that because it’s actually colder than normal someplace in the country that global warming is bogus: ”Newsflash!” he says. “It’s summer!”
And he mocks the experts at NOAA in the process. Because of course, a Fox Business analyst knows more about climate than NOAA.
And then there is this little issue, just reported:
2010 and 2012 NASA images from the University of Delaware showing crack in the Petermann Glacier
A chunk of ice twice the size of Manhattan has parted from Greenland’s Petermann glacier, a break researchers at the University of Delaware and Canadian Ice Service attributed to warmer ocean temperatures.
I don’t know why Cavuto might think the oceans are warming up but it’s a good bet it has something to do with global warming. You know: that liberal plot. There is a great deal of hot air coming from Cavuto, I admit, but not enough to crack a glacier.
Water, not air temperature is the culprit, but the air is getting warmer, as the Post reveals:
Air temperatures in the region have warmed more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2.5 degrees Celsius since 1987, a rate five times that of the rest of the world.
So no, I am not launching an ad hominem attack on Neil Cavuto. I am pointing out that factually, the man is either stupid or insane or an audacious liar. If you can think of a fourth possibility, drop me a line. But keep in mind that there’s no saying he’s not all three.
He’s a Republican in the year 2012, after all. Anything is possible.
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