Matt Walsh:
Got this message yesterday from a very concerned climate change alarmist:
Hi Matt, I read you sometimes but I generally find you to be an assh*le. Just being honest. I also think you have a reputation (or you’d like to think you have a reputation) as someone who isn’t afraid to “tell it like it is,” but I think you haven’t earned that. Actually you are very afraid to challenge any republican talking point so you stick to the script on everything. I guess it’s more important to be invited to the parties than to tell the truth.
I’m wondering if you have the guts to address something and actually force your right wing readers to think for themselves. I’m getting really tired of seeing these idiots on Facebook who every time it gets cold or snows start gloating about how it “proves” there is no climate change. You’ve never outed yourself as a climate denier, and I know you like to consider yourself a logical person, so I’m hoping this is one area where you differ from your cohorts. These morons need to be put in their place. Colder temperatures and blizzards ARE CONSISTENT WITH THE SCIENTIFIC MODEL FOR CLIMATE CHANGE. This is why I could never be a republican. I can’t be a part of a group of anti-science climate deniers who would kill this planet if they were given free reign. Prove you’re really “controversial,” Matt, and call your people to task here.
-JM
Hi JM,
I agree with you. Honestly, I never addressed it because I never knew it was such a pervasive problem. But now that you’ve called my attention to it, allow me to be the first to say that climate deniers are lunatics. I’ll take it a step further than you even did, JM, and submit that climate deniers should be banned from teaching, voted out of office, and probably fired from any other job they might hold. Seriously, I can’t hardly believe that anyone could be so foolish and so delusional as to be a climate denier.
I mean, to deny the existence of the climate? That’s madness. The word “climate” means “the composite or generally prevailing weather conditions of a region.” The word “deny” means “to refuse to recognize or acknowledge; disown; disavow; repudiate.” Anyone who rejects or repudiates the existence of weather conditions ought to be scolded and shunned and possibly institutionalized. We all must stand up against these menaces!Luckily, upon closer inspection, I see that no such view actually exists anywhere in our society. This is just a label you people fabricated because left wing environmentalists are reflexively disingenuous about everything. “Climate denier” may in fact be the most ludicrous assemblage of two words ever concocted by mankind. But it’s not much better than the slightly more specific “climate change denier,” (used in a sentence: “liberal college professors think climate change deniers should be put in prison“) because, despite these marvelous straw men left wingers take so much time building, nobody in the world denies the fact of climate change. If anyone is a climate change denier — that is, someone who denies that climates change — I’d agree that he is an imbecile and probably mentally unstable.
Yet that view doesn’t exist because we all know the climate changes. Of course the climate changes. It’s a climate. That’s what climates do. They change. It gets colder, it gets hotter, it rains, it snows, it does all kinds of things. I don’t deny that, and although I’m not a Republican and I take great exception to that accusation, I feel safe in speaking for them when I say that they neither deny the fact of the climate, nor the fact that the climate changes. Progressives use labels like “climate denier” or “climate skeptic” (for the people who are willing to believe that there might be a climate, but are still a little iffy on the whole thing) because they are not interested in an honest discussion. You either buy in to their environmental dogma one hundred percent, or you will be painted as an idiot, an infidel, and a maniac.
Now, why might a person be skeptical about the theory that humans are causing dramatic shifts to the climate, and that these shifts will eventually kill us all? Have you ever thought about why someone might have these reservations, JM? Have you really taken the time to consider the reasons for this skepticism? Yeah, they’re morons, right, I get it, but have you determined that they’re morons because the media and people on Twitter told you they’re morons, or because you gave their case a fair hearing and came away with the impression that they have absolutely nothing even slightly coherent to say? I’m guessing it’s more the former, which makes you not necessarily a moron yourself, but an intellectually lazy chump who can be easily herded and exploited.
But since you broached the subject, I’m hoping today will be perhaps the first day in your life when you listen to a point of view before deciding to disqualify it.
So, why do so many people have trouble falling in line with the Climate Change Doomsday Cult (CCDC)? Let’s start with history. Just going back through the past few decades, according to left wing environmentalists we should all be dead from an Ice Age, and after that it was a nuclear winter, and after that it was overpopulation. Sprinkle in the various fits of hysteria about how we’re going to run out of oil and end up back living in caves, or run out of rain forest and suffocate to death, or run out of food, or run out of water, or run out of ozone, and you see how people might grow wary of the CCDC’s constant hand wringing about some kind of apocalypse (side note: “Some Kind of Apocalypse” would be a great name for a band). We should have perished 12 times over at this point. There were at least three different global annihilations that should have arrived before the year 2000, and another several since then. We should be starving, sick with radiation poisoning, unable to breathe, freezing from the sub zero temperatures, melting from the scorching heat, and causing entire landmasses to literally tip over due to the excess population. But we’re still here.
Some of these theories, like overpopulation and the Ice Age, have been thoroughly debunked and disproved. Others have simply been abandoned for trendier causes. But in all of these cases, the prophets of doom reaped profits from the doom, while slimy politicians used the hysteria as a means to tax, regulate, and control. Excuse us, JM, but are you really saying that after so many failed and erroneous predictions, we shouldn’t even raise an eyebrow when the very same people come back with yet another one?
Left Wing Environmentalists: Watch out everyone, this is going to kill you!
Everyone: Oh no! What do we do?
LWE: Quick pay more taxes!
Everyone: OK, here you go!
LWE: Just kidding. That probably won’t kill you, but this will!
Everyone: AHHHH!
LWE: No, OK, not that. But this!
Everyone: Dear Lord, help us!
LWE: Alright, never mind, we dodged that bullet. But this new thing will definitely wipe us out!
Everyone: We’re so afraid!
LWE: Scratch that. It’s this. This will do it!
Everyone: Uh, OK, we’re starting to get a little skeptical –
LWE: WHY DO YOU HATE SCIENCE?
How many times do they have to be wrong before our skepticism might be considered reasonable? Because that’s what this is about. Skepticism. You’re saying, just as most progressives say, that it’s “anti-science” to even be skeptical of climate alarmism, which is to say that the prevailing climate theory of the day should be believed regardless of how believable it is. This is the very definition of an unscientific attitude. It’s religious zealotry. Nothing more, nothing less.