Posted on 10/30/2014 6:53:33 AM PDT by thetallguy24
Yesterday ABC's This Week (10/26/14) profiled George P. Bush, a Texas land commissioner candidate who is a grandson and nephew of the more famous George Bushes. It was part of This Week's "Closer Look" series, which seems to be intended as a place for upbeat profiles of political heavyweights. But a brief exchange about climate change showed the limits of this kind of journalism.
Given its impact on land issues, correspondent Jonathan Karl had good reason to ask Bush about climate change.
KARL: As land commissioner, he'll oversee millions of acres of oil and natural gas reserves. But he also talks about the need for renewable energy and he attempts to stake out a middle ground on climate change. Well, sort of.
How big a threat is climate change to the Texas coastline?
BUSH: The Texas coastline is impacted by rising sea levels. And again, the question is whether or not that's man-made, and I'll leave that to the scientists. But, at least in Texas, the facts showed that on average, about 17 feet of wet beach is lost due to coastal erosion and so….
KARL: Which is a huge problem for Texas.
BUSH: It's a huge problem.
KARL: But you don't doubt that human activity contributes to climate change?
BUSH: Well, we'll see in terms of the science, there's a wide range that has been discussed. And, again, I'm not a scientist by any stretch. But everywhere from, you know, no impact at all to 100 percent.
So Bush's position is that coastal erosion is a problem linked to rising sea levels, but he's not sure that's linked to human activity. I suspect Karl's "sort of" quip is intended as a signal to viewers, but some clarity would be helpful. The position that Bush is taking–maybe humans are causing climate change, maybe they aren't–is not a "middle ground" in any sense. It's certainly a good position to take if you don't want there to be any action to stop climate change.
This isn't the first time Karl has been able to get a Republican politician on the record on climate change. In May of this year (FAIR Blog, 5/12/14), Karl interviewed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who gave him a nonsensical answer to a direct question about the scientific consensus on climate change. Rubio said that "natural disasters have always existed" and that scientists were taking "a handful of decades of research and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend." What was Karl's response to that?
It's talk like that that Rubio hopes will appeal to the conservatives he would need to win the Republican nomination.
In Karl's worldview, it would seem, Rubio's position is one that will appeal to the conservative base. And Bush, with his more rhetorically evasive version of scientific denial, is somewhere near the "middle." Both positions, of course, are outside the overwhelming scientific consensus–which should be the most important benchmark for journalists who are describing where a politician stands on the issue.
Climate change is rarely discussed on the Sunday talk shows. It'd be nice if when they did discuss it, the conversation was less about political positioning and more reality-based.
Egad the freakin’ sea levels are not rising people...
OK!! Everybody pay attention!
Lesson for today:
1. The sun is 1,300,000 times as big as the earth.
2. The sun is a ball of fire that controls the climates of all its planets.
3. The earth is one of the sun’s planets.
4. The earth is a speck in comparison to the size of the sun.
5. Inhabitants of the earth are less than specks.
Study Question: How do less-than-specks in congress plan to control the sun?
The beaches I went to in FL as a kid look exactly the same today. Where’s this rising sea level? Maybe it’s only in the Gulf
/sarc
I didn't and won't.
The Bush machine is pushing hard to get Gee O Pee a 'starter office' for which he is totally unqualified. They've been calling in a lot of press favors to get him high profile exposure that he wouldn't get if his name weren't Bush.
“Climate Change” is a Political Science.
He’s falling for the left’s tactics of conflating unrelated facts to support their conclusion -
coastal erosion does not mean rising sea levels.
No problem, W, neither are any of the West Wing clown show.
This is exactly what happens when you answer questions based on a false narrative.
Republicans constantly step in it by accepting the left’s talking points.
The Bushes wouldn't have any talking points otherwise.
I see George Pee has inherited the good ol’ Bush political backbone.
Not sure bout the whole overwhelmingly thang.
I as well as my friends removed him from the ballot during early voting.
Ya know....it's that whole dynasty thing.
Wow, he:
1. Confuses natural wave/soil erosion with water rising.
2. Claims he hasn’t actually seen it, but assumes it must be true.
Total fool.
| Commissioner of the General Land Office | ||||
| George P. Bush | REP | 937,987 | 72.99% | |
| David Watts | REP | 346,949 | 27.00% | |
| ----------- | ||||
| Race Total | 1,284,936 | |||
Here comes the brown ones!
Sea levels aren’t rising. How can non-rising sea levels cause erosion?
The continents were formed processes (volcanic activity, drift, and erosion) yet we are to believe that we are the cause for all current change.
All we have to do is buy carbon credits from al gore. I think the man who invented the internet has the smarts to build a machine that will control the sun.
Earth's tectonic plates have been colliding for gazillions of years. One plate dives under another. The result is mountains and volcanoes on one land mass and (gasp!) loss of shoreline on others.
Here's an educational video on plate tectonics (warning: Very technical information. May be hard for some minds to wrap around):
Click pic or link for video
Shuckin’ ‘n jivin’ already, and he hasn’t even officially run yet!
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