DO YOU #schadenfreuden?

I hope this disgraceful campaign blows up in Visa's face. My heart shall be filled with glee if the backlash sends those humourless asses into bankruptcy.

The Denier's Pledge

The Denier's Pledge

Global warming and climate change are not happening. But even if they were, it would not, could not, be because of anything we humans are doing – with the possible exception of all that hot air coming from Al Gore, the IPCC and Big Government.

Denial Never Sleeps

Still from Obama's climate change video

In a White House video released on Saturday, President Obama announced he will unveil his second-term vision for fighting climate change in a major speech this Tuesday. More like a short and sappy infomercial, its content echoing the broad strokes released by his administration a week ago, the video has left me with that sinking feeling of too little, too late. Take these peculiarly out-of-touch lines (please):

“We'll need scientists to design new fuels and farmers to grow them. We'll need engineers to devise new sources of energy and businesses to make and sell them. We'll need workers to build the foundation for a clean-energy economy, and we'll need all of our citizens to do our part to preserve God's creation for future generations.”

When I first read them in CBS's story on the video, I was tempted to post them on Facebook, mock-attributing them to George Bush circa 2007. Hardly anyone is bullish on biofuels any more except the relevant agriculture lobbies, and we already have an abundance of increasingly affordable renewable energy sources. Obama himself has done plenty to scale up their utilization, considering.

So if I'm bracing myself for a letdown come Tuesday, surely the ubiquitous Greek chorus of denial – which, by subverting America's capacity for reality-testing and political problem-solving has long since turned climate hawk candidate Obama into climate chicken president – will sit this one out.

Not on your life. Not even on “liberal” cbsnews.com:

Cherry-picking an IPCC climate scientist's interview

Image cherry-picked from Open Parachute:
"No cause for alarm if you cherry-pick."

Recently Der Spiegel interviewed climate scientist Hans von Storch about the question du jour: “Why Is Global Warming Stagnating?” – as the German newspaper headlined it.

I happen to know this because a climate change denial Facebook page I “like” was eager to trumpet it – well, to trumpet select tidbits, as we'll see:

Friends of Science · 2,078 like this

about an hour ago · 

• UN IPCC Lead author, Hans von Storch: "Certainly the greatest mistake of climate researchers has been giving the impression that they are declaring the definitive truth" The short article is refreshing in that there are some prominent IPCC participants who value science over ideology.

To which I quipped:

Added Storch (who is one of many dozens, if not hundreds, of IPCC lead authors): "Similarly, space scientists should chill, cop a smoke, check their Facebook page, when an asteroid as big as the one that killed off the dinosaurs is hurtling toward our planet and assure people it's not definitively as bad as it sounds - there's up to a 5% chance the asteroid will miss."

My God

I believe in God, but not in some “white-haired old man” with a “long robe” and “flowing white beard” kind of way ... 

The God I believe in looks more like Brad Pitt ... 

or Angelina Jolie.