When Sarah Palin was asked by Katie Couric about whether climate change is caused by human activity, she responded, “I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate.” I immediately reaction was that she had committed a syntacical error reflective of her generally poor performance, since the meaning of her sentence is that she doesn’t blame changes in climate with affecting human activity. I was sure she meant to say that she doesn’t credit human activity with causing global warming.
But she used the same syntax in the VP debate tonight. (I’ll post a link once a transcript becomes available, or when I get around to it.) A mistake like that is uncharacteristic of her losing but strong, composed performance.
My theory? She does not believe that human activity causes global warming, and she intentionally changed her syntax to avoid apostasy, correctly assuming that most viewers would not catch the difference in meaning.
She has always worded that in an odd manner. It gives her wiggle room. OTOH, hunters are usually pro-environment, so maybe there is hope for her. OTOOH, I doubt she keeps up on the scientific consensus.
Steve
I dunno, that just sounds like what seems to be her congenitally inverted syntax. What’s she’s saying is what most believe anyway, that climate is an additive function of natural and manmade elements. Few dispute that, only the degree to which the manmade fraction is critical relative to an onerous cost to curtail it or to which the manmade fraction has become the onerous cost itself.
[...] is the original post: Palin, global warming, and apostasy Tags: debate, featured-works, franklin-evans, global-warming, harvey-lacey, language, [...]
Testing
I hope those of you that want in my pocket to solve global warming will be ready to repay me when you become the emperor with no clothes. Otherwise we should have the option of putting all of you on the shores of Hudson’s Bay where you can tend to your imaginary palm trees and your memorials to the Polar Bear. I was in the early phases of my graduate science education when the coming of the new Ice Age phonies were after grants to spread the sky is falling alarm in my University. Now the same climate whores are serving the needs of the neo-socialists that after the fall of the Soviet Union have found a home in the environmental movement. I know both sides of this coin well and am sad to see us hustled by this crowd again.
Bob – That’s a non-sequitor to my argument.
Global warming does not preclude a new ice age. In fact, that is one of the probable consequences, a result of shutting down the Gulf Stream and other warm-water currents.
Open your eyes and look to the sun. The earth is actually now cooling as the sun activity is slightly declining.
Spotless Sun: Blankest Year of the Space Age
NASA Sept 30,2008
Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 is now the “blankest year” of the Space Age. As of Sept. 27, 2008, the sun had been blank, i.e., had no visible sunspots, on 200 days of the year. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to 1954, three years before the launch of Sputnik, when the sun was blank 241 times.
“Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. “We’re experiencing a deep minimum of the solar cycle.”
And it is a very quiet time. If solar activity continues as low as it has been, 2008 could rack up a whopping 290 spotless days by the end of December, making it a century-level year in terms of spotlessness.
“There is also the matter of solar irradiance,” adds Pesnell. “Researchers are now seeing the dimmest sun in their records. The change is small, just a fraction of a percent, but significant. Questions about effects on climate are natural if the sun continues to dim.” Coinciding with the string of blank suns is a 50-year record low in solar wind pressure, a recent discovery of the Ulysses spacecraft.
Thanks for reading my blog, Solar Chaos, but I wish you would have read this post more closely. This post IS NOT about the veracity of climate change perspectives. It is a POLITICAL post about Sarah Palin’s syntactical attempts to avoid apostasis, which results in deception of the public since she isn’t adequately answering the question.
Frankly, since you have strong opinions on the causes of global warming, you should be just as suspicious of Palin as anybody else for her failure to address this issue transparently.