User blog:OGRastamon/Lying Liars Tell More Lies

Last Friday (November 2, 2012) I got to wind down my birthday with an episode of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. It opens with the usual ho-hum, pandering monologue (I've never been a big fan of his stand-up) and then Bill sits down to talk with photographer James Balog. Balog is yet another guest who has been engaged in the seemingly thankless and futile task of educating Americans and thus the world about the very real effects of climate change. He collected his photos of melting glaciers into a book, Ice: Portraits of Vanishing Glaciers, that few people will buy. It has been adapted into a documentary film, Chasing Ice which few people will see. Thus the match is lit that will later be thrown into my fueled rage.

Next Maher introduces a panel consisting of Rick Lazio, Margaret Hoover and Rob Reiner. Ahh, Meathead. I began to reminisce that Reiner may have played the first vocal liberal on American television and how along with Captain Kirk, Mike Brady and Kunta Kinte he had helped shape my view of the world. My reverie was interrupted when Bill addressed the panel on the subject broached by Balog.

This is where I lose my shit. Hoover and Lazio, both peripheral victims of Hurricane Sandy, pretend that they are not crackpot deniers of climate change. Then each of them felt it necessary to relate an anecdote meant to cast doubt in the minds of the stupid. WTF!? Either you're a denier or you're not. If not then you are in the right and there is no need to bring up the purported evidence of people who are wrong. There are only two types of people denying climate change: those incapable of differentiating the truth from lies and the liars who tell the lies so they may continue to profit. There are also only two types of people who feel it's necessary to put forth the argument that before we take steps towards retarding and reversing the effects of global warming that we must waste precious time making certain that those measures are economically sustainable: they fall into the same two categories.

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