Political Silly Season In Icebox Iowa Reveals The "Hoax" Of Climate Change

Esteemed climatologist Lauren Boebert added her two cents
to the climate debate recently. As usual, not exactly brilliant

It's wicked cold in Iowa at the moment. 

And it comes at a moment when all media eyes are on Iowa as the Presidential Caucus is today.  

The low this morning in Des Moines was around 17 below and it was supposed to get all the way up to minus 1 for a high.

Politicians and pundits, never shy from taking advantage of a situation have seized the moment.

 To the far right wing that are running things in the GOP these days, the frigid Iowa winter air proves the climate change doesn't exist.

Yeah, yeah, I know, this is pretty much a run of the mill Midwestern winter cold blast. But the right wing ranging from, ahem, noted climatologist/Fox Business host Larry Kudlow to extreme Beetlejuice fan Lauren Boebert set us straight. 

The ever-reliable Fox Business host Larry Kudlow starts it out for us.  

"Why hasn't there been front page stories," he whines about the Iowa cold snap, ignoring the legions of network reporters freezing their tushes off in Des Moines to cover the caucuses.  

But never mind. Kudlow plows on:

"I mean, every time you get a little heat wave or every time you get a bad rainstorm, everyone runs with these crazy stores about global warming global warming, global warming and climate change."

Repeat that phrase enough, Larry and people will just hang on your every word? I dunno. Kudlow keeps digging his hole:

"How about global freezing? Alright, not just in Iowa, but throughout the whole Midwest of the country and maybe more. The whole thing is a hoax. The idea that it's some kind of emergency is a complete and utter hoax. And the socialist green new deal is hoax also."

Then it was Boebert's turn.  On X, formerly Twitter, she offered us this climatological analysis:

"You've got to appreciate the irony of climate protestors trudging through a foot of snow and -30 degree wind chills to yell about how the planet is warming. They just don't see it, do they?"

Oh, those climate demonstrators get it all right. It's just Boebert and her ilk that are terminally clueless. Or at least duplicitous.  Hoaxers like Kudlow and Boebert have played this game as long as I can remember. It's winter. It gets cold, even with climate change, as we well know.  

But apparently, if it's cold in Iowa, that means climate change was just a mirage. Thank goodness!

Meanwhile, in the past few days  parts of Chile, did set record high temperatures by a wide margin .  Within the last few days record heat also hit Dominica, Australia, the Canary Islands, ,Morocco and Thailand. And maybe some other places.

But that doesn't matter.   Because it's cold in Iowa.  Therefore climate change doesn't exist. Or something  like that. 

 Sure, Iowa is ridiculously frigid today,  but not nearly as bad as it can get in an Iowa January. Des Moines this morning missed tying the record low for the date by a full 10 degrees.  Let's face it. Winter in Iowa sucks. 

Plus one week from today, the expected high temperature in Des Moines is 34 degrees. Above zero.

So anyway, I'm being Captain Obvious here about the difference between weather and climate, and the difference between winter and climate.

The likes of Kudlow understand it too, no doubt. But they are just part of Team Fossil Fuel who continually wish to fool the public and delay the day when oil is no longer king. And at that point we can actually start dealing with climate change.  

And no, the transition won't tank the economy or take away your freedoms. 

 It's nice to see more pushback on these climate deniers than I used to.

Our smarmy GOP candidate Vivek "Why The Hell Am I Still Running" Ramaswamy had a bit of a disagreement with some climate activist  who crashed a campaign event.. Ramaswamy credit, he didn't have a hissy fit when the climate activists confronted him. 

Ramaswamy's campaign has droned on and on about climate change is  hoax that threatens liberty. Yeah, that same old trope again. 

Rhonda Santis, as I call the GOP presidential candidate from Florida, also gets pushback from climate activists. Which he deserves. 

And don't get me started on Donald Trump.  

In any event, I hope Iowa caucus goers manage to stay warm today and tonight in this frigid weather, and I  hope they make wise decisions. 

Everyone Behaved Badly At Burning Man Climate Road Blockade

Screen grab from a video by Freedom News TV appears
to show a ranger drawing a weapon on climate protestors
at an ill-fated demonstration on the road to
Burning Man in Nevada.

Today we have a tale of everybody behaving badly over climate change, all involving an effort to disrupt a big event where pretty much everybody behaves badly.  

Social media and the news to some extent is all abuzz about a coalition of climate activist known as Seven Circles who recently blocked a road leaning to the annual Burning Man festival in the middle of nowhere, Nevada. 

Burning Man is a quirky (to say the least!) annual gathering that draws tens of thousands of people to a remote Nevada desert for arts, events and such. As organizers explain: "Our intention is to generate society (sic) that connects each individual to his or her creative powers to participation in community, to the larger realm of civic life, and to the even greater world of nature that exists beyond society."

Of course, like so many idealistic things, lots of other people want to join the fun without actually participating in the idea.  As The Guardian succinctly put it: "In recent years Burning Man has drifted from its hippy roots and has become better known for luxury RVs, wild orgies and Silicon Valley bros."

Touché. 

This year's Burning Man event is going on now, and if past years are any indication, at least 80,000 people are showing up for this thing. 

That brings us to the road blockade, which pretty much shut down the only route to the Burning Man bacchanal. (A full video of it is at the bottom of this post).

A coalition of activists blocked the road to Burning Man, some of them chaining themselves to a 28-foot long metal trailer they placed across the road. Their demands on Burning Man were actually pretty reasonable. Among them: They wanted the event to ban private jets, single use plastics and unlimited generator and propane use. 

All of which of course can contribute to climate change. 

THE BACKGROUND

Plenty of similar climate protests - mostly in Europe over the past couple of years - involved blocking busy highways.  I'm not sure how effective those protests have been, since they only serve to turn the stuck motorists off from the climate cause. That leaves the real powers behind climate change, like powerful corporations and governments, pretty much unscathed.

At least the Burning Man road blockade had more of a focused point. Let's face it, Burning Man  - and all the traffic going to and from it - put lots of carbon in the atmosphere.  

Vox reports that an internal Burning Man study says the annual event pumps 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. That's roughly how much carbon dioxide 20,000 cars push into the atmosphere each year. 

To be sacrilegious here, if the annual Burning Man didn't exist, humanity would continue on just fine. 

THE CLASH

Anyway, back to the Nevada road blockade. Soon enough, a long traffic jam formed on the remote paved road and those stuck behind the climate protest quickly became irate. Clashes quickly developed .

People, some exiting vehicles that have seen better days, others leaving their super big, expensive gas guzzling trucks and RVs confronted the protestors. 

They kept trying to forcibly remove the trailer, push demonstrators away, and attempt to direct traffic around the edges of the blocked road, and yelled and hurled insults at the activists. 

The activists blocking the road weren't exactly behaving wonderfully either. One kept insisting he has an absolute right to protest in the United States. Which is completely true. However, he wanted to be left alone to protest and block traffic as long as he wished. Even though for most people, there are consequences to direct action. Sometime you are moved, or arrested, unjustly or not.

Worse, as The Guardian notes, this demonstration took place on land owned by the Paiute Tribe, members of which told the activists they weren't allowed to demonstrate like that on tribal land.  The demonstrators were unmoved by this. 

What did move the protestors, literally, was the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribal police department, which wasn't messing around. They showed up just a little over a half hour after demonstrators first blocked the road. 

The police demanded they get off the road within 30 seconds, one of officers, apparently cosplaying Rambo or the Incredible Hulk,  floored the truck he was in and bashed through the trailer blocking the road, despite the fact that some protestors had chained themselves to it. 

The red-faced officer then pulled out a what appears to be a gun or taser and yelled, "Get on the ground, now!"    When one activist who was forced to the ground was picked up and escorted to a truck, you could see in the video her face was bloodied.

Though I understand people stuck in the European protests complain that the police there are too milquetoast, the officers in Nevada took it to the other extreme.  This scene wasn't exactly a tutorial video on how police should de-escalate things, that's for damn sure. a 

Bottom line,  police behaved badly, too.    

Badly enough so that the ranger who plowed through the barricade and drew the gun or taser might be in trouble. "The involved Ranger's conduct is under review," according to a press release from the Paiute Tribe. 

Of course that scene of aggressive police breaking up the blockade  got right wing media in a big happy dance. They like that sort of thing.  

"Everyone has been waiting for law enforcement to step in and establish authority" at climate action road blockades, huffed Fox News weekend host Lawrence Jones. 

Fox contributor Mollie Hemingway went further, saying, "I don't buy that these people care about the environment.....They only care about controlling the economy, people and destroying peoples' lives."

Hemingway didn't explain how the Burning Man climate road blockade destroyed anybody's life. But oh well. Hyperbole sells, right?

A large proportion of the comments on the YouTube video of the whole incident suggested a lot of people got off on watching the violence.  

DOES CLIMATE ACTION WORK?

I'm actually in favor of direct action, like protests, to rail against those who would block efforts to stop climate change. Sure, the Burning Man stunt got publicity, which is good I suppose.  Did it move the needle at all on climate change? I'm not so sure. 

What was Seven Circle's end game? I get why they were protesting Burning Man, but how did they expect the road confrontation to end, and when? Were they going to block the road for an hour? All day? All week? All year?

If so, did the demonstrators really think Burning Man organizers would cave to their demands that afternoon?  I guess my question is, was this demonstration just to call attention to the wastefulness and stupidity of Burning Man?

If so, great! If not, what the hell were they doing there, anyway?

Showy climate protests attract the news media.  But if you make the publicity negative, how effective are you?

I know there's a lot of good climate activists who are not trying to get into the newspapers. .But they are perhaps quietly pressuring politicians and corporations more and more to take the climate crisis seriously.

I know, too, that quiet efforts don't always work, and sometimes you have to make a bunch of noise.  But let's do it in a way where people not only hear the message, but actually listen to it and join the cause. 

Here's the video from Freedom News TV of the whole thing. It's a bit long, but the crapshow is still worth the watch, especially if you like all those "Karen" videos. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that: