Ted Stevens, climatologist

Alaskan senator invents new theory of global warming 13

Ted Stevens. Photo: congress.gov

Ted Stevens, the Republican senator whose vacation home was recently raided by the FBI, and who made over $800,000 from a shady real estate deal last year, has come up with a brand-new theory of global warming. He told a NBC reporter in Alaska:

We're at the end of a long, long term of warming, 700 to 900 years of increased temperature, a very slow increase. We think we're close to the end of that. If we're close to the end of that, that means that we'll start getting cooler gradually, not very rapidly, but cooler once again and stability might come to this region for a period of another 900 years.

This was Stevens' way of telling the villagers of Shishmaref, which is being washed away by rising waters despite the Army Corps of Engineers' construction of massive sea walls, that they're on their own.

It'll be interesting to see if the denialists at Planet Gore, so quick to attack anyone who dares make an issue of global warming, will leap to the defense of Stevens' claim, which as far as scientists can tell, appears to be a personal fantasy.

Intriguingly, five years ago, Stevens sang a different tune, as as Timothy Egan of the New York Times reported:

In Alaska, rising temperatures, whether caused by greenhouse gas emissions or nature in a prolonged mood swing, are not a topic of debate or an abstraction. Mean temperatures have risen by 5 degrees in summer and 10 degrees in winter since the 1970's, federal officials say.

While President Bush was dismissive of a report the government recently released on how global warming will affect the nation, the leading Republican in this state, Senator Ted Stevens, says that no place is experiencing more startling change from rising temperatures than Alaska.

Among the consequences, Senator Stevens says, are sagging roads, crumbling villages, dead forests, catastrophic fires and possible disruption of marine wildlife.

These problems will cost Alaska hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.

"Alaska is harder hit by global climate change than any place in the world," Senator Stevens said.

Perhaps he saw some federal money in the issue at that time. Stevens is good at finding federal money -- remember the Bridge to Nowhere?

(h/t: TPM)

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  1. GreyFlcn Posted 4:09 am
    06 Sep 2007

    Perhaps this is his source.Perhaps this is his source for his claims.

    http://n3xus6.blogspot.com/2007/02/dd.html

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  2. akbeancounter Posted 4:26 am
    06 Sep 2007

    Senator-For-LifeThe sad thing is, as long as he keeps pumping money into the state for construction and oil company subsidies, our state will re-elect him.  It doesn't matter if he changes his policy every other week, if he's obviously on the take from oil companies, if his son is drummed out of the State Senate, or if he tells his own constituents that he can't/won't do anything for them.  They'll keep voting for him for the rest of his life, and probably one or two terms after.

    Taking accounting to the extreme since 2004.

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  3. akbeancounter Posted 4:29 am
    06 Sep 2007

    CorrectionOh, and lest ye be fooled by the logo, KTUU (the Alaska station reporting on Shishmaref's gradual collapse) is an NBC affiliate, not CBS.

    Taking accounting to the extreme since 2004.

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  4. eriqa Posted 4:32 am
    06 Sep 2007

    new source reviewGreyFlcn, that link is a brilliant, subtly funny debunking.  How come subtly funny people never get to make policy?  Who's up for forming the Snarky Sense of Humor party?
    But nah, I doubt that's Senator Stevens's source.  I'd bet money that his "source" was a 10-page popular science article about climate history which he didn't quite understand, but he didn't let that stop him from making wild extrapolations from his own vague miscomprehensions, and calling it science. It's how all the best research is done, dontcha know.

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  5. trock Posted 11:22 am
    06 Sep 2007

    bring him to minnesotaWe got a bathroom at our airport that has worked with one senator.  who knows, maybe we can get another.

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  6. Jones Posted 11:51 am
    06 Sep 2007

    this is funny......except that it isn't. The guy's a lawmaker, for criminy sake. With power. He shouldn't be allowed to drive, let alone use a fork.

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  7. mihan's avatar

    mihan Posted 11:23 pm
    06 Sep 2007

    "We"?Who is the rest of this "we" who thinks the planet will start cooling soon? Or is he feeling particularly regal?

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  8. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 2:03 am
    07 Sep 2007

    Stevens Model no match for Bailo Model

    The Bailo model calls for continued heating in the 21st century -- no cooling.



    John Bailo


    Sutext:

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  9. Steve Bloom Posted 2:56 am
    07 Sep 2007

    Goodbye LIANotice how Stevens erased the Little Ice Age, beloved hobbyhorse of denialists everywhere.

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  10. davedenali Posted 11:54 am
    07 Sep 2007

    Ted Stevens is a Doofus.

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  11. davedenali Posted 11:56 am
    07 Sep 2007

    And a Sleazebag

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  12. davedenali Posted 11:56 am
    07 Sep 2007

    And a Crook.

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  13. seabeast Posted 6:13 am
    19 Sep 2008

    ted stevensIt's too bad this old codger will croak before he sees how wrong he really was.

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