Jim Morin for October 31, 2014

An army of one?

NURSES! Volunteer to help fight the ebola virus in West Africa and then return home to defy minimal measures to ensure public safety, insult those who are trying to keep ebola out of THIS country, and mock the American public. What a self-righteous windbag.

It seems to now be In Vogue to put Anti-Science on anybody who suggests a modicum of caution when dealing with anything that could have far reaching consequences.

If you don’t want to run your car on Wind power and you still invest in coal plants you are anti-science.

If you think that ANYONE returning from an Ebola infected area should spend 3 weeks in Quarantine to protect the public you are anti-science.

It is Science on which we rely when we invoke a quarantine for goodness sake. We know that not being exposed to the virus will keep you from GETTING the virus.

We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if that nurse had been fighting Tubruculosis but political correctness dictates that because they are helping poor Africans we need to let Doctors and Nurses return and amble amongst the public as if nothing could possibly go wrong.

BAH!!!!

@Jase99 – Let me offer you a different perspective on showing caution. You seem to only see it from the perspective that we will all suffer dire consequences if we don’t halt Global Warming now.

The other side of that coin is that I can promise you dire consequences if we embrace the energy poverty that Global Warming Chicken Littles advocate. The economy will tank and suddenly all those tax dollars that the Progressives rely on to help the poor would dry up.

They keep telling me that Global Warming is a bad thing and yet living in the Midwest – Everything looks pretty good. We have a somewhat longer and milder growing season and the Farmers are getting huge harvests. If that’s the effect of climate change then I’m all for it. And if it gets warmer we will switch from corn and beans to cotton and sorghum.

It isn’t anti-science to say that I’m not willing to change my life style for the potential doom postulated by some scientists.

To be clear – I think that the nurse was treated shabbily by port authority and Homeland security. I know because Homeland security has been treating everyone like criminals since 911. She should have been sent to her home to ride out her quarantine rather then “voluntarily” encarcerated.

But her argument is that she is standing up for Doctors and Nurses everywhere that are helping the African nations. OK – Go help them and with my applause and admiration. But recognize that you will spend 21 days in Quarantine when you return to this country.

I wonder if we would be having this same conversation if it had been a White Male Businessman who just sold 100 gensets into Africa and was returning from the same area? I’m not willing to grant diety status to Doctors and Nurses like some. After all, it was a Doctor who travelled all over New York before he came down with the symptoms and was positively diagnosed.

The medical experts do not support isolation in this case. Politicians are trying to play on the fear of Ebola to get a photo op. If they were really concerned about the public they serve they would be pushing flue shots to try to prevent the thousands of deaths it causes every year. It is simply politics.

@Motivemagus – Yes and I should worry about the bogey man and the flying spaghetti monster too.

The real issue isn’t whether climate change is occuring or not. The real issue is how we respond to it.

Many, on the left, advocate wholesale changes to our energy policy, transportation policy, and economic policy even though none of our international competitors will do the same (Read here Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, Russia, etc.) so they would destroy our economy with very little benefit. But the approach matches up with what they really want which is to rejigger capitalism to be more fair and compassionate.

Let me offer you a more sensible approach: Adaptaion!!!We can examine each of your Bogeymen and see how this works.

Dust Bowl – Wasn’t because of global warming. It was because of poor farming practices. We adapted our farming practices.

Climate change – We build better levies in costal areas, We build stronger houses (We do have the technology to do so), We learn to irrigate in the midwest (Already being done by the way). That won’t save you from a Force 5 Hurricane or a Type 5 Tornado but those are rare and I have seen no evidence that they are becoming less rare.

We were promised more and worse hurricanes as a result of Climate change and more and worse tornados and it just hasn’t happened.

Yes, the climate has changed. But the sky hasn’t fallen and there is no evidence it will do so tomorrow. You need to show me a lot more evidence of doom and gloom before I’m willing to embrace a wholesale change in the way I live.

And that’s not being shortsighted at all. I much prefer that we keep the economy humming along so that we have the economic slack to deal with disasters (Climate and otherwise) rather then impoverish ourselves.

I see the Climate change hype as a way for socialists to get their foot in the door so they can preach the gospel of a kinder, simpler economy that distributes wealth to all the good boys and girls by robbing from those who learned to do well in todays economy.

Someone needs to point out that it wasn’t just the Republican Governor Christie who tried to impose a quarantine on people returning from the affected areas of west Africa. The Dem Governor Cuomo did the same thing

@opednance – I don’t know how old you are but we had Saint Louis Under water back in the 90s before there was any claim of Global Warming.

As one who has lived here in the midwest all my life I’ve seen warm weather, cold weather, excessive snow, no snow, too much rain, drought, etc. And you know what – Midwesterners continue to thrive. Because we adapt to the circumstances.

This Nonsense that the weather is somehow worse then it was 30 years ago doesn’t ring true.

I agree with everything you say about the little things we can do and I contribute in every way I can and encourage others to do the same. Where I fall off the wagon is when someone else wants to enforce a regime on me because they’ve decided the sky is falling.

@Opednance – My personal recollection is JUST AS GOOD as their educated Hunch about what comes next.

They are scientists who have created very complicated and sophisticated models but those models are only as good as their understanding of the environment and the data fed into them. They are not infallible. And they certainly haven’t predicted the Warming Hiatus we have seen over the last 15 years.

“logicalone said, about 2 hours ago@Jase99and you are fear-mongering about climate change/global warming…”Is it fear-mongering when you advise a child not to play with fire or put its hand on burning hot heating elements.

@r2varney – It happened in Texas but I don’t think it is fair to treat the Presbyterian Hospital as though they were singularly incompetent. My hunch is that we could just as easily had the same breakout if Mr. Duncan had gone to Des Moines, Cleveland, or Nashville.

The “Experts” Damn well should have been polling hospitals around the country to ASSESS their state of readiness. It isn’t like Ebola just popped up on the radar screen. They had known about this possibility for Months and just assumed that every hospital in the country was perfectly stocked and prepared for a potential case.

You seem pretty arrogant to suggest that anyone who criticizes a poorly managed issue is somehow wearing a tinfoil hat. Chev noted that the Government did a poor job of managing this and he is right. There is more to managing a country wide crisis then saying everything is OK which seems to be all the CDC did while wringing their hands.

@eugene57 – To extend yet another poorly matched metaphore – No it is not fear mongering to warn a child not to touch a red hot burner because we know without a doubt that a red hot burner is hot enough to burn and destroy flesh.

- But this is more like telling people they should throw out the stove because it might get hot one day and then it will certainly burn someone. It is probably true that the Stove will get hot one day but it isn’t necessarily true that it will burn someone and, in fact, many might benefit from a hot stove (mmmmmmm… Bacon)

1. Calling for a quaranteen on EVERYONE isn’t the same as monitoring “anyone”.

2. Comparing a difficult (acutally) to transmit VIRUS, to a highly contagious AIRBORN BACTERIA is pretty typical of the “science ignorant” populace, instructed by a science denying and equally ignorant press and political faction.

3. So the science says it IS a bad idea to go play pickup basketball on a freeway, and the panic stricken will then grab a ball and run for the median barrier!

I’m reminded again of those who see a buliding on fire and run toward it to SAVE people, vs the “average” who run away from the fire, to file a twiiter report on how courageous they are to watch the rescue from the sidelines, and report cause and effect of the fire.

They used to treat Lepers better when they thought it was highly contagious and you could catch from one of them breathing on you.Then they found it wasn’t that contagious and couldn’t be spread that easily, only by exchange of bodily fluids – similar to Ebola.When was the last time you saw a Leper Colony?

@TripleAxel – Thank you!!! Isn’t if funny that opednance posted one of the Theories for why the temperature rise has slowed (or stopped as some have reported) as absolute fact.

There are plenty of fools in the blogosphere ready to deride and ridicule any position that doesn’t align with their own and facts be damned.

For all of you – We came out of a mini ice age in the 1800s

(most probably due to Vulcanism like Krakatoa but there could be other explanations.

Has the earth warmed since then? Yes, absolutely.Was it’s source anthropogenic? Probably, to some extent

Can we reverse it? With enough resources and a concerted global effort – perhaps but that isn’t a given at all and it certainly isn’t possible when major producers of Greenhouse gasses refuse to go along read here (Brazil, Mexico, China, Russia, etc)

Are we doomed then? NO!!! Absolutely not!!! But the answer lies in adapting to the change rather then trying to hold back the tide. I’m an Engineer and I doubt I’m the first to tell you that Raising the bridge is almost always easier then lowering the river. You adapt your systems to the environment whenever you can rather then try to adjust the environment.

So I advocate using the time, before we see any of the predicted results of global warming, to: Build stronger levies, improve our Electrical Infrastructure (Higher demand for air conditioning if the heat continues to rise), better construction standards for new buildings so they can withstand higher winds and heavier rains, increasing the size of resevoirs so they can sustain a population through longer droughts, planting trees and creating greenspace to absorb more Greenhouse gasses.

Unfortunately, there is a loud mouthed group who want to use this crisis as an opportunity to de-energize the economy because they don’t like how it works for them and they think they can scare the gullible and the stupid into accepting their solution on faith.

And they are loud mouthed. Notice people like Opednance don’t just stop at refuting a position with more theories but they have to call people names and suggest that they must be crazy to think that way.

I agree that everyone should do their part to help the earth beyond global warming and I put my money where my mouth is: I recycle, compost, use a Geothermal furnace, drive an economical car though I could afford much better, etc. I don’t do this because I’m afraid the earth will fry – I do it because it’s the right thing to do as a steward of the earth.

“Isn’t if funny that opednance posted one of the Theories for why the temperature rise has slowed (or stopped as some have reported) as absolute fact.”There IS a difference between a theory and observed data.

jerry brown, martin o’malley, terry mcauliffe, pat quinn, andrew cuomo…

@Eugene57 – I know. I wouldn’t even call the hypothesis that the oceans are sucking up the heat a Theory. But guys (or girls I’m not sure) will repeat those hypothesis as absolute gospel.

Retuning health care workers should be wearing “Don’t Tread on ME” T-shirts to remind right-wingers of what they claim to stand for??

Dr. Bruce Beutler publicly says that quarantining is the way to head off a possible Ebola epidemic. But then, who you going to believe, a Nobel Prize winning researcher on immune systems, or a crowd of liberal dabblers commenting on funny cartoons from the comfort of a basement couch?

Yeah, that’s not it.