Apples, Oranges and Fruitcakes

In her Twitter last night regarding Barack Obama’s attendance at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, Sarah Palin responded with the following:

"Arrogant&Naive2say man overpwers nature. Earth saw clmate chnge4 ions;will cont 2 c chnges.R duty2responsbly devlop resorces4humankind/not pollute&destroy;but cant alter naturl chng,"

Okay, let’s get the little stuff out of the way first.

For starters, Sarah, the word you’re reaching for above is “eon” (an extremely long span of time), not “ion” (a charged particle). Secondly, it is nonsense to claim on one hand that mankind should not “pollute&destroy” natural resources, while wailing that Earth--as a biosphere--cannot be impacted by human activity. Nature has been impacted by human activity for centuries via habitat destruction, deforestation, agriculture, war, and thousands of species driven to the brink of, or into, total extinction.

What happened at, say, Love Canal in 1976 is no different in principle than global warming. Both are basic examples of cause and effect regarding humanity’s direct impact on the environment.

Finally, we get the following from Sarah’s Facebook page, which I can’t blame her for entirely as it’s heavily ghost-written. At any rate, Palin sez:

"Climate change is like gravity – a naturally occurring phenomenon that existed long before, and will exist long after, any governmental attempts to affect it.”

Once again, Palin’s inability to distinguish two different sciences—in this case, physics and climatology—is fucking baffling. Of course, humanity can’t impact the globe’s gravity; it’s a matter of universal Newtonian law. Yet in a laboratory, it’s very easy to demonstrate in a jar how excessive CO2 raises temperatures by direct correlation. Next time you want to sit at the grown-up's table, Sarah, I recommend you first consult a science text other than a high school science book from 1959.

Nevertheless, I look forward to Sarah continuing to embarrass herself on a near-daily basis between now and 2012 – at which time if she decides to run for president (and I still doubt it), even her fellow Republicans are cringing at the prospect.

UPDATE (12-20-09): After writing the above knock on Sarah Palin for apparently being unable to discern the difference the words “eon” and “ion,” it occurred to me that Sarah may have only been guilty of fat-fingering two keys (e.g. “e” and “i”) in her Twitter message, resulting in a simple typo. Yet in looking at the keypads of various Blackberry-like devices, the layout is no different than in a standard keyboard – wherein the keys for “e” and “i” are placed on near-opposite ends of the table.

So my point is that after giving Palin the benefit of the doubt for a minute, I have returned to my original conclusion that she is, in fact, an idiot and a near-illiterate one at that.

Thank you.