George Carlin: Global Warming Denier … ?

This video is the rage among the Global Warming denial sect, as they pass it around and post it with great glee following Carlin’s death. Their RIP is a celebration that George was one of theirs.

You got people around you.
The country’s full of them right now, people walking around all day long, every minute of the day, worried about everything …
the greatest arrogance of them all, Save the Planet.  …
I’m getting tired of this shit.

Celebrate George “Global Warming Denier” Carlin!

Hold on a second …

Carlin’s Saving the Planet is seriously the rage, check “the” Google if you don’t believe me.  As I understand it, this was from Carlin’s last show on cable, we’re not talking something decades ago. The language is harsh

“Haven’t we done enough. We’re so self-important. So self-important. Everybody’s gonna save something now. Save the trees. Save the bees. Save the whales. Save those snails. And the greatest arrogance of all, save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet? We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven’t learned how to care for one another and we’re gonna save the fucking planet? I’m getting tired of that shit, tired of that shit, tired. I’m tired of fucking Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists. These white, bourgeois, liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet, they don’t care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced.”

 
Yes, this is being celebrated by the denier world. For
example

I saw his last ravings where he points out the gall we have to think we make such a vast difference to the global condition.
**We puny humans might create garbage, pollution, etc, but in the history of the earth, we are insignificant. **

No, clearly humanity is unable to have a global impact. Would all-out nuclear war have an impact?  If you answer yes, then you evidently have “the gall”.
BUT
The denialists are celebrating, loving up this piece, but they are not looking at the subtext nor are they looking other Carlin words and perspectives on Global Warming.

there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The people are fucked. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people the planet is doing great.

This is almost Gaia thesis.
Humanity might wound, might damage itself, but will the planet remember a million, a billion years from now?  Carlin didn’t seem to think so:

The planet will be here for a long, long, long time after we’re gone. And it will heal itself. It will cleanse itself, because that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover. The earth will be renewed.

But let’s look past Save the Planet for other perspective on George Carlin and Global Warming.
Don’t you hope it gets completely out of control …

Watch this and one gets a bit of a different perspective on Carlin and Glo

at the same time one of those month-long Global Warming heat waves comes along …

No, Carlin doesn’t really come off as much of a denier in this one.

There’s no learning curve with these people …

No, the deniers have no interested in learning, even as they have fun showing up a George Carlin rant.
From A TV interview last fall

“People are selfish,” he said. “These people with the fires and the floods and everything, they overbuild and they put nature to the test, and they get what’s coming to them, that’s what I say.”
Joy Behar replied, “That’s a little harsh, George.”
But the 70-year-old comic continued: “People think nature is outside of them. They don’t take into [themselves] the idea that nature is a part of them.” Pointing to his chest, he said, “Nature is in here, and if you’re in tune with it, like the Indians – the balance of life, the harmony of nature – if you understand that, you don’t overbuild, you don’t do all this moron stuff.”

Jamie Lee Curtis on that same ET segment

“Global warming, combined with people building houses in places they shouldn’t, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,” she said. “It just compounds to become, as they call it, a perfect storm experience here. It’s not by accident. This isn’t an act of God. This is an act of man.”

So what …
Not sure of the “so what”, but after the 50th time receiving a link to Carlin’s “Saving the Planet” rant or seeing it on denier sites this week, it starts to get tiresome.  If we care so desperately about Carlin’s “Seven Words” and mourn his passing, what should we think of “Saving the Planet” and the deniers celebration of it?  
Carlin’s rant is biting against (“white-lilied”) environmentalists and those acting to deal with quite real problems.  My understanding of and appreciation for Carlin drove me to take the moment to do a deeper dive, to explore beneath the surface.  Beneath the surface, George “Global Warming Denier” Carlin ceases to exist, after thought and examination, the rant is not denier, but Gaia theory.  And, it (and other pieces) express not just humor but that Carlin’s fundamental rage is not with activist environmentalists, but with those who jump into their McSUV to drive 20 extra miles to get organic butter, proud of themselves for having a “Save the Planet” bumper sticker.  Even more so, these are rants against humanity’s rape of the planetary system.  

Nowdo you get it why I celebrate when nature gets even with humans?

With fires, floods, melting ice, is George celebrating as Global Warming catches up with us?
RIP George.
 
 

4 responses to “George Carlin: Global Warming Denier … ?

  1. “Beneath the surface, George “Global Warming Denier” Carlin ceases to exist, after thought and examination, the rant is not denier, but Gaia theory. ”

    Well at least someone is a “denialist” or at least in denial. Carlin was always a misanthrope is it surprising that he would find it funny if we destroyed ourselves in a nuclear holocaust. He’s bright enough to understand that “the Earth” would continue on just fine burdened by one less species and to his mind an inferior one.

    Hell I don’t even believe that, with reflection he probably understands that even we couldn’t fully exterminate ourselves this way. Some people, somewhere would survive. Them and the cockroaches.

  2. What is global warming?

  3. Global warming is about as true as the Easter bunny. The earth has natural warming and cooling cycles. Some places becoming warmer and some become cooler. The sun is the only thing effecting earth’s temperatures. Anyone who Tell’s you differently is selling you something.

    Your willingness to demonstrate, publicly, your serious case of Anti-Science Syndrome is sad.

    You are stating something that is simply false.

    Yes, there are natural ‘cycles’ and natural drivers of cooling and warming. Human activity is operating on top of that to drive the current significant warming — significant in extent and rapidity.

  4. “Your willingness to demonstrate, publicly, your serious case of Anti-Science Syndrome is sad.”

    Wow–what did George say about arrogance? Nail, meet head…..

    Well, Mitch, did you bother to do any checking about the actual science.

    For example, from the commentator above

    The sun is the only thing effecting earth’s temperatures. Anyone who Tell’s you differently is selling you something.

    What is The New Scientist selling?

    even if solar forcing in the past was more important than this estimate suggests, as some scientists think, there is no correlation between solar activity and the strong warming during the past 40 years. Claims that this is the case have not stood up to scrutiny (pdf document).

    Direct measurements of solar output since 1978 show a steady rise and fall over the 11-year sunspot cycle, but no upwards or downward trend .

    Similarly, there is no trend in direct measurements of the Sun’s ultraviolet output and in cosmic rays. So for the period for which we have direct, reliable records, the Earth has warmed dramatically even though there has been no corresponding rise in any kind of solar activity.

    The commentator asserted something that was, simply, totally at odds with the data, the science, and scientific understanding of our planetary system’s workings.

    That is, well, a pretty good example of Anti-Science Syndrome.

    Evidently it is arrogant to highlight when someone is asserting something absurdly and ignorantly false.

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