Maybe He's A "Flat Earth" Believer...
Kooky Local Simpleton Bryan Fischer today displayed his ignorance of either geography or the concept of "the Earth rotates around the Sun and has an axial tilt, resulting in different seasons" when he said this at the bottom of today's IVA Daily Update:
More bad news for global warming hystericists. Early snowfall blanketed a number of areas in southern Africa late last week, and on Friday Durban experienced its coldest September night in recorded history."Early" snowfall, Bryan? Just a quick geography lesson here, although Fischer probably won't believe it because it doesn't say it in the Bible -- South Africa is in the Southern Hemisphere, so at the same time we're having summer, they're in winter. Since it was still summer here in the Northern Hemisphere last week, it was the very end of winter in the Southern. Unless Fischer thinks it only snows in the Spring, I'd say the issue was a late snowfall, not an early one.
posted by Bubblehead at 5:38 PM
5 Comments:
Joel,
Are you sure the Earth "rotates" around the Sun? Or does the Earth rotate around itself and revolve around the Sun?
Rotate: verb - To turn about an axis or center
Revolve: verb - To move in a curved path around an axis or center
My apologizies for possibly seeming so persnickity.
9/24/2008 12:15 PM
Of course, you're right, but I went with the more simplistic definition of rotate to mean "to move in a curved path around some kind of center-like point, returning periodically to the approximate same position relative to the center".
9/24/2008 1:34 PM
To be fair that idocy could also be pinned on "Africa = desert hurr durr"
9/24/2008 3:17 PM
Joel,
It seems the only mistake he made was in using the word "early", the link itself says: "Surprise spring snowfalls blanket KZN". It's an honest mistake.
It is even logical (while admittedly completely stupid) to say "early" is not entirely inaccurate, since the passage of seasons is cyclical, the snowfall arrived several months earlier than the next snowfall was expected.
The single word error no more implies a lack of knowledge of geography than your use of "rotates" implies a lack of knowledge of the solar system.
The fact remains that the snowfall was an unusual event, even if using it as evidence against man-made global warming is questionable.
Understood, you don't like the ILA, they seem a little creepy to me, too, but perhaps you are blowing this out of proportion.
Why not just give the benefit of a doubt and keep the arguing to the actual points of dissent?
9/24/2008 7:19 PM
What pisses me off most about Fischer, other than his claim to represent Idaho families (which he seems to define as only those who share his religion -- as he defines it -- and color) is that he continually practices "science by anecdote". People who say "this cold snap in this part of the world proves there's no such thing as global warming" sound as ridiculous as those who say "the bad round of hurricanes we had in 2005 is proof that man causes global warming". "Science by anecdote" is the opposite of everything I stand for. If someone comes out and says "I know cell phones cause brain cancer 'cause this one person my sister knows used a cell phone and got brain cancer" I'll mock and belittle them too.
In this case, Fischer's error reveals, once again, that he really doesn't understand that there's a world outside of Evangelical White America, and his claim that, what turns out to be a late winter snow, is proof that there's no global warming is just more evidence of that. If Idaho legislators didn't invite him to testify all the time at hearings, it wouldn't really matter what he says (his "blog" gets a lot less traffic than mine does), but they do, so I take every opportunity I can to reveal his ignorance.
9/25/2008 8:13 AM
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