We all sighed and shook our heads at Pat Robertson’s ridiculous assertion that the Haiti earthquake was caused because the brave slaves who rebelled against France back in the 19th Century had “made a pact with the devil.” But we should be just as dismissive of Danny Glover, who claims that the quake is the earth’s revenge for the failure of Copenhagen. From the story:
“When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?”
Gaia has attacked people who have no impact on global warming because of Copenhagen? Good grief. Robertson and Glover have a lot in common, despite their worshipping different deities.
January 15th, 2010 | 10:28 am
[...] environmentalism is stunning even if not commonly recognized or acknowledged. As Wesley Smith notes, while people rightly mock Pat Robertson’s statement about the earthquake in Haiti being [...]
January 15th, 2010 | 10:53 am
Global warming causes earthquakes? Now I’ve heard everything.
January 15th, 2010 | 11:49 am
Danny Glover has become a joke!!!!!!!!!
January 15th, 2010 | 12:09 pm
[...] J. Smith weighs in at First Things: “Gaia has attacked people who have no impact on global warming because of Copenhagen? Good [...]
January 15th, 2010 | 12:32 pm
I heard what Danny Glover said and he must be the biggest idiot in the world if he really believes the earthquake is a result of global warming
January 15th, 2010 | 12:44 pm
Unlike Mr. Robertson, Danny Glover provides one with a chuckle. Mr. Glover obviously made his statement “with tongue in cheek”, as who would be so foolish to think that Copenhagen had anything to do with the tragedy in Haiti. Everyone knows that Mr. Glover is not just an actor but also a great mind with exceptional insight into politics and all matters regarding climate. Oh, wait a minute, he’s the one who idolizes Hugo Chavez, oops, never mind.
January 15th, 2010 | 12:57 pm
Two loons in a pond (Glover and Robertson).
Danny: What’s the physical mechanism for translating the results of an international meeting into an earthquake in Haiti? Why did the earth choose to punish the Haitians and not the Americans or the Chinese? Giving you the very generous benefit of the doubt, perhaps you were suggesting AGW made the situation worse. How? It was an EARTHQUAKE.
God and Gaia teaming up to tag-team the Haitians. Is this 10,000 BC? Sigh. Invoking magic to explain physical phenomena is rarely helpful.
January 15th, 2010 | 1:43 pm
Glover wasn’t blaming the quake on global warming. He was saying that emergency responses to disasters was part of what took place at the summit.
January 15th, 2010 | 3:59 pm
Glover’s remark was idiotic, but at least it was in the context of trying to help the victims. Whereas Robertson was in his ivory tower blaming the victims for their own misfortune, an act of God, frankly. I don’t think Glover was saying that the Haitians could have avoided this by making a better showing in Copenhagen.
If Robertson has shown any sign of actually helping the victims, I’m willing to cut him some slack too.
January 15th, 2010 | 4:09 pm
Mike Ovitz: Nice try but no cigar.
January 15th, 2010 | 4:10 pm
Richard Riker: Glover is never tongue in cheek. He’s a zealot.
January 15th, 2010 | 5:22 pm
Wesley J. Smith: You’re misconstruing Glover’s remarks to mean that he thinks failures at Copenhagen caused earthquakes in Haiti. He’s talking about the need for coordinated responses, and what he thinks will be an increasing need due to global warming. He may or may not be right but it’s far-fetched to think he believes global warming or the lack of response to it caused the earthquake.
January 15th, 2010 | 9:58 pm
My feeling is that words (from anybody) don’t count for much in the face of a crisis of this proportion, padraig; how does he actually put his money where his mouth is?
January 16th, 2010 | 8:27 am
The on-going temperature decline trend was predicted.
All average global temperatures since 1895 are accurately predicted by a simple model using the first law of thermodynamics and the time-integral (same as ‘running total’ if time steps are equal) of sunspot count. The standard deviation of concurrent measured minus predicted temperatures since 1900 is 0.064 C. There was no need to consider any change to the level of CO2 or any other greenhouse gas. Climate change is natural.
The model, with an eye-opening graph, is presented in the October 16 pdf at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true. (One of the discoveries made during this research was the effective sea surface temperature oscillation. The integral of the PDO Index http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest indicates a substantial measure of sea surface temperatures, as does ENSO 3.4, but not all so replace all references to PDO with ESST for Effective Sea Surface Temperature).
This model predicted the ongoing temperature decline trend. None of the 20 or so models that the IPCC uses did.
January 16th, 2010 | 10:31 am
Padraig,
Not to defend Robertson mistaken belief in an urban legend, but he did follow that story with calls for prayers and aid for the Haitians. You have to watch the full video, because the media seems to always ignore the substance and make a beeline for the headline with these controversial statements, giving the impression that’s all they say.
January 16th, 2010 | 11:28 am
CG, googled both Robertson and Glover to see if I could find any direct aid given by either. Robertson has a disaster relief group that they say has donated a great deal of medical material. Glover is primarily just publicizing and advocating for the victims; I suspect he’s at least written a check or two besides.
Unfortunately it’s inevitable that self-promoters like actors and evangelists will attempt to get a little something for themselves out of the deal. (I guess Tila Tequila has even gotten into the act.) As long as they do something for the victims, I prefer to bite my tongue and keep the focus on what’s important, which is actions and not words.
January 16th, 2010 | 12:10 pm
The stupidity of Danny Glover and Pat Robertson is blinding. The difference between the two is that the media has the means to identify when Pat says something idiotic, because they are already bent to jump on him because he’s a simple-minded dweeb who many in simple-minded “Christian” circles have high regard for.
Glover’s mindset is no different from the primitive “evil spirits did it” mentalities who have populated Haiti for centuries, but the media carefully and mindfully CONSIDER what this moron says, because he believes in destroying our way of life (because we must “save the planet,” as if people could either destroy or save the Earth)–which is what all knee-jerk reactionaries believe.
I just haven’t decided whether it’s insanity or just plain stupidity that drives these people. There’s obviously a huge drive on the part of the environmentalism front to destroy over two millennia of Western Civilization, and to bring the vast majority of humanity back to being primitive hunter-gatherers. This is certainly insanity. It is insane to choose cultural suicide.
January 16th, 2010 | 3:37 pm
I am profoundly disappointed in Robertson for his remarks about Haiti. I don’t understand why he clings to the OT notion of God causing Earthquakes in vengence.
January 16th, 2010 | 6:07 pm
I didn’t know about this until just now. But yeah, Glover should stick to non-scientific matters. As for Pat Robertson, I will say in mitigation that he was merely repeating an urban legend, whose factual and historical accuracy is still a subject of debate. I do not think it is beyond the realm of possibility that OT-style calamities can still occur in the modern day. There’s nothing in the Bible that says this cannot happen. So while we cannot be certain that the disasters in Haiti were ordained by God as punishment for some “pact” or other with the Devil, we cannot also be certain that wasn’t the case. Whether we agree or disagree with Robertson’s beliefs on this issue, we should be careful not to promulgate theories about God that put him into convenient little boxes of our making. God is sovereign and can do pretty much anything he wants to do.
January 17th, 2010 | 2:58 am
Cant blame something that doesnt exist. The earth has been cooling for eight years. Google climategate
January 17th, 2010 | 12:49 pm
Satan responds, via the Minneapolis Star-Tribune letters page (2nd letter on the page):
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/letters/81595442.html?elr=KArks7PYDiaK7DUqEiaDUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU
January 21st, 2010 | 2:15 pm
[...] J. Smith weighs in at First things: “Gaia has attacked people who have no impact on global warming [...]
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