21 Jan 2013 Classless Obama Insults Global Warming Skeptics in Inaugural Address

It is said that Ronald Reagan so respected the office of the presidency that he wouldn’t enter the Oval Office if he wasn’t wearing a suit jacket.

Barack Obama so demeans the office of the presidency that he uses the occasion of an inaugural address to insult people.

Hence the use of the term “deny” in an otherwise scientifically illiterate sentence about climate change in his inaugural address today:

Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.

Here’s the full paragraph:

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But American cannot resist this transition. We must lead it.

Ask yourself what benefit the phrase “some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science” brings to the strength of this portion of the address. Would this paragraph not have been stronger?

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. No one can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But American cannot resist this transition. We must lead it.

The reference to global warming skeptics was the only time in the address that Obama made an overt reference to others not agreeing with him.

For those new to this debate, the term “denier” was invented by propagandists for the view that global warming is caused by humans, will be catastrophic, and fighting it will cost billions of dollars. It is meant to claim that people who believe either that climate change is mostly natural, is not sufficiently understood, is unlikely to be catastrophic and/or should not cost billions of taxpayer dollars annually are not in intellectual disagreement with them, but are morally inferior.

That, for example, is how it was laid out by Jim Hoggan, who serves the global warming alarmist forces as a high-profile public relations director, in 2005:

But soon after, the global warming alarmist community realized that running around calling people the equivalent of holocaust deniers wasn’t good PR at all for people who like to market themselves as impassionate, eggheaded scientists with concern only for the truth and none whatsoever for money, fame, the adulation of peers and the press or downright nice speaking fees.

So they stopped admitting the genesis and meaning of their insult (while still indulging in it). By 2007, Hoggan’s post had been edited to remove the holocaust reference. One of this employees wrote an essay that year chiding global warming alarmist “hero” (their word) James Hansen for using a holocaust reference:

Advice to James Hansen: If you are going to be engaged in public debate on global warming, or as a major public figure on pretty much any subject, you should probably stay away from Holocaust metaphors and analogies, PERIOD.

And what Hagan’s employee then went on to say about Hansen fits Barack Obama, as well:

Obama won’t apologize. The best we can hope for is that at some point Barack Obama realizes the dignity of his office requires him to rise above ad hominem insults and restrict himself to facts and truth. It would be a big change for a man who seems sincerely to believe that reaching a different conclusion than he has on seemingly every issue is a sign of immorality in others.

(I wrote about a prior use of the slur by Obama here.)