Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for October 14, 2015
Transcript:
Man: The pope shouldn't be commenting on climate change. Woman: Why? Man: 'Cuz he's not a scientist! Woman: Ah-ha. o we should listen to you? Man: Right! Woman: But you're not a scientist either. Man: Yeah, but I'm not the pope! WHOOOSH Man: Whoa...what was that? Woman: My guess is, the planet heaving a sigh of relief that you're not the president either. Man: Oh, I'm not that crazy.
Argythree about 9 years ago
Maybe the ‘whoosh’ was the planet laughing at this guy’s total lack of logic…
Proginoskes about 9 years ago
Pope Francis has a chemical technician’s diploma, which is closer to being a scientist than the guy reading the paper ever will be.
Varnes about 9 years ago
Hmmmmm……Religion AND politics….Have a good day, Mr. MIller….
Randy B Premium Member about 9 years ago
It’s the science that convinced the Pope. He didn’t make up his own reasons to take a position.
Reppr Premium Member about 9 years ago
Blame me – not a scientist and not convinced “climate change” is caused by humans or their activities. If so many “scientists” agree to the point where they want to silence skeptics, you know they have to doubt their claims. Follow the money.
Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus Premium Member about 9 years ago
The Popes shouldn’t intrude also in Italian policy and society but they do it from the night of the times
cdward about 9 years ago
@repprWhat evidence do you have that scientists “silence skeptics”? None. Presenting the facts is not the same as silencing. Skeptics are in fact quite loud. There is plenty evidence for skeptics silencing science on the issue. Republican-led Congress, for example, has cut funding from research and has worked to forbid NASA from further studying climate change. That’s silencing.
tripwire45 about 9 years ago
So we should only listen to scientists (and the politicians and news media who support their views) because all scientists everywhere are always right. Sorry. I thought maybe I could read the evidence and think for myself.
Kaputnik about 9 years ago
Yes, it’s okay to listen to the Pope on a subject he’s not qualified on, as long as he agrees with you.
wmbrainiac about 9 years ago
“Scientists.”O. M. G.
wmbrainiac about 9 years ago
Brass O has things as well worked out as mullet boy of The Walking Dead. Difference? He’ll never come clean about his delusions.
jarvisloop about 9 years ago
I certainly hope that Mr. Wiley never ever travels by motorized transport and never ever uses anything made of plastic.
Otherwise, he’s a flipping hypocrite.
Rarely528 about 9 years ago
Global warming is a fact. Proof? Look at the recent changes in the polar ice caps. Without any scientific proof at all, it would be reasonable to believe that we are making a contribution to it. However, those who are making fortunes from talking about it while they personally have the ecological footprints of small cities, those who unnecessarily fabricate evidence of it, those who talk down to us about it like we are idiots and those who turn it into a political issue detract us from the reality of the situation and have muddled the severity of it. There are just so many agendas out there we have a tough time knowing who or what to believe. If the changes we’ve seen so far are just the beginning, the tip of the iceberg so to speak, heaven help us.
DutchUncle about 9 years ago
I don’t really care about the Pope, but as I understand his statement, it was that if the science is correct it will affect a lot of people, especially the poor who can’t run away to the mountaintops. So, we should deal with climate change, not because ANYONE says so, but because society should be concerned about things that could hurt a lot of people.
DutchUncle about 9 years ago
I don’t see any hypocrisy on Wiley’s part; and not even a position on the issue. All I see is an example of double-think like the ones usually shown on The Daily Show taken from Fox and CNN.
Prestondinjax about 9 years ago
It should be titled Straw Man
dabugger about 9 years ago
That is a relief. What ‘you are not’ is important. Meaning? Gee, I don’t know. See, this is what happens reading da stuff.
qq4w354p2c about 9 years ago
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/healthscience/2015/July/Christians-Who-Believe-in-Climate-Change/
Beleck3 about 9 years ago
ah, the ignorance and willful stupidity is outstanding. No Science related stuff for those who doubt science, cars, engines, nuclear medicine, flying, et al
great to see the end of human life, I won’t be around to watch, but i’ll know the Right is right about ending life, cause the rest allows the Right to kill everything and everyone… cause they/the Right say so.
ah Republicanism equals death.
dlauber Premium Member about 9 years ago
But the Pope IS a scientist. It’s kind of fascinating to see so many radical right wing fundamentalists attack him for speaking out on climate change. Don’t they know he’s supposed to be infallible? But I guess that’s only when he agrees with you. (Just having a good giggle about all this — I am not about to get involved in a discussion of Catholic dogma.)
dflak about 9 years ago
There is not such thing as global warming. If there was, it would be mentioned in the Bible.
alexanderrogge about 9 years ago
The 97% Consensus? Global Warming Unmasked!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTTaXqVEGkU
“A Disgrace To The Profession”: The World’s Scientists In Their Own Words On Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick, And Their Damage To Science: http://www.steynstore.com/product133.html
Indeed, those who continue to follow the Global Warming lies, while ridiculing those who are smart enough to see through the deception, are no different than those who followed the Church teachings that demanded such beliefs as The Earth is Flat and The Earth is the Center of Everything.
route66paul about 9 years ago
Slash and burn on this continent cause global changes, mother nature is just adjusting for them now. Kind of like what world leaders did at the end of WW1 still affecting the politics of our world.Knee jerk policies do not help this. While we need to address world wide pollution, the US has done much more than any other country to fix it. It has been our large corporations’ policy(in the guise of “free trade”) to do the dirty manufacturing far, far away.As world leaders, we need to address overpopulation first. Humans have become a plague and mother nature will find a way to fix it.
Johnny472 about 9 years ago
The Pope has a Master’s Degree i chemistry, if that is not science, what is?
goweeder about 9 years ago
“Let’s get it straight. We should deal with climate change, not because the pope says so, but rather because the scientific experts say so.”~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And your point?
Sheila Hardie about 9 years ago
By this logic, men/people who aren’t medical doctors shouldn’t get to talk about abortion. But you know, logic isn’t their strong suit…
Linguist about 9 years ago
I don’t know about climate change, but today’s strip has generated a lot of toxic, hot air !
Miserichord about 9 years ago
We cannot say what is or is not an unnatural rate.We only have data for the last 800K years, and the resolution of that gets fuzzy for anything more than 200K years.As the observed rapid temperature change is only in the last 200 years, and the resolution of temperature change is unreliable for that that time frame in anything outside of the last 400K years, given an estimated age of the Earth as 4.5 billion years, and the biosphere as 3.5 billion years, we only have 0.01% data for rates of temperature change.A similar rate of temperature change could have occurred hundreds, or even thousands of time before. We have no way of knowing.We can say it is the most rapid change during recorded human history, in other words, in the last 10k or so years.
Miserichord about 9 years ago
Geological records suggest that whenever the global temperatures are more than 5 C higher than today, the system adjusts to limit temperature increase. On possible adjustment would be increased water vapor producing greater cloud cover which would limit solar heating in the lower atmosphere, along with greater rainfall and snowfall. With the massive heat sink of the oceans retaining heat, and producing greater cloud cover, the ice sheets could return and increase the albedo of the planet to level that would retain the lower global temperatures even after the cloud cover returns to historical levels.Sea levels could rise 20 feet in the short term, then fall 200 feet for a 100 million years.
Brass Orchid Premium Member about 9 years ago
Think of my argument as a false equivalence.No, scratch that. Think of the Earth’s water as a boulder that is pushed uphill by the stored thermal energy of the seas. When the dark times come, and the cold caused by increased reflectivity and surface cooling from available evaporative volatiles sets into the seas, then the seas, or Sisyphus, rests, and the boulder rolls back down to the lowest available level. It is heat that pushes water uphill, and its rest from its labors that allows it to roll back to the swamp, over and over again as punishment for being a smart-apps.You just can’t beat the classics.Presuming you can turn the book right-side up.
Thomas & Tifffany Connolly about 9 years ago
Can we classify that as direct divine intervention?
Miserichord about 9 years ago
I can infer that you are neither a scientist nor an engineer.The further an event is in the past, the greater the error in determining both when and the duration of the event.For something such as the rate of change in temperature over a short time frame. Prior to the current interglacial (the last 2.6 million years), we can show that there were large changes in global temperatures.We cannot show the rate of change in anything but very broad terms.Did a 10 C change take place over 10K years, 100 years or 10 years? That cannot be determined, only that the change did occur sometime during a 100K year period.
Argythree about 9 years ago
Whether we are contributing to climate change or not through the use of fossil fuels, there is no question about the impact of emissions on health (of humans and other animals). That alone should be reason enough to diversify energy sources.
I was born and raised in Pittsburgh at the time that it earned its name of ‘smoky city’. Coal was burned not only at the steel mills, but in our furnaces during our long winters. I used to stand next to the coal shutt by our furnace as the coal was poured in; given the amount of dust that was generated by that alone, it’s kind of amazing that I escaped the damage that some of my family suffered.
My cousin and step dad both spent their entire early lives (till service during World War II) in Pittsburgh, and both ended up with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Neither they nor their close relatives were smokers.
I had a lot of friends who ended up with lung diseases who also never smoked. My brother (never a smoker) suffered severe asthma attacks until college, when he moved to a part of the country where coal wasn’t in use.
And reports of the lung problems suffered my miners are on record. Multiply all this by hundreds of thousands, and the increased medical costs should convince most people that coal and petrochemical fuels need to be only part of our picture, and not the predominant sources of our energy.
hmofo813 Premium Member about 9 years ago
The Pope isn’t trying to convince anyone that global climate change is real. That’s a given. The only new thing he’s saying is that the issue has a compelling spiritual dimension. That is, in fact, part of his job.