Now, I haven’t even talked about the idiots, the absolute total buffoon idiots who want to equate global warming and climate change with this tsunami, and I’m going to avail myself of the opportunity to do this, but I’m a little embarrassed we have to. The idea that climate change has anything to do with this or that man has somehow caused this is just beyond my intellectual ability to understand people who think this way. So I am going to conclude they’re not thinking, they are just emotional, or they are just super-partisan and will take the advantage of anything, even a massive human disaster like this, to try to rip into the President of the United States and the United States itself. I didn’t hear this, but I got a bunch of e-mails. Apparently last week some idiot called Roger on this program, somebody called Roger Hedgecock and claimed that human drilling, like in for oil, is slowly emptying the core of the earth, which will someday cause the earth’s collapse. Now, when I heard about this, I said, “I’m gonna go look some things up.” I mean, this person apparently really believed this.
I remember when I was in junior high school I was taught how thick the earth’s crust is and how hot the core is, how impossible it will ever be to get there, despite a James Mason movie. (talking to staff) It was a caller from Brooklyn? Did you take the call, Brett? Did this guy actually believe this, or was he just trying to be provocative? We’re weakening the geodesic dome of the planet because we’re drilling to the core. This is obviously in our pursuit of oil, is that correct? Yes, it has to be. So our pursuit for oil, obviously Halliburton is somewhere involved. Well, here are some facts for you. Earth’s crust, folks, which is the smallest percentage of the basic three layers of our planet, the crust is, in terms of, if you actually had an actually size — couldn’t produce an actual size graph here, but a proportional graph — the crust is so thin you couldn’t see it as a layer, unless it were drawn so large that it wouldn’t fit in the average American University classroom. The crust of the earth is anywhere from 14 to 61 miles thick. And, of course, it’s thinnest at the bottom of the ocean, and it’s thickest at sea level. So 12 and a half, 13, 14 miles, 61 miles, depending on where you start digging, is as thick as the crust is. What do you think the deepest we have ever dug or drilled through the crust is? I looked this up. I found out what this is.
No, the deepest that we have drilled is about seven and a half miles, and it is taking place, and it’s purely experimental, we’re just drilling to see what we’ll find. We’re not even drilling for oil. It’s someplace called the Kola Peninsula, K-o-l-a, in Russia, and it’s just experimental drilling to see what we will find there. They’ve gotten down to seven and a half miles. They want to go to eight miles, but they don’t think they will be able to get there because it gets so hot or will get so hot their drilling equipment will melt. We haven’t even gone halfway through the crust, ladies and gentlemen, we’re so far away from ever drilling to the core. We cannot dig a hole to China, I’m sorry, it’s not possible, these things just do not happen, but this is the kind of idiocy and pure ignorance that survives out there. So we’re not doing anything to cause the planet to shift on its axis or to collapse on itself. The idea that this is even possible, though, in some people’s minds is truly frightening. What, Mr. Snerdley, what? Well, they say it moved off its axis, but it probably wobbled back. It may have shifted off its axis a bit. I mean, you’ve seen the before and after pictures, these little peninsulas that existed and now sea level has risen and so forth. Global warming has nothing to do with it. This is a tsunami, this is an earthquake underneath the ocean that we had nothing to do with.
In fact, I’ve got a story here. I’m gonna run through this before this program is over. A brief history of the continental shifts that are still occurring and have gone on that we have been able to factually identify and trace. This ought not even be necessary, but this kind of education is so woefully inept now in intermediate schools, kindergarten, pre-K, Junior High, Middle School, High School. This stuff was understood by everybody when I was growing up. They taught all this. The planet is forever changing, it’s forever moving around. In fact, there’s a great little piece here from The Times of India that ran on Sunday, and it’s a column by an Indian journalist whose name I cannot pronounce, but listen to this. “As the death toll keeps rising, it seems certain that the tsunami on December 26 killed more than the 140,000 who died at Hiroshima.” And, by the way, what is the official death toll of this tsunami now? Is it 140, is that what they’re saying, 144,000? Would I be insensitive to point out, ladies and gentlemen, that Saddam Hussein killed three times this many? Is this insensitive? Saddam Hussein killed at least twice this many, the mass graves, we’ve found them, and of course when the United States moved in to solve that disaster, we were ripped and criticized to no end, we were told we’re horrible; we were told to get out of there, what are we doing, it’s not worth it, it would be better off if Saddam were still there. A tsunami comes along, an act of God, destroys all these people, “oh, no, it’s horrible, what are you going to do United States?” An act of man creates a loss of twice as many in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, just didn’t happen in one day, happened over a number of years. We move in and say you have no business going in there and tampering with a sovereign country. It’s disaster relief either way you look at it, one way or the other, we arrive late as it turns out in Iraq, letting world political circumstances play out first.
I mean, you can say here that Saddam Hussein killed more people than the tsunami has. I haven’t even mentioned Hitler, ladies and gentlemen. You just compare these different ways we look at things and it becomes — well, maddening to see the way some people react at certain things and ignore the deaths that occur when man is responsible or a single man is. But listen to this. “As the death toll keeps rising, it seems certain that the tsunami on December 26 killed more than the 140,000 who died at Hiroshima. A search for culprits has begun, but is misdirected. The real culprit is nature. Ecologists have created the myth that nature represents a harmonious equilibrium threatened by human excesses. In fact, nature’s apparent harmony is a short-term illusion between cataclysms.”
There’s no such thing as 
harmony in nature. We create and invent harmony based on when nature is not destroying us. But nature is always gonna take acts of destruction against us, and we have nothing to do with them. We don’t cause them and we can’t stop them, and that is nature. And this is exactly the heart of the global warming argument; the earth is pristine, it is a well-balanced and perfectly functioning organism, but man has come along and terribly upset nature and distressed things so that these horrible cataclysmic events are happening, when in fact horrible, cataclysmic events have always happened and we just luck out if we happen to be alive and one of them strikes and we’re not there. It’s just that simple. We’re nothing but residents here, we didn’t create it, we’re not the stewards, we’re not the landlord. We don’t give orders to nature. We survive.
Here’s another way of looking at this. And, by the way, I want to warn you people, as the bureaucrats and the regulators and the liberals get going on this, somebody has already made the conclusion, “If nobody lived there, in Sri Lanka, it wouldn’t have been a disaster.” If nobody lived there, why, it wouldn’t have been a big deal, and that’s true, we wouldn’t be worried about it, yeah, we’d have seen this earthquake and this tsunami and cover up a bunch of islands and so they all lived on, but no big deal, just a fascinating event of nature to watch. So the liberals are going to figure out — since they’re trying to save everybody from dying — the liberals are gonna try to figure out a way at some point to deny people the opportunity to live where they want to live, take the risks that they want to take, and basically be free.
In fact, there are elements of that already in this country. Coastal construction lines prevent people from building so close as they want to a body of water or to an ocean or a beach. You can’t build certain buildings very high. Some of this may make sense, some of this in terms of, you know, commercial real estate and all that, but if an individual wants to live near a river — every time we have a flood in the Mississippi river everybody in the country gets mad because we go and bail out the farmers who get destroyed. People say, “If they hadn’t lived there it wouldn’t matter, we ought not let people live in a floodplain.” Hey, if people want to live in a floodplain it’s their right. Problem is when they get destroyed by a floodplain they don’t have the insurance because insurance companies are not — well, they’re more and more unwilling to even insure people that live in areas where these kind of disasters are likely to happen. But this is all going to take place gradually over time as we deal with the initial shock of this crisis and we get the aid out there, and when somebody pronounces it all gone and all fixed and okay, everybody’s done their best except the United States which could have done more, then we’ll start with the prevention, how do we prevent this again? And I’ll guarantee you, there will be people trying to stop us from driving certain kind of cars because that will lead to tsunamis. Already we’ve got these scientists out there with these alarmist scenarios going on, tsunami could wipe out Florida, do you know that? Tsunami could wipe out Kansas, you know that? Tsunami could wipe out California. Of course it could! There’s a fault or a plate, whatever thing — I’m having a mental block here on the term, but over the tectonic plate, problem over there in the Diego Garcia — not Diego Garcia — what are the islands over there off the coast — not off the coast, but they’re not far from Spain — Canary Islands, Canary Islands, there’s a tsunami just waiting to happen in the Canary Islands. There’s a scientist been warning about this for years. Just like scientists been warning about this Indian Ocean tsunami for years. Oh, yes.
Well, Mr. Snerdley, if there’s a huge earthquake in the Canary Islands, and the tsunami is a result, it will travel all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and devastate the eastern seaboard, including Florida. Unless we act now. Unless we act now. Everybody move to Wellington. (Laughing.) Folks, I’m telling you, I know how this is going to go, and rather than have this — we just got 180-degrees-out-of-phase view of nature. We have this view that it’s this harmless, perfect harmony existence, until we came along and angered it, and now nature is getting back at us, nature is taking its revenge. And this is just sophistry. It is utter — you know what this is all called? It’s called life. I also am amused, and I don’t mean to offend anybody here, I’m amused at all the liberals out there saying, “So, all of you red staters who believe in God, well, how do you explain God letting this happen?” Well, I’ve got a couple pieces on that in the stack, too. Naturally, they don’t understand. God doesn’t let things happen, God doesn’t cause things to happen.
You know, what is patently obvious is that this is life. There are disasters large and small in everybody’s life. It is how they are dealt with. We’re all going to die at some point. You know, there’s this old phrase, excrement happens. Sometimes you’re around when it does and sometimes you’re not, but you’re going to be around when it happens to you once. We’re all going to die somehow, someday, somewhere, we all have life, we’ve all been given this, it’s how we deal with these, and I guarantee you how you deal with all of the ups and downs, the people who lack spirituality in their lives are the ones that have the least ability to cope. That’s the answer to where’s God in all this. And God is not found on a bin Laden T-shirt.
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Did you hear what Rush just said? The Canary Islands could cause a tsunami on the east coast? Wow, I better move to the Mississippi. What? There’s a flood risk, when the Mississippi — oh, okay, better move near California. What? San Andreas fault? Where do I go? Yes, my friends, there’s a book out there. You people ought to get this book by Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything. This book, Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, will document enough natural dangers to make our survival so far seem a miracle. You want some details? Nature’s vagaries, nature itself, ladies and gentlemen, nature’s vagaries have made extinct 99.99% of the 30 billion species created since life began. 99.99% of all 30 billion species created since life began are gone, starting with T Rex. We didn’t do it. We didn’t do it. Oh, no. We tried to save species, we tried to save that idiot condor but somebody forgot, left some antifreeze out, the thing drank it. “The Ordovician and Devonian extinctions wiped out 80-85% of all living species. The Permian extinction (245 million years ago) wiped out 95%. Humans have done their bit too. Estimates of man-made extinctions range from two per month to 600 per week. Yet, even the high figure pales besides nature’s own extinctions. Humans have survived only by squeezing through a series of closing doors over millennia. The last 2.5 million years witnessed 17 major ice ages, all killers. The periods between the ice ages represented global ‘global warming’, and were (ironically) saviours. Maybe greenhouse emissions will cause calamitous weather changes in a century. But a greater disaster by far will be the next ice age. The interval between ice ages has been as short as 8,000 years. The last ice age was 10,000 years ago. A new one is due.” Nature is due. But nature is never due because you don’t know when nature is going to do things. Nature doesn’t have a plan; nature doesn’t have a schedule. Not that we can figure out.
“We worry that greenhouse gases could raise the earth’s temperature by 3 degrees in the next century. But nature itself creates more dramatic warmings. Ice cores from Greenland reveal episodes when temperatures shot up by 15 degrees in 10 years. Since 1850, humans have lofted seven billion tonnes per year of carbon into the atmosphere. But nature belches 30 times more through volcanoes and decaying vegetation. One single volcanic explosion at Krakatoa, Indonesia, in 1883 threw more particulate matter into the atmosphere than all the industrial smoke ever generated by humans, and created tsunamis that reached Britain.” It’s all there, it’s documented history. It just isn’t taught because it doesn’t fit the template of the left these days, which is that capitalism destroys all that’s good.
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By the way, folks, according to this book, Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, if I’m reading this right, folks, we ought to immediately close Yellowstone Park, particularly Old Faithful. I mean, if we don’t close this soon, unnecessary deaths are going to occur within 30,000 years. I’ll have the full details of this. Hey, we’re getting a warning out there in plenty of time now, that’s what they said they never got over there.
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Let me give you a couple more statistics from this book that I have been quoting from, or referencing, not quoting actually but referencing, Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, and let me just give you the last stat before I get into next one. “Since 1850, humans have lofted seven billion tonnes per year of carbon into the atmosphere. But nature belches 30 times more through volcanoes and decaying vegetation. One single volcanic explosion at Krakatoa, Indonesia, in 1883 threw more particulate matter into the atmosphere than all the industrial smoke ever generated by humans, and created tsunamis that reached Britain. A volcanic eruption at Sumbawa, Indonesia, in 1815 was equivalent to 60,000 Hiroshima bombs. Thirty six cubic miles of dust and ash cloaked the sun globally. Summer failed to warm the earth as usual, leading to the worst year in history for agriculture. Crops failed everywhere, causing famines and epidemics. Even bigger was the Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago in Sumatra, which led to at least six years of ‘volcanic winter’. This is believed by scientists to have brought humans to the verge of extinction: maybe only a few thousand of us survived. Supervolcanos like Yellowstone Park, USA, will one day wipe us out. Yellowstone’s geysers are a tourist attraction, caused by boiling rock underground. These create 1,260 earthquakes a year, most too small to be felt. Yellowstone is the crater of an old supervolcano that has exploded periodically every 600,000 years or so. The last explosion was 630,000 years ago. The next is due.”
We’re due for Yellowstone National Park to blow up on us. And then we could open a discussion on germs, which are part and parcel of the environment.
“We like to think that we have conquered most diseases. But we have not conquered viruses. One single viral influenza epidemic in 1918 killed 50-100 million people. Antibiotics once protected us against bacteria. But rising bacterial resistance to antibiotics means that only one drug, vancomymicin, is effective against serious staphylococcal infections. And now hospitals the world over have reported strains resistant even to vancomycin. Worse could be a meteor or comet crashing into the earth. One such meteor, the KT meteor, caused the extinction of the dinosaurs,” it is thought. It goes on.
The point of all this is again this. Ecologists have created the myth that nature represents — and not just ecologists, I’d say left-wing environmentalist wackos and a number of others on the left have created this myth that nature represents a harmonious equilibrium threatened by human excesses. In fact, nature’s apparent harmony is a but a short term illusion between cataclysms. What is nature is things like tsunamis and volcano eruptions, and when those things are not happening, that’s a lull between the storm. But we’ve got it just the opposite. We think whenever things are fine and dandy and not harming us, why, that’s natural, and when something comes along and harms us, “Uh-oh, what did we do? What did we cause?” It’s the exact opposite. And it is that theory, that nature is this — And, by the way, along with this notion that nature is this pristine, harmonious thing, it is also fragile. It is very fragily balanced, ladies and gentlemen, and human activity is destroying that balance, da-da-da-da-da. And sadly this 180-degree out-of-phase thinking has come to be accepted as the norm and as fact by way too many ignorant people.
Here’s a story from Kansas.com: Kansas scientist warns quake will devastate Plains. “Rick Miller heard the reports from the Indian Ocean, where people are burying tens of thousands of their dead. And he thought of what will happen here someday. Someday, perhaps not that far in the future, perhaps tomorrow, the swarm of fault lines buried under New Madrid, Mo., will go boom again. Miller, a seismologist with the Kansas Geological Survey in Lawrence, has spent a career studying earthquakes. The New Madrid quakes of 1811 and 1812 are an old story that could make news again any day.”
New Madrid is not far from my hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. And in fact, these two earthquakes are far bigger than the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. But, there weren’t as many people living near the New Madrid fault when the earthquakes then happened, and, as such, there wasn’t as much destruction as there was in San Francisco. So the San Francisco earthquake is considered worse, and everybody thinks California is the epicenter of earthquakes, so don’t go there, but the New Madrid fault is there, and there’s also one along the east coast that is not talked about much, but it’s there and is a possible occurrence at any time. And there’s nothing we can do to stop it, and there’s nothing we can do to cause it, folks. It just is going to be what it’s going to be.
If you’re worried about this stuff, I’ll tell you, there’s one step you could take, and it’s not much, there’s one step you could take. Move somewhere where you are guaranteed of being protected from any flash floods. I mean, if you want to have the greatest chance of surviving a calamity, go someplace where flash floods will not occur as a result of it. And I’m not saying you’ll be safe, we’re talking degrees of safety here. For example, if a tsunami is going to wipe out the east coast, you’ll be fine if you live in Missouri. But then you’ve got to deal with the New Madrid fault. But the New Madrid fault might cause the Mississippi River to go haywire, could flood your house, depending on how close you are to it. So you might want to move to the Rockies, but then you’ve got to deal with cold temperatures a lot, you may freeze to death. And if an earthquake happens out there, the mountains might get swallowed or go even higher, and you would lose oxygen and you wouldn’t be able to breathe. All of this because of your Ford Explorer.
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