Rep. Steve King Doesn't Know How Sea Level Works

[deminks]

Last edited Thu Aug 8, 2013, 12:29 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/08/rep-steve-king-doesnt-know-how-sea-level-works

On Wednesday, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), last seen evaluating the leg muscles of undocumented immigrants, told a town hall audience in Iowa that we have nothing to fear from climate change—we probably won't even notice it. Per the Fort Dodge Messenger:

"Everything that might result from a warmer planet is always bad in (environmentalists') analysis," he said. "There will be more photosynthesis going on if the Earth gets warmer. ... And if sea levels go up 4 or 6 inches, I don't know if we'd know that."

He said sea level is not a precise measurement.

"We don't know where sea level is even, let alone be able to say that it's going to come up an inch globally because some polar ice caps might melt because there's CO2 suspended in the atmosphere," he said.

(end snip)

:facepalm

Get the clown car ready, this one's running for pretzeldente.

[DetlefK]

1. Maybe he hasn't realized that the sea is attached to a thing called "beach".

[1awake]

3. Thanks for my first laugh of the morning! n/t

[Enrique]

2. tide goes in...

[DontTreadOnMe]

4. Maybe they use different style rulers...

different number system?

[CJCRANE]

5. Well, you'd probably notice if you live in a beach house or a port or a coastal city

or, you know, on land near the sea.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Aww..c'mon guys....he is making perfect sense.

Since his head is stuck up his ass, he wouldn't know......well, practically anything.
As he clearly demonstrates.

[live love laugh]

7. After re-watching Idiocracy, my pat answer to this kind of drivel: "It's got electrolytes."

There, that explains everything.

[1-Old-Man]

18. and electrolytes is good, everyone knows that.

as another passer-by gets kicked in the balls.

[COLGATE4]

8. Actually, the title should read

"Rep. Steve King doesn't know how __________ (fill in the blank until your hand gets tired) works."

[liberal N proud]

9. He is from Iowa

FIRST - let me say that I grew up in Iowa and I know how sea levels work.

But this asshole, probably never bothered to learn about sea levels because he is "from Iowa" and didn't think that it would be necessary as part of his life. You don't see much of the sea in Iowa. The farm reports don't talk about it much either.

[exboyfil]

12. Longtime resident of Iowa

who married an Iowa girl. I agree with you totally. It is a true embarrassment to the state, but it will be fun watching him run for President (gotta replace Bachmann). That means he won't compete for Harkin's Senate seat.

[Bluzmann57]

10. Rep. Steve King doesn't know much about anything.

Except how to be batshit crazy.

[oldhippie]

11. Not to defend a Republican, but ......

... sea level is a pretty tricky thing to define and measure.

Many years ago (crap, it's decades now) I worked on the development of the GPS system. While the constellation itself lives in an Earth Centered Earth Fixed coordinate system (which itself is pretty tricky - where exactly is the center of the earth? Or more correctly the center of Earth's mass? But I digress.) most people on earth want to know where they are in relation to the ground. We usually reference the ground level to Mean Sea Level. Which is what? It turns out that the sea is not level. besides tides and waves and things we see, the earth's gravity field is not spherical. It is "lumpy" and thus there are hills and valleys in the ocean's surface all over the globe. It makes determination of what, exactly, is "sea level" problematic. An issue I grappled with constantly when trying to develop algorithms for certain systems.

Some may find these interesting:

Wiki - Height above sea level

Wiki - Sea Level

[Bandit]

13. I live by the sea and I get tide books every year that tells me EXACTLY what the sea level

will be at any given time throughout the day and throughout the year. As a property owner that has land on the shore I know exactly how far my property extends onto the beach and where public access takes over. It is called mean high tide or where I live 16 foot level...

[oldhippie]

17. That is true, relative to your property, which is what ...

.... most people worry about. It's a little different when you are trying to design and test precision global guidance systems.

But I know what you mean. In 1972-73 I had a beach house in Haleiwa, on the North Shore of Oahu. I was VERY conscious of where the water was, literally 10-20 feet from my front porch. During the high surf in the winter of '73 it was closer than my front porch, in my living room, and we had to evacuate inland. Living close to the ocean concentrates your attention to such things.

But globally, things are a little more fuzzy.

[oldhippie]

19. And actually, the tide book DOESN'T tell you exactly what .....

... the SEA LEVEL will be at any given time. It tells you what the variation (or delta) will be from a reference point, usually the Mean Sea Level at your location. It sounds like kinda the same thing, but it's not.

[treestar]

14. When they waive it away like that

Yeah, global warming is happening, but it's a Good Thing, I have to shake my head.

[Javaman]

15. maybe he needs to consult o'rielly about how tides work.

[Ganja Ninja]

16. King - Gohmert 2016!