Fox News Tells Obama To Go Be A Weather Girl If He's So Worried About Climate

Why does anyone care about permafrost? You can always get a touch-up at the salon.

Barack Obama may be visiting the Arctic this week to call attention to climate change -- even though self-appointed Alaska spokestwit Bristol Palin told him to stay away -- but Fox News is not impressed with a bunch of dumb stories about vanishing permafrost and coastal villages being eaten by the sea. Fox wants to know why Obama thinks climate is even a thing, when there are other bad things he should be stopping, like crime. Sure, yes, how about crime, Obama? On "The Five" Tuesday, host Kimberly Guilfoyle wanted to know just why Obama is wasting his time talking about something that might not even be real!

"To me, it’s such a glaring example of priorities askew," host Kimberly Guilfoyle said, arguing that the president should be focusing on escalating crime rates instead of climate change. "I fail still at this point to understand where he’s coming from because I don’t speak the language he speaks. ... He thinks the biggest threat to national security is climate change. Whoa. Where do you even go from there?"

We suppose you might go from there to pointing out that as climate change gets worse, the economy will become more unstable, which might have an effect on crime, but that's silly. Or maybe you could take the more direct route, like that Siouxsie and the Banshees song about how people start going crazy at 92 Fahrenheit degrees? And let's not even get started on how melting permafrost releases even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, creating a feedback loop that accelerates global warming. Instead, let's make jokes about how Obama's the one who's out of touch.

The real problem, co-host Greg Gutfeld chimed in, is that Obama is a nerd who doesn't care about normal people and their normal concerns, because he's always hanging out with the "academic, climate change-obsessed community" instead of helping communities where crime is running rampant.

"He should work for The Weather Channel," Guilfoyle suggested, adding later, "He’s like, obsessed with cumulus clouds."

God, what a nerd! It's almost as if Obama insists on looking at the big picture instead of merely whatever Fox News has been directed to freak out about any given week. And why isn't he addressing Benghazi while he's in Alaska, huh?

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It's not like any real people are being affected by global warming, unless, of course, they're residents of one of the Arctic villages Obama's visiting this week, where the coastline is already being swallowed by the ocean and the sea ice receding, leaving the towns exposed to storms and flooding. One of the villages is considering picking up and moving inland, at a cost of roughly $300,000 per person, while the other is betting on a new $34 million seawall to protect it. Both villages, populated mostly by native Alaskans, have also seen declining snowfalls as well as winter ice forming later and melting earlier each year, reducing the time when residents are able to hunt for seals, a vital part of their diet and lifestyle. Perhaps the villagers would be comforted if someone would direct them to one of the climate denial websites that explains that none of this is really happening.

[ HuffPo / Alaska Public Media / NBC News / PRI ]