For those hoping that conservatives will come to their senses sometime soon and understand that climate change is a real and present danger to our planet and our survival, stop hoping. Not happening. The fossil fuel industry has been successful in using paid politicians, lobbyists and hacks to turn an issue that should be viewed solely on its scientific merits into a convoluted and muddied political juggernaut.
Any conservative unwilling to play the game is instantly ostracized and demonized. Such was the case with Jon Huntsman during the Republican primary and such is the case with former South Carolina Republican Rep. Bob Inglis who was defeated in the 2010 Tea Party uprising.
From The Hill:
Inglis on Tuesday announced a new “Energy and Enterprise Initiative” that he hopes will voice the case for conservative leadership on energy and climate.
“Conservatives have the answer to our energy and climate challenge,” he said in a statement. “It’s about correcting market distortions and setting the economics right. We need to stop retreating in denial and start stepping forward in the competition of ideas.”
Conservative readers instantly responded.
F.U. Bob Inglis. It’s not ‘denial.’ It’s healthy and accurate skepticism.
Loser, needs to shut his trap and cross over to the Demoncrat (sic) party. There is NO evidence linking human activities to long-term climate change.
Inglis said in 2010 that his belief in global warming was an important factor in his primary loss to Gowdy. Maybe Inglis should listen to the voters rather than the so-called elite.
An ousted RINO showing his true colors as the liberal scum he was ousted for being in 2010. Go Tea Party!
The ignorance shown by these people is frightening. Despite Inglis’ immaculate conservative credentials (“while in Congress he won an “A” from the National Rifle Association, 100 percent from the Christian Coalition and a 93 from the American Conservative Union“), his refusal to bow down to the Deniers has earned him the label of RINO – the term the right uses for any conservative who refuses to dangle teabags from their tricolored beanie caps.
In the bizarro world conservatives have created for themselves, scientists with degrees in chemistry, biology, geology, chronology, mathematics, geophysics, hydrology and climatology are now elitists who should be ignored in favor of politicians like climate-change denier Jim Inhofe who is one of the top recipients of oil money – over $600,000 between 2000 and 2008.
When a political party’s following portrays a man like Bob Inglis as a bum because he chooses to believe in science and then views a man like Jim Inhofe as a hero because he says stuff like this,
“With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?”
you know you’ve hit dirt bottom. You also know that you’re no longer dealing with a political party. You now have a cult of ignorance on your hands.
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There are thousands of scientists from every country on the globe that have all come to the same conclusion. It is only the oil backed conservatives in the USA that cry HOAX. They are using the same play book that they used when smoking was an issue. They sent lobbyists to speak before congress dressed as doctors! Now they can just buy the law makers. Much easier.
Which brings me to this….if the worlds scientists announced that an asteroid was heading toward earth, would their opinion be the same? When these same scientists make a medical breakthrough will they refuse to believe?
And I can’t imagaine how the rightwing can so readily accept DNA results, after all it was scientific research that brought that into the accepted mainstream. Pick and choose. This is crazy.
Many years ago, I was an aircrewman stationed in Williams Field Antarctica. I asked one of the scientist to explain what he did with the core samples his team drilled out of the polar plateau.
He said, “This line represents the climate 200,000 years ago, 100,000, 10,000, etc.
These lines are close together and a different color because they show the beginning of the industrial revolution about 1850 and see how they get closer together and change color up until today? Pollution and temperature rise.”
I’m a believer.
Conservatives seem to fall for arguments like Pascal’s Wager pretty easily, so I came up with a (sort of) version applied to climate change. It goes as follows: suppose we invest in renewable energy and resources, recycling technology and pollution reduction – it’ll give people jobs after all. Suppose we do nothing and the deniers turn out to be right; nothing lost, I guess. Suppose we do that and the climate change deniers turn out to be right; in that case, we end up with a cleaner world and our children and theirs will be grateful. Suppose we do that and the deniers turn out to be wrong; in that case, we ensure the survival of humanity for at least a while longer. Now suppose we don’t do that and the deniers turn out to be wrong; we’re fucked. Would you want to risk that?
I heard a Republican spokesthing going on about how we don’t need to worry about climate change because, “…by 2060 or so we’ll have the technologies in place to deal with it.” Sorry, Mr. Spokesthing, but we won’t develop those technologies when the Republicans and the oil companies and the 1%ers resist all attempts to foster that technology to begin with. It may already be too late to start, and when the world’s ecosystem finally collapses, billions will die and you will have been responsible.
Makes good sense to me, E.A. Besides, you don’t have to be an educated scientist to observe climate change for yourself — here in the midwest we had an extraordinarily mild winter this year, and have been living this summer with triple digit temps, and an extreme drought that is going to result in the worst crop yield in 24 years. In 43 days we have had 1/10th” of rain. There are other weather extremes happening all around the globe, and you’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to see it.