Republican contenders are towing the climate denial line ahead of the midterm elections. An influx of Republicans means that both chambers will be polluted by more anti-science skeptics of human-induced global warming.The facts are hard to refute, but where there is a will there is a way. Although some Republicans will concede that the climate is warming, they do not attribute it to human activity.
Gov. John Boozman, Arkansas explained it this way, “I think that we’ve got perhaps climate change going on. The question is what’s causing it. Is man causing it, or, you know, is this a cycle that happens throughout the years, throughout the ages. And you can look back some of the previous times when there was no industrialization, you had these different ages, ice ages, and things warming and things. That’s the question.”
Despite Republican efforts to deny, the fact remains that the vast majority of scientists and scientific literature recognizes that humans are causing global warming. While 97% of climate experts agree that humans are causing global warming, incredibly, GOP Senate candidates unanimously disagree with the scientists.
Of all the Republicans vying for the 37 Senate seats in the 2010 election, only one, Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware, supported strong climate action. Now that Castle has been resoundingly defeated by Tea Party candidate Christine (not a witch) O’Donnell, the GOP slate is unanimous in its opposition to a green economy.
Despite the overwhelming body of evidence, Sharron Angle, the Tea Party candidate running against Sen. Harry Reid in Nevada, described climate change legislation as being “based on an unscientific hysteria over the man-caused global warming hoax.”
It is not only the candidates spawned by the Tea Party that are making absurd statements. Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri said, “there isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth.” And Rep. Rob Portman of Ohio added, “when you analyze all the data, there is a warming trend according to science, but the jury is out on the degree of how much is manmade.”
Another Tea Party candidate, Florida’s Marco Rubio echoed the same sentiments: I don’t think there’s any scientific evidence to justify it, he insisted, while also deriding his opponent, Charlie Crist, as a “believer in man-made global warming.”
The full slate of GOP candidates deny the existence of man made climate change. Some Republican's vying for office have even claimed that global warming is good for us. Last June, Ron Johnson claimed that global warming saved Wisconsin from turning into a glacier, saying he was “glad there’s global warming ... We’d be standing on top of a 200-foot thick glacier.”
Wisconsin's , Ron Johnson is a Republican candidate for US Senate, he has said uncategorically, “I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change,” Johnson also called scientists and all those who believe in human causes of climate change, “crazy” and called the climate change theory “lunacy.” He achieved the pinnacle of climate change stupidy when he attributed this summer's flooding and forest fires to "sunspot activity."
GOP Senate Candidate John Raese is no better, he promotes a pre-industrial vision of science and he blames volcanoes for global warming. Raese has said he has “zero” [trust that] human activity is contributing to climate change.”
Climate change is ultimately a security issue. Denying anthropogenic climate change is a refutation of reality, and blaming volcanoes and sunspots for global warming is as ridiculous as Palin and Limbaugh blaming the BP oil spill in the gulf of Mexico on environmentalists.
These Republican candidates would be laughable if they did not have traction with the American public. The midterm elections are fast approaching and Republican lies are too dangerous to be ignored.
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