Global warming skeptics left to making things up

June 24, 2006

I was awfully curious how the far-right would respond to news like this.

It has been 2,000 years and possibly much longer since Earth has run such a fever.

The [tag]National Academy of Sciences[/tag], reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the “recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia.”

A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that Earth is heating up and that “human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.” Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century.

Done deal, right? The NAS is the premier scientific research body in the nation; the [tag]report[/tag] on [tag]global warming[/tag] was requested by a Republican member of Congress; and the results were overwhelming. House Science Committee Chairman [tag]Sherwood Boehlert[/tag] (R-N.Y.) said, “There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change.”

Boehlert clearly underestimates the intellectual acrobatics some [tag]conservatives[/tag] are capable of.

An electricity industry trade journal, for example, said, “The NAS report casts serious doubts on the conventional scientific wisdom of man-made climate warming, particularly as described by political advocates such as former Vice President Al Gore.” True? Not so much. The report concluded that “human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.”

Sen. James [tag]Inhofe[/tag] (R-Okla.), who gets his scientific advice from fictional novels, said the NAS report proves that climatologist Michael Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph is wrong. True? Strike two — NAS research “largely vindicates” Mann’s central thesis.

It’s a telling reaction. For the far-right, no amount of evidence or science will ever be enough. They’ll keep denying reality and, when confronted with inconvenient facts, will just make it up as they go along.

Polls consistently show that more than half the American people believe humans were created exactly as depicted in the Bible (twice, actually, two different stories in Genesis 1 and 2),
but that really boils down to a personal need, an emotional need. These people must believe that God created them for a purpose, and their lives become meaningless – they think – if that’s not true, and they will resist any threat to their belief system. I understand that.

But what drives the tens of millions to this evangelical denial of global warming? I just don’t get it. The science is overwhelming that human beings have trashed planet earth, and that we need to do something before it becomes irreversible, even catastrophic. That’s a challenge and Americans have embraced challenges throughout history, and prevailed.

I’m just not getting it. I see “liberal conspiracy” all over the blogs with respect to global warming, but that doesn’t seem to cut it.

I’m baffled. Well, I never understood the mindless, seething hatred of Bill Clinton, either.

  • american conservatives firmly believe that a ghost in the sky created the earth and man, that the ghost is nonetheless OK with us destroying the earth for the right reasons and encourages us to hate certain types of men, and that the ghost will intervene in a person’s personal affairs if one asks it frequently and nicely and then gives money to some big haired salesman who claims to know the ghost intimately.

    so you expect american conservatives to believe in something tangible and measurable and factual? please.

  • Many years ago I was a registered independent and would vote for candidates who seemed to be reasonable moderate Republicans. At that time I lived in Tulsa for 5 years, the most extended time I’ve spent outside of my home state of Missouri. I voted for Bond for Governor back in those ancient days in Missouri and I had voted for Inhofe for mayor of Tulsa. I look back at those times and wonder what pod people have replaced the men I voted for back then because it’s been years since I would consider it. In fact the Republican party has shifted so far to the right that I will not vote for any Republican because to do so would give power to that party’s leaders and I detest them all. I barely have any respect for any current Republican office holders because even the best of them seem to be enablers of the worst of the group more often than not. The environment is definitely one of the issues that have pushed my opinion in that direction.

  • Sadly, for some it seems to me the same emotional response to Evolution.

    But then again someone like Inhofe has his rea$ons why he hang$ on. According to Open Secrets, his number one and two donors are oil and power companies. Plus he’s the numba one boy for the infamous Koch brothers.

  • Well, think about it. If they warm up the planet enough, they can drill for oil in the Antarctica ;0

    What the conservatives don’t get about the difference between the temperature 1000 years ago and now is that 1000 years ago, the warm was from a slightly hotter sun. Now, it’s from a concentration of CO2 and as that concentration goes up nothing is going to be able to cool the world.

    Except, of course, hanging some mirrors as satellites right between the Earth and the Sun to cut off part of the Sun’s light.

    Of course, if they don’t do it soon, we will be in a hot, dark place sufficating from CO2 poisoning with nothing to eat except mushrooms growing from the bodies of our children.

  • You are confusing conservatives with religious fundamentalists. The “conservatives” who deny global warming do so because it makes them feel out of control, and that this is something that requires sacrifice. The common theme of modern conservatism is “what, me worry?” and “I’ve got mine”.

    Christianists, on the other hand, think all this is part of God’s plan, so there is nothing they can do. Their job is to turn the country into a Christianist republic, not fight global warming, which is God’s job.

  • “You are confusing conservatives with religious fundamentalists.” – Carol

    Once you make that distinction the word ‘conservative’ loses all meaning. Big Business ‘conservatives’ make a profit off of the destruction of the Earth. This provides two means to their goal, which is to displace the Existing Wealth ‘conservatives’ as the ‘Rich’. First, they are getting more money, second, they are destroying the basis of the world’s wealth. What’s the point of having a ski chalet in Vale if it no longer snows in Colorado. What’s the point of having a beach home that’s ten feet below water. What’s the point of owning shares of a corporate farm when all the topsoil has blow away in a dust bowl.

    Unfortunately, the Existing Wealth ‘conservatives’ are being blinded by the attempted permanent repeal of the Estate tax to realize that by 2011, half their wealth will have been ‘taxed’ away by the destruction of the environment.

    So the next time you get into an argument with a ‘conservative’, ask him how he will like the fact that his timeshare is going to be destroyed in storm and flood.

  • For some of the conservatives / fundamentalists, the scientific case for global warming must be easy to dismiss.
    1) Ice core evidence (and any other evidence going back before 4004 BCE must be wrong, Using the Usher biblical dating, that’s when God created the world.
    2) Much of the rest of the evidence comes from scientists who are either Darwinists or people who believe the earth is older than 6000 years. Therefore anything they say must be suspect.
    3) Even ignoring (1) and (2), the Apocalypes will come before the water rises 20 feet, so “what? me worry?”

    Some of the more thoughtful will also think to themselves: “It’s only a theory, like evolution.” Then they can load up the SUV and head to church without another thought.

    Of course there are the “conservatives” who care about the money to be made from denying global warming science, and who find it easy to lead the “wackos” (to borrow a term from Jack Abramoff’s partner in crime, Michael Scanlon).

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