Climate Change "Controversy"

[Ashliana]

You are bat shit crazy.

If you want to take the most extreme, ridiculous and exceptionally liberal view of opinion not in line with your own, I think your dissertation above covers it.

You claim that my overview of contemporary Republican opposition to climate science is an "extreme, ridiculous, exceptionally liberal view" of their opinions. Okay? I can cite specific examples of what I'm talking about.

1) So Evangelical Christians all think they are perfect and or the world will end in their lifetime? Yeah, that's not an exaggeration or intentional misinterpretation of their beliefs.

I never implied that all Evangelical Christians think, or vote the same way. I said they often reject climate science, based on the reasons I listed. They do. It's not an "exaggeration" or "intentional misrepresentation" of their beliefs, buddy. The 2012 GOP primary season was a circus clown cavalcade of climate change deniers, often with purported Evangelical reasoning, like with Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, Santorum, etc.

Then there's the Cornwall Alliance, James Inhofe--you know, the GOP senator from Oklahoma continuously trying to tie fabricated scandals to the Obama administration?--spouting such gems as:

"Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,’ my point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

There's Ken Cuccinelli, recently failed governor candidate for Virginia and totally insane evangelical Christian (he was Virginia's Attorney General) and his attempts to use his office to run a patently political witchhunt into the University of Virginia's work with climate scientists, before he was smacked down by Virginia's Supreme Court.

There are *bunches* more examples of this. So please tell me how many more examples I need to provide before I'm simply making an "extreme, ridiculous, exceptionally liberal view" of their opinions.

Mainstream Republicans are opposed to green energy, revile Al Gore and his hypocrisy, ignore the oil industry and simultaneously (while ignoring them) allow their special interest groups to dominate congress. Not only do you contradict yourself at the end there, it's exactly what people who vote partisan and not issues/candidates would say.

I highlighted the hypocrisy in Republican views on Al Gore--he's villified because he started advocating for green policies, invested his own money in green companies, documentaries and books, and made money off of his investments. Now that he's made money from them, any advocacy on his part (and on many other people's parts) is reduced to "self-serving money making," at the cost of the state, while Republicans seemingly have no problem with the Koch brothers and the oil industry's army of lobbyists that blatantly fund groups funding climate denial, and have the entire GOP house in their pocket--as evidenced by their total obsession with the Keystone XL pipeline, and the GOP's 2008 platform obsession with increased expansion to drilling, under the patriotic idea of "energy independence" (which is totally nonsensical, as oil drilled here is sold on the global market, and even heavy expansions in U.S. drilling would hardly counteract the ever-increasing demand for oil).

I suppose by using "virtually" you can pretty much state anything you want. Virtually all liberal media ignores anything to do with Obama and what could be considered a scandal, blunder or outright lie.

So all ills of our country can be attributed to conservative efforts to hand-waive them away. Got it. Then you throw in something we really have limited influence on, China's environmental programs. Got it.

Could you summarize neatly for me, like you did in your original post, how if we did everything in the liberal agenda, what exactly would be accomplished? Thanks!

Again, I can provide examples.

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming...-coverage.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/foxne...science-2012-9
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...121503181.html

Fox and the Wall-Street Journal grossly over-represent climate deniers and "skeptics," heavily promote articles that are skeptical, in any way, and--I wonder what their biggest story was for weeks, when the so-called "Climategate scandal" occurred (which turned out to have almost completely absolved the scientists in question of wrongdoing), leading Nature to summarize: "There is also the sense that many in the media felt cheated by the original Climategate. They were led by the nose, by those with a clear agenda, to a sizzling scandal that steadily defused as the true facts and context were made clear."

Republicans make no secret of their "business knows best," anti-regulation philosophy. There's an obvious profit motive for oil companies in maintaining the status quo, and their broad influence among lawmakers and conservative politicians is readily apparent to even the most slightly objective observer. China is simply the example of the future we have awaiting us, if Republicans get their wish to eliminate the EPA, expand oil production everywhere, and deregulate the industry.

"I think the EPA has gotten completely out of control for a very simple reason. It is a tool in the hands of the president to crush the private enterprise system, to crush our ability to have energy, whether it's oil, gas, coal, nuclear... there's a real effort on the part of some in the president's party that don't like the American enterprise system and are trying to find a way to do everything they can to impede the growth of our economy and our energy independence." -Romney