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Republicans Make America Ignorant Again About Climate Change

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Sorta transcript:

Lamar Smith is the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He also doesn’t think human-caused climate change is real, going against the scientific consensus supported by the vast majority of people who study the Earth’s ever-warming atmosphere.

The top industry funding Lamar Smith is the oil and gas industry at a whopping $700,000 a year, followed closely by old people. That’s more than 20 times the amount that that industry spends to purchase the average Republican Congressional Representative to advance their own interests.

The Science Committee is holding hearings this week to discuss climate change, and Smith, in line with his oil and gas employers, has stacked the lineup with climate change deniers. He chose three, and Democrats were allowed to choose the fourth: Michael Mann, who understands the scientific consensus that humans are causing the planet to warm up.

That would be like holding a hearing on whether or not cigarettes cause cancer and having 3 of your 4 experts be the CEO of Marlboro, a doctor who has been in a coma since 1960, and your Uncle Jerry who has been smoking since he was 12 but is pretty sure he doesn’t have lung cancer yet.

I list all these things so that you can truly appreciate the fact that today, Lamar Smith announced that the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), is “not known as an objective…magazine.”

Lamar Smith wouldn’t know an objective source if it fucked him from behind while whispering potential conflicts of interest in his ear. He is literally on the payroll of an industry that, like tobacco companies in the 60s, desperately wants to suppress the scientifically-proven truth that they are destroying our planet.

So essentially, Michael Mann was forced today to stand before a group of adult men and explain reality to them — that the overwhelming scientific evidence shows that the earth is heating up and that human activity is the cause. And in response, he was attacked with ignorant, slanderous, and downright McCarthyist accusations that it’s all a giant liberal conspiracy to, well, save our planet I guess.

The stated purpose of the climate change session was, according to the Committee on Twitter, “Making scientific debate great again.” As with the other Trumpian slogan, feel free to replace the word “great” with “ignorant.” The “debate” over climate change happened years ago and was resolved by the evidence: the earth is warming, humans are the cause, and the current US government is going to do nothing about it because they’ll die before it’s an issue for them, and they’d rather die rich than right.

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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2 Comments

  1. It’s not surprising. Expect people to not realize that climate denial, much like racism, is part of the fiscal wing of the GOP because “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” types like a certain Google employee we can all name are totes acceptable.

    Come to think of it, West Virginia is probably only (R) because of the environment. They couldn’t take Al Gore and have been solid (R) ever since.

  2. Chevron just agreed that humans burning fossil fuels have caused climate change.

    “Theodore Boutrous, a seasoned litigator who’s argued cases before the US Supreme Court, presented on behalf of Chevron. “Chevron accepts the consensus in the scientific communities on climate change,” he said last week. “There’s no debate about climate science.”

    https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/3/28/17152804/climate-change-federal-court-chevron

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