Michael Mann: As Long As Kochs Shovel Money, GOP Denyathon Will Keep Stumbling Along

[hatrack]

EDIT

“It used to be it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier,” Cruz said. The comments were emblematic of the environmental threat that has plagued the Republican party for years. Buoyed by the oil and gas companies and fossil-fuel-funder mega-donors that increasingly bankroll their campaigns, most prominent Republican politicians have either denied that climate change exists or refused to stake out a clear position, citing their personal lack of scientific knowledge.

But as the subject’s specter looms larger by the day, and as presumed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has stepped up her calls on the need to battle climate change as a potential signature issue, the “I’m not a scientist” line is infuriating scientists. “I think, frankly, the Republican party is going to have to make a decision,” Michael Mann, director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, who contributed to a Nobel Prize-winning landmark report on global warming, told the Guardian. “Are they going to move in the direction of logic and rationality, or are they going to continue to pursue this anti-scientific fringe movement within their party that is personified by people liked Ted Cruz?

“As long as the Koch brothers are pouring tens of millions of dollars into their campaigns,” Mann said, referring to the top conservative donors, “there’s going to be enough oxygen to keep these folks going.”

EDIT

Even so, scientists are not holding their breath for any outright climate change acknowledgements by Republican candidates. “It would be suicide in their primaries,” John Abraham, a professor of thermal sciences at the University of St Thomas School of Engineering in Minnesota, told the Guardian. The fate of the political discourse over climate change, he argued, in many ways lies in the hands of voters in town halls as well as reporters and debate moderators – and whether they accept outright denial from Cruz and vague obfuscation from other candidates at face value.

EDIT

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/27/ted-cruz-climate-change-republicans-2016

[caraher]

1. I still can't get over the mangled scientific history from Cruz

implying that what got Galileo on the hot seat was claiming the world is round.

[jwirr]

2. K&R

[MisterP]

3. it's indeed extremely crucial to remember this isn't some spontaneous movement,

but thoroughly bought-and-paid for, like tobacco or CFC denialism: it's the same people, in fact; they're not concerned with saving a few mil on converting to solar, they want to create a total Powell-Doctrine atmosphere where the corporations have free hand in everything and anything and, worse, they have public opinion behind them