“Ridiculous pseudo-science garbage”: Meet the GOP’s environment leaders!

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http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/ridiculous-pseudo-science-garbage-meet-gops-environment-leaders



As scientists agree that the problem of man-made climate change is getting more and more urgent, a review of their records reveals that all eight Republican senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee do not believe the phenomenon even exists.

This sentiment was on full display last week in a committee hearing on the subject, when, most notably, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., called for greater “tolerance” in “the public discourse regarding the many scientific viewpoints on climate change. Respect should be shown to those who have done the research and come to a different conclusion.”

That conclusion is certainly “different” from the consensus reached by most members of the scientific community, who have concluded that anthropogenic climate change is real. A 2010 survey of 1,372 climate researchers, in fact, found that 97-98 percent believe in man-made climate change.

So what do the Republicans on the committee believe?

Wicker, in addition to preaching “tolerance,” responded to President Obama’s speech on climate change earlier this month by decrying Obama’s “assertions that global temperatures are on the rise – a notion challenged by scientists and scholars.” He was also initially slated to be part of the “Truth Squad” organized by Sen. Jim Inhofe (see below) for a climate change summit in Denmark in 2009, which was intended to present “ another view” of climate change. In the end, though, Wicker did not attend.

Inhofe, R-Okla., on the other hand, did follow through on the “Truth Squad” promise and attended the summit — by himself. Inhofe is one of the Senate’s most ardent climate change deniers, and famously said that global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” In Copenhagen, he described where that hoax came from. “It started in the United Nations,” he said, but “the ones who really grab a hold of this in the United States are the Hollywood elite.” Inhofe is also fond of proclaiming that “we’re in a cold spell” whenever it snows.


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