Yesterday, in a major move toward strengthening the forces working to restore American economic competitiveness through clean energy, the Blue-Green Alliance and the Apollo Alliance merged. The Blue-Green Alliance had emerged as a powerhouse, combining 12 unions and four environmental groups with twelve million members. Apollo had focused itself on developing the policy initiatives for a clean-energy economy, and the merger simply combined these two capacities. (Full disclosure: I serve on the boards of both, and the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers were co-founders of both.)
During the press conference that followed, most of the media were curious about how even a combined Blue-Green/Apollo effort could overcome the incredible Republican hostility in Washington toward anything that smacks of clean energy. It's a good question, but one that highlights a powerful irony.
As potential candidates ranging from the thoughtful (Mitch Daniels) to the risible (Donald Trump) take themselves out of the Republican presidential field, most of the remaining serious candidates have something very powerful and unnoted in common. As late as 2006, when the Blue-Green Alliance was fully launched, the Republican Party had a very strong set of clean energy advocates in very high places. There was an eastern governor who was putting his state into the nation's first cap-and-trade system and had promised he would oppose coal-fired power plants that "killed people." There was a mountain state governor who eloquently called on the nation to undo "Churchill's blunder" of allowing the West to become dependent on Middle Eastern oil, joined Arnold Schwarzenegger's Western Climate Initiative, and helped his state make a sharp U-turn from freeway central to one of the nation's most enlightened transit advocates. In the Midwest another prominent mainstream Republican governor was leading his state to enact the most ambitious renewable portfolio standard in the country, joined with Arizona's Democratic governor Napolitano to advocate cap and trade, and partnered with famed Arctic explorer Will Steger to educate the public on global warming. And the Party's most visible former House Speaker was openly apologizing for the Bush administration's climate inaction.
Those leaders are all still powerfully placed within the GOP. Indeed, for all practical purposes they constitute the present GOP presidential candidate field -- because I'm referring to Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, Tim Pawlenty and Newt Gingrich. All four, of course, have recanted their earlier views, to greater or lesser degree. All seem to be mindful of the remarkable know-nothing standard set for GOP candidates by Marc Morano, the head of the new right-wing, climate-cynic website Climate Depot. Morano, who used to work for Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, proclaims, "Republican presidential hopefuls can believe in man-made global warming as long as they never talk about it, and oppose all the so-called solutions."
We can be certain that if Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin does decide to grace the Republican field, they will go after their opponents with this recycled question from the McCarthy era: "Do you now, or have you ever, believed in man-made climate change? Do you now, or have you ever, supported cap and trade?"
So science, for the Republicans, has become the new Communist conspiracy.
How sad.
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That question could be rephrased to just about any field of science deemed politically controversial (such as evolution, toxicology (used to set EPA regulations) and population ecology (via endangered species) for starters). It seems that ignorance of science is being worn as a badge of honor in certain circles.
Surely you are not including the money from Goldman Sachs, Natural Resource Defence Council, JP Morgan, Pew, Citibank, British Petroleum, Enviromental Defence Fund, Citi, General Electric, and the whole club of financial, business, energy, and corporate enviromental groups allied for green scams, primarily cap and trade perhaps building up to be the largest financial global scam in human history?
Is how "progressives" and their NGOs have sold out or bought in to the cap and trade scam, as shown here. Sadder is the fact see no irony in their anti-business comments which support the greatest businesses of all, Wall Street finance capital. Or the fundamentalist degree of full faith and belief in the idea that a business offering something "green" is any less inclined to be a scam or overrated than someone selling dirty energy, or sausages, or cars, or anything.
Science is not a new version of a Democracy that creates proofs of hypothesis by voting to call it good or bad based on created projected data that was manipulated in some manner to create the desired conclusions. [Not facts] These are people that have PHD degrees in literature, and history and there arts - they are not scientist. [Check the list]
Junk science is junk science and those creating this bogus information just to get more GRANT money are frauds in the light of day. Even poor old Al gore has gone away from WARMING?
The real science done by U of A and USC in tree ring and geological research indicate that the C02 content in the air has been many times higher in the past. Global cooling and heating cycles have always been a factor in earths development. The goals as stated by the combined environmental movement chief scientist revealed the real goal of all your behavior and talk of SUSTAINABILITY is to reduce the population of man on earth by about 2/3. I do not understand why you all are not repeating his science on just killing off 2/3 of the humans. Hum you mean the truth would hurt your POLITICAL agenda behind the curtain of carbon taxes to fund global governments and population controls like licenses to have a child?
You did not major in math or science did you? Nor did you study statistics - the article is couched in generalities and compares the annual human emissions of C02 PER YEAR to the average ANNUAL OUT OUT OF VOLCANOES in the 20th century to now. Well, I submit that volcanoes do not belch their gas and ash on a schedule. So, if I wanted to disprove your hypothesis I would simply go back through time sampling geological formations and sample the C02 trapped in the voids of the stone. Then I would pick the years or decades that prove my hypothesis.
This is why real science does not do consensus reviews - we require peer review and mathematical proofs.
“A sustainable society will require fairness (equity) and justice locally and globally.” – John Cook (“Climate Change Denial”, 2011).
“Preventing the collapse of human civilization requires nothing less than a wholesale transformation of dominant consumer culture.” – John Cook (“Climate Change Denial”, 2011).
“Just because there a professor of something denying climate change does not mean it is not true, it is just that the professor is in denial. This is why one must make use of the preponderance of evidence in science, the collective view.” – John Cook (“Climate Change Denial”, 2011).
Here I present The Quick Glance Guide to Global Warming:
Denial: http://oi51.tinypic.com/242hnb8.jpg
Oceans: http://oi53.tinypic.com/35b9g08.jpg
Thermometers: http://oi52.tinypic.com/2agnous.jpg
Ice: http://oi52.tinypic.com/2upvlvm.jpg
Earth: http://oi56.tinypic.com/2m7f1qp.jpg
Authority: http://oi56.tinypic.com/2nbtwcp.jpg
Prophecy: http://oi52.tinypic.com/29bh95e.jpg
Psychopathy: http://oi52.tinypic.com/i56fsg.jpg
Thinker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n92YenWfz0Y
Do you reject climate scientists?
And all of their works?
And all of their empty rhetoric?
It is more a cult than a paranoid, delusional political movement. Although I could be wrong about that.