MAY BONEHEAD ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH (2014)



With the recent release of the 2014 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was easy to predict that bonehead deniers would see a need to reaffirm their denial credentials.  Sure enough, they emerged from under their rocks.  This month's bonehead absurdity candidates put their gross ignorance on display in offering the following comments about climate change.


1.  This whopper comes from conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer:

“What we're ultimately talking about here is human sin, through the production of carbon. It's the oldest superstition around. It was in the Old Testament. It's in the rain dance of the Native Americans. If you sin, the skies will not cooperate. This is quite superstitious and I'm waiting for science that doesn't declare itself definitive but is otherwise convincing."

2.  Despite the IPCC Report, which concluded that there is increased certainty that human behavior is causing ice caps to melt, sea ice to collapse, water supplies to be stressed, heat waves and heavy rains to intensify, and coral reefs to die,  and its follow-up report, the National Climate Assessment, which concluded that climate change has already widely affected the U.S. and the worst is yet to come, Republican Party office holders and most of their conservative constituents remain in denial about the reality and growing peril of global warming.

Phronesis has decided to select the GOP as an organization candidate for the May Bonehead Absurdity award.   The following quotes are representative of absurd Republican ignorance, many of them coming from politicians with presidential ambitions:

• Ted Cruz (R-Tx):  "The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming."
• Bobby Jindal (R-La):  Global warming is a "left-wing environmental theory."
• Rick Santorum (R-Pa):  Calls climate change "a beautifully concocted scheme."
• Ran Paul (R-Ky):  Says "The earth's 4-5 billion years old . . . and you're going to say we had four hurricanes and so that proves a theory?"
• Mario Rubio (R-Fl):  "I do not believe human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. . . and I do not believe that the laws they propose we pass will do anything about it, except destroy our economy."
• Dana Rohrabacker (R-Ca):  "Global warming is a total fraud."

And, perhaps, the topper:

• Joe Barton (R-Tx):  Noah's . . . great flood is an example of climate change, and that certainly wasn't because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy."

3.  Here's another climate change idiocy, this one from Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak, who on May 19 said:

“I now believe global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their own ends."

And the winner is . . . . .



Hands down, the GOP!