Fish Wrap Has A Snit Fit Over GOP Climate Deniers

And when I say the NY Times, I mean the paper itself, as the editorial board offers up consensus

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has to be smiling. With one exception, none of the Republicans running for the Senate – including the 20 or so with a serious chance of winning – accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming.

Cheney? Who dat? The guy who has been out of office for almost two years……didn’t I do this in my last post? Anyhow, there’s that word “consensus” again. When you start talking about consensus, it means it isn’t science.

The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy.

Exactly how many problems were found in the IPCC reports? Glaciers, sea level in Holland, the Himalayas, the Amazon, poor computer models, and Antarctic sea ice, among others. Then you had the East Anglia emails, which showed collusion to manufacture and spin the data. There are peer reviewed reports after peer reviewed reports showing that anthropogenic global warming is, at best highly exaggerated, if not complete bunk.

Some candidates are emphatic in their denial, like the Nevada Republican Sharron Angle, who flatly rejects “the man-caused climate change mantra of the left.” Others are merely wiggly, like California’s Carly Fiorina, who says, “I’m not sure.” Yet, over all (the exception being Mark Kirk in Illinois), the Republicans are huddled around an amazingly dismissive view of climate change.

Let me post a question: under FEC regulations, could this editorial be considered an “in kind” contribution? This editorial does have value to Democrats, and, in particular, those running against Angle and Fiorina. Those who make up the board were compensated for writing it (though not by a campaign).

According to Congressional inquiries, White House officials, encouraged by Mr. Cheney’s office, forced the Environmental Protection Agency to remove sections on climate change from separate reports in 2002 and 2003. (Christine Todd Whitman, then the E.P.A. administrator, has since described the process as “brutal.”)

The administration also sought to control or censor Congressional testimony by federal employees and tampered with other reports in order to inject uncertainty into the climate debate and minimize threats to the environment.

Funny that the Fish Wrap doesn’t mention the Obama administration putting pressure on scientists working for the government. But, really, the info on Cheney was years ago, and is relevant to today how, exactly? But, if they want to go there, how about I mention that the Democrat controlled Senate voted against joining the Kyoto Protocol, and President Clinton agreed with them?

Nowadays, it is almost impossible to recall that in 2000, George W. Bush promised to cap carbon dioxide, encouraging some to believe that he would break through the partisan divide on global warming. Until the end of the 1990s, Republicans could be counted on to join bipartisan solutions to environmental problems. Now they’ve disappeared in a fog of disinformation, an entire political party parroting the Cheney line.

Ah. I get it. They are trying the old “Darth Cheney, Lord Of the Sith” route. Except, AGW is not an environmental problem. Clean air, water, and land are environmental issues. Clear cutting is an EI. Land use and habitat fragmentation are issues. Waste is an issue. Species extinction is an issue. Man induced global warming is not an environmental issue. It is a political issue, revolving around junk science, a cult like fervor, with designs on controlling people’s lives.

But, hey, if we want to talk about environmental issues, what about those from publishing a newspaper? The large amount of trees required to be culled (around 95 million per years). The pulping process, which is very dirty. And then there are the “climate change” issues. The CO2 from distribution. The effects on landfills. And “The pulp and paper industry is the 4th largest emitter of greenhouse gases among U.S. manufacturing industries. (check the link for some interesting climate alarmist facts).” And then there are all the issues from having the paper on-line (interesting article on this all at Slate). Oh, my, perhaps the NY Times should simply shut down in order to negate their high environmental and climate footprints.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. Re-Change 2010!

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