"The idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax." That's Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives. Presumably sober. And serious. And stupid.
It would be so therapeutic to laugh off this lunacy. To acknowledge that in a Congress of 535 members there are bound to be a couple or three morons. A handful of representatives and senators providing the nation with a daily eye-roll. Hicks and halfwits who sit heavy-lidded in meetings all day long with their earbuds tuned into Limbaugh or other hate-radio losers.
But it's not just a couple. It's a couple of hundred. Elected men and women who are either deep in willful ignorance or blinded by the Koch and Exxon campaign cash they are up to their eyebrows in.
It would be comforting if they were all backwoods types where modern communications don't reach and the key industry is meth manufacture. But the Speaker of the House from urban Ohio is on board with denial, showing off his keen understanding of biology by making mouth-farts about how humans can't be causing climate change because cows emit CO2 via their digestive systems. Instead of the methane they actually do.
As the video above points out, these denier Republicans, the bought-and-paid-for ones combined with the blockheads, have rejected two dozen calls for congressional hearings on climate change. They don't even want to talk about it.
Some of them, who knows how many, are aware what they're saying is bogus. They know they're spouting nonsense. They just don't care. These are the real hoaxers. So narrowly self-interested that they believe that global warming won't touch them or their families, that they and their descendants can buy their way out of the impacts to come.
John Boehner says of scientific conclusions about climate change that "It's almost comical." He may indeed be the House's court jester. But, as CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have edged over 400 parts per million, his denial and that of his colleagues is anything but funny.
The clock keeps ticking.
Delay is denial.