As reported at Daily Kos, Sen. Ted Cruz chaired a tendentious Senate subcommittee hearing Tuesday on climate change while negotiators in Paris work long hours to put together a worldwide agreement on controlling carbon dioxide emissions that are warming the planet. Anybody who has even cursorily followed the claims of climate-change charlatans wouldn’t have a learned a single thing from the three-hour hearing, titled “Data or Dogma.” Other than certain diehards won’t budge from their denials of climate change even when the Atlantic Ocean starts lapping at the entrances to the buildings of Lower Manhattan.
Cruz’s little carnival show included four witnesses who spouted the same old Koch- and Exxon-funded lies that they and other “experts” have for years been slathering across every venue of public discourse they can poke themselves into. This despite the fact that Exxon has publicly started admitting that climate change is real and could be disastrous, no doubt in hopes of obscuring the fact the giant corporation worked diligently for more than three decades to persuade Americans that it’s not happening or, if it is, it’s no big deal and nothing can be done about it even if it is a big deal.
Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, who also sits on the Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, perfectly characterized the hearing ahead of time:
"The only thing that requires a thorough scientific investigation is why Sen. Cruz is having a hearing on climate science,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said during a press conference before the hearing.
“This is no longer debate across the entire planet. They’re all there. The last group of deniers are the Republican Congress. The last sub-cult of deniers are the Republicans on the Senate Commerce Committee.”
Another subcommittee member, Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said the hearing was Cruz’s attempt to “undermine America’s leadership on this issue.”
As ridiculous as Cruz’s message is, however, it will resonate with the Republican rank-and-file. A recent ABC News-Washington Post poll found that 72 percent of Democrats say they think climate change is a very serious problem, versus 18 percent who do not. Among independents, the division is 49-37 percent. But only 28 percent of Republicans think climate change is very serious against 57 percent who think it is not. The puppeteers and propagandists who’ve been pouring money into a the effort to convince Americans that climate change is a liberal scam obviously are continuing to have some success.