"... but I did spend a day chatting with the fine people at Exxon Mobil."
Are we seeing an intentional rhetoric shift in climate change inaction, a move by Republicans from
we do not believe the science, so we should not do anything to
we are ignorant of the science, so we still should not do anything?
I wonder:
House Speaker John Boehner became the latest top Republican to try that tack Thursday, seeking to deflect an issue that has given Democrats an opening to brand the GOP as “anti-science.”
“Listen, I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change,” Boehner told reporters when asked about the science behind climate change. “But I am astute to understand that every proposal that has come out of this administration to deal with climate change involves hurting our economy and killing American jobs.”
That is not what the word
astute means, or how you use it. You do not generally get to say you are
astute to an asinine theory, which you then proceed to state outright due to your abject lack of shame, that not turning the Earth into a planet-sized barbecue spit is an anti-jobs plot. There are a million fortunes to be made in Not Fucking Up The Planet, which is why other industrialized nations have eagerly embraced and promoted new technology sectors that we ourselves cannot because it would make our current crop of Rich People and their preferred Rich People Family Industries too sad. If you want to see something
hurting our economy, take a look at the crop forecasts for various of the American states as climate change steadily begins to pick up speed. And nothing will kill your beachfront hotel business like having four feet of water in the lobby. Tourists are generally not keen on having to wear hipwaders to get to the vending machines.
Please read below the fold for more on this story.
Similarly, Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott has offered the response “I am not a scientist” on multiple occasions when the topic has come up lately.
To which the nation's scientists give an earnest
thank you, because science does not need money-grubbing swindlers. Politics is really the only profession in which being a professional crook is a resume booster; scientists who fake their numbers generally don't get much work again. Not unless Mary Rosh is around to stick up for them, anyway.
“We are not experts on climate change,” Koch spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia said in an email to The Wichita Eagle this month. She added, “The debate should take place among the scientific community, examining all points of view and void of politics, personal attacks and partisan agendas.”
Which is why they and other fossil-fuel tycoons have been bankrolling the supposed "opposition," consisting mostly of people who themselves are not scientists and whose remarks on Fox News are not subject to the rigors of peer review, for a good long time now. To keep
agendas out of it.
So is "we are not scientists" a new strategy, or is this just "I am not a scientist" month and none of the rest of us saw the honorary Google doodle celebrating that? Politicians generally only fess up to being ignorant when they think confessing ignorance is the best approach; at least in Boehner's case, he seems to be saying that since he does not understand climate science and does not want to, he simply doesn't want to deal with the issue anymore. Like a drunkard standing on the railroad tracks, he's pretty sure that if he just keeps his eyes closed the train won't hit him.