So back on November 12, I wrote my daily letter to the Newark Star-Ledger, pointing out Chris Christie's utter idiocy when it came to the science of climate change.
Asked by a man attending the event whether he thought mankind was responsible for global warming, Christie says he's seen evidence on both sides of the argument but thinks it hasn't been proven one way or another.
Christie says "more science" is needed to convince him.
What a Moran.
I figured I'd offer him a list of resources, and sent the following:
So Governor Christie needs "more science" before he's convinced that human beings are causing global warming? Okay. Perhaps Mr. Christie didn't know that the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Physics, the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, the American Meteorological Society, the International Union for Quaternary Research, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, and hundreds of other scientific societies and associations have issued position papers asserting that the evidence for anthropogenic global warming is indisputable. But wait! But wait! Perhaps the evidence the governor really wants is in the dissenting 2007 statement from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the only scientific body in the world to dispute human causes of global climate change, and, unsurprisingly, an organization heavily subsidized by the oil industry. Mr. Christie is no "skeptic." Rather, he is a so-called "climate zombie" — a politician for whom denial of scientific fact is an article of faith.
WarrenS
They printed it, or at least ran it in their online edition.
What should appear in my mailbox a few days later but the following postcard:

I looked at the address side first, thinking, "WTF? I don't know anyone in Dunellen, New Jersey, let alone someone named J. Alexander." Then I turned it over.
My first hatemail.

Or is it?
As with POEs (Parodies of Evangelism), any sufficiently effective parody of hate mail will be indistinguishable from the real thing. What do you think? Is "Right-Wing Jim" spoofing Tea-party talk, or is he serious? I can't decide.
And then two days later, I find that I've made the Washington Post:
Sanitizing the GOP's climate-change denials
Sherwood Boehlert finds incomprehensible the obstinate adherence to a science-blind ideology on the part of his fellow Republicans ["Science the GOP can't wish away," Washington Forum, Nov. 19]. His attempt to buck the prevailing sentiment in the GOP is commendable, for the facts of climate change are incontrovertible and the threat climate change presents is terrifyingly real. Mr. Boehlert cites Ronald Reagan as a Republican president who "embraced scientific understanding of the environment and pollution." Well, um, no.
That would be the same Ronald Reagan who famously opined that "trees cause more pollution than automobiles do" and who appointed James Watt as interior secretary and Anne M. Gorsuch as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. The former was a biblical rapturist who saw no need to preserve the environment (since the end of time was imminent); the latter's attempts to gut the Clean Air Act took Congress years to undo.
What I find incomprehensible is Mr. Boehlert's attempt to sanitize the Republican Party's multi-decade history of denying ideologically inconvenient facts.
WarrenS
My original version of the letter was all one paragraph, and in the online version I had substituted various characters to prevent phrases from showing up in searches; the WaPo's policy is not to print letters that have been published online (even on little rinky-dink websites like mine).
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An appearance in the Washington Post, and my very own hatemail. My cup runneth over. Thank you to Right-Wing Jim, and to the letters page at the WaPo; you've made my day.
That's all.