Last week at Heartland’s denier conference, some crazy people said some crazy things. As is our duty, we rounded up the coverage for our readers. As the event is barely worth mentioning, we’ll keep it short:
Lamar Smith, chair of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, reportedly “acknowledged that the committee is now a tool to advance his political agenda rather than a forum to examine important issues facing the U.S. research community,” according to Science’s Jeffrey Mervis.
Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma declared, “Obama’s war on fossil fuels is temporarily over.” He also took a page out of Trump’s “truthful hyperbole” playbook, saying the Waters of the United States rule that Trump rolled back “would have allowed the EPA to regulate all land and water uses in America.”
Willie Soon, famed for his undisclosed fossil fuel funding, said that the IPCC was an “anti-science movement” for which he would create a “place in hell.”
Myron Ebell, clearly stinging from the fact that his transition plan has been ignored, lashed out at Rex Tillerson, calling him “part of the swamp.” He was “not willing” to identify Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner as “swamp creatures,” but nonetheless criticized their attempts to temper Trump’s climate views.
The winner for most stomach-turningly offensive quip, however, goes to relative a newcomer on the denial scene, Scott Armstrong, who likened the deniers at the conference to the heroic firefighters who responded to the 9/11 terror attacks.
Which could only make sense in the mind of a denier, because shouting "No fire, remain in your seats!" when the theater is indeed burning is what firefighters do.
Oh wait...
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