Senator Lindsey Graham dropped out of the presidential race. Why is this significant? Because he was the last remaining major Republican candidate who publicly accepted the scientific consensus of climate science. You know, that the climate is warming and we are the cause of it. Now there are none.
At the presidential debate in October, Graham said “I’ve talked to the climatologists of the world, and 90 percent of them are telling me that the greenhouse gas effect is real — that we’re heating up the planet.”
This past summer, Graham also said:
I know I’m not a scientist. But here’s the problem I’ve got with some people in my party: When you ask the scientists what’s going on, why don’t you believe them? If I went to 10 doctors and nine said, “Hey, you’re gonna die”, and one says “You’re fine”, why would I believe the one guy?
I appreciate this, but actually the percentage is 97%, so he would have to go to at least 32 doctors on average to find one that said he was fine.
And just a few weeks ago, almost 200 countries agreed that global warming is real and is a big problem, and pledged to do something about it.
So what are we left with? People like Donald Trump, who theorized that the Chinese created “the concept of global warming” in order to “make US manufacturing non-competitive.” Or Ted Cruz, who called climate science “not science” but “religion”. Or even Ben Carson, who called climate change “irrelevant”. And on down the line.
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“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” – Carl Sagan
The naysayers, the clueless, the fossil fuel apologists and tea baggers aside, a majority now accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change (many brought kicking and screaming to the table), though we can question whether the global community as a whole will do enough about it in time to keep us from the brink of a radically different world our grandchildren will inhabit. Some argue that we may have already crossed over that brink, from which there is no return for the foreseeable future.
The Paris agreement is non-binding and non-enforceable, just like Kyoto, and emerging economies are still far more gray than green. Christmas in Beijing anyone? Bring your respirator, and your GPS to see around the next corner.
http://www.vosizneias.com/144171/2013/10/21/beijing-china-smog-emergency-shuts-city-of-11-million-people/
If the GOP acknowledges that climate change is real and man-caused, then they might be in a position of having to take action to do something about it.
Follow the money.
The GOP continues to do this to its own peril.
Redjon, and to ours!