There's scarcely a point on which the new Republican majority in Congress isn't out of step with reality both with the American people and with the facts. Yet another example is their determination to make sure we do nothing to combat Global Warming. It isn't a real shock given that most of their seats were purchased with fossil fuel money, but at some point fact have to prevail.
That was certainly the case last week when three reports were issued in two days, all proving that Global Warming is real and manmade within two days. In aggregate the reports are highly supportive of the Obama Administration's regulation of greenhouse gases and an ongoing effort of the world's nations to reach a joint agreement on emissions reductions.
The first of the reports confirmed that 2014 was the warmest on record, surpassing previous records set in 2005 and 2007, a full 2 degrees warmer than the average of the last century. The second confirmed that sea levels have already risen by 6 inches over the last hundred years, within the range of calculations that project three feet of total rise over the next century. The third confirmed that deaths of ocean life have reached a worrying level which reaches the edge of a mass extinction event.
We no longer have any excuse to debate the extent of Global Warming. The only question is what we should do to combat a problem which could be a threat to civilization and potentially much of life on Earth. None of this, naturally, will prevent radical Conservative Republicans from debating a question which is not in doubt.
No part of this bad-news trifecta is likely to change the minds of the rump faction of climate deniers—particularly in Washington. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who is set to assume chairmanship of the committee that oversees science in general and NASA in particular had this to say to CNN about climate change: “The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn’t happened.”
He’s wrong on the facts—as the new temperature readings demonstrate—and wrong on his interpretation of the science which shows that the rate of atmospheric warming has indeed slowed a bit in the past decade and a half. The reason for that seeming happy development is not that climate change isn’t real, but that the oceans, for now, are sopping up more heat than anticipated—see, for example, those migrating fish.
Meantime, Cruz’s Oklahoma colleague Sen. James Inhofe is set to become chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. This is the same Inhofe who persists in his very vocal belief that climate change is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and that even if it is true, it might actually be good for the world.
Ultimately, reason will prevail; in the long arc of scientific history it usually does. How much ocean and atmosphere and wildlife we’ll have left when that happens, however, is another matter entirely.
http://time.com/...
Congratulations Americans, this is the government you elected. May God have mercy on all our souls.