Wednesday, January 27, 2016

While 2015 Was Hottest Year on Record, GOP Sociopaths Still Reject Fact ... by gimleteye

2015 was the hottest year on record according to the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization. It says global temperatures were up 0.76 degrees Celsius above the long-term average. That confirms similar findings by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A year ago, the GOP controlled US Senate rejected global warming as a man-made phenomenon, guaranteeing that no legislation would move through Congress that addressed the root cause of what British economist Nicolas Stern called, "the great market failure in the history of mankind."

Last year, Republican senators went a step further, proposing to restrain NASA scientists from studying and speaking about climate change at all. Leading the charge, Texas senator Ted Cruz, head of hte science and space subcommittee. In "Republicans want scientists to stop studying the earth":

Leading climate change denier U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has had enough of NASA studying our planet: he wants NASA to devote its attention only to space and inspiring children… somehow, without studying our own planet. He even went as far as saying that earth sciences are not “hard sciences”, which should be NASA’s main aim... He maintains that the problem with climate change is there’s no data to support it and that “there has never been a day in the history of the world in which the climate is not changing... 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."

Only last week, the World Economic Forum at Davos released a white paper citing the greatest threat to economic growth in 2016 to be climate change; the first time this assessment ever received top status.

Underlying the significant fissures in global stock markets: climate chaos and its effects on international stability.

A sociopath is a person with a personality disorder manifesting in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience. By that definition, climate change deniers and refusers are sociopaths.

Yesterday a group of South Florida mayors issued a public letter imploring the two candidates for the Republican nomination from Florida, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, to make clear their commitment to address climate change.

On this blog, we repeatedly wrote about Marco Rubio's refusal to meet with climate change scientists. Jeb Bush recently said that (sic) "global warming is not an issue that keeps him up at night".

The United States can no longer afford politicians who exhibit such antisocial behavior and lack of conscience when it comes to prioritizing climate change and its deep threat to economic and social stability.

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