Mitt Romney Adopts Denialism

See no evil....etc.

 

So we started with a hypothesis that CO2 might cause changes in the global climate. Deniers claimed there was no evidence of global climate change. Now, they admit there is evidence of global climate change but have forgotten that we already had a mechanism?

Ironically, the only way for "us to become energy secure and independent of the oil cartels." is be using no energy source that creates CO2. So we can't get where he wants us to be without doing exactly the course he says we shouldn't be on.

 

Which brings me back to one of my favorite quotes:

"So-called “global warming” is just a secret ploy by wacko tree-huggers to make America energy independent, clean our air and water, improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 21st-century industries, and make our cities safer and more livable. Don’t let them get away with it!" -Chip Giller, Founder of Grist.org.

 

Scientific illiteracy will destroy us. I suspect that you will find that there is a strong overlap between AGW deniers and religious fundamentalists.

 

You are so subtle D.

 

Perry was a believer in 1988 when he campaigned for gore. Romney was a believer until last week. I impagine they believed because it helped their politics, not they question because they believe it will help their politics.

He was consitantly against doing anything about it

The question is do you do a btu tax but leave big exemptions so that it can't pass, or a cap and tax that has big loop holes so that it simply transfers payments. Or do you give money to your buddies and pretend it is green and will create jobs. Or do you do the hard work and do a gas tax that , a fuel oil tax, and major penalties to those using oil to generate electricity. Solving the opec problem requires different solutions than have been put to congress.

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4036/4254681996_27b1ed7ff0.jpg

 

You see, there you are again, detached from reality.

I do not claim a perfect concordance. But it does seem to be the fundies who are most opposed to science. After all, according to them, knowledge itself was the first sin.

Of course, what politicians say publicly is most often what their pollsters have told them the public wants to hear, rather than their own actual beliefs. So we have no way of knowing what any of them really believes.

 

Fortunately, Congress is allowed to write legislation rather than just vote on it.

 

It's not ignorance, one can cure ignorance. This is anti-science, anti-intellectualism at the very top.

 

Well they would be wrong there... as the first sin was doing what was said not to be done. Just so happens the tree of knowledge was involved. It could have been the dessert table.
:focus:

 

Public ignorance allows the political demagogues and religious zealots to foist their bigoted agenda on the nation.

So why was it that this god person was so dead-set on people not having knowledge?

It's funny, really, that Biblical literalists have managed to twist their own book so out of shape. As a Congregational UCC minister once said to me, there is no faith-based reason to take the Bible literally. It's full of poetry and parables and impossible "history," and makes much more sense as allegory.

Taken as allegory, the story of the expulsion from Eden can be read as saying that what makes us human is our sense of right and wrong (i.e. good and evil). Rather than a story of disobedience (the literal reading) it can be seen as an explanation of what makes us different from the other animals (allegorical reading.)

Historically, the modern fundamentalist Christian movement considers knowledge to be evil whenever it contradicts their own narrow interpretation of the Bible. This is all the more damning when you consider that whatever you decide to believe, you can find a quote in the Bible to justify it. The fundies are not merely putting a two thousand year old book above the scientific method; rather, they are putting their own fairly recent interpretation of that book above the scientific method.

Lots of Christians, perhaps the majority, reject the literal reading and accept science, but the fundies have become politically powerful way beyond their numbers, in part because of the scientific illiteracy of the general public, and the very savvy political machinations of a few wealthy extremists.

 

So you and I would not be having this conversation.

 

Uh...what?

 

Well that is not really a solution with this congress. This is what Pelosi's congress wrote

America and climate change: Cap and trade, with handouts and loopholes | The Economist

It means give away to many big polluters while higher prices for many Americans. This is the reason that those corporations not getting the give always along with environmentalists that don't think the caps are fair or big enough stopped the bill in the senate.

The Clinton BTU tax had similar special interest bribes for votes, that killed it. Now there can be a gas and oil tax along with cap and trade without giveaways to big polluters, but this takes political will, and though these bills started out correctly, they were traded down to some pretty bad politics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/opinion/07hansen.html

 

you're the smart ex-catholic, you figure it out. If you still can't let me know in a couple of days.

 

This will not be an election of the best man winning, but more of the least objectionable one winning!
Lucky us!

 

Me? Catholic? Never.

I can make all sorts of assumptions about your line of reasoning, if you'd rather not explain it yourself.

 

Having been raised with "The First Church of the Presumptious Assumption" I left ASAP! It no way affects/effects my choices, well except the Religious Right gets a NO vote from me!