Like I mentioned recently, trying to discuss serious science based topics with GOP representatives of climate science denial is worse that trying to explain serious things to kids, it more akin to trying to get through to a profoundly autistic kid, when nothing at all connects because they are so thoroughly locked up within their own mindscapes that nothing from the outside can get in.
What's the point, why even care? I find myself asking me that more and more.
But, for some god awful reason, walking away from their insanity and simply ignoring the willful stupidity - and what it will commit our children's lives and our miraculous planet's future to - doesn't work for me either.
In any event, today I noticed Lamar Smith's hard-on against serious science has been mentioned over here before so I'll repost those today.
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Seems to me this is important information to get out there, so I will take advantage of Daily Climate's CC license and repost most of Peter Dykistra's opinion piece in the DailyClimate and encourage you to help inform others.
It's another example of how the Republican PR machine is utterly dependent on misrepresenting science and other facts of record. Their obstinate refusal to listen to serious experts and to learn about the issues divorced from their political self-interest will guarantee all our kids a bleak difficult future.
But hoping for some sober objectivity and enlightened self-interest seems like asking the impossible these days. Here we are once again faced with a glaring example of what oil company lap dogs these Republican Representatives are. All they seem to know is self-interest. So tragic.
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Opinion: In Meme-Moriam
May 28, 2016
The Daily Climate
... The effort to cast Exxon as victim of a cabal between state Attorneys General, environmentalists, and other ne’er-do-wells followed reports by journalists from InsideClimate News, the Los Angeles Times, and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. They uncovered a howlingly hypocritical contrast between Exxon’s longtime internal embrace of climate science and its external support for climate denial.
Decades ago, Exxon began to ignore its own scientists’ warnings on the prospects for global disruption from climate change, opting instead to focus on climate change’s threat to the fossil fuel business model. Following the pattern set by tobacco, pesticide, asbestos and tetraethyl lead producers, Exxon circled the tankers and fought against progress on climate. ...
. . . When the American conservative media machine kicks into action, it is an awesome thing, taking no prisoners while apparently serving as a real job-killer for the fact-checking community. I (Peter Dykstra) found dozens of opinion pieces, editorials, and unbalanced news stories in the three-week period from March 31 to April 22, all embracing ExxonMobil’s trampled free speech rights in the face of investigative reports and meddlesome Attorneys General.
Curiously, not a single one of these First Amendment themed tomes made mention of the years of harassment, threats, bottomless FOIA requests, and Congressional inquiries targeting actual climate scientists.
From “mainstream” sources like Bloomberg and USA Today to movement mouthpieces like the Washington Times and National Review to countless ideological blogs and websites, the message repeated as if it were spit out of a photocopier. The Washington Post ran not one but two Exxon-victim pieces on April 22 (Happy Earth Day, y’all!)
