Year 2, Month 3, Day 17: Truth Is A Drug

A regional paper in Florida, the Biscayne Times, runs a fabulous editorial by a guy named Jim W. Harper:

The Sun Orbits Our Flat Earth

Written By Jim W. Harper

OH, AND “CLIMATE CHANGE” IS JUST LEFT-WING PROPAGANDA

Wake up, Sen. Marco Rubio. And Gov. Rick Scott, too. You got elected after pretending that climate change doesn’t exist, but that fairy-tale position can’t last. What’s next? Are you going to deny that smoking causes cancer?

The majority of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives likewise wobble in skepticism about climate change. At least Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen got it right in 2009 when she stated that “global warming is real and man-made.”

If you won’t listen to her, ask any elementary school child, because they have ears to hear the truth. They can probably tell you these facts:

Last year was the warmest and wettest year on record.
Last decade was the hottest on record.
Last century the planet warmed by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit.
Got it? The earth has been getting measurably warmer since modern record-keeping began in 1880. Global warming is a fact. Don’t waste the nation’s time and money debating ideas that have been settled.

And that’s just the beginning. He sounds completely DFH, and genuinely outraged. I figured I’d get his back on this one.

Sent March 8:

Jim Harper’s op-ed is a refreshing dose of truth-telling. Future generations will look back with incredulity on the complacency of our current crop of politicians; rather than recognize what is certainly the gravest threat humanity has faced in recorded history, they’ve abdicated their responsibilities as leaders. Actually, imagining future generations looking back on this era now requires a faith in our species’ survival potential that is no longer automatic. We of the carbon-burning countries are moving the entire planet toward conditions that human beings have never before experienced. Some profess confidence that we can adapt to a radically transformed climate. Sure, given enough time, and a climate that changed gradually over many millennia. Instead, our radical energy consumption has us headed for the geological equivalent of a sudden and catastrophic impact — a planetary car crash, as it were. And the climate-change deniers in our political and media systems are making sure that none of us will be wearing our seat belts.

Warren Senders