Year 2, Month 3, Day 5: We Don’t Need No Steenkin’ Evidence!

The Nashua Telegraph (New Hampshire) discusses the move in that state to stop participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. They’ve got climate zombies in the state house and misleading robo-calls from the Koch Brothers. What could possibly go wrong?

Americans for Prosperity, an conservative group with financial support from the oil industry, made automated robocalls over the long holiday weekend, attacking RGGI as guaranteeing further increases in electricity bills.

Studies had concluded that RGGI has added 6.5 cents per month to an average consumer’s bill.

Rep. Sandra Keans, D-Rochester, attacked AFP’s calls as “sleazy” and deliberately false.

“I have never seen such a cowardly perpetration pulled on the citizens of New Hampshire,” Keans said.

AFP Executive Director Corey Lewandowski defended the group’s lobbying against RGGI.

“Constituents should be able to call their elected officials to register a concern. Nobody forces people to run for office if they don’t want to hear from those who elected them,” Lewandowski said. “We’re delighted by the strong House vote for consumers.”

Rep. Beatriz Pastor, D-Lyme, said that even if there were questions about climate change science, it’s wise for the state to take preventive measures like RGGI.

“Noah got intelligence (that) a natural disaster was about to occur,” Pastor said of the Bibilical account. “He could have looked out the window and said ‘it doesn’t look like it is going to rain’.”

But Deputy Majority Leader Shawn Jasper of Hudson disagreed.
“Neither man nor cow is responsible for global warming,” he added.

Mr. Jasper seemed like an excellent hook upon which to hang a letter. Sent February 25:

Representative Shawn Jasper is an excellent example of an increasingly prevalent species of Homo Politicus: the “climate zombie,” a politician whose denial of the facts of global climate change is so ideologically rooted that no amount of factually-based argument will change his mind. Our nation used to regard scientists with respect; after all, they were responsible most of our major technological advances and noteworthy achievements (the Apollo program, anyone?). There should be nothing unusual about the idea that when you need expertise in a particular area, you ask experts and take their advice very seriously. But in the world of today’s Republican party, scientists are only to be listened to when their opinions are ideologically convenient. Representative Jasper’s pronouncement that “neither man nor cow is responsible for global warming” has no factual foundation, as author Kevin Landrigan could have ascertained with a few minutes’ worth of research. The fact that this “climate zombie” has been given an unrefuted last word in a supposedly objective article about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is an unfortunate dereliction of journalistic responsibility.

Warren Senders