During his speech, the senator said:
When we point out that no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can’t control the weather — he accuses us of wanting dirty water and dirty air.
Chait sees the comment as a dog whistle:
[W]hat’s going on here is that Rubio wants to uphold the Republican position without coming across to non-Republicans as a total yahoo. So he is not directly questioning the carbon-climate link, but instead moving his skepticism to the climate-weather link. Saying “government can’t control the weather” sounds plausible enough — a way to take a position that doesn’t sound completely insane to audiences but is, in fact, completely insane. In this way, it is the quintessential Marco Rubio utterance.
Ezra also pushes back:
No one suggests the government can control the weather. The argument — which is thoroughly in line with market-based economics — is that carbon can be priced to better reflect the harm it does to the environment.
The Dish 