The cascading evidence of climate change that has been presented in various reports in the last few weeks crested today with news that the melting of the Western Antarctica ice sheet is now underway. And it’s a done deal:
“This is really happening,” said Thomas P. Wagner, who runs NASA’s programs on polar ice and helped oversee some of the research. “There’s nothing to stop it now. But you are still limited by the physics of how fast the ice can flow.”
So this was the perfect moment, of course, for Marco Rubio to come out as a proud denialist – even though Miami may be one of the cities most affected by the rising sea levels the Antarctic melt will bring. The Senator is not the brightest bulb in the GOP – his asinine foreign policy feels like a 1980s music video without the charm. But this latest pandering – as well as the ludicrous idea that he has the skills to be president of the US – marks a new low:
“I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” the first term senator said Sunday on ABC “This Week,” after being asked by ABC News’ Jon Karl whether humans were contributing to the heating up of the planet. “I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy.”
And what is the scientific basis for that “belief”? So far as I can see: zippo. Here’s his version of this for CNN:
I think severe weather has been a fact of life on earth since man started recording history. I understand that there’s a vast consensus of scientists that are saying that human activity is what’s contributing to changes in our climate. I think it’s an enormous stretch to say that every weather incident that we read about or the majority of them are attributable to human activity.
So straw men proliferate as well. And when intelligent, educated right-of-center intellectuals engage in absurdity on the subject, it’s hard to blame the somewhat dim member at the back of the class. I guess it’s worth re-stating. For me, climate change is a baseline test. Are Republicans capable of rationality or are they still busy creating reality?
Today, I explained why a kiss is still a kiss – even if it’s an inter-racial gay NFL one. Putin kept playing his usual war-not-war games, as some of his countrymen whipped themselves up into a full-scale gay panic. (I’m with PJ O’Rourke on the ultimate fate of the little big man in Russian history.) And, for some reason, West Virginians have started naming their daughters “Brooklyn“.
The most popular posts of the day were two on The Gay Sonic Boom – here and here.
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Hope you had a good weekend. I want to share a view from my parents’ window in Oakland. On the right is the Mother’s Day gift I gave to my mom today: a framed print-out of the note I sent to you in January in which I wrote about how she had mailed me copies of The Dish while I was in basic training in Ft. Benning, GA in 2002. The Dish is a gift that keeps on giving.
See you in the morning.
The Dish 