| By all accounts (except for the crude one in the Rutland Herald, written in such a way as to make one wonder if the reporter was even present), the recent McKibben-McLaughry debate on global warming was a one-sided bloodbath, with reports that McKibben not only casually countered every phony, long-obsolete canard offered by McLaughry, he actually had McLaughry beginning to accept reality and discussing solutions. Well, apparently it didn't take, as the "Ethan Allen Institute" (such as it is) is now sponsoring a Vermont appearence by Dr. Marlo Lewis, Jr. Hardly news, but it's interesting that the Vermont GOP is actively promoting this lecture on their website, lashing themselves haphazardly to the Exxon-Mobil funded Lewis, whose scientific credentials seem to consist of degrees in Government and Political Science, and a career in partisan hackery. Here are some choice comments from Mr Lewis: 26 April, 2006
The main incontrovertible effect of global warming to date is that it has made those severely cold regions slightly less lethal to people and other living things.
Source: www.cei.org/pdf/5288.pdf 1 February, 2007
"The asserted consensus that global warming is a planetary emergency and that all right-thinking people believe we need to limit our energy use has been exposed, once again, as unsubstantiated myth."
Source: Heartland Institute website 2007 It's continually outrageous that anyone continues to spout this nonsense, and Lewis wavers between outright denial and passing off climate change as a really swell thing for everybody. What's interesting at the local level is that the state GOP is gleefully associating themselves with this sort of rhetoric, when many of their elected politicians are wising up enough to realize what kind of poison such views are to their electability. Global Warming denial is steadily moving into the realm of evolution-denial. It's flat-Earthism. The new issue for the casually engaged swing voter that defines a candidate as that political nowhere creature (at least in the purple-to-blue states); the Neo-Trogladyte. The Neo-Trog label sticks, and becomes a shorthand measure of a candidate's character to the marginally engaged, who so often turn close elections. If Roper wants to continue to hang this sort of nonsense around his Party's neck in this state, more power to him. |
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