Representative Scalise believes in fairy tales

In case you haven't seen some of Al Gore's testimony to Congress when being badgered by Republicans who don't understand the relationship between carbon dioxide, plate tectonics, and the Earth's climate, the following YouTube video on TownHall.com shows a bit of what it was like:

Gore: Those Who Challenge Man-Made Global Warming Like Moon Landing Deniers

Well, you know what: they are.

Global warming denialism is basically pseudoscience. The vast majority of the manufactured research that is paraded out as legitimate isn't -- and the supporters of the snake oil ask "why don't you believe my experts? My experts are finding flaws in the science!"

Forgive me; finding flaws in the edifice of scientific knowledge regarding how greenhouse gases affect climate is like finding a few chips in a couple of bricks at the base of a brick wall and saying: "Look, a couple of these bricks are less than perfect -- so the whole wall is unsound and in danger of falling down!"

It's not going to happen. Nothing new has been added to the arguments from the handful of denier "experts" for a decade -- and in fact, they've been shown repeatedly to be making bigger and larger and more egregious mistakes the harder they try to hold up their flimsy end. So now they are grasping at straws, like a solar minimum lasting a bit longer than average, while meanwhile there are discoveries that even the scientists employed by a climate change denial coalition indicated that the science was right!

(From the Washington Post: you might need to subscribe (for free) to read the entire article)

Industries Buried Internal Findings
Climate Wording Cut From Public Report

"The Global Climate Coalition, a group of representatives of the oil, auto and coal industries, spent years telling the public that the link between human activity and climate change was too uncertain to justify U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 treaty aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. In 1995, however, a "primer" on the issue produced by the organization's own scientific experts concluded that "the scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied."

This language was deleted from the primer when the group released it to the public."

OK, folks, that's pseudoscience at its BEST. Because that's basically saying that the science is wrong when it's really right. That's basically like saying that despite huge amounts of scientifically verifiable evidence that 12 human beings walked on the Moon, it was actually a staged hoax.

Some of these fringe nutcases (like John Coleman or Christopher Monckton) are calling for a "debate". It'd be easy to destroy these guys, provided the debate was done in print, point-by-point. They think they can win this issue with soundbites and appeals to public fears and public ignorance.

It's too important an issue for that. And Rep. Scalise should do a little research himself and find out (rather quickly) that his so-called "experts" are paper tigers.

But he won't. He just wants to make sound bites, too.