So the British PM joins the leaders of Australia and this country in condemning the anti-science disinformers (see Obama takes on the anti-scientific delayers, while Australia’s Rudd slams the “deniers” and the “gaggle” of “conspiracy theorists” opposing climate action). The above cartoon appeared in the UK’s Guardian with the headline “Brown attacks ‘flat-earth’ climate change sceptics.”
And yes, I’m glad Brown picked up the phrase “anti-science” — it’s better and clearer than “denier” [see “Diagnosing a victim of anti-science syndrome (ASS)“]. Who knows, maybe he reads Climate Progress!
Ed Miliband, Brown’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change — a position Brown created (and if climate change doesn’t need an SOS, what does?) — joined in the condemnation:
Ed Miliband gave his most damning assessment of the sceptics yet, describing them as “dangerous and deceitful”.
He said: “The approach of the climate saboteurs is to misuse data and mislead people. The sceptics are playing politics with science in a dangerous and deceitful manner. There is no easy way out of tackling climate change despite what they would have us believe. The evidence is clear and the time we have to act is short. To abandon this process now would lead to misery and catastrophe for millions.”
Hear! Hear!
Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) was on hand to lend support:
Markey warned against allowing America’s political agenda to be hijacked by the email affair. “We can no longer allow our climate and energy policy to be hijacked by the government of Saudi Arabia, ExxonMobil, and the defenders of the fossil fuel status quo,” he said.
And the Guardian itself introduced some sanity:
Even if an investigation into the university emails were to show evidence of wrongdoing, scientists and politicians say there is an overwhelming body of evidence that humans are causing climate change.
The piece end with a truly amazing quote I will be using many times in the coming weeks and months to show just how much U.S. “conservative” leaders have been captured by narrow political interests:
A number of prominent Conservatives, including former chancellor Lord Lawson and former Cameron frontbencher David Davis, have pounced on the email furore. But tonight the shadow climate change secretary, Greg Clark, made clear the party line remains that climate change is a serious man-made threat. “Research into climate change has involved thousands of different scientists, pursuing many separate lines of independent inquiry over many years. The case for a global deal is still strong and in many aspects, such as the daily destruction of the Earth’s rainforests, desperately urgent,” he said.
Yes, there is nothing genuinely “conservative” about refusing to conserve a livable climate.
Related Posts:
- Washington Post mocks Inhofe as “the last flat-earther”
- Sen. Inhofe explains he’s going to Copenhagen so that when Sen. Kerry says “Yes. We’re going to pass a global warming bill” then “I will be able to stand up and say, ‘No, it’s over. Get a life. You lost. I won!’ ”
- Joe Klein on the GOP: “How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? … How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?”
- Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 1: Conservatives vow to purge all members who support clean energy or science-based policy
