Almost eight years ago, on February 26, 2015, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, and the leading Senate Republican on climate change (Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee), brought a snowball to the Senate floor. Senator Inhofe’s purpose was to prove that climate change was a hoax. After all, according to the Republican’s leading Senate expert on climate change, unseasonably cold temperatures in Washington, D.C. meant that the earth’s climate was not changing. Of course, in other places, it was unseasonably warm.
Weather is the mix of events that happen in the atmosphere. The weather is different in different parts of the world and is subject to short-term changes. On the other hand, the climate is the weather over extended periods in a specific region. As Hurricane Ian, the latest of increasingly severe natural disasters, confronts the U.S. and weather disasters regularly rock the rest of the world, even the most extreme climate deniers have begun to notice. Globally, researchers have found about a 30 percent increase in category 4 and 5 hurricanes like Hurricane Ian as the earth’s temperature increases. Ian is likely to cost $50 billion to $70 billion. Compared to the increasingly severe weather events we are now experiencing; Senator Inhofe’s snowball is even less convincing than it was.
What is convincing is the similarity in thinking between “establishment Republicans” like Senator Inhofe and some of the newer Republicans like Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, another climate denier. (She claims climate change makes our planet safer because it produces carbon dioxide!)
Weather is the mix of events that happen in the atmosphere. The weather is different in different parts of the world and is subject to short-term changes. On the other hand, the climate is the weather over extended periods in a specific region. As Hurricane Ian, the latest of increasingly severe natural disasters, confronts the U.S. and weather disasters regularly rock the rest of the world, even the most extreme climate deniers have begun to notice. Globally, researchers have found about a 30 percent increase in category 4 and 5 hurricanes like Hurricane Ian as the earth’s temperature increases. Ian is likely to cost $50 billion to $70 billion. Compared to the increasingly severe weather events we are now experiencing; Senator Inhofe’s snowball is even less convincing than it was.
What is convincing is the similarity in thinking between “establishment Republicans” like Senator Inhofe and some of the newer Republicans like Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, another climate denier. (She claims climate change makes our planet safer because it produces carbon dioxide!)