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We have a winner. I got my 1,000,000th email today complaining that I am not fair to the Republicans. Well, fair is kind of a matter of opinion. I actually think I am mostly fair to Republicans, within the context of cartooning anyway. I do have real trouble with the party in that their pre-eminent, overarching, unbreakable, ironclad and undiscussable principle is that taxes can never go up, even after they have gone down, even back to levels we thrived with before, even for a brand new and unprecedented class of hyper-hyper-hyper wealthy individuals, even when the solvency of the American government is hanging in the balance. Yeah, I have some trouble with that as a first principle, but that’s still not the main thing.

The main thing is they are in absolute, abject and catastrophic denial about a straightforward set of facts that is probably the most important set of facts we face as a nation, and as human beings on planet earth. They have turned their faces away from climate change in a way that is simply and utterly unforgivable. They now apparently DO feel entitled to their own facts, and they live, campaign and purportedly do their jobs in a zone of outright lies. Lies they have every reason to understand are lies, and lies that will almost certainly result in massive destruction and death. Exactly how would you be “fair” to these people? http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/05/18/208121/tom-toles-slams-gop
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Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations

As 2012 ended, a series of increasingly dire predictions regarding the impacts of anthropogenic climate change were issued (International Energy Agency 2012; World Bank 2012). These warnings were amplified when the National Research Council (2012) and the National Intelligence Council (2012), both issued reports warning of the adverse political and security impacts that such levels of warming would foster. Even as the consequences of the “settled facts” (NRC 2011: 22) of anthropogenic climate change were amplified, the level of understanding of this issue in the U.S. remained low. In response to a survey question in the fall of 2012:1 Do scientists believe that earth is getting warmer because of human activity? 43 % replied no, and another 12 % didn’t know. Only 45 % of the U.S. public accurately reported the near unanimity of the scientific community about anthropogenic climate change. This result reflects a broad misunderstanding of climate science by the general public.

A number of analyses have shown that one major factor driving this misunderstanding and an overall lack of legislative action is a deliberate and organized effort to misdirect the public discussion and distort the public’s understanding of climate change (National Research Council 2011: 35). This literature has revealed a great deal about the nature of efforts to deny and/or distort climate science. It clearly shows that a number of conservative think tanks, trade associations, and advocacy organizations are the key organizational components of a wellorganized climate change counter-movement (CCCM) that has not only played a major role in confounding public understanding of climate science, but also successfully delayed meaningful government policy actions to address the issue. Much more at http://drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing%20Delay%20
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please remember what the nation’s top climate scientist has said:


“¦ the most serious effects will be visited upon the young and the unborn, the generations that bear no responsibility for the problem.

The most important effects, I believe, will be those that are irreversible for all practical purposes, specifically (1) extermination of species, and (2) ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise. If we continue business-as-usual energy policy, using more and more fossil fuels, it is likely that we will have: (1) rapid climate change that will combine with other pressures on species to cause the rate of extinction of plants and animals to increase markedly, leading in some cases to ecosystem collapse, snowballing extinctions, and a more desolate planet for future generations. (2) meter-scale sea level rise this century, and ice sheets in a state of disintegration that guarantees future sea level rise in the 10-meter-scale, with a continual reworking of future global coastlines out of humanity’s control.

I would add that the planetary desolation our continued inaction would leave our children includes the loss of the inland glaciers that provide fresh water for a billion people, irreversible ocean acidification and Dust-Bowlification across much of the habited land mass. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/10/31/206961/when-you-see-kids-o
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