The thread for stupidity from GQP politicians who don't have their own thread

[newyorkguy]

In 2018 when Ron DeSantis was running for governor of Florida, he stated, " “I am not in the pews of the church of the global warming leftists.”

Despite the firmly established science linking climate change to more powerful hurricanes, as well as sea level rise that helps worsen their impact, many Florida Republican politicians, including the governor and both of its U.S. senators, have resisted government action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing warmer temperatures. Yet even while they avoid any admission that burning fossil fuels is the underlying cause of climate change, they must also try to manage growing risks in the state that scientists have linked to the warming world. DeSantis has embraced spending for the restoration of the Everglades wetlands and “resilience” for coastal cities, such as improved drainage and raising sea walls. In May last year, he said his state must “tackle the challenges posed by flooding, intensified storm events [and] sea level rise.”

But DeSantis stubbornly refuses to even talk about why storms are intensifying and why sea levels are rising.

"What I’ve found is, people when they start talking about things like global warming, they typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of left-wing things that they would want to do anyways,” DeSantis said at an event about sea level rise last year. “We’re not doing any left-wing stuff.” Yahoo News link

 

[shemp]

Seems a bit odd that the leftists always run those hurricanes through places like Cuba and Puerto Rico first. If I were spawning hurricanes, I'd keep them within the Sharpie zone.

That's to provide plausible deniability.

 

[bruto]

If the leftist hurricane targets are SO predictable, wouldn't the smartest move be to get out of the ******* way of them??

I hear De Santis sent a scouting party up to Martha's Vineyard but the lying fake news press got it all wrong.

 

[Stacyhs]

Not to mention that the "convenient time...right before elections" would be because hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, with the peak around the middle of September; since elections are usually held the beginning of November, it would actually be very untypical for them to happen at any other time.

Now, now...let's not confuse them with facts, logic, and reality. You know they don't react well to them.

 

[newyorkguy]

Despite the firmly established science linking climate change to more powerful hurricanes, as well as sea level rise that helps worsen their impact, many Florida Republican politicians, including the governor and both of its U.S. senators, have resisted government action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing warmer temperatures.

Serious warnings about carbon emissions and climate change began in the early 1980s, forty years ago. Today events that were predicted are happening. But Ron DeSantis' position is typical GOP speak.

“I am not in the pews of the church of the global warming leftists.”

To update an old saying:
He prefers to err on the side of recklessness.

 

[newyorkguy]

Apparently the GOP is switching to a new tactic. Global warming is real after all, but the cure may be worse than the disease. Except for GOP Congress member marjorie taylor greene. She thinks rising temperatures are actually good. As greene told a radio interviewer last summer:

“This Earth warming and carbon is actually healthy for us,” Greene said this summer in an interview with the Right Side Broadcasting Network, arguing that warming is good because people die of cold. New Republic link

While greene rejects the science -- "Climate just changes," she explains -- most of greene's Congressional colleagues don't agree rising temperatures are good.

Few Republicans in Congress now outwardly dismiss the scientific evidence that human activities — the burning of oil, gas and coal — have produced gases that are dangerously heating the Earth. But for many, denial of the cause of global temperature rise has been replaced by an insistence that the solution — replacing fossil fuels over time with wind, solar and other nonpolluting energy sources — will hurt the economy. New York Times news report

 

[Aridas]

Apparently the GOP is switching to a new tactic. Global warming is real after all, but the cure may be worse than the disease. Except for GOP Congress member marjorie taylor greene. She thinks rising temperatures are actually good. As greene told a radio interviewer last summer:


While greene rejects the science -- "Climate just changes," she explains -- most of greene's Congressional colleagues don't agree rising temperatures are good.

Looks like a simple variation of "More carbon in the atmosphere helps plants grow better" as if that were the only thing that mattered.

 

[autumn1971]

Serious warnings about carbon emissions and climate change began in the early 1980s, forty years ago. Today events that were predicted are happening. But Ron DeSantis' position is typical GOP speak.


To update an old saying:
He prefers to err on the side of recklessness.

Global warming due to fossil fuel burning goes back to the 1800’s. But yes, we are now seeing confirmations of experimentally predicted events that date back to the 1980’s.
Wasn’t it Watt who as Regan’s Sec. of the Interior who said environmentalism was sill because Jesus was about to return anyway?
The insanity runs deep with republican idiots.

 

[Aridas]

Global warming due to fossil fuel burning goes back to the 1800’s. But yes, we are now seeing confirmations of experimentally predicted events that date back to the 1980’s.
Wasn’t it Watt who as Regan’s Sec. of the Interior who said environmentalism was sill because Jesus was about to return anyway?
The insanity runs deep with republican idiots.

IIRC, the fairly reliable predictions date at least back to the 1950s.

 

[kookbreaker]

It’s a point in the movie Soylent Green from 1973. Both mentioned and how everyone seems to be sweating constantly in the heat.

 

[Stacyhs]

The GOP suffers from "future blindness". They are concerned with the here and now and the future is not their concern. That's someone else's problem. If it means negatively affecting their pockets now...which has always been the primary focus of that party...they'll fight it.

 

[newyorkguy]

I sometimes wonder -- and reducing emissions is a good example -- just how much influence the Republican's corporate donors have over GOP policy. I think it becomes apparent when individual Republicans are willing to work on climate change-related issues -- like protecting wetlands, building higher, stronger sea walls or expanding storm drainage systems -- but refuse to even discuss the relationship between fossil fuel emissions and sea level rise, more intense storms, more frequent and severe heat waves. I have a feeling it's because they have been warned by the top donors, "Just don't talk about it. Period." When you see articles like this one from Kenyon College:

Even if climate change were not such an urgent issue, the shift to renewable energy would make sense on purely economic grounds alone. Given the need to avoid the most significant impacts of climate change, the case isn’t even close. Kenyon link

The current GOP argument -- switching to renewable energy will cause widespread economic harm -- is very debatable. But Republicans refuse to have that debate. You have to wonder: who does the Republican leadership listen to? Scientists or corporate donors. From the corporate side -- having been employed by one -- they know not all corporations will do well if we switch to renewable energy sources. Corporations are filled with people who -- if it's a choice between what's best for their employer or everybody else -- they're sorr-eee, gotta do what I gotta do.

 

[slyjoe]

...snip

The current GOP argument -- switching to renewable energy will cause widespread economic harm -- is very debatable. But Republicans refuse to have that debate. You have to wonder: who does the Republican leadership listen to? Scientists or corporate donors. From the corporate side -- having been employed by one -- they know not all corporations will do well if we switch to renewable energy sources. Corporations are filled with people who -- if it's a choice between what's best for their employer or everybody else -- they're sorr-eee, gotta do what I gotta do.

Unfortunately, I think you are right. However, the buggy whip makers should provide a lesson to them. I just fear we won't see those corporations go the way of the buggy whip makers in my lifetime.

 

[Jim_MDP]

The GOP suffers from "future blindness". They are concerned with the here and now and the future is not their concern. That's someone else's problem. If it means negatively affecting their pockets now...which has always been the primary focus of that party...they'll fight it.

Which is a poor set of blinders when the longest standing tent pole of the conservative/religious faction has been 'live your life for your children, grandchildren etc.' Family first, eh?
Their inheritance will be little comfort when noone will be able to afford a loaf of bread because the aquifers have collapsed and mass agriculture areas worldwide have shrunk to worthlessness.

Between that and the ominous looking potential that we've been poisoning ourselves with microplastic refuse for 100 years, and I have to reconsider likely explanations for there being no nearby "interstellar empires".
Isn't this combo more likely than self inflicted nuclear extinction? [emoji15]

 

[Trebuchet]

The GOP suffers from "future blindness". They are concerned with the here and now and the future is not their concern. That's someone else's problem. If it means negatively affecting their pockets now...which has always been the primary focus of that party...they'll fight it.

That comes directly from their CEO masters, who can see no farther than the next quarter's bottom line. Even if -- when -- it becomes blindingly obvious that planning for a warmer future is the way to future profits, they won't do it because it'd hurt next quarter's stock options.

 

[shemp]

I sometimes wonder -- and reducing emissions is a good example -- just how much influence the Republican's corporate donors have over GOP policy. I think it becomes apparent when individual Republicans are willing to work on climate change-related issues -- like protecting wetlands, building higher, stronger sea walls or expanding storm drainage systems -- but refuse to even discuss the relationship between fossil fuel emissions and sea level rise, more intense storms, more frequent and severe heat waves. I have a feeling it's because they have been warned by the top donors, "Just don't talk about it. Period." When you see articles like this one from Kenyon College:


The current GOP argument -- switching to renewable energy will cause widespread economic harm -- is very debatable. But Republicans refuse to have that debate. You have to wonder: who does the Republican leadership listen to? Scientists or corporate donors. From the corporate side -- having been employed by one -- they know not all corporations will do well if we switch to renewable energy sources. Corporations are filled with people who -- if it's a choice between what's best for their employer or everybody else -- they're sorr-eee, gotta do what I gotta do.

And if nothing is done, there won't be any ******* economy, there won't be any ******* corporations, there won't be ******* anybody left alive. The super rich will be the last ones to go, dying in their polar hideaways surrounded by their ******* gold, stocks and bonds. And someday, someone from another planet will come here, see how we ****** everything up, and put in their report "These people were a bunch of stupid, greedy **** ups who made all the mistakes our civilization avoided."

 

[newyorkguy]

It's like a race to the bottom.

[Florida senators] Marco Rubio and Rick Scott sent a joint letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee chairs to secure funding to “provide much needed assistance to Florida.” Link to Tallahassee Democrat newspaper story

So Thursday the Senate passed a bill that included Ian relief funds. The two senators from Florida? Rick Scott voted against it and Rubio didn't show up at roll call.

The Senate passed a short-term spending bill on Thursday that includes an additional $18.8 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to respond to Hurricane Ian and future disasters. The vote was 72-25. Scott, however, voted against it, while Rubio was not present for the vote, according to the U.S. Senate roll call.

 

[Aridas]

It's like a race to the bottom.

So Thursday the Senate passed a bill that included Ian relief funds. The two senators from Florida? Rick Scott voted against it and Rubio didn't show up at roll call.

To be fair, it's pretty much a Catch-22 for them. Either they vote for it like a responsible person who is actually serving their constituents and engage in the deadly sin of working with the Democrats or do what they did to avoid the deadly sin of working with Democrats. They'll still likely try to claim credit, of course.

 

[newyorkguy]

Then why ask for the funds? To be fair, twenty-two Republican senators voted for the bill, including Senators McConnell and Lindsey Graham. The GOP senators who voted against the bill opposed it as being inflationary.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

It’s a point in the movie Soylent Green from 1973. Both mentioned and how everyone seems to be sweating constantly in the heat.

Better yet it was in the novel Make Room! Make Room!^WP by Harry Harrison, published in 1966.