Rick Santorum continued his attack on global warming at the February 6, 2012 Colorado Energy Summit. Held at the Colorado School of Mines, the event was hosted by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association and Consumer Energy Alliance, a group backed by a who's who of Big Oil companies, including BP and Exxon Mobil.
Transcript of Rick Santorum's comments on global warming:
The most important thing we need to do, which is what this administration has not done, which is to use sound science, not politicized science.
We have seen the politicization of science like we have never seen before in the recent years.
We saw it with global warming.
A absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by politics.
Motivated by those who saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and crisis and for government to step in and even greatly and more control your life.
I can tell you, I for one never bought the hoax.
I for one understood, just from science, that there were a hundred factors that influence the climate, and to suggest that one minor factor of which man’s contribution is a minor factor in the minor factor is the determining ingredient in the sauce that affects the entire global warming and cooling is just absurd on its face.
And yet, we had politicians running to the ramparts.
Unfortunately politicians who happen to be running for the Republican nomination for President, who bought into man-made global warming and bought into cap and trade.
Both Congressman Gingrich and Governor Romney, both supported the idea of man made global warming and in fact cap and trade.
I never did, and unless the science is such that it is a heck of a lot better than what we see today, I won’t.Video of Rick Santorum's global warming remarks:
A full video of Rick Santorum's speech at the 2012 Colorado Energy Summit can be found on C-Span
I don't want to live on this planet anymore...
ReplyDeleteThat's an impressive amount of stupid on display.
ReplyDeleteWe sure have seen the politicization of science. Good one, Rick.
ReplyDeleteI don't see what the problem is here
ReplyDeletePlease write him to complain. It's fine for people to think that it isn't economically advantageous for us to act right now, but to say that climate change isn't happening is just ignorant.
ReplyDeleteWhere did you get the idea that he said climate change isn't happening? At no point does he say that; in fact, he concedes that it is happening
ReplyDelete"Climate change deniers are like the person who goes to the doctor for a diagnosis and, when the doctor tells him, "If you don't stop smoking, there is a 90% chance you'll die of lung cancer," the patient replies, "Oh, doc, you mean you're not 100 percent sure? Then I'll keep on smoking"
ReplyDeleteDo not confuse the uncertainty about which trajectory we are on for uncertainty about where we are heading. And do not be confused that just because scientists tend to focus on the 10% they don't know that the 90 percent the do know isn't already a call to action.
The most important and almost unanimous SCIENTIFIC (not political) conclusions about climate change - that it's real, that it's accelerating, that it's already doing significant harm, that human activities are responsible for most of it, that tipping points into really catastrophic disruption likely lurk along the "business as usual" trajectory, and that there is much that could be done to reduce the danger at affordable cost if only we would get started.
These conclusions are based on an immense edifice of painstaking studies published in the world's leading peer-reviewed scientific journals. They have been vetted and documented in excruciating detail by the largest, longest and costliest, most international, most interdisciplinary and most thorough formal review of a scientific topic ever conducted.
We need to separate the political issue of climate change from the scientific issue of climate change. Just because it happened that a liberal politician, Al Gore, was the bearer of the message, the American media largely adopted the view of the climate change deniers -- the view that climate change was a political issue, not a scientific one, and therefore it had two sides. But this is not politics, it's settled science. "
To say that anthropogenic climate change is an issue spawned out of American politics is naive. There are international panels of researchers concluding unanimously, and to umbrella this group of scientists as American liberals is just trash talk.
ReplyDeleteRick Santorum has a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters in Business Administration. He's not a PhD, he has obviously never been very educated in the sciences. It is expected that someone like this would be so naive when it comes to the scientific community.
No one's saying it's just American politics. Europeans are, in general, far worse, and they're certainly not better. There's just as much money to be made peddling man-made global warming in Europe, so you can count on a steady stream of scientists doing just that.
DeleteAnd let me point another thing out (though I certainly recognize that you've worded your comment ambiguously to give yourself space to back-pedal): you take no stock in Rick Santorum's scientific opinion because he doesn't have much science education, a conclusion you've drawn based on how much you dislike his scientific opinion?
This from the party that told us that tides are inexplicable works of a god.
ReplyDeleteI really don’t understand US politics.. how can these absolute idiots get any airtime? The current crop of GOP hopefuls is laughable, if it wasn't for the dire nature of the predicament. At a time when the world needs leadership and vision, it gets these fools, talking complete and utter rubbish. Greed, idiocy, words fail me.... The debate about climate change is how do we act as quickly and effectively as possible? There is an overwhelming scientific consensus, plus we are confronted by the finite nature of oil and gas.. a rapid move to low carbon alternatives is a global imperative.. it is only the vested interest of the oil industry itself that is creating this inertia.
ReplyDeleteGo away Santorum, you are an idiot, a fool and a liar, history will judge you and you will be quickly forgotten.
Next please..!
These arguments are painful... Here's some light reading:
ReplyDeletehttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213244084429540.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
overwhelming consensus:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p1845.htm
http://www.oism.org/pproject/GWReview_OISM600.pdf
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs%3Darticle