Maybe it’s time Marco met with climate change scientists
By Alan Farago
From Eye on Miami
MIAMI – The startling reversal of one of the climate change deniers heavily funded by the Koch Brothers, made the news over the weekend. Climate change denier Richard A. Muller, a physicist at Berkeley, now believes that science and data conclusively support man-made global warming. This must be highly irritating to the Kochs, who have pledged spending nearly half a billion dollars to defeat President Obama in November. The Kochs are perhaps, more than any other "donor", responsible for fomenting doubt around the conclusive evidence of global warming, severely harming the rational discourse that might point America to a position of dynamic leadership instead of standing for calcification in defense of hydrocarbon energy production.
I did learn over the weekend that according to the LA Times, the communication director for the Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Marc Morano, is "a former top producer for Rush Limbaugh".
Rush Limbaugh is, in my opinion, a more dangerous version of Joe McCarthy, the congressman who used his bully pulpit in the 1950s to sow rancor and fear. Almost single-handedly – with like-minded asses of Fox News – Limbaugh has been able to push the GOP to the fringe, armed with verbal rocket propellants and semi-automatic demagoguery. And of course Limbaugh, promoting the notion that climate change is a leftist conspiracy, has fought against reforming energy policies.
I had never heard of Morano. Honestly, I prefer sticking with science and facts. But it is nearly as shocking to learn that a Limbaugh stand-in is driving the GOP from within a powerful Senate committee as it was to learn that a Jeb Bush stand-in, Marco Rubio, was supporting climate change deniers and hysterics like Oklahoma senator James Inhofe.
Eye on Miami has repeatedly criticized Senator Rubio for refusing to even speak with climate change scientists. Maybe now that one of the Koch’s own deniers has flipped, Rubio is also safe to flop.
Think we are being hard on Rubio?
Senator Rubio is ignoring the recent government report that reveals that of the world’s cities, Miami is most at risk from climate change. Has the issue even come up in the current campaign to elect a new mayor of Miami-Dade?
Then, again, with right-wing conservatives dominating Florida, high tides will be licking our doorsteps before there is any effort to control the cost to taxpayers. And then, Rush Limbaugh or whoever inherits his megaphone will be saying it was your choice to listen or not and government should not be forced to pay your costs of evacuation and property abandonment. And by that time, who knows: Marco Rubio may be as wealthy and retired as George W. Bush.
For the past 20 years Alan Farago has written, worked and volunteered to advance civic engagement and issues related to the environment and politics. He publishes the Eye on Miami blog and writes under the name, Gimleteye.
