He may appear to come off as smart, but the only people he’s fooling are his own followers
Who better to have as the chairman of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness than a god fearing, gun totting, hillbilly whose sense of science is stuck in the 17th century
Ted Cruz of course. The Climate Change denying Republican presidential hopeful has 25% of his personal wealth tied up in fossil fuel investments and has received close to a million dollars in campaign funds from oil and gas.
It should come as no surprise that during a hearing on climate change on Monday, he came out swinging against those his Subcommittee is supposed to represent. He started off by stating “Facts matter, science matters, data matters. That’s what this hearing is about.”
To someone who knows nothing about science, the Earth, and climate change, Cruz probably sounded like a genius. To anyone who knows a thing or two (such as don’t believe a word Cruz says) his points were confusing, out of context and just plain wrong.
Cruz suggested, as other Republicans have done, that CO2 isn’t bad, because we’ve had more of it in our atmosphere in the past then we have right now:
“I would note that the history with markedly more CO2 pre-dated the industrial revolution, so it didn’t come from automobiles or the burning of carbon fuels. … I would note those facts are directly contrary to what the global warming alarmists tell us day in and day out, and what the media who echoes those concerns tell us day in and day out.”
Cruz is saying the carbon dioxide we emit can’t be harming the planet, because the planet had more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere before the industrial revolution. That is actual true, except according to science, the last time CO2 was this high, humans didn’t exist, and the Earth was a terrifying place to live. Yeah, he failed to mention the last time CO2 was this high, God hadn’t created us yet.
He continued:
“Here are the inconvenient facts about the polar ice caps. The Arctic is not ice free. This year’s minimum sea ice extent was well above the record low observed in 2011. In the Antarctic, a recent study… indicates that the ice is not only not decreasing, but is in fact increasing in mass, directly contrary to what the global warming alarmists had told us would be happening.”
Aside from admitting that the record low for sea ice occurred only four years ago, he doesn’t seem to understand that the up and down change in arctic ice levels doesn’t mean squat over the period of just a few years. You need to look at the long term data.
Cruz was right when he said the sea ice is growing. But Antarctic land ice, which you find in glaciers and ice sheets, has been accumulating for thousands of years, but is now decreasing at intense rates.
He continued:
“According to the satellite data, there has been no significant global warming for the past 18 years. Those are the data. The global warming alarmists don’t like these data, they are inconvenient to their narrative. But facts and evidence matters.”
That’s okay, you can roll your eyes. Again, Cruz is nitpicking data. When Cruz says there’s been no warming in the last 18 years, it’s because 1998 was an abnormally warm (El Nino) year. 13 of the 15 warmest years ever recorded all happened in the 21st century and 2015 is set to be the new record breaker.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850.” You’d think a man like Cruz who likes to live in the past would go back a little further than 1998 for his data.
Speaking of living in the past, Cruz and other republicans have dismissed the fact that 97 percent of scientists agree about climate change, because back in the 1600s, 97 percent of scientists said the sun rotated around the earth.
Evidently, Cruz has never heard of the Scientific method. A method or procedure that has characterized science over the last few centuries. It requires people to back up their evidence using first-hand data so that others can duplicate it. Before the seventeenth century, scientists were philosophers more than anything without anyway of backing up their beliefs. Kind of like religion.
Cruz’s chairmanship of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness is insulting to anyone who takes science seriously and it’s insulting to anyone who cares about the planet we live on. Furthermore, it’s insulting to American Democracy which has assured people like Cruz, who’s been bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry, the lead voice on a committee that runs contrary to his ideology.
