If we think of these people as bumbling, well-meaning fools seduced by a silly ideological program, they are going to eat our lunch. Their program is to maintain conditions that maximize their profit and power for as long as possible, the rest of the world be damned. These guys are not just mistaken, they know exactly what they’re doing and they are both ruthless and evil.

As the campaign to hold ExxonMobil accountable for hiding what they knew about climate change gains momentum, Exxon’s defenders have fallen back on a bizarre strategy to try and protect the company: claiming that environmental groups and attorneys general are colluding to “silence” scientists and “chill” scientific inquiry.

“These investigations have had a chilling effect,” said Texas Republican Representative Lamar Smith, the Chair of the House Science Committee, who hosted a hearing on the Exxon issue this afternoon in Washington. Other Republicans on the committee echoed him. “If government was put in charge of science, we’d still think the Earth was flat,” said one member. “Scientists are being bullied,” thundered another.

This Republican committee’s eagerness to defend science was rather ironic considering the committee’s own track record. The committee is perhaps best known not for its support for science (Republicans consistently vote to defund federal science agencies), but for subpoenaing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for, wait for it, conducting climate science. “The hypocrisy from the majority members defending scientific freedom given their previous actions towards NOAA+Tom Karl is breathtaking,” tweeted Gavin Schmidt, himself a scientist and director of the NASA Goddard Space Institute at Columbia Institute.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

(Click on every fifth or tenth year and watch the collapse unfold.)

https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/vishop-extent.html?N

(Note the decade averages.)

Remember, the key here is not how much less ice there is in the summer than the winters. That’s only to be expected. The terrifying fact is how much less ice there has been in later summers than in earlier ones.

It is an undeniable trend. The summer Arctic ice pack has melted away almost by half since the beginning of the Reagan Administration.

Not that I’m implying causality…

Its the same motivation as those who fought against the recognition of the carcinogenic effects of tobacco. They didn’t necessarily smoke, or even work for a tobacco company, they just didn’t want public interference in private profits, and if they can do it to tobacco or oil companies then no one is safe.

People who own businesses already feel they are threatened by market constraints and competition. They feel they should therefore be exempt from any other form of supervision or control. Maybe Global Warming is not caused by human activity, just like maybe lung cancer may have nothing to do with cigarettes. But that’s not the point, is it? That’s why the argument over these issues has never been primarily about the science, its about the politics, which really means its about the money. It also explains how quickly arguments against these regulations so quickly morph into bogus constitutional questions or conspiracy theories involving sinister Communist cabals. Remember how they resisted seat belt laws? They simply didn’t care how many people got killed, mandatory seat belts might cost them money.

Now, whether or not the proposed regulations will actually help solve the problem or not is a valid question, and should be debated. We had very good reasons to ban alcohol but we learned the hard way it simply wouldn’t work. But that’s not what these arguments and are all about, is it?

All the temperature graphs and climate models (or chest x rays and firearms deaths) in the world are not going to move these people. They feel they have a right to do these things, just like the antebellum Southerner believed he had a right to own slaves.

That’s a nice graph RL, I especially like the bottom where it explains the source of the data. Its really well done all around.

On a similar note did you see Monday’s XKCD?

http://xkcd.com/1732/