Rand Paul On Climate & Environment: Straw Men, Bullshit And Lies

[hatrack]

EDIT

Paul, who is announcing a presidential run on Tuesday, is an anti-government extremist and a climate change denier. Just last April, he said he is “not sure anybody exactly knows why” the climate is changing. He went on to call the science “not conclusive” and complain about “alarmist stuff.” If you’re wondering what he means by “alarmist stuff,” in 2011, while arguing for a bill that would prevent the EPA from regulating carbon emissions, Paul said, “If you listen to the hysterics, … you would think that the Statue of Liberty will shortly be under water and the polar bears are all drowning, and that we’re dying from pollution. It’s absolutely and utterly untrue.” Paul went on to assert that children are being misled into believing that “pollution” has gotten “a lot worse,” when “It’s actually much better now.” Paul, of course, was conflating conventional air pollution — like sulfur dioxide, which has declined in the U.S. — and climate pollution, which is cumulative and global, and therefore gets worse every year, even if America’s annual emissions drop.

Indeed, Paul is prone to making ignorant, conspiracist statements about science in general. In October, he suggested to Breitbart News that Ebola may be more easily spread than scientists say and that the White House had been misleading the country on the issue. And in February, Paul told CNBC, “I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” This despite the fact that the supposed connection between autism and vaccination has been thoroughly debunked.

Like almost every other Senate Republican, Paul has voted to strip the EPA of its legal authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, to force approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and to prevent Congress from placing any tax or fee on carbon pollution. Paul’s lifetime voting score from the League of Conservation Voters is 9 percent.

EDIT

In that interview with Axelrod, Paul then falsely asserted that “most of the models have been changed within the last five years, they all predicted the poor Statue of Liberty was going to be drowned within 100 years.” The Statue of Liberty is 305 feet tall. No credible climate scientist has ever claimed that the sea will rise that high in 100 years, nor does the fact that it won’t disprove any of what climate scientists actually do say about the importance of limiting sea-level rise this century to more like two feet than six feet. In light of Paul’s tendency to conflate general air pollution with climate pollution, and his lies about climate science in that Axelrod interview, it is not clear that Paul was endorsing minimizing climate pollution specifically. Reporters need to understand that distinction.

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http://grist.org/politics/rand-paul-is-no-moderate-on-climate-change/

[OnlinePoker]

1. First line and second line are contradictory

The second says he agrees that climate change is happening, so he can't be a climate change denier. His position is he doesn't believe humans are the cause of it.