# Republican Senator Offended by Facts **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 3, 2012, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313 "2012-08-03T16:29:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/1 "2012-08-03T16:29:35Z")
[http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/08/01/624821/sessions-i-am-offended-by-views-of-climate-scientists/](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/08/01/624821/sessions-i-am-offended-by-views-of-climate-scientists/) Jesus fucking Christ. That about sums it up, doesn’t it? Republican candidates aren’t lying to help themselves get elected, they’re lying because they have a moral duty to speak out against the truth. How do the people who voted for this assclown live long enough to reproduce? I’d figure that they’d Darwin themselves out of the gene pool before they hit breeding age. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/2 "2012-08-03T16:39:14Z")
Well, he should be. I have it on good authority that the Earth is warming of its own accord, regardless of CO2 emissions, solely to piss that guy off. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/3 "2012-08-03T16:47:37Z")
Meh, I can’t get too worked up about this quote. Assuming he’s a true believer (which I confess may be a stretch), he thinks that the scientific community is engaged in a conspiracy with liberals to get their ideological beliefs passed into law. He thinks 98% of climate scientists can and will lie to the world (remember, he’s a politician; of course he’d believe this), so of _course_ he’s offended. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/4 "2012-08-03T17:12:21Z")
Actually he’s disputing the claim that 98% of scientists disagree with him. Especially as he’s not denying that global warming has happened, but only that it’s happening at the pace that “a lot of people predicted”. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/5 "2012-08-03T17:24:28Z")
Ah, I misread. Then it’s even more “meh” than I thought it was. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/6 "2012-08-03T17:39:06Z")
Very meh. It sounds to me based on the video that he was offended by the claim that his views on global warming is analogous to agreeing with the 1-2% of scientists who say smoking doesn’t cause cancer. He’s wrong about global warming, but I don’t see anything more egregious in his statements than those made by any other global warming denier. ---
**Author:** ![Wheelz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wheelz/32/5718_2.png) [@Wheelz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheelz)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/7 "2012-08-03T17:43:42Z")
I’m having a bit of trouble parsing the actual quote: > [@](#): > > Madam Chairman, I am offended by that, I’m offended by that — I didn’t say anything about the scientists. I said the data shows [sic] it is not warming to the degree that a lot of people predicted, not close to that much… It’s not entirely clear exactly what Mr. Sessions is offended by here. But I think maybe he thought Boxer was misrepresenting something he said, and _that’s_ what offended him. Maybe. In any case, I agree with “meh.” ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/8 "2012-08-03T17:50:07Z")
> [@Wheelz](#): > > I’m having a bit of trouble parsing the actual quote:It’s not entirely clear exactly what Mr. Sessions is offended by here. But I think maybe he thought Boxer was misrepresenting something he said, and _that’s_ what offended him. Maybe. I think the past few posts are all pretty much saying the same thing. Sen. Boxer claimed that he was disagreeing with 98% of scientists, which is apparently based on the premise that he completely denies global warming. He was offended by this, because he was only making a much more limited claim, and one which does not contradict 98% of scientists. ---
**Author:** ![boytyperanma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4491bb/32.png) [@boytyperanma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boytyperanma)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/9 "2012-08-03T18:30:49Z")
If this thread needs a Senator who is on the record for being offended by the concept of Global Warming in general you can always swap Inhofe in for Sessions. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/10 "2012-08-03T18:41:02Z")
Well, I suppose I’ll have to accept the judgment of ‘meh’, but watching him in the video I distinctly got the impression was that he was offended by being contradicted by the truth. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/11 "2012-08-03T19:04:00Z")
I am often offended by facts. Like the fact that this braindead doofus is a US Senator. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/12 "2012-08-03T19:53:16Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > I think the past few posts are all pretty much saying the same thing. > > Sen. Boxer claimed that he was disagreeing with 98% of scientists, which is apparently based on the premise that he completely denies global warming. He was offended by this, because he was only making a much more limited claim, and one which does not contradict 98% of scientists. He’s right. The earth seems to be absorbing CO2 at a higher rate than expected, thus Global warming doesn’t seem to be increasing as fast as predicted. [http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/earth-absorbs-more-of-our-co2-emissions](http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/earth-absorbs-more-of-our-co2-emissions) \*Even as Man’s output of Earth-warming CO2 has risen, so has the capacity of plants and the oceans to absorb it, scientists said Wednesday, but warned this may not last forever. Carbon storage by land and sea, known as carbon sinks, has more than doubled in the past 50 years from about 2.4 billion tons in 1960 to some five billion tons in 2010, said a study in Nature.\* ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/13 "2012-08-03T22:10:37Z")
GIGObuster to make an entrance into the thread and slam us all with offensive facts in 3…2…1… ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/14 "2012-08-03T22:43:49Z")
He’s from Alabama. Everything between Huntsville & the Gulf Coast is a wasteland. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2012, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/15 "2012-08-04T01:31:20Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > He’s from Alabama. Everything between Huntsville & the Gulf Coast is a wasteland. You didn’t read the thread. In this one case the Alabama Senator was right and Pelosi was wrong. Wont happen again very soon, I imagine.😛 ---
**Author:** ![Lochdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/edb3f5/32.png) [@Lochdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lochdale)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2012, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/16 "2012-08-04T02:45:01Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > He’s from Alabama. Everything between Huntsville & the Gulf Coast is a wasteland. Says the person from Tennessee :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2012, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/17 "2012-08-04T06:54:55Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > You didn’t read the thread. In this one case the Alabama Senator was right and Pelosi was wrong. Senator Barbara Boxer actually, not House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. > [@DrDeth](#): > > He’s right. The earth seems to be absorbing CO2 at a higher rate than expected, thus Global warming doesn’t seem to be increasing as fast as predicted. > [http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/earth-absorbs-more-of-our-co2-emissions](http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/earth-absorbs-more-of-our-co2-emissions) > > \*Even as Man’s output of Earth-warming CO2 has risen, so has the capacity of plants and the oceans to absorb it, scientists said Wednesday, but warned this may not last forever. > > Carbon storage by land and sea, known as carbon sinks, has more than doubled in the past 50 years from about 2.4 billion tons in 1960 to some five billion tons in 2010, said a study in Nature.\* Wonderful. But that says nothing about the predictive accuracy of climate scientists, since various factors push in both directions. As it happens, Hansen et al’s 1981 Science article underestimated the rise in temperature, though it actually tracks rather well. Extraordinarily well. [RealClimate: Evaluating a 1981 temperature projection](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/evaluating-a-1981-temperature-projection/#bib_1) To conclude, a projection from 1981 for rising temperatures in a major science journal, at a time that the temperature rise was not yet obvious in the observations, has been found to agree well with the observations since then, underestimating the observed trend by about 30%, and easily beating naive predictions of no-change or a linear continuation of trends. It is also a nice example of a statement based on theory that could be falsified and up to now has withstood the test. The “global warming hypothesis” has been developed according to the principles of sound science. It is indeed unfortunate that the Republican Party is temperamentally unable to man up to the hard facts of climate science. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2012, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/18 "2012-08-04T11:14:29Z")
> [@Lochdale](#): > > Says the person from Tennessee :rolleyes: No debate on that: much of Tennessee is less desirable than downtown Detroit. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2012, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/19 "2012-08-04T14:06:39Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > I think the past few posts are all pretty much saying the same thing. > > Sen. Boxer claimed that he was disagreeing with 98% of scientists, which is apparently based on the premise that he completely denies global warming. He was offended by this, because he was only making a much more limited claim, and one which does not contradict 98% of scientists. [Hommie the clown’s -bump- to the head] I don’t think so! Sessions just never told guys like Inhoffe that they were full of it, tacitly accepting the Republican’s even worse denialist tripe. And then this idea is a repeat of the old "Scientists failed to predict the actual rate of increase in warming, that has been peddled by guys like Monkton: > **[Monckton misuses IPCC equation](https://skepticalscience.com/ipcc-overestimate-global-warming.htm)** > > \Lord Monckton has taken a single equation from the IPCC, used it in an inappropriate manner, and then attributed his results to the IPCC. This is as if I borrowed your car, drove into a tree, and then blamed you. He uses a method that is clearly... > [@](#): > > Lord Monckton has taken a single equation from the IPCC, used it in an inappropriate manner, and then attributed his results to the IPCC. This is as if I borrowed your car, drove into a tree, and then blamed you. He uses a method that is clearly intended to examine the long-term response of temperature to changes in carbon dioxide, and which is never used by the IPCC (nor should it be) to make predictions about current temperature trends. A slight change in Lord Monckton’s methodology as of July 2010 still does not make his method or attribution remotely appropriate. > [@](#): > > You can see that these values match up with the “IPCC predicts warming” values shown on Monckton’s figures. > > There are four fundamental problems with using these values to “predict” temperatures and attributing them to the IPCC: > > 1. The IPCC does not “predict” anything on this matter – they make multiple projections assuming different future emissions scenarios. This may sound trivial, but it’s a very important distinction. Monckton narrows the analysis to a single scenario (A2) and labels it a prediction. > > 2. Temperature rise for the A2 scenario is very unlikely to be linear, and single values in °C / century are inappropriate when looking at temperatures for time periods of less than a century. This is particularly problematic when looking at very short time periods early in this century, which are likely to exhibit less warming than later in the century. > > 3. These equations predict the equilibrium temperature response, which is the final temperature change once the climate has fully adjusted to a change in CO2. It does not represent the temperature expected for the year that CO2 concentration reaches the value used in the equation (and will always be higher than this value). The IPCC is abundantly clear on this point. > > 4. The IPCC never uses or presents these values to project global temperatures in the first decade of the 21st century. > > In his most recent figures from July 2010, Monckton has decided to address the fact that warming to equilibrium temperatures by 2100 is clearly wrong (fundamental problem #3). He does this by simply reducing equilibrium temperatures by one-fifth (or multiplying by 0.8) to convert to “transient warming”, although it is unclear where he gets this conversion factor from. He has applied these changes to his “prediction zone” on the graph, but he has not changed the legend of the figure which still lists the incorrect equilibrium values after “IPCC predicts warming.” > [@](#): > > What about Monckton’s CO2 predictions? - > > Although, the primary topic here is Monckton’s “IPCC” temperature predictions, his “IPCC” CO2 predictions are also completely at odds with what is actually presented in the IPCC. Barry Bickmore from Brigham Young University has done an excellent bit of detective work to help elucidate the matter (see his RealClimate post here). > > Dr. Bickmore compared Monckton’s “IPCC A2” CO2 values to the actual IPCC A2 CO2 values and found that, other than the start and end points, Monckton’s values are always higher. There is absolutely no justification for this. I’ve reproduced the same result by carefully scaling and overlaying Monckton’s graph onto the IPCC’s figure 10.20a (here’s an uncropped larger version): In essence, there is a myth going on pressed by deniers and accepted by many Republicans: that it is not warming as predicted, so we should not do much of anything. Only that the actual projections based on the current emissions do match the most probable outcomes mentioned by the IPCC. AKA the current consensus of virtually all climate scientists in the world. As for the report mentioned by \*\*Drdeth \*\*: Mother Nature News is not linking to the actual study. (first red flag) The cite is not mentioning that other research points that human total emissions worldwide are more than double to take away the advantage (maybe one could talk of giving us more time, but only to avoid even worse outcomes) that one could expect from that study, incidentally the same study (that is not linked) is reporting that :“At the same time, fossil-fuel CO2 emissions rose almost **fourfold**.” (Second red flag, cherry picking) And that gets me to (Third flag) citing Mother Nature News is like citing “Answers in Genesis” in an evolution debate, in this case, the more I look around, the more it seems that the study that is referred to is not saying anything close to what Sessions is pulling out of the denier’s asses. This is very typical, cherry picking even good research to get the opposite of what they claim, in this case the title of the report leads one to conclude that we should not worry, and this is typical way for woo woo sources to deal with inconvenient information. In other early reports I have seen that the calculations of how much the earth and plant sinks are absorbing the human CO2 is close to 40%, this study (as it is quoted so far and more likely misreported) reports that is going to 50%, not enough IMHO to then dismiss all the different ways scientists are calculating that humans are driving the current warming that is observed, and even the researches quoted do report it will get worse if nothing, or very little as Sessions and their ilk propose, is done. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2012, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/20 "2012-08-04T14:27:52Z")
Dang, missed the edit, > [@](#): > > As for the report mentioned by \*\*Drdeth \*\*: Mother Nature News is not linking to the actual study. (first red flag) The cite is not mentioning that other research points that human total emissions worldwide are more than double to take away the advantage (maybe one could talk of giving us more time, but only to avoid even worse outcomes) that one could expect from that study, incidentally the same study (that is not linked) is reporting that :“At the same time, fossil-fuel CO2 emissions rose almost fourfold.” Change “The cite” for “the quote”. The problem is that the quote, just like the title of the article quoted, is just cherry picking and giving us a conclusion that is actually not supported by the current increases of warming observed. The reality is that Sessions was still wrong if he was using that example to say that Global warming doesn’t seem to be increasing as fast as predicted. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313.md?page=2)