# 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:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**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, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/21 "2012-08-04T15:55:00Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > [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: > 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.. Oh puhleeze. The facts about carbon sinks are from a peer reviewed article: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7409/full/488035a.html](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7409/full/488035a.html) I just grabbed the first Google hit. You may mock MNN’s synopsis all you want, but the facts are there in the peer reviewed article. ---
**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, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/22 "2012-08-04T16:27:45Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Oh puhleeze. The facts about carbon sinks are from a peer reviewed article: > [The balance of the carbon budget | Nature](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7409/full/488035a.html) > > I just grabbed the first Google hit. You may mock MNN’s synopsis all you want, but the facts are there in the peer reviewed article. Read again for comprehension. The study does not lead one to assume that we should drop the rise in tenperature observed. It is useless for your point and as mentioned I’m not questioning the paper, only your cherry pickness. ---
**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, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/23 "2012-08-04T17:12:11Z")
In general terms it is like seeing deniers going all “Yeah!!!” for the secuestration doubling, but they forget the “we humans have increased emissions fourfold at the same time” is also in the mix. So real skeptics should be going “Yeeeeaaah ?! ??? ?” Wha? if they take into account the fourfold increase, but deniers just ignore what is inconvenient. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2012, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/24 "2012-08-04T19:16:30Z")
Hey, the good news is that it may be _twice_ as long before we all fucking die! ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2012, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/25 "2012-08-05T03:44:56Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > 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”. It’s worse than the predicted average here in the central U.S. The coasts get off easy. If our national capital were St. Louis, we’d probably have taken action by now. ---
**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 5, 2012, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/26 "2012-08-05T04:20:25Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > It’s worse than the predicted average here in the central U.S. The coasts get off easy. If our national capital were St. Louis, we’d probably have taken action by now. According to my cite it’s worse than predicted all over, at least on average. And the climate models I’ve seen show superproportionate warming in the midwest. No worries, the midwest was a big opponent of carbon taxes in the early 1990s. A tax on C02 is a tax on coal, and the midwest uses a lot of that stuff for electricity generation. For that matter I don’t see a lot of green activism coming out of Florida. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2012, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/27 "2012-08-05T10:53:46Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > According to my cite it’s worse than predicted all over, at least on average. And the climate models I’ve seen show superproportionate warming in the midwest. > > No worries, the midwest was a big opponent of carbon taxes in the early 1990s. A tax on C02 is a tax on coal, and the midwest uses a lot of that stuff for electricity generation. For that matter I don’t see a lot of green activism coming out of Florida. I’m not making any generalizations on other topics, but I just wanted to mention that while Florida does use coal for electricity, it uses quite a bit less than the rest of the Southeast or the Midwest - about 25% of their total energy\* generation comes from coal. A little more than half of their energy comes from natural gas. One of the reasons for this is the high cost of transport of coal to Florida (although the cost of transport of natural gas is also relatively more expensive and subject to interruption - from pipeline disruptions during hurricanes and from demand during cold winter days - which is why Florida tops the continental US\*\* in energy coming from oil at about 4%). \*when I say energy here, I mean energy produced in the electric sector \*\* Hawaii and Alaska both use a butt-load of oil for electric generation ---
**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 5, 2012, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/28 "2012-08-05T18:02:02Z")
**Darth** : What I had in mind was that Florida is likely to face climate change impacts first. Adding energy into the atmosphere probably increases the frequencies of higher category hurricanes. And when Greenland ice hits a tipping point (30 years? 130 years? who knows?) the rise in sea levels would hit Florida especially hard. No worries though. Florida extracts billions of dollars from the Feds in the form of FDIC bailouts and hurricane relief. I assume that will continue. Morally of course, they should be supporting carbon taxes or emissions trading. But such agitation tends to come from the richer blue states rather than the red or purple. ---
**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 6, 2012, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313/29 "2012-08-06T13:22:44Z")
Worth noting that his taking offense comes on the heels of a study suggesting that climate change is occurring at a rate commensurate with the worst estimates … and what liberal thinktank funded that study? Why, the Koch brothers. [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/28/602151/bombshell-koch-funded-study-finds-global-warming-is-real-on-the-high-end-and-essentially-all-due-to-carbon-pollution/](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/28/602151/bombshell-koch-funded-study-finds-global-warming-is-real-on-the-high-end-and-essentially-all-due-to-carbon-pollution/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republican-senator-offended-by-facts/630313.md?page=1)