The more mainstream Republicans will probably blame Democratic resistance to nuclear power, but the Freedom Caucus may have another strategy in mind.
“Democrats secretly poisoned the climate with geoengineering and chemtrails, and are now trying to enslave the rest of us to further their evil plans!”
The main denial isn’t that climate change isn’t real. Only complete morons like Boebert might say that. The argument is against the idea that climate change is caused by human activity. Any data on climate change can be waved away as normal cycles.
Democrats created climate change just to make Republicans look bad.
That is my thought as well. If/when it becomes undeniable, they will deny that they ever denied it, and anyone who says otherwise is just playing that blame game rather than implementing a solution, which undoubtedly involves tax cuts for the wealthy, and securing our boarders against the hoards of climate refugees.
I’ve seen a conservative here blame Obama for not being able to convince him that climate change was real, also the Democrats “politicized” the debate, whatever the fuck that means.
Here’s a great Tom the Dancing Bug comic on the subject.
We already have this situation in Canada. The conservative party has its base in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where oil and gas are sacred cows. But the party leadership (and the oil industry lobby) recognises that it’s no longer acceptable, at the federal level, to deny the problem. So they just attack any carbon reduction measures (especially carbon taxes) as too costly. The only solutions they propose are (1) using advanced science to study the problem, (2) promoting gas (replacing some petroleum with LNG, and exporting LNG to countries that use coal) and (3) investigating carbon capture.
Yup. I can almost hear it.
“What we need is to give the energy companies free rein to do whatever they want! AND however, always let the people freely choose whether they drown or burn, as long as they can fuel up their SUV!”
Except that there is a point at which any given mitigation strategy is too expensive. Plus, everyone has their own personal cutoffs at how much comfort versus conservation is acceptable. If any and all conservation is to be lauded, then the “but so-called environmentalists fly to conferences on their private jets!” argument would have merit, which it doesn’t. To say that you think that a given mitigation strategy’s cost would be better spent on some other climate goal, or even that it would be a lot of money for very little benefit, which would be better spent on things other than climate, doesn’t make one a crypto-denialist.
I think they will blame the immigrants. And if they think we have too many now…
Easy: They’ll say “It’s all Biden’s fault!”. Or insert whomever is the current or most recent Democratic president.
Or if pressed further, “What, you’re actually unsure of how it’s Biden’s fault? Read the news!”
“Well, I’m sure we can all agree at least that it’s all Biden’s fault.”
“It’s all Biden’s fault because he’s in league with the Evil Woke Brigade.”
What, you didn’t think that they’d actually come up with justifications for their positions, did you? Why would they need to do that? The bare accusation plays just fine with their base, no need to make things complicated.
Pretty gross, trying to get into their heads like this.
I see a lot of 'pubs just throwing their hands in the air with resignation and sloughing it off with a “too late now to do anything about it” handwave.
I’m often making refences to the summer mega-droughts that the western half of North America has been contending with for the last 20+ years, and too often I get dozy repsonses, as though they were unaware, or just really don’t give too much of a blank about it.
Y’all, @Sam_Stone is replying as I type, so we’re about to get the answer to the OP’s question!
Prediction: “Democrats hate nuclear power so it’s their fault, also, lemme tell a bunch of lies!”
In which case we’re fucked, might as well party hardy, right?
There have been a number of die-offs in the Phanerozoic eon – from the Cambrian era to date – the Big Five more significant ones being notable. Biggest one of them all was the P-Tr event a the end of the Permian period and the beginning of the Triassic. It was also big enough to be marked as the end of the Paleozoic era and the beginning of the Mesozoic – the age of dinosaurs – as 96% of all species were wiped out.
[I]t is the Earth’s most severe known extinction event,[11][12] with the extinction of 57% of biological families, 83% of genera, 81% of marine species[13][14][15] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species.[16] It is the largest known mass extinction of insects.[17]
[…]
The scientific consensus is that the main cause of extinction was the flood basalt volcanic eruptions that created the Siberian Traps,[19] which released huge amounts of carbon dioxide,[20] elevating global temperatures[21][22][23] and acidifying the oceans.[24][25][3] The level of atmospheric carbon dioxide rose from around 400 ppm to 2,500 ppm with approximately 3,900 to 12,000 gigatonnes of carbon being added to the ocean-atmosphere system during this period.[21] Important proposed contributing factors include the emission of much additional carbon dioxide from the thermal decomposition of hydrocarbon deposits, including oil and coal, triggered by the eruptions,[26][27] emissions of methane from the gasification of methane clathrates,[28] emissions of methane possibly by novel methanogenic microorganism nourished by minerals dispersed in the eruptions,[29][30][31] an extraterrestrial impact creating the Araguainha crater and consequent seismic release of methane,[32][33][34] and the destruction of the ozone layer and increase in harmful solar radiation.[35][36][37]
Sounding familiar?
See? It’s all perfectly natural.
Yeah, because we have almost nothing else! Quebec is awash in hydro resources. Ontario has lots of hydro and nuclear. BC has lots of hydro. It’s real easy to talk ‘net zero’ when you get 70-80% of your energy from renewable and nuclear sources already.
Alberta and Saskatchewan have almost no hydro or other developable non-fossil resources, and our energy exports in Alberta are a main component of our economy, amounting to about $39,000 per person. Trudeau wants us to cut that in HALF. Is any other province in Canada willing to take an economic hit like that, AND pay to transform a heavily fossil dependent energy system with something else?
Tell you what: To pay for all this Alberta should get back all the equalization money. Quebec should lose all of theirs, since they are now an ‘energy have’ province. Canada can start subsidizing Alberta like we’ve been subsidizing Canada, because we stand to be hurt the most from the ‘energy transition’. But that’s not how Trudeau rolls. He just wants to shut us down and give our workers ‘sustainable jobs’, which is bullshit.
Support for cutting Alberta’s oil would plummet in Canada if other provinces had to pay their share of the costs. Especially Quebec, which has been benefiting disproportionally from Alberta’s oil revenue for a long time.
Actually, you will be supporting us. I hope Quebec realizes that shutting down our energy will turn Alberta back into a ‘have not’ province, and Quebec’s share or our oil profits (billions per year) will stay in the ground in Alberta.
As for the power grid, Alberta can not build a non-renewable power system. Trudeau is demanding the impossible, and Smith was right to tell him to take a hike. Our future relies on nuclear, or a whole lot of natural gas with some wind and solar supplements. Nothing else works here.
You left out 4) pushing for nuclear power.
But of course there is opposition from the left:
Just for completeness, here’s our energy report for a couple of hours ago:
https://twitter.com/reliableab/status/1680239433520480256?s=61&t=RJpEck3wp7LlEO0cNO3zPA
We actually have a LOT of wind and solar in Alberta - it’s just fairly useless. We have over 5,000 MW of wind and solar, which would be enough to meet half of our current demand if it was providing full output power. However…
Today so far, Solar is operating at 57.3% of capacity, and wind is at 1.0%. So 86.9% of our energy has to come from fossil fuels. This is a common situation. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the fossil fuel percentage go below 75%. And this is summer, when solar works at all. It provides virtually nothing in December and January. So what do you suggest we do?
And three of four of our grid partners are also importing energy. Often it’s all four, at which point the spot price can jump to $1,000/MW. It’s forecast to go to $400 later today. We already having severe energy issues, and Trudeau wants us to just shut down 50% of our fossil capacity. He’s insane.
Take away our fossil fuel, and Alberta will freeze in the dark and Canada will become poorer. In the meantime, China is building coal as fast as they can, and powering it in part with the coal we sold them when we shut down coal plants here. We didn’t reduce coal burning - we just transferred it to China, along with some more manufacturing.
I think you got some spittle on your chin that time.
This made me LOL! But damn if it’s not right on target.
MTG already has provided her answer: Jewish Space Lasers cause the wildfires in California.
Climate change is a Jewish plot guys.
I’m not so sure they’ll actually blame climate change on anyone. The pivot I’m expecting will be: “yeah, OK, climate change is real… and that’s a good thing.”
The assholes could very well take credit for it.
We have someone on this very board that thinks we need more atmospheric CO2 or all the plants are going to die.