Climate Sunday: A Meditation on Denialist WTF-ery

Here's Pat Robertson, who seems to believe that the EPA is "out of control" and actually, get this folks, powerful:
 

You know, I actually do think that a slightly more agrarian, rural existence would be neat. I'm a big fan of green spaces, parks, urban farms. I think that local cuisine should be really local and that it would benefit the environment if there was less globalization of things that could be locally produced. I think lots of our products are irresponsibly manufactured with needlessly toxic materials, too.

But most environmentalists aren't talking about everyone turning to the woods and squatting around a campfire wearing hemp huaraches. Implying that to be against mindless expansion of the fossil fuel industry and the wrack and ruin of our atmosphere is the same as shunning the technology that makes our civilization possible is kind of far-out.

Also, the idea that regulating water purity or carbon outputs associated with industry is somehow making people starve in other countries is really peculiar. Where does this jackass think food comes from? Newsflash, Pat--we're salting our own earth and acidifying our oceans. People don't eat coal, and they don't drink oil. Climate change threatens soil erosion and desertification--that's less arable land which, because our population is getting bigger, is used to feed more people, but will be capable of yielding less without some attention to sustainability. Because of what scientists (not your back-to-nature hippie leftists, but people who work with technology everyday) know about climate change, they can also tell us that there will be more storms, and deadlier storms, and those will effect particularly the poor of this world not because of their sins, but because of man's greed. Lord, if there is one--just call this mendacious grasping old prick home already.

But that's small-potato WTF-ery, because I just don't know who even listens to the likes of Pat Robertson anymore. Here's a person who is actually in our House of representatives, Rep. Steve Stockman, R-The Back Pocket of the Fossil Fuel Industry:

The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out.

Yep. That was a Tweet, and honestly, I checked in on that Twitter-feed throughout the day for other gems about how ironic it was that  the people chiding him for his anti-environmental views were using computers made in part from petroleum products! Wow! You've got us, dude! It's like we aren't even anti-technology or anti-science, just anti-stupid. Huh. But no, really. The best thing about Earth is the capacity for sustaining life.

In the real world, however, as an interesting footnote, did you know that most climate-change denialist books are linked to conservative think tanks? It's true! And most conservative think tanks are linked in some ways to fossil fuel money? Yeah! I know!