Climate Monday: Let's Go To Mars, Dude!

I know, I know, I'm a day late and this is a light post, but I genuinely think this comment from a KY lawmaker last week short-circuited my ability to get past denialism--because wow. Here's the definitive "shut your mouth" from State Senator Brandon Smith, who owns a coal plant:

“I won’t get into the debate about climate change,” Smith said. “But I’ll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There’s no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.”

It's a thing of unsurpassable beauty in all the wrong it has in it. He's not debating, but he's making a point. The point he's making isn't only not true, but very not true--Mars is farther away from the Sun and a lot colder. He isn't in academia, but there is no consensus in academia anyway that would even try to support his one, very wrong, point.  Which leads me to wonder if he is, in fact, hopelessly stupid and has lived as long as he has believing that Mars is like one of those planets from Star Trek that is just like Earth, but the people are just a slightly different hue with a ridge thingy on their foreheads or something. Or he kind of thought it might not be true, but he double-dog dares anyone to look that the hell up! Or, he genuinely believes that the people he is speaking to, the real folks, the ones who like his coal mines and jobs and stuff, really don't care what he says, so he will lie to them and treat them like idiots because they deserve it.

So, this is the extreme example, but most denialist arguments sound kind of like this to me--sort of dumb to begin with, but with an arrogance that no one will critique the stupid bits and the certainty no one who matters would really care.