Senator Marco Rubio followed up his climate denial on ABC’s This Week with a climate denial on The O’Reilly Factor last night. Predictably, O’Reilly did not ask any pesky questions about Rubio’s ridiculous attempt to make climate denial about abortion - as he did on Sean Hannity’s radio show last week – or his inability to cite any source that led him to conclude that human activity may not be causng climate change. In fact, even though Rubio’s comments on ABC were rated false by PolitiFact, O’Reilly gave him a pass on that, too. Instead, O’Reilly lauded Rubio as some kind of original thinker.
From a May 15 post on Think Progress:
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who has recently come under fire for failing to name a single source to justify his assertion that “there’s no scientific evidence” to prove humans are contributing to climate change, is defending his comments by claiming that at least he knows the science about abortion.
In an interview with Sean Hannity on Wednesday, the senator said that liberals who criticize him for ignoring climate science are revealing their “hypocrisy” because they ignore the science supporting the idea that life begins at conception. Rubio claimed this concept is a “proven fact” that people on the left are ignoring.
“Let me give you a bit of settled science that they’ll never admit to. The science is settled, it’s not even a consensus, it is a unanimity, that human life begins at conception,” Rubio said. “So I hope the next time someone wags their finger about science, they’ll ask one of these leaders on the left: ‘Do you agree with the consensus of science that human life begins at conception?’”
As Think Progress pointed out, Rubio did nothing to burnish his science cred with that analogy, either. But I digress.
Last night, after plumbing Rubio’s thoughts on President Obama, O’Reilly said, “You said flat out, (a) bold and fresh statement that you don’t believe the scientists on global warming.”
Rubio answered:
I’ve never denied the climate is changing. The climate is always changing. …The left loves to go around saying "There’s a consensus, there’s a consensus." There is a majority of scientists that say …that carbon emission by humans causes some changes in the climate. What there’s no consensus on, and they conveniently ignore is, there’s no consensus on the sensitivity of the climate. How much is it changing and how much of it is directly attributable to human carbon emission. There’s no consensus on that which is why the models vary so greatly. Which is why, despite 17 years of dramatic increases in carbon production by humans, surface temperatures on the earth have stabilized.
Assuming that Rubio is correct that there’s no consensus on just how much human activity contributes to global warming and that earth temperatures have stabilized (which the NOAA characterizes as a “pause” rather than a “stabilization”), Rubio is engaging in a straw man argument here. It’s akin to saying there’s no need to quit smoking because scientists don’t agree on exactly how many cigarettes you need to smoke to get lung cancer and pointing to a group of lifelong smokers who didn’t get it.
As PolitiFact reported when it rated Rubio’s This Week statement as “false”:
“The connection between increased levels of greenhouse gases and rising temperature has been confirmed by scientists for over a century, said Jennifer Francis, a Rutgers University marine and coastal sciences professor.
“There is as much uncertainty about this connection as there is about what will happen when you drop an object,” Francis said. “It will fall.”
Of course, O’Reilly did not challenge the fallacy. However, he did say he believes “all people should work together for a cleaner planet. I mean, I really believe that.” If you ask me, O’Reilly disagrees with Rubio but either for his own personal reasons and/or because he knew management would frown on such a thing, he kept his criticism of a potential Republican presidential candidate to himself.
Is this a wink and a nod that O’Bully is just in it for the money and knows full well that Fox and its gormless believers are on a different planet? Is he really saying that Rubio’s argument is a steaming pile of horseshit?
Let’s see how long he holds onto his Senate seat (never mind even running for the White House), considering — way ahead of the new, dire predictions of rising sea levels — many of his constituents in South Florida already, in 2014, have to put on hip boots when high tides flood their properties.
So on Memorial Day a few years from now, ex-Sen. Rubio will join his new BFF Slanthead Hannity for a bar-b-que on the patio at Hannocchio’s Moraya Bay beachfront condo in Naples, Fl. “Sorry Senator, no arroz con frijoles today… we’re having prime beef. I paid $78 a pound for these steaks. I don’t give a damn if extreme drought has caused meat prices to skyrocket, I EAT BEEF!”
Of course they’ll probably have to dine by candlelight while the waves lap at their feet. All the big coastal power plants in South Florida will go first.
Am I greatly accelerating the latest predictions by legitimate climate scientists? Perhaps, but just think about what would happen if Slanthead got his way and every single acre of American soil contained an oil or fracking well. And Hannocchio also wants every single coal deposit on our land fully dug up. Maybe his new title should be CBIC — Carbon Burner in Chief!
Slanthead Hannity is so fixated on fossil fuels and meat — just the other day on the radio, he was talking with a lawmaker from Oaklahoma, and the first words out of his mouth were: “I get off the plane in Oaklahoma and can smell the crude, and taste the big juicy steaks!”
Billy and the rest of the Fox “News” cafeteria Catholics would love to take on Tyson, but since this show is from Fox Television, they remain silent. These clowns don’t want to lose that high salary, and that cushioned job at Fox “News.”
Ruthless Rupy will not tolerate anyone who bashes Tyson or Cosmos. Rupy’s little company has put out millions of dollars in production and marketing of the weekly series.
No Fox “News” suit wants a face-to-face “meeting” with Ruthless on why his employees are attacking one of his shows.
Tyson will wipe the slate clean with these clowns, and friends of Fox “News.” These frauds won’t say anything negative because they are afraid of Ruthless.
