Articles by Kit Stolz

Rush Limbaugh calls climatologist James Hansen a ‘double agent’

Earlier this week, the notorious Rush Limbaugh got in trouble for calling soldiers in Iraq opposed to the war "phony."

Thursday he called the science of ozone depletion "phony" and the science of climate change "fraudulent." Limbaugh went on to accuse Dr. James Hansen, America's top climatologist, of being "dishonest," compared him to a "CIA double agent," and said he should be "drummed out of NASA."

Does anyone take Limbaugh seriously anymore? Apparently, the answer is yes. Here are facts and links for the open-minded:

Alaskan senator invents new theory of global warming

Ted Stevens, the Republican senator whose vacation home was recently raided by the FBI, and who made over $800,000 from a shady real estate deal last year, has come up with a brand-new theory of global warming. He told a NBC reporter in Alaska:

We're at the end of a long, long term of warming, 700 to 900 years of increased temperature, a very slow increase. We think we're close to the end of that. If we're close to the end of that, that means that we'll start getting cooler gradually, not very rapidly, but cooler once again and stability might come to this region for a period of another 900 years.

This was Stevens' way of telling the villagers of Shishmaref, which is being washed away by rising waters despite the Army Corps of Engineers' construction of massive sea walls, that they're on their own.

It'll be interesting to see if the denialists at Planet Gore, so quick to attack anyone who dares make an issue of global warming, will leap to the defense of Stevens' claim, which as far as scientists can tell, appears to be a personal fantasy.

Bush lies misleads on global warming, again

The Prez has a long history of misleading the nation on climate change. Not unlike his father, who promised on the stump to be the "environmental president," Bush promised on the campaign trail in 2000 to reduce CO2 emissions, then promptly reversed this position once he took office.

But that's in the history books. Last week, according to the Washington Post, he told an audience at a fundraiser in Washington state:

Do you realize that the United States is the only major industrialized nation that cut greenhouse gases last year?

One problem: that's, er, misleading at best. A spokesperson for the Council on Environmental Quality admitted so after the speech, saying that although the U.S. did slightly reduce energy consumption and thus emissions last year, it couldn't rule out the possibility that other nations did as well.

"We are making sure the President is aware of that," the spokesperson said.

Fires in Greece encouraged by global warming, developers

Two years ago, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, conservatives and right-wingers were quick to deny any possible link to global warming.

"As if any reputable expert believes this is in any way connected," huffed Andrew Sullivan on his well-known site.

To his credit, Sullivan admitted just two days later that he may have blogged too soon, and said that experts such as Kerry Emmanuel had in fact linked global warming and more powerful hurricanes. In the years since, Sullivan has stopped questioning the reality of climate change, and called for a carbon tax.

Now we have an unprecedented outbreak of fire in Greece, and once again some are quick to insist that no connection can be made between drought, wind, record-breaking heat -- and devastating fires.