The King of Denial
January 26th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Two days after the President of the United States - a Texas oilman to the core - finally got around to acknowledging global warming in his State of the Union address, Texas Republican Phil King proudly announced that he believes in no such thing. Overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, King told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “I think it’s just bad science. I think global warming is bad science.” King, a state representative from Weatherford, joins such icons of deep thinking as Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the ever-lonelier camp of climate change deniers.
King went on to make the ludicrous assertion that “For every study and every report that somebody points to and says this is occurring, you can find just as many that say it’s not.”
Back in the reality-based community, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s most authoritative body on climate change, long ago concluded that human-induced climate change is a reality and that the phenomenon is caused primarily by human consumption of fossil fuels. For years, the only signigicant “debate” taking place within the wide mainstream of scientific opinion has been over how quickly the earth is heating up and what the consequences will be for human life. The panel, comprised of thousands of scientists and experts from over 150 countries, is due in February to release the first part of a massive report that will hopefully lay to rest any quaint notions that it’s all just a liberal plot.
“This isn’t a smoking gun; climate is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles,” a co-author of the report recently told the AP.
Skepticism is healthy for scientists and politicians alike. But the dwindling number of global-warming deniers are beginning to seem rather silly - and dangerously ignorant or self-serving. King, for example, chairs the Regulated Industries Committee in the House, which oversees the carbon-intensive electric utilities industry. King has expressed support for the 18 proposed coal-fired power plants, which critics decry as global warming juggernauts.
TXU finally cried ‘uncle’ on climate change this Monday by accepting the conclusion of the majority of scientists. Exxon-Mobil, the mother of all polluters, has owned up. As noted earlier, even President George “The Jury’s Still Out” Bush has said we’ve got to do something about climate change. What’s up with the rest of these holdouts and why do they all seem to live in Texas?
June 11th, 2008 at 10:36 am
[…] The steering committee of Power Across Texas includes Erle Nye, the former chairman of TXU, some guy from mega-utility AEP, and that noted greenie, state Rep. Phil King (R-Weatherford), the chairman of the House Regulated Industries Committee and a proud global warming denier. […]