Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Ron Johnson channels Dale Gribble in climate change comments -- people like it “a little bit warmer”


His failure to take the issue seriously makes him unfit for a second term in office


To hear Sen. Ron Johnson put it, global climate change isn’t a problem at all. Humans will actually thrive under the warming temperatures, he says.

“Climate has already changed, always will. I’m just not an alarmist. We will adapt,” Johnson told a Wisconsin radio station recently.

He was certain that the warmer temps would be welcomed. “How many people are moving up toward the Antarctica, or the Arctic?” he asked rhetorically. “Most people move down to Texas or Florida, where it’s a little bit warmer.”

Johnson doesn’t want to do anything about climate change either, calling those who bring it up “alarmists,” adding that their actions and proposals will do “a great deal of harm on our economy.”

He acts as though climate change is a propaganda tool for some hidden agenda. Ron Johnson, in short, has become Dale Gribble.


But that sort of thinking is just plain idiotic. Yes, people love the beaches and coastlines that Florida and Texas have to offer, and so they flock to them for vacations even in the heat. But climate change will affect those areas too, in negative ways.

It goes beyond the temperatures -- should they continue to rise globally we’ll see water levels rise on coastlines worldwide, which will be devastating to states like Texas and Florida. In fact, according to estimates from actual scientists, a complete melting of the polar ice caps would result in the entire sinking of the state of Florida, and much of the Texas coastline would also disappear.

Weather patterns across the globe will be altered as a result of climate change, too. The severity of storms will increase, droughts will destroy the farming industry, and massive hurricanes will become commonplace.

But hey -- the temperatures will be warmer! And that’s what matters, according to Johnson. People love going to the beach, they love vacationing in warmer locales...so why the big fuss about global warming?

There’s plenty to fuss about, even if our sole focus is on temperatures alone. We’re already seeing the negative effects of climate change with regards to rising temps -- over the past ten years, heat-related deaths have become the number one killer of Americans when it comes to weather-related fatalities. And it’s only going to get worse: excessive heat events across the country are expected to rise by 475 percent by the middle of this century (PDF).

Sen. Ron Johnson likes to joke about and scoff off climate change as an “alarmist” piece of propaganda. But for many Americans, climate change is real, and is a matter of life and death. That Johnson refuses to take it seriously demonstrates in part why he’s unfit for the office he currently holds.

He doesn’t care about you, the voter, or other Americans threatened by this crisis. He just cares about monied interests that want to ignore the problem exists in the first place.

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