More Science Denial By The GOP

This happened yesterday in the United States Senate:

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) blocked Senate Democrats on Monday from passing a resolution that would have acknowledged the reality of climate change.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asked unanimous consent to pass S.Res. 524, which is a measure that expresses the sense of the Senate that climate change is occurring and poses a risk to the United States. But Inhofe objected.

Where else but amongst American Conservatives (yes, I know - not ALL of them, but enough for the rest of them to be ashamed) can a resolution acknowledging reality be so easily blocked?

Luckily, there was someone in the Senate (a New Englander, thankyouverymuch) who responded to the ignorance with some science.  From thinkprogress:

[Rhode Island Senator Sheldon] Whitehouse began by addressing one of Inhofe’s most oft-used arguments against the existence of climate change — that the earth’s atmospheric temperature has not risen in the last 15 years.

That “little rhetorical device” Inhofe is using fails to consider two things, Whitehouse said. One, is that more than 90 percent of the heat generated from increased carbon emissions gets absorbed into the ocean, not into the atmosphere. Two, is that any changes in ocean temperature will eventually have “a pronounced effect” on atmospheric temperature. Indeed, recent studies show that global temperatures are set to rise rapidly in the face of our increasingly warm and acidic oceans.

“To say that we have no warming is just not factual,” he said.

You can watch Senator Inhofe get some science by Senator Whitehouse:


Here's the 2014 National Climate Assessment if you want to read it.