Posted on March 27, 2012 by Anthony Watts

This just in from The Daily Climate, Kerry tells us we are winning, but the blames the usual suspects rather than the message itself. I love the part about where we “made up our own science”, which is sort of like when Kerry swiftboated the weather back in 2008, except there was really no support for his position in science. Of course that lack of basic understanding couldn’t be the reason “people just turn off” when he’s talking about climate, could it?

Kerry: ‘We have lost the notion of responsible capitalism’

Venting frustration at the lack of progress on environmental issues, U.S. Sen. John Kerry voices the exasperation of a core constituency in President Obama’s re-election bid.

By Doug Struck For the Daily Climate

BOSTON - Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John Kerry, exasperated at what he called “the flat-earth caucus,” on Sunday described the frustrations of working on environmental issues in the U.S. Senate.

Even amid the “Tuesday Group” - a bi-partisan bloc of lawmakers, mostly Democrats, who are interested in energy issues - “you can’t talk about climate now,” Kerry said. “People just turn off. It’s extraordinary. Only for national security and jobs will they open their minds.”

Kerry, in a dinner speech at Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, voiced the exasperation of an environmental movement that had high hopes with the election of President Obama in 2008 but has been disappointed by the administration and largely shut out after the Republican takeover of the House in 2010.

“The irony is that we used to be a nation that valued science. We have become a nation that is now discarding science,” Kerry said. He spoke at a conference on the challenges facing the Arctic, attended by Iceland’s president, Olafur Grimsson.

Iceland temperatures manipulated by government funded NASA/NOAA craftsman.

Opponents to the legislation “made up their own science. They made up their own arguments,” Kerry said. “The Republicans created this idea of (carbon credit) trading because it avoided command and control by the federal government.” Then, “they just decided to pick up and brand this a negative.”

Kerry blamed brothers David and Charles Koch, oil billionaires who have bankrolled attempts to discredit climate change, as well as opposition from energy companies. “You have Peabody Coal. You have MidAmerican. They have these big old cash cows, these old coal-powered plants. It’s just cash coming in, and they want to keep it that way.

Icecap note: And in a few years when the Atlantic follows the Pacific into the cooling mode and the Eddy Grand minimum begins and temperatures globally plummet, you Mr Kerry with your partner in crime, the equally clueless Henry Waxman who have helped the government fund the biggest scam in science in history will be turned on by angry Americans. The public senses the scam and see it is perpetuated by those who have a big D after their name. Sadly I am an independent who used to vote for Ds. No longer if they continue their anti science, anti energy, class warfare, big government ultra progressive campaigns.

------------------

John Coleman opines on the political nature of Global warming

It seems to be 90% politics to most people.  People’s attitudes about the threat to our way of live and our standard of living poised by Global Warming seems to be dictated by their political party affiliations, or least their political leanings, and attitude about the Environmental Green Energy issues than about the scientific issues or debate.  Liberals are generally closed to scientific discussion saying it’s settled science, that 97% of scientists accept the science as settled (both of which are not facts at all) and conservatives support the Global Warming skeptics without doing much or any study of scientific arguments first.  It drives me nuts. 

I support the efforts to come up with alternate (green) energy sources (but I know that there is no viable such green energy alternative to fossil fuels now available and none that seems to be any where near to reality.  I also know that in time we must come up with a replacement for fossil fuels and the internal combustion automobile and jet aircraft engines.  But, that someday is definitely not now.

Thanks to science and engineering our processed fuels (California’s reformulated fuels lead the way) and injection engines with catalytic converters and smoke stack scrubbers and cleaned fossil fuels for power plants, our used of fossil fuel is no longer a significant air pollution issue.  That is unless you subscribe to the outrageous anti-science position of the Environmental Protection Agency and classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant and the primary source of man-made global warming.  That is a totally environmentalist driven, political distortion of science.  It drives me nuts and must be addressed.

One of my heros, William Happer, Ph.D. in Physics, at Princeton has just contributed an item on this topic.  Regardless of your political or environmental position, I hope you will read it.  It is from the Wall Street Journal (see post under Political Climate).