Repúblicanos y cambio climático (aún más)

El representante por el estado de Michigan, el republicano Fred Upton, que preside la Comisión de Energía y Comercio, es de la idea que la empresas no deben ser reguladas para moderar sus emisiones contaminantes, ya que si bien acepta que el clima se ha alterado en los últimos años, no considera que se trata de un evento causado por la acción del hombre. Los más importante donadores de fondos a la campaña de Upton, así como también de las de varios de sus compañeros de partido en la misma comisión, son compañias que se dedican al procesamiento de desechos tóxicos y otras actividades relacionadas con el sector energía.

Algunas reacciones de los lectores de la nota:

• Facts are such pesky things. I worked for 9 years in a geography dept at a state university - climatology is part of geograph - and guess what - out of 57 faculty only ONE thought it was bunk. And he testified repeatedly for the Bush administra­tion because there are only about 9 flat-earth­er's out there. With these guys in charge, we'll drown along with the island nations that are sinking into the rising ocean due to both poles' ice melting and changing the 'conveyor' that goes along the east coast of the Americas and back up Africa and England to the north pole. When that totally breaks - our weather could go either way, according to actual scientific fact - either another Ice Age because the pole ice is no longer there to reflect back the sun, instead the heat goes into the ocean - or the ocean heats past a way to cool it down, and we go ballistic with storms.
•  You want the scary informatio­n - Oceanic overturn (The disruption of the thermo-hal­ine circulatio­n - the mechanism where by warm water rises and cold water sinks.) is suggested as one of the reasons that lead to the late Devonian and Permian-Tr­iassic extinction events. The Devonian one alone wiped out 95% of all life on earth. Then there's Kump, Pavlov and Arthur's suggestion that Permian-Tr­iassic event was caused by hydrogen sulfide emissions from the sea, as the warming of the oceans upset the balance between phytoplank­ton and deep water sulfate-re­ducing bacteria, which lead to the poisoning of life in the sea and on land, and a severe depletion of the ozone layer.
•  Upton is but a reflection of the people who vote for him - the industrial­ized world's most ignorant, indolent, irrational and irresponsi­ble American elector. It is this incompeten­ce of many too many American voters that is the greatest obstacle this nation has to be competitiv­e in the 21st century. A populace with plummeting abilities, as shown by repeated studies, in science, mathematic­s and reading comprehens­ion cannot be a populace that is capable of selecting good representa­tives or requiring good government­. The American system of representa­tion is, unfortunat­ely, working way to well, and the representa­tives who are being voted into office are too faithful a mirror of the ignoramuse­s who vote for them.