It’s Getting Hot In Here

Why are conservatives such liars, deniers and naysayers when it comes to global warming? Because of their irrational hatred of Al Gore, liberals and environmentalists says David Roberts in a perceptive post over at Grist .

This pungent discovery got me pondering a post on how conservative opposition to global warming advocacy seems openly and bizarrely centered on hatred of liberals and environmentalists and Al Gore rather than, say, any substantive take on the issue itself. It is perhaps the clearest example of how modern conservatism has descended into pure resentiment.

Rather than deal with the science of it all, the denialist conservatives traffic in an unadulterated bitterness that drives their thinking. They are Jack’s sense of impotent rage. Its not all conservatives that are blinded by the Al Gore light.

As Jonathan Chait points out in the L.A. Times:

Your typical conservative has little interest in the issue. Of course, neither does the average nonconservative. But we nonconservatives tend to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom. Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.

In other words, as Stephen Colbert says, “Facts have a well-known liberal bias.”

Any conservative who believes the science rather than the right-wing ideology is forced to hide his or her beliefs for fear of being labeled a treehugging hippy commie freak. Witness the small band of Christian evangelicals who are all but forced into an environmental closet. And as the more moderate conservatives leave the deniers, liars and naysayers behind, the denialists become increasingly shrill while seemingly unaware that the American people are laughing at them, not with them.

Crossposted on Bloggernista