Quote After Quote From GQP Elected Officials: "It's Summer"; "Nobody Knows"; "Crazy Left Agenda"

[hatrack]

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“There is a very scientific word for this: It’s called summer,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told HuffPost when asked about the heat on Thursday. “It’s no hotter right now than it’s ever been. I’ve been in this heat all my life in July and August as a football coach. This world’s not heating up, come on.”

Tuberville coached college football before entering politics and has no apparent scientific background. Yet the lack of knowledge in the field doesn’t keep him from confidently pooh-poohing the work of thousands of scientists around the world. Last month, as much of the U.S. Northeast was blanketed in thick smoke from Canadian wildfires, Tuberville deployed a similar response: “We’ve had fires for all of our life, come on.”

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“Only in Washington will they try to find an excuse to take something that’s been going on for hundreds of years … to promote their crazy left agenda,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporter Pablo Manríquez in The New Republic this week when asked about the link between human-induced global warming and the crushing heat. “Southern Louisiana, it’s always hot,” Scalise added. “Thank God for air conditioning.”

Last month, Senate Republicans heard from a fossil fuel advocate at a weekly closed-door meeting who argued that the benefits of using fossil fuels outweigh the harms. GOP senators representing states reliant on oil and gas industries ate up his speech, carrying his signed book back to their offices. “It’s hot for sure, but we also know that weather cycles,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said. “What we do know about them is they’ve been going on for a long time. How much we can impact them — that’s the question. I doubt we can.” Asked if extreme heat is linked to climate change, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said: “I don’t think anybody knows.”

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/climate-change-heat-republicans_n_64c3c5bfe4b024f8ebc870f5