World In Flames: GQP: "I'm Not A Scientist"; "It's Summer"; "Virtue-Signaling"; "Hubris"

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“Do I have a comment about hot weather in the summer?” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who serves as an advisor to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said when asked about its link to climate change. “I was always taught that climate isn’t the same thing as the weather.” Scientists say this summer’s extreme weather — including hot-tub-like temperatures off the Florida coast and wildfire smoke that blanketed US cities — was far more likely due to worsening climate change. July’s extreme heat would be “virtually impossible” without climate change driving it, a scientific analysis published this week found. Cornyn said drawing a correlation from recent heat waves and wildfires to climate change was “hubris.”

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Some of Capitol Hill’s top Republicans said they are unmoved by recent weather to take a more aggressive stance on global warming, which is caused primarily by humans burning fossil fuels. “I hope we would not be swayed by news of the moment,” Representative John Curtis, a Utah Republican who chairs the Conservative Climate Solutions Caucus, said. “I think we sometimes have to be careful when we look at anomalies in weather as to whether or not they are a piece of a larger pattern or news of the moment. Because I’m not a scientist, I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about that.”

Not just heat and fires, but other weather events this summer such as horrific flooding in the Northeast are being exacerbated by climate change, said Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. “There will come a time when people look out the window and say, ‘Holy crap, we need to do something about it,’” Dessler said. “If this summer doesn’t do it, what’s it going to take?”

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But don’t expect anything major soon, said Senator Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who has called for putting a price on carbon. “I don’t think there is much action at all of a bipartisan nature on climate, other than small-bore virtue-signaling steps,” Romney said. “It takes the public at large to say ‘Hey, this is an important political issue.’ And as more young people fill out the voter rolls, you’re going to see this as a bigger political imperative.”

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-27/summer-of-heat-and-fire-doesn-t-sway-republicans-on-climate?srnd=premium&leadSource=uverify%20wall#xj4y7vzkg