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This article explains how several of the extreme weather events that we have recently experienced are connected to the science of global warming. Most of you already know this stuff but its important to understand the resistance. For example, Florida had a an unusually cool winter this year and it was used as evidence by right wing commentators like Rush Limbaugh to deny global warming. One of my relatives, who happens to belong to the Florida tea party, declared on Facebook that "I told you that Al Gore was crazy". They of course made the common mistake of using a single weather event to deny global warming. On the other hand, the extreme heat that has broken records in many parts of the country is regarded as an exception, it is not viewed as evidence for global warming. There is no way to convince a large segment of the population that global warming is real by using evidence. Many of the deniers are similar to those who want to eliminate evolutionary theory from school textbooks despite the overwhelming evidence for evolutionary theory in biological science.
Not too long ago groups like the tea party would have been ignored as ignorant extremists. Today they have been organized into a powerful political force that can determine election results in most of the southern and rural states. They attend church on a regular basis by listening to Rush Limbaugh and others on talk radio and they can hardly wait to watch Fox News in the evening to have the days events explained to them according to the gospel of right wing extremism. Even well educated and very smart politicians like Mitt Romney are forced to deny global warming in order to win the GOP nomination for the presidency. The inmates are running the asylum, and it is very dangerous for the US and the rest of the world.
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