{"id":338720,"date":"2024-08-07T14:23:49","date_gmt":"2024-08-07T12:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=338720"},"modified":"2024-08-07T14:23:52","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T12:23:52","slug":"guardian-climate-deniers-make-up-nearly-a-quarter-of-us-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=338720","title":{"rendered":"Guardian: \u201cClimate Deniers\u201d make up Nearly a Quarter of US Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Naomi Oreskes<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essay by<\/strong> Eric Worrall<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate believers claim climate skepticism is in decline, that a growing number of people are concerned about climate change. But if this is the case, why are there so many elected climate skeptics?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of US Congress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate denialists \u2013 23 in Senate and 100 in House \u2013 are all Republicans and make US an outlier internationally<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oliver Milman<\/a> and Dharna Noor<\/a>
Mon 5 Aug 2024 20.00 AESTLast modified on Tue 6 Aug 2024 00.51 AEST<\/p>\n\n\n\n

US politics is an outlier bastion of climate denial with nearly one in four members of Congress dismissing the reality of climate change, even as alarm has grown among the American public over dangerous global heating, an analysis has found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A total of 123 elected federal representatives \u2013 100 in the House of Representatives and 23 US senators \u2013 deny the existence of human-caused climate change, all of them Republicans, according to a recent study of statements made by current members<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely concerning,\u201d said Kat So, campaign manager for energy and environment campaigns at the Center for American Progress, who wrote the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOf course the climate is changing,\u201d the Texas senator Ted Cruz<\/a> said in 2018. \u201cThe climate has been changing from the dawn of time. The climate will change as long as we have a planet Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had freezing periods in the 1970s. They said it was going to be a new cooling period,\u201d the Louisiana representative Steve Scalise said in a 2021 interview, referencing long-debunked research that is often still cited by climate deniers<\/a>. \u201cAnd now it gets warmer and gets colder, and that\u2019s called Mother Nature. But the idea that hurricanes or wildfires were caused just in the last few years is just fallacy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe amount of people at each end of the spectrum \u2013 alarmed and dismissive \u2013 were essentially tied back in 2013 but today there are three alarmed people for every one dismissive, so there\u2019s been a fundamental shift in how people see climate change in the US,\u201d said Anthony Leiserowitz, an expert in climate public opinion at Yale.

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard University who has long studied anti-climate rhetoric, said it was \u201cunsurprising\u201d that the report found old-school climate denial is on the decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s harder to deny the science when it\u2019s so much more apparent that the climate is warming, that extreme weather is getting worse and happening constantly,\u201d she said. \u201cNobody can deny the science with a straight face, given everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026Read more:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/article\/2024\/aug\/05\/climate-change-denial-congress<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Activists like Oreskes claims climate skepticism is in decline, and climate concern is rising. But if this is the case, why are there so many elected climate skeptics in US politics? Why would people who are majorly concerned about climate change keep voting for representatives who oppose climate action?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know this might be a difficult concept for climate activists and some climate scientists to grasp, but if your model disagrees with observations, you should keep the observations and discard the model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climate believers claim climate skepticism is in decline, that a growing number of people are concerned about climate change. But if this is the case, why are there so many elected climate skeptics?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":338723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691818920,691822418,691818262,691830019],"class_list":{"0":"post-338720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-climate-deniers","10":"tag-professor-naomi-oreskes","11":"tag-the-guardian","12":"tag-us-congress","14":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/0oreskes.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1q7e","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":237809,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=237809","url_meta":{"origin":338720,"position":0},"title":"Municipalities of Puerto Rico v. 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This is because Professor Naomi Oreskes is an academic who specialises in debunking climate change sceptics. Yes, she takes people like you and cruelly exposes your na\u00efve acceptance of the supposed obfuscation, distortions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"climate alarmism\"","block_context":{"text":"climate alarmism","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-alarmism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-270.png?fit=1200%2C630&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-270.png?fit=1200%2C630&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-270.png?fit=1200%2C630&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-270.png?fit=1200%2C630&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-270.png?fit=1200%2C630&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=338720"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338724,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338720\/revisions\/338724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/338723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=338720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=338720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=338720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}