Recently Lenar Whitney — a Lousiana state rep. running for Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA)’s seat in the House while he challenges Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) — released an interesting video in which she calls human made climate change a “hoax.” She also claims that “any 10 year old can invalidate” man-made climate change “with one of the simplest scientific devices known to man, a thermometer.”
Apparently, she doesn’t care that 3.7 million Americans — mostly in Whitney’s state of Louisiana, along with Florida, California, New York, and New Jersey — are at risk due to climate change-induced rising sea levels.
Whitney’s throwing down of the climate change denial gauntlet was bound to draw a response, and of course it did. After David Wasserman a House analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report wrote in a Washington Post column that he had never met a candidate for office who was “quite as frightening or fact-averse,” and Politifact looked into the claims that she makes in her video.
“We talked to several climate scientists who said Whitney’s claim was ‘laughable,’ ‘deeply misguided,’ ‘uninformed,’ ‘disgusting’ and ‘absurd.’
So is there a mass conspiracy to pull the wool over the world’s eyes? It seems highly unlikely, considering the numerous studies that show overwhelming consensus among respected scientists that anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming is indisputable.”
Going on they noted that 97 percent of climate scientists are in full agreement on the facts of climate change and man’s contribution to that change and that while it is true that a handful of scientists steadfastly cling to their denial they are on the fringe and “tend to have less expertise in the subject than those who believe in it.”
Citing a 2009 report they pointed out that within the scientific community the problem “appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact to policymakers and a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate among scientists.”
After considering the “evidence” that Whitney provided, Politifact determined that it was “simplistic” and that she was guilty of “cherry picking,” a common tactic employed by science deniers and that even her own source did not support her claims.
Politifact determined that scientific consensus disagrees with her claims and that her evidence was not there labeling her claim, “Pants on Fire.”
Whitney denies climate change on video.
Watch Whitney make a fool of herself in the video below.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BzItCPk5j4?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360]
Featured Photo: Composite from Lenar Whitney’s facebook page and Inhabitat.com.
