Fred Thompson, Soon-to-Be GOP Candidate, on Climate Change
by Alex Pasternack, New York, NY 
on 06. 1.07
While the Democrats' dream candidate resists calls to quit his day job and return to politics, it looks like future Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson is already establishing the kind of science credentials popular (despite some late promises to the contrary) in the current White House:
Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. … NASA says the Martian South Pole’s ‘ice cap’ has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto. This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, nonsignatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their airconditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.
We would have told him not to, but Thompson has already quit his day job, in which his lines were also fictional and scripted. The joke does beg the question however: which planet does he live on?
: : Thompson's Blog at ABC Radio, via New York Times; : : Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report
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Democrats are SO hoping that this guy runs. He's a stumbling buffoon. Rudy is nimble and agressive and takes the game onto the Democrats' field, Rudy is the one Democrats fear.
Senators can't win elections... except for Republicans.
Celebrities are ignorant and should be quiet about political issues... except for Republicans.
I'm sure he'll win. Idiot America won't let me down.
I am not sure what Thompson is implying when he jokes about SUV driving aliens, but he would seem to be suggesting that scientists have claimed that warming implies anthropogenc warming, when that it clearly not the case.
Besides which, his reasoning is akin to saying that since there are at any time at least 4 cars starting up and going at the same time, they must somehow be tied together by way of a common cause.
I think that the first stage of global warming denial is not that you deny certain fundamental claims of what is going on, but that you simply don't take the time to understand those claims to begin with.
I wish Senator Thompson's enitre short blog post http://abcradio.com/article.asp?id=386579&SPID=15663
on climate change by had been quoted. Here's how it ends:
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Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn't even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There's a consensus.
Ask Galileo.
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He isn't necessarily disputing that climate change is taking place, his coment can reasonably be construed to be suggesting that blaming warming solely on man's contribution may be to overstate the science and cut off further study.
Reads to me like a rehearsed script, drafted for his "improvisation" testing by staffers wanting to measure the result of their craft on campaign donations Equivalent to 'not much to see here, move along, donations from fossil fuel firms accepted at the back table.'
Fred Thompson was a paid lobbyist for the Competitive Enterprise Institute so he'll deny global warming as long as his paychecks keep coming.
haha idiot... i hope he never works again.
I think that Fred Thompson should tell that joke in New Orleans. He'd get a real big laugh there!
I'm a Dem, and I do fear Thompson running. The sheep in this country have already proved that they will vote for a Republican actor. They will buy into his planetary flu theory lock, stock and barrel. Be afraid of the dumbed down, flat earthers that make up the majority of the American public and the fundie Republicans who toil day and night to keep them that way. Be very afraid.
A lot of republicans have acknowledged global warming, like Tommy "I hate gays" Thompson.
The only two candidates I have seen put forth REAL proposals for GHG reduction are Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd. Its still early, and I have my fingers crossed for one of them to emerge.