Climate Denial Crock of the Week

“…the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” – Carl Sagan

This is going rather well.
One of my projects this year is to amplify as much as possible the true face of climate denial – starting with Strom,..ahem..James Inhofe, who is to climate as Strom Thurmond was to civil rights.  Now, another plum has fallen into my lap, with Senator Ted Cruz inserting himself prominently as yet another ideal face for the climate denial movement.

Not only is the Senator from Texas a demonstrated race baiter, and a self promoting, Dr. Suess reading bomb thrower – he has shown himself to be consistently and increasingly unpopular even among his own party, and the right wing media itself.
So the Ted Cruz demographic tracks pretty close to the climate denial demographic, on the extreme right wing fringes of American politics – right where I think it should be in people’s minds.

So far so good.

Now the gentleman from Texas has gone so far as to compare himself to Galileo.

Here is the relevant portion of the Texas Tribune interview in which Cruz makes the bizarre claim.. so jammed with climate denial nonsense that one hardly knows where to begin.

Cruz, when challenged by the interviewer on whether he is “out of step” with younger voters, responds that, at a rally the day before, with “12,000 college students”, the atmosphere was “electric”.
One can only assume Cruz was talking about the event at Evangelical conservative Liberty University, which has been well tracked in the social media. Judge for yourself whether the electric charge was positive or negative.

Daily Dot:

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told the world on Monday morning that he was running for president, surprising exactly no one. Cruz made the initial announcement on Twitter and then followed it up with a speech at Liberty University.

Making such a major announcement on a college campus might seem like a risky move for a conservative like Cruz, but Liberty University is no ordinary college. Founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell in the early 1970s, the school was recently listed as one of the top ten most conservative colleges in the country. The odds of Cruz’s announcement speech being interrupted by liberal protesters were about as low at Liberty as they would have been at CPAC, the annual conservative conference. Cruz’s choice of venue also allowed him to send social conservatives a message while visibly appealing to young people.

Nevertheless, college kids are still college kids, and mandatory Monday morning assemblies are still mandatory Monday morning assemblies. Yes, that’s right: Attendance at Cruz’s speech was mandatory for all Liberty students.

As you might expect, anonymous local messaging app Yik Yak soon filled up with comments from Liberty students mercilessly mocking Cruz.

In the interview above, I was struck by Cruz’ creepy repetition of the phrase “massive government control of the energy sector and every aspect of our lives”, – and kept flashing back to General Jack D. Ripper’s “precious bodily fluids”.  For researchers on the denialist mind, and historians trying to piece together what went so horribly wrong in our supposedly advanced society – I have just two words.
Toilet training.
That’s all I’m gonna say.