• by J Mitchell McMahon , June 23, 2008

You don't need to wear a tin hat to have your suspicions about why big energy and their Pennsylvania Avenue cohorts deny global warming. Their way of economic life - liquidating fossil fuels for industrialized use - is under siege by crystal clear (and actually understated) data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shows human activity, not natural weather patterns, is the dominant cause of climate change.

More mystifying than a fossil fuel alliance funding junk science is Joe Six Pack and fundamentalist religion's unified dismissal of climate change theory. Consider the bizarre attack on scientific reason by the God-fearing conservative group grassfire.org, run by a Ralph Reed-esque slickster named Steve Elliott - Carbon Belch Day. Ads call for a day of liberation from CO₂ guilt by partying like it's 1985: Smoke four cigars, leave lightbulbs on, drive every time you cross the street, turn up the AC, don't recycle. The goal: 100 million-plus pounds of CO₂ emissions to show Congress we don't want a Carbon Tax.

Cute. Despite parading sophomoric idiocy like a frat kid spraying beer at a MADD meeting, Elliott has roped in Fox Business, Sean Hannity, MSNBC, CNN and Glenn Beck. Prior Grassfire online petitions include Secure Our Borders, Stop Internet Porn and Save Marriage. Elliott claims more than 30,000 "scientists" have signed his Carbon Belch Petition, an unbelievable notion considering the great and humiliating pains Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., went to get 400 "scientists" to dispute "consensus" on the IPCC panel. Climatologists find themselves in the crosshairs of the same folks that brought us Intelligent Design. That alone should give us pause.

It seems the global warming denier shares alarming traits with the common psychopath, whom the American Psychological Association describes as marked by "a sense of extreme entitlement, deceitfulness, lying, conning others for profit, failure to plan ahead, reckless disregard for safety of self and others. Lack of remorse, as indicated by indifference."

Something's going on in the head of the denier, but it's not rational science.