This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Jason Chaffetz near the end of his debate with Brian Wonnacott Tuesday night said, "Global warming is a farce." A version of this rhetoric echoes daily throughout the country as Republican denialists insist climate change is a scientific and liberal hoax while never offering scientific data to validate their own erroneous claims.
Even Republicans, who believe that denial will make the climate issue vanish, are being affected by a rapidly heating Earth. And according to the latest research, it's going to become a hell of a lot hotter.
Climatologists now speculate that the Earth's mechanisms like coral reefs, rain forests, deciduous and conifer forests, plankton and algae throughout the oceans, all of which are slowly deteriorating because of climate change, have reached the point of saturation and can't scrub as much greenhouse gas from the atmosphere; hence, a rapid increase in greenhouse gas will accelerate global temperature.
It won't be many years before Republican congressmen, along with their foolish constituents, are held accountable for their intransigence as the Earth's ecosystems collapse and a future generation struggle to survive; however, I'd wager they'll blame it on Obama.
Allen Livingston
Huntington