Something to think about while you swelter away the day

The dice, they be a-loaded.

"I'm starting to wonder if we will ever have a normal year again," Degroot said. "The last few years have been very difficult. It seems like every year, something is going on with the weather."

Loading the dice is a nice way to describe the metaphor of what global means to climate change. More heat into the system, by atmospheric heat-trapping gas (put there by our conversion of solid carbon into carbon dioxide), means more volatility in the climate system. Another way to put it is that when you add energy to an energy transfer system, what you get is often unpredictable change. Another way to put it is that we've known all this for years and years and years, but progress has been repeatedly held up by people who haven't bothered themselves to read about basic atmospheric physics before thinking themselves eminently qualified to weight in on important issues and declare them hoaxes and Bolshevik plots. By the way, have I mentioned that these are almost universally the same people who've been hopping and down on one foot the last two years, shrieking about health care reform as a "government take-over of health care," and repeatedly insist that tax cuts create jobs? Same people, same belief that facts are relevant to someone's previously held opinions, same ideas that are failures when applied to real life.

More from the Freep this morning.

A federal appeals court last week upheld the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to tackle global warming and affirmed the scientific evidence the agency is using. While no single year of weather records, bad air and crop damage makes the case for global warming, the years and records are beginning to pile up in a way that makes the arguments against controls on global warming gases look increasingly foolish.

Look, guys ... let's stop pussy-footing around about this. Climate change denialism is a stated and important component to rightwing ideology. It makes no sense that it is, but it is. The teabaggers will vote you out of office in Republican primaries if you profess to believe in global warming.

Let's start identifying the bad actors, the people who believe public policy ought to be based on fantasy rather than reality, by name. As small as possible to shame these people into saying stupid shit, but going large when necessary to point out mindless mob-like behavior.

When the Freep says that arguments against global warming controls look increasingly foolish, what the Freep means is that the Republican Party is increasingly at odds with reality on this issue. And, yes, it's entirely fair to suggest that if the Republican Party is so willing to embrace such a clearly foolish, easily-refutable position on hard science, then it's time to ask questions about whether their entire platform is based on foolish notions. It's time to stop coddling idiots.