Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is just the latest Republican politician with presidential ambitions to cast doubt on the validity of climate change, a necessary prerequisite for claiming the G.O.P. nomination in 2016. Indeed, anyone who is going to have a ghost of a chance with the tea-party fueled right-wing electorate in that party needs to be a climate change denialist to the core (though Rubio has since backpedaled slightly, perhaps in embarrassment). Sadly, then, the senator is not alone.

Now, I don’t usually comment on opinion columns, but I will make an exception on this occasion, only because columnist Tom Morgan is spectacularly deserving of the “tin ear” award for his column “Remember that report? Well, forget it.” I know Morgan is trying to be, well … sort of funny, I guess, but when he spouts something like this, the humor escapes me:

That is part of the problem the president and the Greens face. They want us to be alarmed by climate whatever. But the reason they changed the term from global warming is that the globe did not warm — not the way they predicted. And so many more of their predictions have not come about.

Morgan goes on to say that many of the predicted “calamities” related to climate change have failed to occur. All of this, mind you, on the week when it was reported that the West Antarctic glacier is, well, melting away … in fact, it’s in the midst of what’s described by researchers as an unstoppable retreat which will result in a precipitous rise in sea level over the long term. That’s long term.

Short term, the evidence of climate change is simply undeniable. Glaciers are retreating in Greenland, the arctic is melting, California and Texas are experiencing unprecedented drought, and extreme weather is becoming more and more extreme. Maybe Morgan doesn’t live in Tornado alley, but frankly, if he doesn’t now he may soon. Here in upstate New York, we’ve had more tornadoes in the last couple of years than in the previous 30. The next big storm may be headed your way.

Perhaps when Super Storm Sandys start happening twice or three times a month, people like Morgan and Rubio may start admitting the obvious. But I’ll believe it when I see it.

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jp