Greg Sargent just posted the actual video of Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Ron Johnson blaming global warming on “sunspot activity,” and the full explanation is even more ridiculous than what we’ve seen excerpted so far. The full climate quote from his interview with the Journal Sun-Sentinel:
If you take a look at geologic time, we’ve had huge climate swings. We’re sitting here in Wisconsin. Had it not been for climate swings, we’d be sitting on a two or three hundred foot thick glacier. Man wasn’t around back then. So no, I absolutely do not believe that the science of man-caused climate change is proven. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I think it’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity, or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate.
The Middle Ages was an extremely warm period of time, too. It wasn’t like there were tons of cars on the road. So it always strikes me as a little absurd for anybody to think, Okay, this is the sweet spot in geologic time for climate. And it’s such a good place, that we have spent trillions of dollars, and do great harm to our economy, on a fool’s errand. I don’t think we can do anything about controlling what the climate is.
Here’s a solid, brief explanation of why the sunspots argument is bonkers. But, of course, this wouldn’t be so problematic if Johnson weren’t currently ahead of Democratic incumbent Russ Feingold in the polls.
