Denying The Deniers

President Obama gave the commencement speech at UC-Irvine on Saturday, and he lit into climate change deniers in Congress yet again.

President Barack Obama renewed his campaign to curb carbon emissions Saturday, saying the debate over climate change is over.

Obama, who made the battle against climate change a core promise of his 2008 election campaign, has been stymied at the federal level by opposition from lawmakers.

Congress "is full of folks who stubbornly and automatically reject the scientific evidence," Obama told a crowd of more than 30,641 people, including thousands of graduates at the University of California, Irvine.

"They'll tell you climate change is a hoax, or a fad. One says the world might actually be cooling."

And yet people keep electing these same Republicans to Congress.  Luckily, here in reality, President Obama is encouraging solutions and not ignorance.

The president used his speech to the university graduates to present a $1-billion competition for funds to help communities hit by natural disasters linked to climate change.

"Climate change is no longer a distant threat," the president emphasized.

"In some parts of the country, weather-related disasters like droughts, fires, storms and floods are going to get harsher and costlier."

He stressed that climate change remains "one of the most significant long-term challenges" to the United States and the world.

It is, but that would require governance to deal with it, and Republicans haven't been interested in governance in decades.

"The climate change deniers suggest there's still a debate over the science. There's not," Obama said.

"I've got to admit, though, it's pretty rare that you'll encounter someone who says the problem you're trying to solve doesn't even exist."

When president John F. Kennedy set the United States on a course for the moon, Obama added, "I don't remember anyone saying the moon wasn't real, or that it was made of cheese."

Ouch.  And yet, climate change deniers are just as ridiculous and silly.  Sadly, they're also elected to power.

Perhaps we should do something about that in November.