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Rick Santorum, fresh from attacking the Pope’s stance on climate change, says “there are more pressing problems confronting the earth” than protecting the earth.

If Santorum thinks there is something more important than a habitable planet, I can’t imagine what it might be.

Oh, what’s that, Rick?

I would say that’s an important thing to do, but I think there are more pressing problems confronting the Earth than climate change. Particularly when it comes to me as someone who is trying to go out there and make sure we have a revitalization in manufacturing, the things that create jobs and opportunities.

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Global warming seems like a pretty big issue to me. How are you going to revitalize manufacturing and create jobs when everybody is dead from polluted air, drinking water, drought, and melted ice caps that put much of the earth’s coastal regions under the waves? Huh, Rick?

The worst-case scenario looks pretty grim after all. Take a peek:

I think most of us agree the Appalachian Trail shouldn’t be beachfront property. Ditto with the problem of creating jobs if most of our large coastal population centers are best visited by boat and scuba gear.

Besides, this “jobs” rhetoric is kind of funny coming from a Republican, given how little interest the GOP has shown in actual job creation for the past six years. I mean, they’ve created exactly 0 of them.

You would think if Santorum was blasting anybody it would be Republicans in Congress.

In fact, it was during the Bush administration that so many jobs went overseas and “Made in America” labels became scarce. President Obama, on the other hand, has overseen 63 consecutive months of job growth and shown that “Made in America” is not a myth.

Chris Wallace actually asked Santorum to defend his earlier claims about the Pope, but facts – even the few presented – did not make an impression on the presidential hopeful.

This is how it went down yesterday on Fox News Sunday:

Chris Wallace: “Two points, if he’s not a scientist — and in fact, he does have a degree in chemistry — neither are you. That’s one point.

“The second point is that somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of the scientists that have studied this say that humans, human activity contributes to climate change.

“So, I guess the question would be if he shouldn’t talk about it, should you?”

Rick Santorum: “Well, we have to make public policy with regard to the environmental policy.”

Wallace: “But you’re not a scientist. You said leave science to the scientists.”

Santorum: “Politicians, whether we like it or not, people in government have to make decisions with respect to our policy that affect American workers.”

Wallace: “And you don’t think the pope has a right to talk about this?”

Santorum: “The pope can talk about whatever he wants to talk about. I’m just saying, what should the pope use his moral authority for?”

Wallace: “He would say he’s protecting the Earth?”

Santorum: “I would say that’s an important thing to do, but I think there are more pressing problems confronting the Earth than climate change. Particularly when it comes to me as someone who is trying to go out there and make sure we have a revitalization in manufacturing, the things that create jobs and opportunities.

“Speculative science which has proven over time not to have check out. All of the projections that were made 50 years ago, none of them have come true. So all of this certainty — this is what bothers me about this debate — the idea that the science is settled.

“Anytime you hear a scientist say the science is settled, that’s political science, not real science. Because no scientist in their right mind would say ever the science is settled.”

Of course, the actual percentage of climate scientists is not 80 to 90, but 97.

And these scientists would not call it “speculative science.” The science is based on observable data. Temperatures aren’t speculative, after all.

Says NASA,

Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals[1] show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. [1] J. Cook, et al, “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature,” Environmental Research Letters Vol. 8 No. 2, (June 2013); DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

And not settled? It looks pretty settled to me:

I’m not a scientist either, but I can see which direction that graph is pointing, and that the angle is getting steeper.

What is funny is the sudden Republican insistence that the Pope should stick to religion, while Evangelicals are making everything about religion – including global warming. It’s God, they say. Well, if they can say it’s God, then the Pope – he IS the Pope, after all – can say it’s man.

Rick Santorum is far from the only Republican exposing his own gratuitous ignorance and obscene levels of hypocrisy, of course, but each and every Republican candidate has had an opportunity to step out from the crowd and actually pay homage to the scientific underpinnings of our universe.

Instead, like Santorum, they rush to Fox News to put that ignorance and hypocrisy on display. Santorum’s feeble defense of the indefensible is just another reason why we can’t let a Republican be president again until, as a party and an ideology, they rejoin the rest of us in our shared reality.