In 2012, global warming is virtually undeniable. A cause strongly championed by Al Gore in his 2007 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, it is now catalogued by National Geographic, certified by NASA, and tracked by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But there remain many non-believers, and they were thrust into the spotlight again this week when former SNL star Victoria Jackson called global warming “false science” on The Howard Stern Show. She is just one of the celebrities who continue to deny the phenomenon that science supports.
After Victoria Jackson’s performance on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show in the early 1980s caught Lorne Michaels’s eye, he hired the Florida native as a regular on Saturday Night Live. Now a wife and mother, the radical-conservative comedian is still making waves. Promoting her new book Tuesday on Howard Stern, Jackson clung to her right-wing views—telling Stern there is a “secret, underground group of showbiz conservatives” in L.A. “It started with two people in 2000,” she said. “Now there are over 2,000.” When Stern brought up global warming, Jackson didn’t hold back. “Human-caused global warming has never been proven,” she said, adding. “It’s based on false science.”
The 1970s guitarist is the magic behind hits like Stranglehold and Cat Scratch Fever. But the Detroit native isn’t your average rock and roller. A gun enthusiast who once threatened Barack Obama, he has a simple view on global warming: it’s a hoax. In a speech to his granddaughter’s Catholic grade school in March of 2010, Nugent boldly stated, “Global warming is a fraud. Watch Glenn Beck.” In an earlier article, he went even further: calling Al Gore a “fraud” and a “global-warming Ponzi-schemer.”
After spending much of 2009 asserting that there had been no global warming since 1998—a thesis widely discredited—The Washington Post’s George Will came out swinging again in 2012. On ABC’s This Week in July, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist was asked to explain the extreme summer heat wave in the absence of global warming. “One word: summer,” said Will. “I grew up in central Illinois in a house that had no air conditioning. What is so unusual about this? We’re having some hot weather. Get over it.”
Rush Limbaugh is famous for offending, well, just about everyone. Whether he’s classifying the entire African-American community as ‘lazy and angry,’ or deeming birth-control users ‘sluts’, he has made comments generally seen to be as absurd as they are incendiary. Limbaugh’s take on global warming is no exception. On a segment of his radio show in July 2011, he offered up what he considers the sole reason for climate-change anxiety: air conditioners. Limbaugh explained that back in the day, when there weren’t air conditioners, the outside didn’t feel that different in warm months. But now, he said, “when you go out … golly is it hot!” If only it were that simple.
If you’re going to blow global-warming studies wide open—why not do it in the state that nearly started it, and is at the forefront of environmental research? Speaking to a group in Redding, Calif., in 2010, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin said the science of climate change was really just a ploy to hurt oil companies. “We knew the bottom line … was ultimately to shut down a lot of our development. And it didn’t make any sense because it was based on these global warming studies that now we’re seeing (is) a bunch of snake-oil science.” In regard to Obama’s climate-change treaty she added, “Yeah, I don’t think much of it.”
The late Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton was so against the idea that humans were responsible for global warming that he wrote a book about it. His 2004 thriller, State of Fear, argued that the impending threats of global warming were being exaggerated by environmentalists and an alarmist news media. While promoting the book, he did not mince words. “My view of this is that the media is like the guy going down the street with a sign that says, ‘The End of the World Is Near,’ and he picks a date and the day comes and goes, and the world doesn’t end,” he said, adding, “I’m saying that environmentalists are fomenting false fears in order to promote agendas and raise money.” In fairness, Crichton did not argue that the world was not getting warmer, just that there was no evidence to determine if the changes were man-made.
Donald Trump can always be counted on to say something controversial. When snow storms got bad on the East Coast in 2010, The Donald took it out on Al Gore. “With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore,” he said. “Gore wants us to clean up our factories … when China and other countries couldn’t care less … China, Japan, and India are laughing at America’s stupidity.”
Television presenter and host of the BBC’s Top Gear Jeremy Clarkson has long been outspoken against climate change. In 2009 he said, “I think people are rather bored with the idea of climate change and, when we do get a lovely day, let’s just enjoy it, not get guilty.” And his views had not changed at all by 2012, when he said, “Science fiction is thriving; only today it’s all being written by global-warming enthusiasts.”
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