As soon as I heard that Osama Bin Laden had emerged from his hidey hole to condemn America for causing climate change, I knew that Rush Limbaugh would be all over that action.  And I was not disappointed.  

Now there are two ways you can go with this.  The first is the random ad hominem attack.  The thing about a crazy man is that he is liable to say anything, because he is crazy.  Rush can gleefully point out that Bin Laden agrees with Al Gore, and that should weaken Al Gore's position.  But for one thing, it was just a coin flip - next thing you know, Bin Laden could come out against America's school lunch program, or in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy.  You never know, right?

An ad hominem attack is one where you attack the person making the argument, instead of the argument itself.  It's like if you read one of my articles here, and countered them with "but you're ugly."  It derails the conversation, and makes the attacker look like they don't have anything better to attack.  If you can't assail the charges, assail the person making them.

Rush isn't engaging with the national conversation about global warming when he points out that Bin Laden agrees with it.  Just because someone ugly and awful and vile agrees with your argument, that doesn't automatically invalidate your argument.

Why, just ask the Republican Party.  (Hey-oooo!)

And this leads me to my second point.  Which is that if even a crazed evil mastermind can tell that climate change is a real thing, then Rush's position is in trouble.  Scientific facts are not decided by public consensus, nor by the blowhardiness of AM radio personalities.  Facts is facts, and I'm sure Bin Laden also believes that 2 + 2 = 4 and other such facts.  Why wouldn't he believe in climate change?  It too is a fact.

It only makes sense that Bin Laden would then go that extra step further and blame America.  For one thing, he's not wrong.  Americans are only 5% of the world's population, but we consume 24% of its energy.  And it is energy consumption which is primarily responsible for the current climate change crisis.

America is a land of plenty - and of waste.  We throw away 200,000 tons of edible food each day, and still manage to collectively consume 200 billion calories more than we need per day.  If Rush Limbaugh chooses not to believe in the scientific reality of climate change, then surely he can appreciate that we ought not to waste what we have?  

I always thought that Republicans were against waste.  Against wasteful spending by the government, surely.  But shouldn't that also translate to being against the wasteful consumption of unnecessary items, wasteful packaging, throwing away perfectly good food, and all the other ills of our disposable single-serving plastic packaging culture at large?

The fundamental problem is that Rush, although charismatic, is pretty stupid.  I have become convinced of this.