As Lisa Hymas of Grist noted today, “Todd Akin is not only fundamentally deluded about the basic facts of women’s reproductive systems. He’s also fundamentally deluded about the basic facts of climate change.”

We have been reporting on this delusion for a long time. Three years ago, we excerpted an amazingly ignorant floor address by Akin, a Missouri House member who is now the GOP nominee for Senate.

In this address, Akin celebrates the seasonal change from winter to spring as “good climate change” and confuses “weather” with “climate.” He calls the threat of global warming a “comedy” and twice suggests his fellow climate zombie GOP congressmen are more knowledgeable than Democrats because they have “passed high school science”:

AKIN: This whole thing strikes me if it weren’t so serious as being a comedy you know. I mean, we just went from winter to spring. In Missouri when we go from winter to spring, that’s a good climate change. I don’t want to stop that climate change you know. Who in the world want to put politicians in charge of the weather anyways? What a dumb idea….

Some of the models said that we’re going to have surf at the front steps of the Capitol pretty soon. I was really looking forward to that….

We’ve been joined by another doctor, a medical doctor but also a guy who graduated from high school science as well, from Georgia, my good friend, Congressman Gingrey.… So to have actually a guy who’s passed high school science is tremendously helpful. And Dr. Fleming from Louisiana.

Here is a short clip from the speech:

Since Akin is a guy who clearly knows very little science, he was a natural for the GOP to stick on the House Science Committee. He offers more pearls of non-wisdom in his website’s discussion of global warming:

As a member of the House Science and Technology Committee, Congressman Akin has participated in hearings on global warming, including its causes and possible effects.

While the political climate change debate continues, research into the effects of human caused CO2 is ongoing. Although some of the physics and meteorology surrounding climate is well understood, the question of predicting future climate trends as well as man’s ability to definitively influence them is still an active field of scientific research.  Moreover, despite our desire for complete certainty, we must understand that global climate is very complex phenomena.  No one variable can be taken as the sole driver of climate and there exist cycles within cycles of meteorological variability.  Scientists state that the planet has gone through many natural heating and cooling cycles over the last thousand years.

Actually scientists don’t state that. Even a top disinformer, like Fred Singer, authored a lame denier treatise, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years. Akin may mean “last million years” but then it is always perilous to  try to figure out what people who don’t know what they’re talking about really mean when they fail to reproduce the “correct” version of their erroneous talking points.

Nor has Akin bothered to update his website, which states “Currently, scientists are somewhat puzzled by a current-extended minimum in solar activity.” Well, they were a little puzzled when we were still in that minimum a couple of years ago, but now we aren’t. Scientists should be puzzled by how Akin can supposedly have “participated in hearings on global warming” but know so little about it.

Then again, as Hymas noted, Akin is a guy who “categorizes rape based on its legitimacy and would oppose abortion in every conceivable scenario save his being abducted by space worms who then laid eggs in his brain. Or maybe that already happened. That would explain a lot.”

By Jessica Goad

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”  A story in yesterday’s Denver Post about fossil fuel magnate William (Bill) Koch’s construction of a private old western town in Colorado provides yet another example of this truism.

Koch has built for himself:

… an unpopulated, faux Western town that might boggle the mind of anyone who ever had a playhouse. Its full-size buildings come with polished brass and carved-mahogany details and are fronted with board sidewalks and underpinned by a water-treatment system. A locked gate with guards screens who comes and goes….

Koch’s project manager has told county officials that the enclave in the middle of the 6,400-acre Bear Ranch won’t ever be open to the public. It is simply for Koch’s amusement and for that of his family and friends.

Koch is building the town on his ranch in Gunnison County, Colorado.  But he has proposed highly controversial land exchanges that would swap tracts of public lands for areas that he has the rights to in order to expand his ranch and provide more privacy for the old western town.

The “Central Rockies Land Exchange” would give Koch control of 1,800 acres of land managed by the Bureau of Land Management in exchange for various other parcels that he owns in Colorado.  Local opponents say that the land exchange will deny access to public lands where they hunt and hike.  Koch has hired a public relations firm to sell local residents on the idea.

Bill Koch is brother to David and Charles Koch, conservative heavy hitters who are virulently anti-climate science and have bankrolled right-wing groups like Americans for Prosperity and the Heritage Foundation.

While Bill Koch maintains some distance from the political zeal of his brothers, he has given at least $2 million to Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super-PAC.  He is also the founder and CEO of the Oxbow Corporation, which has interests in various energy ventures including coal, natural gas, and petroleum coke.  Forbes has listed his value at $4 billion.

Koch’s western town that will be entirely for his own benefit brings into relief the remarkable contrast between public and private lands and the value of places that belong to all Americans, not just the wealthy few.

Koch isn’t the only one who is interested in privatizing our public lands.  Indeed, Republican Vice Presidential candidate and Congressman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget contains a provision to sell millions of acres of public lands to the highest bidder.  The language is largely based on Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s (R-UT) bill that would get rid of three million acres of public lands without clarifying how taxpayers would receive a fair return for them.  And Florida Representative Cliff Stearns (R), who just lost his primary election, called for selling off national parks last March.

Jessica is the Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.