Editing Rick Santorum (section)

== On Climate Change ==
After the Pope came out in support of addressing the issue of climate change, Santorum peddled the typical conservative lie that the science on climate change has not been decided, telling ''Fox News'' “Any time you hear a scientist say the science is settled, that’s political science, not real science, because no scientists in their right mind would say ever the science is settled,” 2015 [[http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rick-santorum-turn-me-not-the-pope-climate-change]]

"That’s important but I think there are more pressing problems confronting the Earth than climate change.” 2015 [[http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rick-santorum-turn-me-not-the-pope-climate-change]]

Santorum also turned to another Conservative cop out strategy on climate change, saying that throughout history the earth has gone through warming and cooling cycles. While this is true, it conveniently ignores the fact that never in the earth's history has the planet's levels of C02 spiked so dramatically and never has the earth experienced a warmer trend of this magnitude, as the planet's temperatures have increased far past the usual rise during a warming trend. "I believe the earth gets warmer and I also believe the earth gets cooler," Santorum said. "And I think history points out that it does that and that the idea that man, through the production of CO2 — which is a trace gas in the atmosphere, and the man-made part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas — is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all the other factors, El Niño, La Niña, sunspots, moisture in the air. There's a variety of factors that contribute to the Earth warming and cooling." 2011 [[http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/56599.html]]

Santorum continued, stating that climate change is a conspiracy by liberals to increase government regulation. "To me, this is an opportunity for the left to create — it's really a beautifully concocted scheme because they know that the earth is gonna cool and warm," Santorum said. "And so it's been on a warming trend so they said, 'Oh, let's take advantage of that and say that we need the government to come in and regulate your life some more because it's getting warmer.' Just like they did in the '70s when it was getting cooler. They needed the government to come in and regulate your life because it's getting cooler...It's just an excuse for more government control of your life," Santorum added. "And I've never been for any scheme or even accepted the junk science behind the whole narrative." 2011[[http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/56599.html]]