Climate change is not health care, social security, or tax policy.  To give an example, the majority of Americans believe that New Deal legislation staved off the worst effects of the Great Depression.  Many staunch conservatives, nevertheless, have launched a revisionist movement, sparked by the historian Amity Shales, to claim that Roosevelt era legislation actually prolonged the depression.  They can make this claim without getting laughed out of the room because determining the effects of tax code changes on median incomes is not cut or dry.  Likewise, if Dems pass major health care reform this year, the opposition will always be able to claim that the reforms were damaging to the US economy or individual consumers.

But floods, hurricanes, and droughts don't have the same ambiguity.  Fifteen or twenty years from now, the debate will be long over.  Carbon dioxide will have triumphed.  Even with very agressive legislation, which the Waxman-Markey bill is not, even with global collective action on the same scale, even if all this happened immediately, from what I read, we are going to face significant impacts from climate change.

The lesson for Smokey Joe and his minions:  Don't turn a scientific debate into a political one.  You'll end up looking like a damn fool.  And possibly lose your party as well.