Kerry: Climate change "as dangerous" as Iran's nukes; on the growth of climate skepticism: "I have to say it’s been a remarkably effective campaign, you can’t sit here and say it hasn’t worked”

Kerry: Climate Change ‘As Dangerous’ as Iran’s Nukes and Possibility of War | CNSNews.com

(CNSNews.com) – The situation facing the planet because of climate change is “as dangerous” as the possibility of war over Iran’s nuclear activities, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) told the U.S. Senate on Wednesday.

Delivering what his office described as “a major address and current assessment of the global climate change challenge,” Kerry acknowledged and bemoaned the success of those who question the notion of human-induced global warming. He compared skeptics to flat-earthers and decried what he called a “concerted assault on reason.”

“I believe that the situation we face, Mr. President, is as dangerous as any of the sort of real crises that we talk about – today we had a hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee on the subject of Syria, and we all know what’s happening with respect to Iran, and nuclear weapons and the possibility even of a war,” Kerry said.

“Well, this issue [climate change] actually is of as significant a level of importance, because it affects life itself on the planet,” he said.

...“Climate change, over the last few years, has regrettably lost credibility in the eyes and ears of the American people, because of a concerted campaign of disinformation – a concerted campaign to brand the concept as somehow slightly out of the mainstream of American political thinking.”

“I have to say it’s been a remarkably effective campaign, you can’t sit here and say it hasn’t worked,” Kerry conceded. “Every opportunity to cast a pall on facts with some kind of cockamamie theory has been taken advantage of, and a lot of money has been spent, Mr. President, a lot of money has been spent in this process of disinformation and of discrediting.”

“We have in effect, with respect to climate change in America today, what is fundamentally a flat-earth caucus, a bunch of people – some of them within the United States Congress itself – who still argue, against all the science, all the evidence, they argue that somehow we don’t know enough about climate change, or they argue that the evidence isn’t sufficient, or they argue that it just is a hoax.”