Yes, Virginia, There Is Global Warming: Reality-Based Democrat Defeats Science Denying GOP Candidate

This is an interesting take on the governor’s race in Virginia, in which Democrat Terry McAuliffe defeated the GOP tea party candidate Ken Cuccinelli in a narrow race. In this piece from the Guardian the British newspaper considers the role that global warming, and in particular, climate change denial had on the election results.

            While McAuliffe has acknowledged global warming and even made it a central part of his campaign, Cuccinelli has done all he could to stymie effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions. As Virginia’s Attorney General he joined a lawsuit in Texas that claimed that the EPA lacked the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions. He also used his position of Attorney General in a strategy of harassment demanding all the personal emails of Michael Mann, a well-known physicist and climatologist, during his six-year tenure at the University of Virginia. Mann claims, I think rightly, that the effort to grab all those emails was simply an attempt to find something, even if it were only one teensy-weensy thing, to embarrass Mann.

            The piece in the Guardian acknowledges that this was not a single-issue election, but I believe that they are tapping into something that the domestic press has yet to delve into. Much about the tea party and Obamacare was mentioned on NPR this morning when they reported this story, but there was nothing about global warming or Cuccinelli’s harassment of Mann. And I haven't found anything else in the U.S. press that mentions global warming in relation to this story.