Thick drizzling rain this Tuesday afternoon on California’s north coast as a slew of storm fronts are moving through our area this week — the NWS calling it ‘unsettled weather,’ with a cold front tonight and another on Thursday.

Even as the world gathers in Paris for the UN climate talks, an idiotic distraction from the horrors of global warning occurred today in DC (via the Washington Post):

But as diplomats huddled in private to try to close the gaps, a Senate committee led by GOP presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) convened a hearing in Washington to question the scientific consensus that human activity is responsible for climate change. Cruz dubbed the hearing “Data or Dogma,” and called as witnesses several scientists who are skeptical of mainstream views on climate change.
“For 18 years there has been no significant warming,” Cruz said.

(Illustration: ‘The Blue Umbrella 1914,’ by Helen Hyde, found here).

Cruz is a Senate subcommittee chairman, and that’s the official authority to allow the execution of such an obviously-crazed event. Titled, “Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Earth’s Climate,” and featured several climate scientists, most denier-whack-jobs, one of whom, William Happer, a physics professor at Princeton University and a George W energy advisor, was also recently singled out in a sting by Greenpeace to expose academics-for-hire used by assholes like Cruz and his benefactors — the energy companies.
From International Business Times this afternoon:

Cruz has received nearly $2 million from the oil and gas industry since 2011, including $709,493 that has gone into his presidential campaign coffers since he began his run for the presidency earlier this year, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
The National Mining Association gave $10,000 to Cruz’s Senate campaign in the 2012 cycle, making him a top-20 recipient.
The well-known Koch Industries, a privately held conglomerate that has significant oil interests and is connected to the billionaire Koch brothers, gave $23,750 to Cruz in the 2012 cycle.
A Koch-backed group that rates presidential candidates recently named Cruz as the only “climate hero” in the 2016 field.

Illogical on its ass…