One in five plants, one in five mammals, one in seven birds and one in three amphibians are now globally threatened with extinction.

This problem is a fact.  Another problem is that American Republican politicians, emboldened by anti-intelligence and anti-experience Tea Party ideals, are once again denying this fact.

The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy.