Yesterday, everyone was reporting that all the new Republican Committee Chairs are white men. Which is of course bad, especially for a party that openly admits it has a diversity problem. But they also put a goddamned climate change denier in charge of the Science Committee?

Case in point: yesterday’s nomination of Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) to chair the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology — a body with jurisdiction over many laboratories, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Weather Service.

Smith is a climate skeptic who has taken to the House floor to rant against scientists and journalists “determined to advance the idea of human-made global warming.”

I know this is standard stuff for the Republican Party; they think it's hee-larious to put creationists on science panels and whatnot. But 68% of Americans believe climate change is a serious problem. You'd think Republicans could take this shit a little more seriously, maybe.