The Booman Tribune takes on Politico‘s assertions regarding “a new mocking tone that the president is adopting on the stump to ridicule science-denying Republicans.” What caught my eye, though, is the discussion of how climate-change deniers benefit, at least in the very short term, from denial:

Ultimately, what the Republicans are doing amounts to fraud. In the example of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, denying the predicted rate of sea level rise is a way to artificially boost your property values, which is a crime against the people who will unwittingly pay too much for a house that will be under water by the end of this century.

I think we can all understand the impulse to protect the value of your property in any way you can think of, but it’s still fraud. And, since the president can’t simply prosecute every example of fraudulent political speech, his only option is to make fun of it.

Property owners in the Outer Banks should be clamoring to talk to the president about what they can do to save their property so that their grandchildren might be able to enjoy it, but they’re more interested in preventing the state of North Carolina from officially recognizing the threat. That’s short-sighted and wrong. And that’s where the whole GOP is headed on this issue.

They have earned their mockery.

Some day, maybe soon, maybe less soon, at least some of those same landowners (and/or their heirs and successors) will come asking, possibly hat-in-hand, for help offsetting the loss of their by-then-literally-underwater properties. We will all bear some responsibility for that, but not the vast majority of it. The bulk of the responsibility will remain on the people who, today, are legitimate objects of mockery for their reality-denying ways.

This isn’t mockery done for any sort of fun, mind you, because the cost is too high. It’s the sort of mockery that is the only available response to those who are being foolish.