Republicans just sick about climate change.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: VOX POPULIST

It's well known that harsh climate conditions can mess with your mind, from cabin fever to heat delirium. But America is now experiencing an even more dangerous disease: Climatic Non-vocal Extremism Syndrome.

Oddly, ONES almost exclusively afflicts a narrow segment of our population: Republican officials and candidates.

Symptoms include an obsessive impulse to deny that human-caused climate change is happening. It's often accompanied by a feverish insistence that government employees be banned from studying it, discussing it, or even uttering such phrases as "climate change" and "global warming."

Hard to believe? For an example of the mind-altering impact of Climatic Non-vocal Extremism Syndrome, look at Governor Scott Walker's Wisconsin. The Koch-backed governor and Republican Presidential wannabe has fought efforts to promote alternative energy in his state, and is opposing the federal government's proposed new carbon-emission rules.

Recently, the state's Board of Commissioners of Public Lands took such efforts to a whole new level. The two GOP commissioners on the three-member board, which oversees the ecological health of thousands of acres of Wisconsin forest lands, has banned agency employees from even talking about climate change while on the job.

"I don't want anyone in this agency to work on that topic again," said commissioner Matt Adamczyk, the Wisconsin state treasurer.

The heartbreak of CNES is that its victims even deny that they're in denial about the disease. Thus, the Wisconsin duo say their no-speech rule is not censorship, because employees can still talk about climate change at home--or even chit-chat about it "by the water cooler."

Governor Walker--who wants to be your President--does not think this restriction unreasonable, his spokeswoman said.

And it's not just Wisconsin that has imposed such ridiculous levels of science denial and...