I was on my way to compiling another “stealth conservative” post (coming soon) when I came across this guy: Robert Burton, retired ER doc, Republican candidate for state Senate in the Addison County district, and a climate change denier so ardent, so forceful, that he made Ruth Hardy’s eyes bug out her head.

Well, I can’t swear that his rhetoric and her reaction are cause/effect or random coincidence, but I can tell you that Burton’s rhetoric could make any reasonable person’s eyes pop.

Burton has no chance of winning in a race against Democratic incumbents Hardy; and Chris Bray, but his commentary is just too delightful to pass up.

The occasion pictured above was an Addison County candidates’ forum held on September 22 featuring all the House and Senate candidates from county districts. Pretty unwieldy event. Not much time for any single candidate to stand out. Still, a few of them them managed the trick. None more so than Dr. Burton here.

Burton couldn’t wait to get to his denialism. Most candidates devoted their opening statements to biographical pablum (always emphasizing How Long I’ve Lived In Vermont and almost apologizing for any step they’d ever taken outside its borders) and so-broad-they’re-meaningless issue positions.

Not Burton. He barely got through his bio before jumping in with both feet in his mouth.

“The climate crisis is a hoax,” he said. “The pandemic was also grossly mishandled.”

Alas, I can’t fill you in on the nature of his pandemic trutherism. This event was sponsored by the Addison County Farm Bureau, so the questions focused mainly on agriculture. But while there was nothing further on Covid-19, there was a big fat juicy question about the Global Warming Solutions Act. And Burton did not disappoint.

“There’s no reason for a Global Warming Solutions Act or tax or whatever they’re calling it because it can’t do what they think it’s going to do except cost Vermonters a lot,” he said. He then referred to someone in the room named “Ed” who “has the handouts” to support Burton’s denial. “Anybody that wants to find out for themselves or find the route to take to dig this stuff out, but it is not man-made, it is not going to be man-solutioned.”

But that was just an appetizer. Here’s the main course.

CO2, carbon dioxide, is not a greenhouse gas. That is one of the frauds that’s being pushed on everybody. That’s why we have the problems with the petroleum industry. There are pollutions, there are emissions, but they do not trap heat, not in the way that we are being told. So the solutions and the EVs and everything that’s being pushed on us is a fraud.

Nice of him to admit that “there are pollutions.”

I don’t have anything else to offer on the good doctor. He doesn’t seem to have a campaign website or any other online presence. But I think this is quite enough to show that he’s a particularly extreme example of the quality you can expect from the Republican ticket this year.