Many experts agree that part of the reason climate change has disappeared from the political landscape in recent years, is due to the fact that both parties are loath to offend the Fossil Fuel Industry.

Now, after Hurricane Sandy slammed into the East Coast Monday night, with a storm-ferocity not previously witnessed, the discussion on climate change has been resurrected.

However, it’s mostly liberals, Democrats and independents illuminating the dialogue, while presidential hopeful, Mitt RomneyMitt Romney, has not uttered one word about climate change, as he enters the final stretch to the election next Tuesday.

In addition, the same silence on the issue of climate change, which is caused by the effect of global warming, has also muted conservative radio pundits and Fox News commentators, as they avoid the subject and continue their attacks on Obama.

But it’s not just radical media talking heads that have perpetuated the global-warming-is-a-myth theory.

Last week, Republican Senator, James Inhofe, was awarded the 6th annual Rubber Dodo prize, by the environmental group, Center for Biological Diversity. Inhofe beat out two other climate regulation obstructionists for his blatant falsehoods and misinformation on global warming.

Democrats may have been quiet on the issue, but they didn’t deny the existence of global warming, call it a hoax, or challenge the accuracy of climate science. Whereas, many Republicans have done all of the above and have been all over the map in their opinions.

Moderate conservatives, who have raised their voices to acknowledge global warming, have been ceremoniously ignored.

John R.E Bliese wrote in his 2001 book, The Greening of Conservative America:

“Unfortunately, we have been playing with the dials (of temperature control) for a long time and have made major changes in one of the important factors that govern climate: The concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Now we must reverse this process and return toward natural conditions of climate variability.”

Bliese, an associate professor at Texas Tech University, wrote a very thoughtful and compelling book, which has been completely ignored by conservative mainstream.

More recently, research financed by the Koch brothers, and led by one of the most well-known climate skeptics, Richard Muller, confirmed that global warming is real and caused by human activity.

Muller’s statement in a September, 2012, New York Times Op/Ed:

“Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

Nonetheless, Muller’s report did little to abate conservative opinions and was immediately exiled to a deserted and sinking iceberg in the Arctic.

Religious theorists and psychologists have also studied the question of why so many people disbelieve proven facts that spawn conspiratorial mind sets .

Experts believe it boils down to biblical and community influence on individuals. Personal skepticism about global warming is forged from ideological beliefs and peer beliefs, which result in people gravitating to whatever evidence they can find that reflects those beliefs.

In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of such divisions. Haidt, blends his own research findings with anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain.

“We are fundamentally groupish,” Haidt wrote. “And it is our groupishness that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations.”

Experts have observed that global warming deniers tend to exhibit a certain pride in being “skeptics” and associate it with challenging the government on everything, in the perceived need to protect their freedom.

Such personal convictions have been carefully groomed and cultivated by organized, well-funded contrarians and conservative think-tanks. Similar to the previous campaign by deep-pocketed corporations formed to convince Americans that tobacco is harmless.

The enormity of destruction and damage caused by Hurricane Sandy has provided the opportunity for open discussion on the subject of climate change, but will it fizzle out after Americans turn their attention to the next headline.

On Thursday, NYC mayor, Michael BloombergMichael Bloomberg, chose to endorse President Obama, due to his emergency response to the mega-storm and commitment to climate regulation.

If Romney gets elected, it would depend on which Mitt would show up at the White House, since he has changed positions on so many subjects, but his silence on climate change—as people struggle to recover from the effects of Sandy—is reckless and unconscionable.

***PrairieDogPress is the media channel for keystone-prairie-dogs.com, which uses humorous images and serious-minded reports to challenge government on political issues, including protection of threatened species and Earth’s resources.