In a talk radio appearance last week, Colorado State Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg (R-Sterling) had this to say about environmentalists concerned about carbon pollution, which is causing temperatures to rise on Earth:

SONNENBERG: [below at 3:45] So, you know, when we talk about carbon dioxide and those type of things, actually, those are important to agriculture and to the balance of nature. Trees and plants use carbon dioxide to create oxygen. It’s part of their process. And it’s nature’s way to make things work. So I guess my argument to those enviros that want less carbon is,”Here, you want to kill all the trees and plants.”

This type of climate change denial is not taken seriously by the scientific community.

Even so-called “climate skeptics,” who deny the seriousness of global warming, at least acknowledge that human activities are contributing to a rise in global temperatures.

So Sonnenberg sits with an extreme fringe, which has representatives in high places. See Trump’s Chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, who denies the link between Carbon emissions and climate change. See also Trump himself, who’s dismissed global warming as a hoax.

Sonnenberg, who spoke to Ft. Morgan’s KFTM-AM Dec. 6 from Nashville where he was attending an unnamed energy task force meeting with other legislators, possibly as part of an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conference, did not immediately return a call seeking clarification or comment. Surprisingly, Sonnenberg said some of his conservative allies on the task force favored a carbon tax.

Sonnenberg’s position in denial of global warming is shared by other Republicans in Colorado, including apparently Cory Gardner, who refused during the last election to tell Denver Post Editorial Page Editor Chuck Plunkett whether he thinks humans are causing global warming.

Top Republican gubernatorial candidates in 2014, including current GOP contender for governor Tom Tancredo, had the same position as Sonnenberg.

SONNENBERG: [00:04:42] And when you look at the speck of time that we’re here on Earth, and we talk about climate change for the last — what?– 30, 40 years compared to the last 30, 40 million of cycles of the Earth — the climate cycles of the earth — we are a fraction — a very small fraction — in the time scale. And to think that humans have the ability to destroy the Earth is just ludicrous.

Sonnenberg scored an 11 percent on Conservation Colorado’s 2017 Environmental Scorecard.