“The Anti-Science Party”: It’s Been A Rough Week For Republicans And Their Support For Science
A few years ago, during the race for the Republicans’ 2012 presidential nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) suggested climate science was an elaborate hoax cooked up by greedy scientists. John Weaver, the chief strategist for former Gov. John Huntsman’s campaign, responded with a sensible declaration: “We’re not going to win a national election if we become the anti-science party.”
Three years later, it’s probably too late to worry about whether the GOP is becoming the anti-science party.
In a little-noticed 2012 interview, Rep. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the front-runner in Montana’s open 2014 Senate race, expressed support for teaching creationism in public schools.
In an interview that aired on November 2, 2012, Sally Mauk, news director for Montana Public Radio, asked Daines, who was then running for Montana’s lone House seat, whether public schools should teach creationism. Daines responded, “What the schools should teach is, as it relates to biology and science is that they have, um, there’s evolution theory, there’s creation theory, and so forth. I think we should teach students to think critically, and teach students that there are evolutionary theories, there’s intelligent-design theories, and allow the students to make up their minds. But I think those kinds of decisions should be decided at the local school board level.” He added, “Personally I’d like to teach my kids both sides of the equation there and let them come up to their own conclusion on it.”
It’s been a rough week for Republicans and their support for science. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), for example, struggled badly to defend his opposition to climate science, only to make matters worse by saying odd things about reproductive science.
And away from Capitol Hill, two GOP Senate candidates said they too have a problem with climate science, while Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature are balking at new science standards because they treat climate change as true.
It’s against this backdrop that the Pew Forum found late last year that the number of self-identified Republican voters who believe in evolutionary biology has dropped considerably in the Obama era.
To reiterate a point we’ve discussed before, none of this is healthy. There are already so many political, policy, and cultural issues that divide partisans; scientific truths don’t have to be among them. And yet, we’re quickly approaching the point – if we haven’t arrived there already – at which science itself is broadly accepted and understood as a “Democratic issue.”
Is it any wonder the Pew Research Center found a few years ago that only 6% of scientists say they support Republican candidates?
Asked to explain the phenomenon, Brigham Young University scientist Barry Bickmore, a onetime Republican convention delegate, told the Salt Lake Tribune last fall, “Scientists just don’t get those people,” referencing Republicans who adhere to party orthodoxy on climate change, evolution, and other hot-button issues. “They [in the GOP] are driving us away, people like me.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 16, 2014
“Let’s Get The Word Out”: Florida’s Governor Scott Takes Deep Dive Into Climate Change
My fellow Floridians, as you’ve all probably heard, a new National Climate Assessment report says that Florida is seriously threatened by rising sea levels, mass flooding, salt-contaminated water supplies and increasingly severe weather events — all supposedly caused by climate change.
Let me assure you there’s absolutely no reason for worry. I still don’t believe climate change is real, and you shouldn’t, either.
Don’t be impressed just because 240 “experts” contributed to this melodramatic report. The Tea Party has experts, too, and they assure me it’s all hogwash.
Even if the atmosphere is warming (and, whoa, I’m not saying it is!), I still haven’t seen a speck of solid evidence that it has anything to do with man spewing millions of tons of gaseous pollutants into the sky.
Is the planet a hotter place than it was 200 years ago? Yes, but only by a couple of degrees. Did most of the temperature rise occur since 1970? Yes, but don’t blame coal-burning plants or auto emissions.
Maybe the sun is getting closer to the Earth. Ever think of that? Or the Earth is moving closer to the sun? Let’s get some brainiacs to investigate that possibility!
As long as I’m the governor, Florida isn’t going to punish any industries by imposing so-called “clean air” regulations that limit carbon emissions.
In fact, soon after I took office we repealed the state’s Climate Protection Act and eliminated the Energy and Climate Commission that was created under my predecessor, the Obama-hugging turncoat Charlie Crist.
I also ordered the Department of Environmental Protection to halt all initiatives dealing with renewable energy and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, no one at DEP is even allowed to whisper the phrase “climate change” any more.
Yet the subject just won’t go away. That’s because the liberal media keep trying to scare everybody.
Say the polar ice caps really are melting, and sea levels really did rise 8 inches during the last 130 years. Who says there has to be a scientific explanation? Maybe God’s just messing around with us for a few centuries.
I myself own a big home in Naples right on the Gulf of Mexico, which is supposedly rising along with the oceans. Do I look scared? Do you see a moving van in my driveway?
Of course not (although I’m grateful to the Koch brothers for offering to let me stay with them in Wichita during the next hurricane).
And, please, enough griping already about Miami Beach going underwater! While I sympathize with all the homeowners and businesses along Alton Road that are being swamped by flooding at high tides, there’s not much I can do as governor except pretend it isn’t happening.
So let’s pull together to remind the rest of America, and the whole world, that most of Florida is still dry, and it will be for many, many real-estate cycles to come.
Newcomers who might be queasy about purchasing waterfront property in South Beach or Fort Lauderdale should instead consider some of our inland gems like Sebring (where the average elevation is 131 feet above sea level), Haines City (182 feet) or Eustis (67 feet).
Let’s get out the word that it could be hundreds of years before Ocala (104 feet) is submerged. So come on down now and get your homestead exemption before you need a snorkel to find your homestead.
If you really want to play it safe, try beautiful Britton Hill, the highest point in Florida at 345 feet above sea level. It is way up in Walton County near the Alabama border, but at least you’ll still be on the map if Key Biscayne turns into a coral reef.
To concerned residents of greater Miami, Tampa Bay and Apalachicola — three areas singled out by the federal report as imperiled by rising water — here’s what I would say:
Open a paddleboard shop, people. Or an airboat taxi service.
Why not turn a negative situation into a positive opportunity? One person’s sinkhole is another person’s cave-spelunking franchise.
Come on, Florida, let’s get to work.
By: Carl Hiaasen, Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, May 13, 2014
“Marco Rubio Disqualifies Himself”: ‘Hey Man’, There’s A Difference Between Climate Science And Meteorology
If American presidents need to prove a basic ability to accept facts, then Senator Marco Rubio of Florida—who’s publicly mulling a run — just disqualified himself from competition.
In an interview with ABC on Sunday, days after the release of an alarming White House report on the present and future effects of climate change on the United States, Mr. Rubio said:
“I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.”
There’s something almost cute about the last part of that sentence — a hedge he can bring out in a general election if he’s accused of willful stupidity. I’m not a climate-change denier, he might say, I just don’t think scientists are giving us an accurate picture.
Does Mr. Rubio think scientists are lying? Or that they don’t know what they’re talking about? Either way, what leads him to believe that the “portrait” of climate change offered by scientists is inaccurate?
Previously, Mr. Rubio told a GQ reporter “I’m not a scientist, man”—when asked about the age of the earth. (He went on to say we may never know “whether the earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras”).
Yet he sounded science-y, if not scientific, when — on Sunday — he argued that “our climate is always changing. And what [scientists] have chosen to do is take a handful of decades of research and — and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend that’s directly and almost solely attributable to manmade activity.”
He believes that climate scientists have made a schoolboy error, and that he—Marco “not a scientist, man” Rubio — knows better.
This is particularly funny since Mr. Rubio felt the need to point out last week that President Obama, who does believe in climate change, is “not a meteorologist.” Mr. Rubio may or may not know that there’s a difference between climate science and meteorology; but, setting that aside, he’s evidently aware — when it suits him — that there’s a difference between scientific and political expertise.
Rubio defenders might argue that it doesn’t matter whether or not the senator thinks “human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate” — so long as he’s willing to do something about those dramatic changes.
He’s not.
“I don’t agree with the notion that some are putting out there, including scientists, that somehow, there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what’s happening in our climate,” he said on Sunday.
Later he added, “I have no problem with taking mitigation activity. What I have a problem with is these changes to our law that somehow politicians say are going to change our weather. That’s absurd.”
Here’s the kicker: Mr. Rubio sits on the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and the Subcommittee on Science and Space.
By: Juliet Lapidos, Taking Note, Editors Blog, The New York Times, May 12, 2014
“Crazy Climate Economics”: These Days, Republicans Come Out In Force To Oppose Even The Most Obviously Needed Regulations
Everywhere you look these days, you see Marxism on the rise. Well, O.K., maybe you don’t — but conservatives do. If you so much as mention income inequality, you’ll be denounced as the second coming of Joseph Stalin; Rick Santorum has declared that any use of the word “class” is “Marxism talk.” In the right’s eyes, sinister motives lurk everywhere — for example, George Will says the only reason progressives favor trains is their goal of “diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.”
So it goes without saying that Obamacare, based on ideas originally developed at the Heritage Foundation, is a Marxist scheme — why, requiring that people purchase insurance is practically the same as sending them to gulags.
And just wait until the Environmental Protection Agency announces rules intended to slow the pace of climate change.
Until now, the right’s climate craziness has mainly been focused on attacking the science. And it has been quite a spectacle: At this point almost all card-carrying conservatives endorse the view that climate change is a gigantic hoax, that thousands of research papers showing a warming planet — 97 percent of the literature — are the product of a vast international conspiracy. But as the Obama administration moves toward actually doing something based on that science, crazy climate economics will come into its own.
You can already get a taste of what’s coming in the dissenting opinions from a recent Supreme Court ruling on power-plant pollution. A majority of the justices agreed that the E.P.A. has the right to regulate smog from coal-fired power plants, which drifts across state lines. But Justice Scalia didn’t just dissent; he suggested that the E.P.A.’s proposed rule — which would tie the size of required smog reductions to cost — reflected the Marxist concept of “from each according to his ability.” Taking cost into consideration is Marxist? Who knew?
And you can just imagine what will happen when the E.P.A., buoyed by the smog ruling, moves on to regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.
What do I mean by crazy climate economics?
First, we’ll see any effort to limit pollution denounced as a tyrannical act. Pollution wasn’t always a deeply partisan issue: Economists in the George W. Bush administration wrote paeans to “market based” pollution controls, and in 2008 John McCain made proposals for cap-and-trade limits on greenhouse gases part of his presidential campaign. But when House Democrats actually passed a cap-and-trade bill in 2009, it was attacked as, you guessed it, Marxist. And these days Republicans come out in force to oppose even the most obviously needed regulations, like the plan to reduce the pollution that’s killing Chesapeake Bay.
Second, we’ll see claims that any effort to limit emissions will have what Senator Marco Rubio is already calling “a devastating impact on our economy.”
Why is this crazy? Normally, conservatives extol the magic of markets and the adaptability of the private sector, which is supposedly able to transcend with ease any constraints posed by, say, limited supplies of natural resources. But as soon as anyone proposes adding a few limits to reflect environmental issues — such as a cap on carbon emissions — those all-capable corporations supposedly lose any ability to cope with change.
Now, the rules the E.P.A. is likely to impose won’t give the private sector as much flexibility as it would have had in dealing with an economywide carbon cap or emissions tax. But Republicans have only themselves to blame: Their scorched-earth opposition to any kind of climate policy has left executive action by the White House as the only route forward.
Furthermore, it turns out that focusing climate policy on coal-fired power plants isn’t bad as a first step. Such plants aren’t the only source of greenhouse gas emissions, but they’re a large part of the problem — and the best estimates we have of the path forward suggest that reducing power-plant emissions will be a large part of any solution.
What about the argument that unilateral U.S. action won’t work, because China is the real problem? It’s true that we’re no longer No. 1 in greenhouse gases — but we’re still a strong No. 2. Furthermore, U.S. action on climate is a necessary first step toward a broader international agreement, which will surely include sanctions on countries that don’t participate.
So the coming firestorm over new power-plant regulations won’t be a genuine debate — just as there isn’t a genuine debate about climate science. Instead, the airwaves will be filled with conspiracy theories and wild claims about costs, all of which should be ignored. Climate policy may finally be getting somewhere; let’s not let crazy climate economics get in the way.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, May 11, 2014
“Denier Vigilantes”: Why It’s So Sad When Conservatives Try To Play The Underdog
Jeffrey Toobin once described the career of John Roberts, the conservative chief justice of the Supreme Court, this way: “In every major case since he became the nation’s 17th chief justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.”
This is a raw expression of one of the most basic forms of conservatism: The defense of incumbent holders of wealth and power. Of course, it doesn’t account for the whole of American conservatism, but it’s no secret that conservatives are the most outspoken defenders of the 1 percent, from the Wall Street Journal editorial board to the vast bulk of the Republican contingent in Congress.
The rise of the social justice movement has thus presented a persistent rhetorical problem for conservatives. Members of this movement have made a compelling case that the powerful have rigged society against certain groups: minorities, women, the poor, transgender folks, and so on. That rhetorical strength has been a great source of temptation for conservatives, who would strongly like to cast themselves as heroic underdogs fighting against a vile and oppressive regime.
We saw this tendency at work this week, when Bill Nye the Science Guy was on CNN’s defibrillated new version of Crossfire. Nye kept emphasizing that conservatives are simply unwilling to accept the scientific conclusions on climate change, which predict highly alarming consequences if we stay on our current emissions path. In response, host S.E. Cupp accused him of trying to “bully…anyone who dares question” the science.
Take a look: http://youtu.be/iWYQb8K6Tek
Similarly, George Will, the conservative columnist at The Washington Post, recently used conservative conspiracy theories to assert that climate scientists have “interests” that have biased their analysis. “If you want money from the biggest source of direct research in this country, the federal government, don’t question its orthodoxy,” he continued.
Set aside the fact that these conservatives conveniently accept the logic of social justice only when it suits them. The real problem with this kind of analysis is that it makes no sense if you think about it for even five seconds. They have the power imbalance completely backward. Carbon-mining companies are, in fact, among the most profitable industries that have ever existed. Climate scientists have, in fact, been legally and personally harassed by denier vigilantes and their pet hack journalists.
Wouldn’t the incomprehensibly huge piles of money the oil industry spends on political organizing count as some kind of interest that influences society? Not to George Will, which is why he doesn’t provide any evidence whatsoever that there is an actual conspiracy. There is none, because it doesn’t exist. It’s derp all the way down.
And thus we see the problem with Cupp’s analysis as well. Accusations of bullying only make sense if there is an insanely wealthy cabal of climate scientists oppressing someone unjustly. But Nye is simply correct in his description of almost total unanimity on questions of climate change. In particular, he’s right to say that more global warming means more extreme weather, the fact of which conservatives are constantly trying to fudge.
Cupp isn’t being bullied; she’s wrong on the facts, and appropriating social justice rhetoric in the most ham-fisted way to put that position out of reach of criticism.
It’s ludicrous, and people shouldn’t stand for it. But more than that, it’s just kind of sad. Just consider the bizarre spectacle of billionaire Charles Koch, who has whined piteously about a bunch of powerless leftists calling him names. You would think conservatives would be more comfortable being on the side with all the power and money, instead of trying to be something they’re not.
By: Ryan Cooper, The Week, May 9, 2014
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 