We all know that unlike, say, Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey, Senator Marco Rubio, Governor Rick Scott, and Speaker John Boehner are not scientists. They don’t claim to be scientists. But we wish that they had at least stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night. That way, perhaps they would be able to come to grips with the fact that 97% of scientists agree that human activity is causing climate change that will have far more economically-negative consequences down the road than the cost of addressing the problem would have now.
Jonathan Chait wants to know why it is suddenly so popular for Republicans to tell the public that they are not scientists and therefore are unqualified to have an opinion about whether or not climate change is actually occurring. It’s because they lack even an iota of moral courage. It’s because they are paid liars. This is not complicated and it shouldn’t even be debatable. Outside of a very small handful of genuine dunces who actually managed to get elected despite having personal beliefs about science that would make John Calvin blush, every single Republican who is either denying climate change or saying that they can’t make up their mind about it is actually just being dishonest. For money and career.
It is outrageous and deplorable behavior that ought to be met with the same derision and scorn we reserve for scam-artists and thieves. These are people whose basic character is so diminished that you would not leave them with your children. These are the kind of people who sell get-rich-quick pamphlets and try to convince you that you can lose your belly fat through a series of small, electric shocks administered by an ill-fitting belt. What they are lacking is any moral scruples about flim-flamming people. It’s like the Glenn Beckification of the Party of Lincoln is now complete. Science is the enemy because scientists don’t fall for their deceitful pitches for fraudulent products. It’s the party of gold-bugs and unskewed polls.
Karl Rove on election night is the face of the modern GOP. And if we listen to these clowns on climate change or let them continue to have a share of power, we’ll be just as bewildered as Rove was that night when the climate begins to really turn for the worse.
Rove has “the math.” It’s just that his math doesn’t compute all that well when he doesn’t have teams out there suppressing the vote, not counting all the votes, or can’t get SCOTUS to choose the POTUS.
Give ’em hell, Boo.
It’s terrible… Except for the fact that there are about 60 million US voters who are just fine with that. How do you deal with 60 million genuine dunces?
As I see it whether human activity is to blame or not is irrelevant. There is a problem, so work on fixing it.
The difference between Lawyers and Engineers (besides pay)? When there is a problem, Lawyers try to fix blame, Engineers try to fix the problem.
The problem is that admitting human culpability is a huge part of fixing the problem.
Awesome!
FDR we need you now!
You mean that Thurgood Marshall as chief counsel for the NAACP that sponsored the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Ed wasn’t working to fix a problem. Nor were Boies and Olson in Hollingsworth v. Perry?
Nor are all engineering fixes good and/or without creating new and larger problems. (NOLA levees?) Geo-engineering in response to climate change would not be a good fix.
Everyone hates lawyers because lawyers are inherently bad people who should be put into camps.
Engineers, on the other hand, are perfect, because they are inherently wonderful people.
Engineers try to improve the world. Lawyers try to imprison or impoverish the world.
Oh yes.
Every single lawyer is evil, while every engineer is a saint.
What a ridiculous straw man.
Engineers try to improve the world. Lawyers try to imprison or impoverish the world.
You’re right. What a ridiculous straw man.
Engineers not lawyers figured out how to mine coal.
Engineers not lawyers figured out how to burn coal for energy
Engineers not lawyers figured out how to drill for oil.
Engineers not lawyers figured out how to use oil in many ways that end up polluting the planet.
Engineers not lawyers figured out how to frack for oil.
Engineers not lawyers figured out how to exploit tar sands …..
The lawyers just protect the engineers in the employment of the oil and coal corps while they do their dirty work.
… so it goes.
Hope you don’t ride in cars or buses or airplanes. Hope you don’t use indoor plumbing or machine made clothes. How are those animal skins working out? BTW, aren’t on a computer? Oh, yeah! Your computer was designed by lawyers.
You obviously are clueless as to the point I made ……
The pollution is a direct result of applying the engineers efforts as they dictated, the lawyers make it hard to stop applying the engineers efforts, since it is so profitable for whom ever is paying the lawyers to gum up the legal efforts to quell pollution …..
I guess it wasn’t engineered to fit your mindset.
Alcoholic says he’s “not a climate Scientist”
You don’t have to be a scientist, just lucid with the ability to read. Oh unless you have been paid off to deny reality.
Good God the Repugs are scum.
So you’re saying I should stop using that electric belt?
Both of these explanations are valid but there are others that should not be dismissed. For example, it’s possible that it’s popular for Republicans to tell the public that they are not scientists because among the members of the public to whom they seek to appeal, being dumber than a box of hammers is a positive attribute and they’re lying to build credibility with their base. It’s also possible that they really are dumber than a box of hammers and therefore not exactly lying (at least in this particular situation).
I keep wondering: Who are these 3% of scientists who don’t agree that human activity is changing the climate? Do they matter? If they’re scientists and I’m not, does that mean I’m not allowed to say they’re wrong?
At any rate, to me “97% of scientists agree” is uncomfortably close to the “I am not a scientist” dodge, because it treats the science itself as a black box. Of course climate science gets incredibly complicated in all its details, but the basics of global warming are actually pretty accessible. My feeling is that we should be talking more about the science than the scientists.
For instance, the evolution of lignin in the carboniferous period is an important factor. It does take slightly longer to explain it than to point to the scientific consensus, but it’s pretty simple. It was a long time before anything evolved that could break down lignin, so huge amounts of plant matter got buried without releasing their carbon. And that’s where fossil fuels come from.
I’m not a scientist myself, but that doesn’t mean I just automatically trust scientists any more than I automatically reject what they say. I do trust them enough to listen to what they have to say, but it’s up to them to convince me.
You wrote: “I’m not a scientist myself, but that doesn’t mean I just automatically trust scientists any more than I automatically reject what they say. I do trust them enough to listen to what they have to say, but it’s up to them to convince me.”
Um, no, it’s not. It’s up to them to convince other scientists with the technical capacity to assess what their research is saying. That’s the peer review process, that and the further testing of results over time to see if they continue to hold up. The process of science, writ large, is what you should trust.
I agree, but that’s not quite what I’m getting at. Perhaps I should have phrased it differently. What I’m objecting to is this idea that science is beyond the grasp of ordinary people.
The carboniferous period is a good example. I’m not up on the peer-reviewed research, so obviously I’m trusting the scientists there. But once I know what they’ve found about the evolution of lignin, I can take that and put it in the bigger picture, and I don’t have to just trust the science. I can understand it.
Agreed.
“The process of science, writ large, is what you should trust.”
Love that.
But for the layreader it isn’t so easy to distinguish in popular press the difference between well reviewed science and a hypothesis so new it still holds some controversy. The “journalists” don’t help much with this.
“But for the layreader it isn’t so easy to distinguish in popular press the difference between well reviewed science and a hypothesis so new it still holds some controversy. The “journalists” don’t help much with this.” Worse, journalists often get it completely wrong. The whole “scientists said it was “global cooling” in the 70s and now they say it’s warming bullshit that people like George Will trot out every week” was a journalistic mistake, taking a study that discussed the possibility of cooling, put it on the cover of Time (or was it Newsweek), and it became “scientific truth” when in fact it was never more than a minority hypothesis.
Consensus is how science works.
Yeah, as I was saying to wvng up there, I shouldn’t have said the scientists need to convince me. It’s more that I don’t want to stop with trusting the scientists, I want to understand the science.
That’s a rational expectation, one that I apply to science all the time. After all, it’s my profession. Although climatology is not my field, not even close.
That said, there are simple ways to understand climate science. The older generation of climate scientists like Roger Revelle and Charles David Keeling published work that is far more intuitive than the model-heavy stuff that is commonplace today.
“Consensus is how science works.” Actually, attention to detail and process, rigorous skepticism and grudging consensus only when enough research supports a particular understanding is how science works. I say grudging because scientists love to be the one to discover that conventional wisdom is wrong.
But in the end, consensus is necessary for something to become accepted fact. How we get there is largely irrelevant, except for the fact that the current system is pretty robust, especially when compared to historical context.
The real problem is there are numerous politicians that will not back anything that will cost their corporate masters one penny. Corporations would lose money trying to meet real legislation that would cut down climate change. There political puppets bow down to their masters wishes and will not pass anything that cuts into the bottom kine. We The People can walk around having to wear protective clothing, gas masks, pollution monitors and so on… The corporations are fine with that who do you think is going to manufacture and sell all of this to us? They see a chance for more profit from climate change.
“It outrageous and deplorable behavior that ought to be met with the same derision and scorn we reserve for scam-artists and thieves. “
Uh, it’s the GOP …. but I repeat myself (to paraphrase Mark Twain).
It started with proving that Al Gore was “Ozone Man.” They just never got out of the habit after that.
Perhaps Republicans have started noticing the sea change (pun intended) in scientific consensus about climate change and the evidence that just keeps piling up.
Rather than continuing to yell “hoax” they are simply walking back a little bit and hedging their bets.
As representatives of the people it’s irrelevant that they are not scientists, doctors, spies, fighter pilots, economists, military experts, engineers, or truck drivers.
But it is relevant to their job to investigate and debate each issue facing their constituents and make laws for the betterment of the Country.
“I’m not a scientist” is GOP speak for ‘it’s above my pay grade’, or ‘it’s complicated’. Well if science is above the Boehner crowd’s pay grade, I know some first graders that would be happy to give them lessons.
Why do you think that GOP stands for Grifters On Parade?
has the drawers to show up at Harvard, of all places, and lecture the faculty that giving 96% of their political donations to the Democrats is equivalent to McCarthy with his list of 57 varieties of Communist known to the President to be in the State Department.
Of course the faculty in their role as smart guys hate the Republicans, who despise them right back, but the GOP has engaged in a generation long attack on the very concept of higher learning and the education citizenry. The Academy can barely reproduce itself, funding is at crisis levels across the board, and Republican policies bear the lion’s share of the blame.