Posted on 02/17/2011 12:38:22 PM PST by neverdem
Will it take the Republican Party as long to accept modern science as it took the Roman Catholic Church? The church waited 359 years to admit Galileo was right — the earth does move around the sun. Not until 1992 did the Vatican officially withdraw its condemnation of the man Albert Einstein called the father of modern science. Today, even children know that the earth revolves around the sun. But that idea was heresy to the 17th-century church. When Galileo would not abandon his views, the Inquisition put him on trial in 1633. He was forced to recant under penalty of death, then lived under house arrest for the rest of his life. Now the House Republican majority is launching its own attack on Galileo’s scientific descendants. Rejecting mainstream climate science became a GOP litmus test during the 2010 midterm elections. Republican leaders then floated the idea of putting mainstream climate science on trial in congressional hearings. This week, Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Energy Committee, introduced legislation that would “repeal” the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific determination that greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare. After Galileo reluctantly recanted, legend has it that he muttered, “Eppure, si muove.” In other words — censorship and repression could not change physical fact: The earth moves around the sun, whether the church agreed or not. This is true today: Modern science has conclusively demonstrated that human activities are dangerously overheating the planet — notwithstanding Republicans’ desire to repeal that conclusion. Republicans are the only major political party in the world that rejects this mainstream climate science. The right-of-center parties controlling governments in Britain, Germany and France, for example, not only embrace mainstream climate science, they support far more aggressive climate policies than anything advocated by Republicans — or Democrats — in Washington. U.S. news coverage usually refers to climate deniers as skeptics. That is misleading. Skepticism is invaluable to the scientific method. But an honest skeptic can be persuaded by facts. These deniers are largely impervious to facts — at least facts that contradict their worldview. When virtually every major scientific organization in the world, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and its counterparts in 18 other industrial countries, has affirmed that man-made climate change is real and extremely dangerous, only a crank would continue to insist that it’s all a left-wing plot.
What, are all these organizations and the thousands of scientists associated with them part of a vast conspiracy? Are they all lying careerists or incompetent buffoons? That is the only logical conclusion to draw from the Republicans’ continuing insistence that climate science is bogus.
Despite having no more scientific credibility than the Flat Earth Society, the climate cranks have held our nation’s climate policy hostage for decades. One reason the United States has done so little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the past 20 years is that our government has listened as much to these climate cranks as to real scientists.
As a result, our planet is now locked into at least 50 more years of rising temperatures and the climate effects they unleash — longer droughts, stronger storms, harsher heat waves, rising sea levels. The young people of Generation Hot—the two billion people born worldwide since NASA scientist James Hansen put the world on notice in 1988 that global warming had begun—are fated to spend the rest of their lives coping with the hottest climate in civilization’s history.
Yet if one judged solely by recent media coverage, one would think deniers have a point. In an embarrassing display of scientific illiteracy and political gullibility, news organizations have repeatedly played into the deniers’ hands: Implicitly endorsing their unfounded accusations of fraud against scientists whose emails were stolen, by portraying a single error in a thousand-page Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report as reason to question all of mainstream climate science.
Then the media largely abandoned the climate story over the past 12 months, even as mainstream scientists were turning out one landmark study after another, clarifying the extreme peril.
There is no point trying to change the climate cranks’ minds. For economic as well as ideological reasons, they will no more acknowledge the truth of man-made global warming than the 17th-century Vatican would concede that the Bible was not literally true.
The rest of us, however, can change how we relate to the cranks.
As Republicans seek to repeal climate science, it is past time for the chattering class in Washington to stop giving them a pass. Climate cranks should instead be called to account for the terrible damages they have set in motion and prevented from further sabotaging our nation’s response to this crisis.
We cannot wait 359 years to believe in science.
Mark Hertsgaard is the author of six books including, most recently, “HOT: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth.”
It’s not just the grant money driving them (though that’s all it is to some, the useful idiots),
it’s the communism.
What does the "consensus" say about climate change?
I do not buy the claim that if we reduce C02 emission by an arbitrary amount the result will be a change in weather patterns. The public is being asked to believe, in a sense, that "I'm from the government, I'm here to change the weather."
Here is what I would like to hear from a global warmist.
"We are not sure exactly how strong the link between C02 and climate change is, and we admit there exists evidence to the contrary that is not easily explainable. But limiting C02 has so many other benefits it is worth pursuing."
I want a clean environment. I want cheaper, renewable energy sources. I would love to the see the combustion engine replace with something cleaner and cheaper. I would love to see alternative means for heating our homes. But until that day, we need to open ANWR, North Dakota, and expand nuclear power
If there are any climate problems that need solving, if there is alternative energy to be had, the answer will come from the private business sector. It will not come from governmental agencies with a green light to spend as much of our tax dollars in the form of grants as it sees fit.
Will it take the ‘Rats as long to accept the failure of their Globull Warming Hoax as it did the Soviet Union and Lysenkoism ?
GREAT POINT.
WIST (wish i said that)
hehehe
stupidity must be painful and we are going to experience a lot of pain coming soon... at the hands of many government employees too...
keep the powder dry and your aim sharp.
t
Let’s put our liberal thinking caps on and compare and contrast arguments.
1. Global temperatures are increasing by a barely noticeable amount each decade. This is inexorable and will cause the atmosphere to boil away in the next million years. The solution is to bankrupt western civilization now.
2. The federal workforce is given, on average, $3000 per day to spend. Each employee spends $4000 per day. Weekends and holidays too. The difference is hardly noticeable to your average bureaucrat. This leakage is infinitely sustainable, and any attempt to cut spending by any amount will cause the collapse of western civilization.
Do I have their arguments down pat, or what?
You can use it...just give me attribution. ; }
When THOSE commies come around then I can get around to dealing with the Green-Pinkos.
And yet he doesn't present a single scientific fact in the entire article.
I would remind this claptrap selling little twit that 100 years ago the ideals of eugenics and the idea that blacks had inferior mental capabilities were far more universally accepted among scientists than AGW is now.
What’s more, India and China are ramping up their use of such fuels at the same time the USA is told “you are an EVIL sinner, and must repent from your evil ways”.
It ain’t about science or the planet. Follow the money and the politics.
25 years ago, they were telling us the oceans would be dead in 20 years.
10 years ago, they were predicting that snowfall in England would become such a rare occurrence by this date that kids wouldn't even know what snow is.
They are doomsday cultists selling their religion on the public dime.
MR B ...i have a message for you from SPACECOAST FLORIDA......
YOU SIR...
are a STEELY-EYED-MISSLEMAN!
And it often completely writes Copernicus out of the history. “no one else”, “the church”, “blah blah blah”.
Unless you are a Young Earth Creationist, 150 years is a drop in the bucket, especially after coming out of the little ice age.
The argument at the link you posted claims the “greenhouse effect” is caused by the transport of heat by water vapor into the atmosphere. It was always my understanding that the greenhouse effect was that short wavelength IR radiation passed through the atmosphere and heated the surface. The heated surface reradiated at longer wavelengths that were absorbed by CO2 and H2O molecules in the atmosphere, rather than the radiation going back into space. This caused the Earth to thus be warmed by the net trapping of energy by “greenhouse” gases.
He said you MUST become another creature and be "born again"..
and, you know, evolve into another creature..
Note: Charles Darwin eat yer heart out..
Galileo! (Galileo!)
Galileo! (Galileo!)
Galileo, Figaro!
MAGNIFICOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!...
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