Paul Krugman writes: "Now, we don't know who will win next year's presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years the world's greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges - environmental, economic, and more - that's a terrifying prospect."
Portrait, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, 06/15/09. (photo: Fred R. Conrad/NYT)
Republicans Against Science
29 Month 11
Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn't a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that's too bad, because Mr. Hunstman has been willing to say the unsayable about the GOP - namely, that it is becoming the "anti-science party." This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.
To see what Mr. Huntsman means, consider recent statements by the two men who actually are serious contenders for the GOP. nomination: Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.
Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as "just a theory," one that has "got some gaps in it" - an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists.... In the past, Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, has strongly endorsed the notion that man-made climate change is a real concern. But, last week, he softened that to a statement that he thinks the world is getting hotter, but "I don't know that" and "I don't know if it's mostly caused by humans."
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Mind you I'm no better, I've seen a few gaps in their world view too , starting with the notion that the Bible is just another holy book, subject to perverse , self serving interpretation, oblivious of its own evolution. Call me crazy but...
we must learn again to dance with the one who brung us - even if the republicans are smug over having two left feet
One is Myth and the other is fact!
I just hope that all the climate deniers live long enough that their Grandkids get to tell them what MORONS they are!
Those who do not believe in the bible that is their perogative but please do not mix the Republicans calling themselves Christians (hypocrits) and people who are really christians.
You have got to have a heart to be a Christian and Republicans have no heart.
give him an island and let him take his followers with him...maybe a comet will come for them too.
We recently saw the impact in Florida's Collier County. The six counties to its north adopted stringent fertilizer controls to keep it away from and out of their waters, knowing fertilizer nutrients spark massive harmful algal blooms and very dangerous bacteria. But the science deniers voted 3-2 against such measures, adopting only state minimums. All this happened while county ponds were erupting in algae, and the counties "world famous" beaches were stretches of harmful algal blooms and dead fish. The results were VISIBLE and still denied! Warn your friends, vacationers, and convention planners about Nasty Collier.
My concern is that, as Krugman notes, there seems to be an attempt to challenge the very legitimacy of "science". Science and religion and different types of phenomena. No independently, objectified proof is required of religion. If I can persuade sufficient people to believe in the "flying spaghetti monster" and use that as a base for a religion, it's a religion (though the dominant religions would probably want to call it a cult).
Let's keep the two - science and religion - as separate categories, as different ways of "knowing", and not attempt to mix them indiscriminantl y.
Gravity is not a theory ("just" or otherwise). Gravity is a force that can be demonstrated as factual in innumerable experiments. Einstein's Theory of General Relativity explains gravity, so it is a theory. That Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Means of Natural Selection has been supported by many observations does not make it a fact. The Darwinian Theory of Evolution has itself evolved over time to incorporate concepts of genetic drift and Mendelian genetics. Powerful theories have predictive power, but one must always understand that they are derived through incomplete and fallible mechanisms and so can never be accepted as totally axiomatic.
I would assume you would agree that evolution is factual. That is, species of life on Earth can give rise to variations or even new species, connected by descent yet with changes. That’s been demonstrated in the lab (mostly with fruit flies and bacteria and such), by the fossil record, and (rarely) by observation of living species. The theory of evolution by natural selection is the connecting and explaining overview, which puts forth how evolution happens. It has lots of factual underpinnings yet is a product of the human mind, weaving the facts together into a big picture. It’s undergone modifications and additions, and will undergo more. Agreed?
Is evolution a "fact"? I've tussled with that question for a long time, teaching biology in a small high school for over thirty years. My current thinking is that it is not really all that important to accept a natural process like biological evolution or plate tectonics as "facts", but to recognize them as paradigms that are useful in understanding the way the world works.
Republicans.
I like that image! Thanks!
We live in the Age of Science....not the more romantic prophetic j Age of Herding and Domesticating animals...in which our prophets thrived and led us ....... I am irish ethnic..so how does ethnicity relate to ethnicity in the Age when Irish can receive organ transplants and pig-kidney transplants to live....the prophets are not scientists..we live in the Age of Science..in fact....our Earth planet is made of the same elements on the periodic table in school classrooms... ..........the same elements...He used the same school classroom periodic table elements to create this planet Earth Universe that surrounds us too!......planet Earth and all its lifeforms....let us preserve what He created...all life consists of the same elements...God ,our Creator is God of Science too!...modern scientists simply father the facts to prove or disprove the earth-man'sprophesy...
Fundamentalists are free to believe what ever they wish to believe.....they should quit using science to live longer.if they are opposed to science.......and quit using that comfy scientific technology also..........and return to days of romantic yesteryear with the horse and independent farm ,where I would like to be........
When a candidate questions a theory he is attacking proven data. Perry and the like have hypothesis regarding climate change, no data involved.
Also the Christian Right and their candidates have no skin in the game of saving the planet because they are all about hastening the end of the world.
Spot on, LeeBlack!
The deeply disturbing similarities to George W. Bush aside, Rick Perry has also got that Ronald Reagan thing happening, have you noticed that? Good hair, telegenic, sunny disposition, smooth talker - and dumber than an empty box of Rice Crispies. Ronnie with a Texas twang. The perfect candidate in this era of soundbites and snake oil.
I hope he gets the nomination. I'm looking forward to the Perry Campaign like an eight-year-old kid looks forward to Christmas morning. A campaign as endearingly weird as that ought to be good for too much material to catalog. Can he make it all the way to the convention? It's not bloody likely that the religious bigots who now control that disgusting party will be nominating Mormon Mitt Romney anytime soon - the only one of the current frontrunners with an IQ higher than room temperature.
Oh, what the hell! Let's all pretend that it's morning again in America. Cheery optimism is the order of the day. Times as weird as these demand Rick Perry.
Git 'em, cowboy!
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
So we have the two faces of the Plutocratic Party, one openly hostile to science and the other covertly hostile to it. We've got to stop giving support and credence to the lesser of these evils as well as to the greater. So I've just re-registered as a Green Party member in the hope of sending a message to the Democrats that they can't get my support by continuing to be so duplicitous. I'm just not buying the propaganda anymore!
Lucky for you, election-season is free.
LOL! Yeah, but if written by the Repukes, it will be a test of circling the two-spotted frog that doesn't belong with the 3-spotted frogs -- that will be both the IQ and the poligraph test.
Next November will tell the tale is the nation lives or die!
I am a true Jesus Christ believer. But I also believe those two should never be together. You cannot put religion in govenment.
I pray to God but never think he answeres me or tells me to do anything.
Anyone who says God talked to them is a big fraud and you should know that.
Most Democrats are true Christians because they have empathy and want to help the poor, disabled, children. That is the difference with the Republicas who only want more money for Wealthy and Corporations and if they call themselves Christians you have to know they are frauds, they are hypocrites and they do not care for the welfare of the poor, sick, disabled and children. Period.
Just what would happen to civilization if Earth's current population of 6 plus billion people did not have enough to eat for a couple of years?
After the eruptions, a short 'ice age', and famine were over global warming would probably resume and accelerate because volcanic eruptions release large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (primarily CO2 and water vapor). Not a pretty picture for the long-run.
Republicans appear to be so worried about the debt that we leave to future generations, but seemingly have little concern about the planetary conditions and civilization we bequeath. On this Republicans seem to agree with their bete noir in economic analysis, John Maynard Keynes, "In the long-run we are all dead".
Krugman neglected to mention that ALL the organizations that came to the defense of the infamous East Anglia climategate emails have as much revenue tied up in the hoax research of climate-change doom as do the authors of chicanerous emails. His claim of greater than 97 percent of climate scientists supporting man-caused global warming is as phony as the AGW science itself.
But the Republican Party of the United States does not employ the scientific method nor logic or reason to their arguments about climate change, evolution, and technology that any world leader must be on top of.
And to even a layman, simply noting the milder winters since my youth forty years ago, the snow disapearing from Mt. Kilaminjaro, glaciers melting in the Alps, real shrinkage of the polar areas of the globe, the movement of Armadillos into northern states, and the increasing regularity of severe weather beyond mere chance, we should begin to have a clue.
Eight or ten billion humans have harnessed fossil fuels, spewed billions of tons of it into the air every year and more. If you think this has no impact on the Earth and its ecosystems you're not paying attention to your world and you are ... you can fill in the blank here along with and a Republican.
their partners in crime however, certainly line their pockets with heir science of pharmaceutical, chemical hazards.
Only reason we are allowed to ponder Outer Space is for a Place/Planet for them to run to when they push the button or Poison this Planet.
They all know full well what they are doing but they are so beyond belief than to believe this will affect their families. They just do not care, and are very stupid. Corporations will keep feeding them lies along with all the money.
For generations southern plantation owners controlled the politics of the South, in part by leaving everyone else too uneducated to object, in part by a terroristic totalitarian state. Southern whites always voted Demcrat because Lincoln was a Republican - the real election was the primary. Southern blacks didn't vote at all.
And then Democrats took on the cause of Civil Rights. All too quickly the same crowd that ran the South as a terroristic totalitarian state decided maybe the party of Lincoln wasn't so bad. Today, when I I look at the Republican Party, I see the old Democratic Party of the South, not the party of Teddy Roosevelt, who believed in the power of education, science, research, greater understanding.
Knowing the lengths to which the old Southern Dixiecrats and their predecessors went to hold on to power frightens me as I see a similar trend rising in the Republican Party.
Sometimes I wish Lincoln had let the South secede and realize it's inner banana republic - without me.
He was the most loved president. I am sorry most young people do not realize to what extent he saved this country and its middle class and poor.
The Republicans always try to downgrade hm but let me tell you
Allmost immediatly on taking over as President the bread lines ended. Work created for everyone Life and hope got better for all thanks to this man alone for what he created and accomplished.
And I should know I am 84 and lived through it.
And Clinton at least left us with plenty of money which Bush immediatly used up and started the deficit we are in.
Obama we have yet to see.
After living there about a month or so a neighbor who happened to be a pastor for a large Gulfport Church invited my wife and I to a "chili-cook-off." So (like a couple-of-idiots) we went and within twenty minutes several members of the group had separated my wife and I, circled each one of us like some kind of a Sioux war party around a couple of prairie schooners and began to proselytize fervently.
After living there for about a year I opened the newspaper one day to discover that some religious zealots had burned down a nearby Hindu or Hare-Krishna Temple.
After living there for about a year and a half - I was substitute teaching one day when I happened to notice that the teacher I was subbing for had strategically plastered a number of anti-Clinton bumper stickers in different places around her classroom.
If these southern-fried, ultra-right-wing, Bible belting crackpots take over - this nation will regress into some kind of feudalistic, fascistic, nightmare of a theocracy in no time flat.
Beware, be diligent and get ready for the worst!
Mother Nature must have been amusing herself when she left out one chromosone (the one that makes sense) in the evolution scale for some humans. The ironic part is, they seem to be all in the US of A! Even apes have more unstanding about their environment that these Republicans and it's Tea party membership.
I'm not very optimistic about the future if these insane brain-washed people get to rule the USA!
to survive or the poverty stricken who have no Medicaid or assistance or the African Americans whose unemployment and disgruntlement is at an all time high. Unhappy people do not go to the polls to vote for a weak contender who has let them down to negate a worst contender. They go to the polls to support a strong contender who will lift them out of their misery. We need to find a strong contender who is able to restore hope in the hopeless and who can convince them he/she will bring action to their words
and declarationa.
It doesn't though seem to matter much whether we choose as President someone who denies climate change and doesn't do anything about it or whether we re-elect someone who says he believes man-made climate change is occurring and doesn't do anything about it. In the contest or rivalry over who can be the most useless with regard to climate change, Obama is every bit equal to Romney. Both men are opportunists to their innermost core.
In a sense, he's right although not the way he intends. EXXON pays its "scientists" very well, more than any government or academic institution could even dream of. For their vast riches, their scientists give them "manipulated data" that they have taken from real scientists and distorted in order to give EXXON and the other oil companies the ammunition that they want.
Unfortunately the public doesn't understand what is going on. See Fredboy above for a brief mention of how this has worked in the past to mess with the public by public relation campaigns based on falsehoods in other industries that are harmful to society's welfare.
Economic theory, taxation, the causes of a shrinking middle class, the rising cost of health care, you name it, they have the answers and they're all as ludicrous as Creationism.
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