Nature - "Hard To Escape Conclusion That The US Congress Has Entered The Intellectual Wilderness"

[hatrack]

EDIT

One lawmaker last week described scientists as “elitist” and “arrogant” creatures who hide behind “discredited” institutions. Another propagated the myth that in the 1970s the scientific community warned of an imminent ice age. Melting ice caps on Mars served to counter evidence of anthropogenic warming on Earth, and Antarctica was falsely said to be gaining ice. Several scientists were on hand — at the behest of Democrats on the subcommittee — to answer questions and clear things up, but many lawmakers weren't interested in answers, only in prejudice.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the US Congress has entered the intellectual wilderness, a sad state of affairs in a country that has led the world in many scientific arenas for so long. Global warming is a thorny problem, and disagreement about how to deal with it is understandable. It is not always clear how to interpret data or address legitimate questions. Nor is the scientific process, or any given scientist, perfect. But to deny that there is reason to be concerned, given the decades of work by countless scientists, is irresponsible.

That this legislation is unlikely to become law doesn't make it any less dangerous. It is the attitude and ideas behind the bill that are troublesome, and they seem to be spreading. Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican who chairs the full energy and commerce committee, once endorsed climate science, but last month said — after being pinned down by a determined journalist — that he is not convinced that greenhouse-gas emissions contribute to global warming. It was yet another blow to the shrinking minority of moderate centrists in both parties.

One can only assume that Congress will find its way at some point, pressured by voters who expect more from their public servants. In the meantime, as long as it can fend off this and other attacks on the EPA, President Barack Obama's administration should push forward with its entirely reasonable regulatory programme for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions where it can, while looking for ways to work with Congress in other areas. Rising oil prices should increase interest in energy security, a co-benefit of the greenhouse-gas and fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles that were announced by the administration last year. The same advice applies to the rest of the world. Work with the United States where possible, but don't wait for a sudden change of tenor in Washington DC.

EDIT

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7338/full/471265b.html

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. In other words: You can't fix stupid.

[bluerum]

2. Hmm. Institutionalised illiteracy. Interesting national agenda.

[struggle4progress]

3. It's a mistake to assume some political blowhards really care very much, one way or another,

about the bilge they noisily spew: their object is to gain attention through controversy or to gain friends by exciting bigotry

So it's actually pointless to argue with such people -- and equally pointless to attempt to refute them by logic: often, it is best to ignore them or to organize quietly against them: but when one cannot ignore them the proper response is almost never direct argument against what they seem to say: in fact, they are playing to an audience from a stage, and their actual message will not be what they say but something else: so one ought to respond obliquely, cutting into the noise from an unforeseen angle, disrupting both the apparent nonsense and also the hidden nonsense

[DCKit]

4. “elitist”, “arrogant” and “discredited”. That's IMAX quality projection, folks.

Pity the script and subject suck so bad.

[Kolesar]

5. It's like the bush administration never ended...eom

[Bigmack]

6. And to think that this ignorant wasteland

has thousands of nuclear weapons...... Ms Bigmack

[Kurovski]

7. K&R. (nt)