Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), gleeful science ignoramus, at CPAC in 2011. Image: Gage Skidmore/Flickr
Writing as true scientists, their report ticked off the disturbing pronouncements in studied language, backed by a vast supply of carefully scrutinized evidence: There is "Risk of food insecurity and the breakdown of food systems," and of "extreme mortality and morbidity during times of extreme heat," they wrote. The eight hundred climatologist co-authors have "high confidence" that global warming threatens to bring on myriad modes of near-term devastation.But back in the courtroom, the committee chair—one of the most powerful science policymakers in the world—begins the meeting by disparaging climate change as "alarmism.""Unfortunately, this administration's science budget focuses, in my view, far too much money, time, and effort on alarmist predictions of climate change," Lamar Smith (R-TX) said. So begins a procession of obfuscation, denial, and provocation, all from non-scientists who appear to believe they are the smartest guys in the room.The reporter Mark Strauss, who dutifully catalogued some of the most distressing statements that spilt forth (some went so far as to clumsily question whether Holdren himself understood science), exhorted, "this is what the GOP war on science looks like.""So, when you guys do your research, you start with a scientific—what do they call it—postulate or theory, and you work from that direction forward, is that right?" Representative Randy Weber (R-TX) said. "So, I'm just wondering how that related, for example, to global warming and eventual global cooling." He paused to make a joke about getting the scientists' cell phone number so he could call to ask when to buy a coat, before concluding that science just isn't up to the task."We've had climate change since the day the Earth was formed, whenever that was, depending upon whatever you believe."
GW advocates insisted hug temp spike would be forth coming. It didn't happen, now they're predicting everything years away.
— Dana Rohrabacher (@DanaRohrabacher) September 19, 2013
@ EMaxever that is not a fact so the lib professor or left wing journalist who put that in your mind is Ur manipulator not Ur friend
— Dana Rohrabacher (@DanaRohrabacher) October 14, 2013
A Dem said: since Obama said in SOTU Climate Change was real, the argument was over. Hmm, did he say if we like our climate we can keep it?
— Randy Weber (@TXRandy14) February 5, 2014
These are men, and there are more of them, who are chuckling at what would appear to grade schoolers to be insurmountable contradictions—how can there be more heat and more snow?—while there is a simple scientific answer to that question and the gates to a hell are opening.In the Senate, it gets worse. That's the lair of the uncontested anti-science lion, James Inhofe (R-OK), who has authored a book about global warming entitled The Greatest Hoax. It is named after a line in what is perhaps his most famous speech, in which he claimed "climate change is the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetrated."But it's bad everywhere, across the entirety of what we might call the science-illiterate caucus of the GOP. Some Democrats, too. The House Energy Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) has stated "I do not say that [climate change] is manmade." Governor Chris Christie pulled his state out of the east coast's regional carbon-reducing cap and trade program. Just two months ago, twenty-four House Republicans voted against an amendment that would have added language to an energy bill that stated climate change was occurring. In essence, they were voting against the reality of climate change.Today's science committee hearing on global warming was cancelled because of harsh snow storm #tcot
— Bill Posey (@congbillposey) March 6, 2013