Those weren’t the exact words Texas Gov. Rick Perry used, but that was the gist of his comments in New Hampshire this morning. Already an acknowledged evolution denier, Gov. Perry made clear that he is also an anti-science fanatic on the problem of climate change. A Union Leader editor tweeted the following quote from Gov. Perry:
Perry “I do believe the issue of global warming has been politicized”
The same editor, Drew Cline, followed up with another tweet about the governor campaigning in New Hampshire:
Perry says “a substantial number of scientists has manipulated data to keep the money rolling in.”
A New Hampshire public radio reporter also tweeted about the new presidential candidate’s science denial:
#perry on climate change: “Scientists are “coming forward daily” to disavow a “theory that remains unproven.”
It’s worth noting that at least two of the people Gov. Perry has appointed to chair the State Board of Education in Texas are also climate-change deniers. Just after presiding over the revision of controversial new science curriculum standards that called the existence of climate change into question in 2009, then-Chairman Don McLeroy, R-College Station, told a reporter:
“Conservatives like me think the evidence (for human contributions to global warming) is a bunch of hooey.”
After the Texas Senate refused to confirm Gov. Perry’s renomination of McLeroy to another term as chair, Gov. Perry appointed Gail Lowe, R-Lampasas, in 2009. Lowe was already on the record as denying the science of climate change, telling a reporter in 2008 that she would vote to reject any textbook that discussed human actions that add to the problem of global warming:
“That’s another textbook that will be turned down by me — political agenda and not solid objective science.”
This man makes me feel sick. Just the thought of him making it all the way to the White House makes me want to barf. The worst of it is that so many casual conservatives see the “R” next to his name on the ballot and think no more of it — even one of my own parents, a professor of organic chemistry, a person who is otherwise intelligent and down with science, thinks this guy can do no wrong. Why? He has no business maligning things he doesn’t understand.
I see there’s a book coming out early next year called “Adios Mofo: Why Rick Perry Will Make America Miss George W. Bush.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2011/0817/Another-Rick-Perry-book
He’s piping a tuhe that appealing to the Kochs and to the religious right. However, more and more average people are convinced of global warming every blistering day after blistering day. They also grant the science community increasing credibility.
So, Perry’s assinine assertions will have the effect of driving more and more people away from the radically politicized and highly superstitious version of “faith” that he espouses. It’s kind of like being a tadpole in a rapidly evaporating stock tank out in the parched flats of Haskell Co.
Of course he doesn’t give a sh*t, because he’s off to do his two-stepping in New York City!? and Viva Las Vegas!, etc.
If climate scientists really were mainly interested in keeping the money rolling it, it seems they would do better by switching sides on the issue and applying to the Koch brothers for funding.
Perhaps Governor Goodhair could explain this: If human activity is not causing climate change, then what are the odds that we would have the temperature volatility and water re-distribution that we are seeing *at exactly the same time* that we are putting a lot of artificial compounds into the environment?
Another comment: I agree completely with what Don McLeroy: Conservatives really do think evidence is a bunch of hooey. They hate evidence. As Richard Dawkins put it, they believe it because they believe it because they believe it.
All Perry is doing right now on the national stage is demonstrating his vast ignorance and his pitiful provincialism. That stuff may play well to the drunken mechanical bull riders in Texas bars or the cowboys farting bean gas around the campfire. On the larger American stage, it is the kiss of political death, and he is tongue-locked in a deep and sloppy French one right now. Like I said, just one dangle of the Don McLeroy puppet in front of the American people, and Perry is a goner.
Charles, imo one should never underestimate the ignorance and pitiful provincialism of the electorate combined with the fact that actual participation in elections in the US is pitifully low. Rule of thumb: the lower the participation, the better for extreme positions. Reason: extremists vote consistently and reliably, moderates don’t. E/(E+M) => 100% if M => 0% however small E is.
Where’s the guy who interjects that we’re a constitutional republic, not a democracy? We need that same kind of semantic referee for the GW discussion. If I may…
Global Warming (GW) a/k/a Climate Change shouldn’t be under debate. It’s happening (one could argue that it’s always happening, to a greater or less degree). What is under debate is the human contribution a/k/a Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). So, is Perry denying GW or AGW?
I consider myself a progressive/liberal. I don’t deny GW. However, I remain unconvinced of the significance of the anthropogenic contribution to it (at least as the major contributing factor). To address goingtotexas, respectfully, correlation is not causation. I wish there was the preponderance of evidence to support AGW as there is for Evolution (including the IPCC reports).
Sometimes rationality, (sanity), (functional cognition), requires that we make judgments about whom to trust. We don’t always have all the facts.
For instance, if I look straight ahead, I do not know whether the ground has fallen away right before me, but I trust that it is still there. So I take a step forward without looking at the ground.
Usually that works out for us.
I don’t know the exact science and the mathematical calculations to the effect that global warming is man-made, but I trust the scientists who say so. I don’t trust them completely, irrevocably, but I trust them enough to accept the theory of human caused global warming.
At any rate, to a certain degree it is a moot point. There are definitely other good reasons why we have to move away from fossil fuels, anyway. We have the capacity to do so.
We also have to redesign and rebuild our cities and houses and infrastructure to meet our 21st century needs.
We have a problem in that Wall Street is an enormous tumor, as is Big Oil /Coal, on the American middle class, and indeed the global economy.
Wherever you see war, famine, pestilence and death, you can see the fingerprints of these bad actors.
In our country, the suckups and toadies to these wielders of malevolent power are the GOP and the religious right. They’re like the character in “Dracula” that is the first in the story to be “bitten”. I forget his name.
“Yes, master.”
This creates a big credibility problem for the climate change deniers.
It doesn’t matter much now, very few people are serious climate deniers anymore. With Irene, about half the eastern seaboard and the northeast is going to have to be rebuilt.
Game over.
David,
I have a hard time considering “trust” and “science” in the same discussion. Not because I don’t “trust” science, but because I’m not seeing where “trust” has anything to do with scientific theory.
I’m glad you clued me in that the the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are merely the hit men of Wall Street and Big Oil/Big Coal. I’m just a little surprised that Wall Street and it’s energy minions have haunted the Earth for thousands of years before the incorporation of the Standard Oil Company or that little seed from the buttonwood tree took root in lower Manhattan.
But I’m having a hard time following your *logic*. What creates “a big credibility problem for the climate change deniers”?
When you’ve exercised your hyperbole muscles to exhaustion, please come back to have reality-based discussion.
Science is a technique that humans use to “figure things out”. Scientists are not necessarily more or less trustworthy than anyone else.
We all have a capacity for “trust” that is as natural as walking with your eyes forward instead of looking at the ground with each step. Why? Because you’ll run into that low hanging limb if you do that very much. You won’t see the bear with cubs that’s down at the water’s edge. Etc.
That doesn’t mean we grant trust lightly or that we trust absolutely.
We make sublte, complex, conditional and imperfect judgments about trust.
Generally, the science community is kicking butt on this equation. They’re gaining credibility every day on this issue.
The comparison with their opponents is rather stark.
Do you know of a book by Daniel Yergin called “The Prize” or the Frontline series based on it?
Do you know how the “Islamic Revolution” began?
Iran had a democratically elected President. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. had a monopoly on Iran’s oil. It feared that Iran would fall under the influence of the Soviet Union. On it’s behalf, the CIA deposed the President, and installed the Shah of Iran. His security police, the Savak, brutalized the population. Finally the people rose up, not in the name of Marxism, but in the name of Islam.
Do you know what’s going on in Burma? Ecuador? Congo, Nigeria, etc.?
The communist bloc was just more imperialistic competition for Western capitalism. Supposedly, when Marxism was defeated, we would enter a golden age of peace. What happened?
In the 19th Century, the struggle for Afghanistan was between Russia and Great Britain. It was called the Great Game. The history of prior centuries has been written, most people know some of it.
Everywhere you see famine, war, pestilence and death, in our modern world, you see a struggle for control of oil, or minerals, or land, etc.
In the U.S. Congress you have these Snidely Whiplash types whoring themselves to Big Oil, Wall Street, the Kochs, etc. and you have them pandering to the religious right. The religious right in turn moves in lockstep to elect their guys, having of course, drank the koolaid. And they of course, deny climate change because it’s not consistent with their reading of the Bible.
So the “balance” of credibility is increasingly tilting away from the climate deniers.
Happy to have been the sounding board for your diatribe up to now, but I’m done, unless you can steer us back to a discussion of AGW and away from your happy, happy, joy, joy take on life.
Ha, case in point.