This post is part of a Huffington Post series that showcases commentary from some of our most active and thoughtful users. See Marvin's commentary as HuffPost user Realpolitic here, and read his second piece below.
Conservatives have been engaged in a war against science for at least as long as John Scopes of Scopes Monkey Trial fame sat sweating in a hot Tennessee courtroom on trial for teaching evolution. To this day, Republicans distrust information from elites, academics, and even that reported in the mainstream media. Conservatives work especially hard to undermine science that interferes with commercial interests, namely the profit motive. What happens when scientific conclusions clash with a preconceived ideology and why the difficulty in recognizing one's own preconceptions? Or is the Republican war on science really a war on reality itself?
The global warming consensus is more often debated in the popular media where a he-said, she-said reportage is used than among scientists. In fact, the U.S. Climate Change Research Program reported in 2009 that:
Observations show that warming of the climate is unequivocal. The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. No scientific organization of international standing disagrees:
A 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences analyzed "1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of anthropogenic climate change outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of anthropogenic climate change are substantially below that of the convinced researchers."
Therefore, why the denial campaign?
Researchers have been measuring the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii since 1958. The CO2 content, uniform throughout the earth's atmosphere, has increased from a pre-industrial concentration of 280 ppm to 392 ppm today, an increase of more than a third. CO2 and other greenhouse gases act as a blanket in our atmosphere that trap the sun's energy. The last time CO2 levels were as high as today was three million years ago, during the Pliocene era, a time long before even the first cigar chomping conservative took his first tax deduction. CO2 levels at that time remained elevated for thousands of years giving a picture of where we are heading today. Then, the Arctic was ice-free in the summers with temperatures being between 20 to 29 degrees F warmer than today, sea levels anywhere from 15 to 100 feet higher, and global temperatures 5 to 7 degrees F warmer. During this era, the Isthmus of Panama cemented North America to South America.
Temperatures at the earth's surface have risen 1.1 degree C, or nearly 1.98 degree F, since the beginning of the 20th century and the warming is accelerating. NOAA's annual State of the Climate Report for 2009 reports that "Past Decade is the Warmest on Record According to Scientists in 48 Countries":
Each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the decade before. At the time, the 1980s was the hottest decade on record. In the 1990s, every year was warmer than the average of the previous decade. The 2000s were warmer still. "The temperature increase of one degree Fahrenheit over the past 50 years may seem small, but it has already altered our planet," said Deke Arndt, co-editor of the report and chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. "Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying and heat waves are more common. And, as the new report tells us, there is now evidence that over 90 percent of warming over the past 50 years has gone into our ocean."
With more heat energy in the atmosphere, chaotic weather patterns are becoming routine. An estimated 15,000 people died in the Moscow heat wave of 2010. Thailand experienced the worst flooding in its history with Bangkok, its capital city of 10 million, choked by water. Australia is almost an Armageddon with record wildfires, flooding that saw 60% of Queensland under water, and temperatures well above 100 degrees F. Catastrophic wildfires scorched Texas last year, rudely ignoring Governor Perry's blanket denial of climate change. Perry's response was to hold a prayer meeting to pray for rain, but he may as well have hired a diviner to search for water in the ground. Although likely not invited to the prayer meeting, scientist Jay Gulledge stated:
There is a well documented link between the earlier start of spring, higher summer temperatures, and drier conditions during summer and fall -- that is, climate change -- and a dramatic increase in wildfire activity in the western U.S. since the late 1980s. These observations reveal an increase in fire risk due to climate change.
Given this massive body of information and the reality of intensifying storm systems, how do conservatives so easily scoff at climate change? For example, Rick Santorum boosted:
I've never supported even the hoax of global warming." Has the GOP completely abandoned the Enlightenment, adopting instead an almost pagan idolatry for the powers of the wind and rain gods? Well, some psychology is needed to explain the GOP war on science. "In particular, more and more attention focuses on motivated reasoning, a subconscious and often automatic emotional process in which people rationalize pre-existing views that are important to their identities, including in the face of direct factual refutation. So we are beginning to be able to understand the Republican denial of science as part of a motivated process in which certain scientific claims are seen as so threatening to self-identity and group affiliations that they must be rejected in order to preserve a sense of self.
Well, we have ended largely where we began that conservatives just trust their gut instincts more than others. However, science is not the movie Rashomon where the same story is told from multiple perspectives completely changing the narrative. If we do not share the same facts, dialogue is impossible. When science becomes just another front in the culture wars, society is the loser and scientific innovation migrates to distant shores. Lastly, conservatives reject moral relativism where standards of right and wrong are thought to be mere products of time and culture, but what about the dangers of intellectual relativism where one believes what he wants to believe simply because it supports one's value structure? Just asking!
There are volumes of information pertaining to the contribution that livestock bring to the global warming arena. A widely cited 2006 report by the UN, "Livestock’s Long Shadow", estimates that 18 percent of annual worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are attributable to livestock….however recent analysis by Goodland and Anhang co-authors of “Livestock and Climate Change” in World Watch magazine found that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions!
This raises significant doubts that mankind's actions are a major contributor. "The last time CO2 levels were as high as today was three million years ago, during the Pliocene era. Was mankind around during the Pliocene era? No matter what mankind does now, the Earth will what it wants to do on its own terms. If the Earth wants to warm, it will warm.
"Mario Herrero, lead author of the Animal Feed and Technology paper, is a systems analyst and climate change specialist working at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Herrero argues that Goodland and Anhang, while claiming in the non-scientifically peer-reviewed World Watch Magazine (which is published by Worldwatch Institute) that livestock generate 51% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions rather than the 18% reported by FAO in 2007, fail to detail the methodologies they used to come up with this new figure, fail to use those methods consistently across different sectors, and fail to follow global guidelines for assessing emissions set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Kyoto Protocol."
http://www.ilri.org/ilrinews/index.php/archives/tag/robert-goodland
Now, let me just say, that even if the Goodland report regarding livestock was not "peer reviewed," there is still enough information out there, including the information below, that calls into doubt mankind's actual contribution to the issue. What this means to me is, until all of the variables and unknowns are pinned down, the issue does not warrant spending large sums of money. I consider such folly akin to playing the lottery. It is also still premature to start thrusting regulation on the issue down the throats of industry or the general public for that matter.
Excerpt:
"The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions..... Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation...
http://climatedepot.com/a/2117/PeerReviewed-Study-Rocks-Climate-Debate-Nature-not-man-responsible-for-recent-global-warminglittle-or-none-of-late-20th-century-warming-and-cooling-can-be-attributed-to-humans
If the Earth wants to warm, there's not a damn thing mankind can do to stop it. Trying to control the world's thermostat is just sheer madness
Well, here's one reason: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/11/29/climategate-ii-more-smoking-guns-from-the-global-warming-establishment/ You're on your second round of email busts. Sloppy, sloppy.
:-)
Since when isn't it?
Berthajane Vandegrift
A Few Autistic Questions about Freud, Marx and Darwin (available on the internet)
Man, did that whooping hurt the creationist behind.
:-)
What kind of article is this Huffpo? I was hoping an answer would be given to the initial headline and at the and the author asks the question again - because he couldn't give an answer or just wanted to cite facts. ....
Republicans fight Climate Change because the industries affected MIGHT be one that they are invested in. This is self-preservation. But it is also tribal because they will oppose anything us liberals have that can direct policy - because sane policy SOMETIMES rubs against what republicans wants.
If this was a chess game it would be akin to cornering the queen(science) as long as possible. The republicans know that the rest of their pieces will be picked off easily if science is let loose.
The 2011 heat wave and drought should have been instructive in that regard, especially for my fellow Texans. It wasn't actually a lot hotter or drier than it sometimes gets, but it was enough to be a major disruption.
On a personal level, the uncertainties of this new climate are bad enough. Is it worth trying to put a garden in this year? Are there going to be enough flowers for my bees to survive, or am I going to have to feed them again?
That's just petty individual concerns about home gardening. Imagine being a rancher or farmer, someone who's livelihood relies on a generally predictable climate, trying to plan for the future here in Texas. It's nail-biting time for those folks, especially since the state climatologist is predicting that drier and warmer will be the new norm in the next few decades.
On a community level, the new climate can no longer be ignored, because a lot of Texas towns found out just how vulnerable their water supplies are. They can't just assume that after the dry years we'll have some wet years to compensate.
That's just some of the uncertainties facing just one state in just one nation. Magnify that by one planet, and it's hard to imagine that anyone in the GOP would still claim that it's safe to keep changing the composition of our atmosphere.
http://www.munichre.com/app_pages/www/@res/pdf/media_relations/press_dossiers/hurricane/2011-half-year-natural-catastrophe-review-usa_en.pdf
Now read the vitriolic comments lambasting the subject of the article. People who laud themselves as "tolerant" randomly claiming superiority and disparaging the subject of the article.
If the article had been written with a different group, and the same "facts" were in evidence, how many here would be piling on? And how many would be standing up in defense of the object of scorn?
I presume that at LEAST 80% of those reading this article are not scientists and don't possess the capability to assess the climate models themselves, you believe the science because someone told you that it is "proven" and beyond question. You therefore are unable to personally defend its merit. Yet you still feel compelled to disparage others for not jumping aboard.
Is it "comfortable" to get together with others who share your b i g o t r y, and pile insults on the target? I wonder about your ethics and morality, and how they come into play as you randomly attack the other half of the country.
It appears that few here are interested in a civil discussion, which is a shame. With what is evidenced on this thread alone, it is no wonder that our country is such dire shape. Imho.
Well, I'm one of the 20 % of the people reading the article who are scientists, and Marv's assessment of the situation is spot-on.
There is a huge difference between being tolerant of African Americans, or what have you, and being tolerant of mendaciousness and credulity. One would think this would be obvious.
First, we have the 'troll" reference.
Second we have you attempting to justify why it is ok to make random accusations a vicious remarks against a group you dislike.
And I would argue that comments such as yours are no less bigoted than they would be if they were directed at any other group.
What I find interesting is the level of acceptance of sentiments such as yours among a group that proclaims themselves to be "tolerant". Isn't that one of the calling cards of the left? Tolerance?
Clearly not in evidence here.
Thanks again for your illuminating reply.
That's not what I intended to convey, and bringing up Fox News, while the typical go-to response, has no bearing here. I rarely watch, so you would know more than I about their claims if you in fact, watch it.
I specifically omitted a discussion about the merits of your well written piece, and was addressing the unguarded vitriol and jactitation of too many responses.
My point is that it is illuminating how people seem so ready to attack republicans, but if any other group had been the focus of your article and the results had been the same, THAT group would not have been the target of the venom seen here - and would in fact have been protected by the same people who are currently attacking.
My question is. Why is it ok to live this double standard?
And given this level of intolerance on the part of the left, how can our country ever possibly come together to work to solve our common problems?
Dear Marv, Can't answer for everyone. Just myself. I have a number of reservations about THIS issue. Tried to thrash through one this week - and got buried in @#$@#. So part of my problem is the inability to TALK about it, hence my current rant.
As for ID? Its a minority that is pushing that and think they have misjudged support- I don't personally know anyone.
As you know its a religion thing for the minority. People are told they need to "believe" in order to be a "good person" and get into heaven, and so they "do" and they want their kids to believe the "right thing" hence the education push. I guess evolution is threatening to this world view.
I'm disheartened to see much of the social agenda; think that the R's will snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory with it.
All you have to do is to examine the posts from the conservatives on this site. Most conservative posts are free of facts, void of reasoning and empty of knowledge. However, conservative posts generally are full of factual distortions, re-writes of history, and empty rhetoric.