Ninety-four percent of Texas schools teach only "abstinence only" sex education. The Texas teen birth rate is 50% above the national average. Yet when Texas Governor Rick Perry is asked about this, he says, "I'm just going to tell you from my own personal life, abstinence works." He also says that evolution is "a theory that's out there -- and it's got some gaps in it," and that "the science is not settled" on climate change.
Newt Gingrich says embryonic stem cell research is "killing children for research material."
Herman Cain says that "man-made global warming is poppycock."
Michele Bachmann calls global warming "voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax," and claims that the HPV vaccine has a very serious risk of causing "mental retardation," while Ron Paul says it is "not good medicine," even though medical experts recommend it because it prevents the leading cause of cervical cancer. It has no known cases of causing "mental retardation" in over 35 million uses in the U.S. alone.
Rick Santorum wants to teach creationism in science classes, as does Michele Bachmann, while Mitt Romney, after being told "bye-bye nomination" by Rush Limbaugh, now says he's not so sure if humans cause global warming.
Jon Huntsman is the only uncompromisingly pro-science GOP candidate, and after tweeting that he believes America's leading scientists about anthropogenic global warming and evolution -- "call me crazy," he tweeted -- he has been marginalized by GOP pundits.
Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner, who has also advocated for teaching creationism in science classes, displays an embarrassing ignorance of science when he claims that climate scientists say that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen. This from the second most powerful elected official in America, and someone we would hope would be engaging in reality.
Want to know what is going on in the Republican Party? Join the club. My family founded the Minnesota Republican Party and I am dismayed by this un-American display of prideful ignorance. These candidates ought to be ashamed. America didn't keep the world safe for democracy by pandering to ideological dark-agers -- we got ahead by using hard-headed science. It's time we get back to it, and start putting America first again. Even Pat Robertson is saying these candidates are "too extreme." With the exception of Huntsman, who has shown real spine, the rest of them owe America an apology.
President Obama's not much better. Running strong on climate change in 2008, he has since totally de-prioritized it, apparently marginalizing his scientist appointees like Chu, Holdren and Lubchenco, all of them outspoken on climate change, and now appears to be moving ahead with offshore oil drilling, lower air pollution standards, poor carbon standards, and the Keystone XL oil pipeline. In a time when the science has only advanced further and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences says anthropogenic global warming should be "regarded as settled facts" -- a time when China's leapfrogging ahead on clean energy investments in the next economy, that's not going to take America where we need to go.
I detail some of the reasons why this is happening -- and identify several solutions -- in the following video. But you are cautioned: move throwable objects away from the computer.
Shawn Lawrence Otto's keynote at the publication party for Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America. At the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Oct 18, 2011. 160 people attended.
Introduction by Minnpost columnist and former CBS/WCCO-TV news anchor Don Shelby.
Get Shawn Lawrence Otto's important new book: Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, "a gripping analysis of America's anti-science crisis." (starred Kirkus Review) An "incredible book" (starred Publishers Weekly review).
Like him on Facebook. Listen to him on Science Friday. Join Science Debate movement to get the presidential candidates to debate science.
Follow Shawn Lawrence Otto on Twitter: www.twitter.com/shawnotto
Alan Schroeder: Rick Perry: Afraid to Debate?
------------------------------------------------
I’ve recently been involved with other scientists and scholars in Utah trying to stop the spread of outright lies, half-truths, abuses of data, and distortions about climate change. Much of this disinformation is coming from (or through) some Republican members of the Utah Legislature, and the other Republican (and some Democratic) members have swallowed it hook, line, and sinker...
I'm a Republican myself, and it galls me that my own party has locally fallen for a bunch of conspiracy theories and scientifically incompetent trash. In my opinion, something has to be done to save the party from disaster in the long run...
Democracy depends on accurate information being readily available to the public, and I see people who propagate such disinformation campaigns as enemies of Democracy.
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/about-this-blog/
the reality is the jury is still out on the subject and some of the "scientists" - arn't
Spoken like an evolution science denier.
Do you deny evolution too, heian120? If not, why the double-standard with respect to climate science?
Climate science denial and evolution science denial are the two most prominent science denial movements in existence today, and deniers of both movements - who not incidentally are quite often the same people - employ your grossly misleading "the reality is the jury is still out on the subject and some of the "scientists" - arn't" science denier rhetoric.
Duh.
heian120: "in fact the semi religious word "denier" tells everyone that you think, like the people who deny the reality of evolution, that AGW is somehow a god given reality"
Yawn.
U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2010):
"Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities."
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12782
Anyone who argues to the contrary is misled, or misleading.
"The reality of global warming is just about as settled now as the reality of the harms of tobacco." - Naomi Oreskes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOnXL8ob_js
Well said Shawn. I look forward to reading your book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik#Effect_on_the_German_nuclear_program
Joseph Stalin rejected established agricultural science in favour of the nonsense promoted by Trofim Lysenko and the result was that the Soviet Union could not feed it's own population and in fact millions starved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko
Mao Tse-tung ignored the established science of metalurgy and embarked on a program of small-scale production of iron and steel. The result was a disaster called the Great Leap Forward. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong#Great_Leap_Forward
More recently, in 1995 Thabo Mbeki announced his belief that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is not the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). I wouldn't put him in the same category as the first three I mentioned but here we see a similar rejection of scientific consensus in favour of an ad hoc belief system.
Roemer refuses campaign contributions from PACs and limits all contributions to $100 or less. Why is Roemer refused a spot on the RNC debates (and why did this author omit him, as well)?
Reference: http://newhampshireprimary.blogspot.com/2011/06/buddy-roemer-believes-in-global-warming.html
I'm having a really hard time with this. So the man thinks that scientists think that that stuff found in fizzy water is a carcinogen? Really?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonated_water
Scientists are all about the truth of the underlying facets and features of reality, and have a system that ensures it's always on that path toward a more-correct understanding of these truths.
What's happening, of course, is that scientists occasionally uncover truths about human activities that upset the status quo and, in particular, may temporarily upset some segments of business as they are compelled by the new information to change their practices. Because they don't want to change their practices as they perceive it as upsetting their profit structures, they steadfastly deny, and use their political and economic clout to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Unfortunately, the spreading of fear, uncertainty, and doubt works with the less-informed among us, and there has been an on-going campaign, a concerted effort to control the media to spread fear, scientific uncertainty, and scientific doubt since roughly the mid 1970s when the 1%ers figured out that the media brought down Richard Nixon and it could bring them down, too, or protect them if it was coopted. The primary means by which this control was mastered is consolidation of the media into fewer and fewer hands, so the overall message can be managed.
If we want to return to a scientifically sane America, we must force media divestiture.
and fyi the people who have tried hard to control the "media" are the GW advocates - its shameful BS
Science's only agenda is to uncover information and knowledge about the universe, though I do grant that such a thing may look "increasingly left" as the propagandists succeed in convincing the less-than-well-informed among us to move the country rightward.
"Advocacy" on the part of scientists regarding AGW is a direct result of knowledge combined with a conscience; you would condemn those who knew of an impending disaster and failed to warn a community while there was still time to act. So your head-in-the-sand approach is the problem.
You provide zero insight into what "nonsense that has been at the heart [of] climate science" you're talking about, of course, so no rebuttal is possible, just as you planned.
The people who control the media don't "try" to do so, they just do. They are the wealthy capitalists whose fortunes are made and kept by manipulating the masses via propaganda, with the subjects of choice being whatever they fear most, or think will benefit them - Anthropogenic Climate Change being chief among them. Example: "Climategate" from about 18 months ago to which the MSM expended days worth (collectively) of air-time when it was "against AGW", and to which, when it was categorically disproven and shown that the fundamental claim of climategate was false, they gave (aproximately) 45 SECONDS of air-time.
Well, you see, at first there was Lincoln. Then it kinda' went downhill.