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April 02, 2007

Global Warming Stubbornness

Have you ever noticed how pushing someone in a debate who is willfully ignorant of the facts typically causes them to increase their stubborn commitment to their ignorant view, rather than to consider an alternative position? It's a phenomenon we've witnessed increasingly since talk radio became so widely popular that it exploded into an ideological war for the mind of the country. Sometimes I think that we Independents form the last remaining group of real thinkers.

Anyway, it seems that the debate over the causes of global warming is yet another important issue that is following this predictable route: the more the topic is discussed, and the more conclusive evidence is produced, the more Republicans disbelieve human activity has anything to do with it.

Last year, the National Journal asked a group of Republican senators and House members: "Do you think it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?" Of the respondents, 23 percent said yes, 77 percent said no. In the year since that poll, of course, global warming has seized a massive amount of public attention. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a study, with input from 2,000 scientists worldwide, finding that the certainty on man-made global warming had risen to 90 percent.

So, the magazine asked the question again last month. The results?

Only 13 percent of Republicans agreed that global warming has been proved. As the evidence for global warming gets stronger, Republicans are getting more skeptical. Al Gore's recent congressional testimony on the subject, and the chilly reception he received from GOP members, suggest the discouraging conclusion that skepticism on global warming is hardening into party dogma. Like the notion that tax cuts are always good or that President Bush is a brave war leader, it's something you almost have to believe if you're an elected Republican.

Is this because the GOP is, to a large extent, owned and controlled by the very industries thought to be causing the problem? Actually, probably not.

Your typical conservative has little interest in the issue. Of course, neither does the average nonconservative. But we nonconservatives tend to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom. Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.

But then again, many of the scientists stirring up this doubt are funded by those polluting industries.

It isn't just the handful of "renegade scientists" who are the problem. A handful of ideologues are also controlling the Republicans' message by denying those who believe the legitimate science any roll in crafting public policy or legislation.

Reps. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., and Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., both research scientists, also were denied seats on the [Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming]. Normally, relevant expertise would be considered an advantage. In this case, it was a disqualification; if the GOP allowed Republican researchers who accept the scientific consensus to sit on a global warming panel, it would kill the party's strategy of making global warming seem to be the pet obsession of Democrats and Hollywood lefties.

Kind of makes you want to just have a drink or two and watch American Idol, doesn't it?

Posted by Becky at April 2, 2007 09:36 AM