More than half of the incoming Republican caucus denies the validity of climate change science. Some 74 percent of Republicans in the U.S. Senate now take that stance, as do 53 percent of GOP in the House. “The deniers goal is to create the perception that fundamental aspects of climate science are controversial,” write several scientists connected to the National Academy. “They are not.” You might think that the revolution of Internet-blogging-networking technology would work to spread sound scientific knowledge more broadly, but you would be wrong. The new technology spreads a cacophony of voices in which the pre-Enlightenment folks are not only equal but more numerous and dominant than the voices of reason. Moreover, the new technology is not working alone. You have the likes of oil interests such as Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil funding a phalanx of anti-science spokesmen, think tanks and lobbyists. They put their money into sowing doubt about the scientific consensus. We are in Tennessee again, 1925, in the grip of the anti-scientists and their politicians.
Title: 3/4ths of Senate GOP Doesn’t Believe in Science — When Did Republicans Go Completely Off the Deep End?
Author: Robert Benson
Source: Alternet, 3/22/11
URL: http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150340
Student Researcher: Ashley Wood, Sonoma State University
Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips, Sonoma State University