The American Political Process and Climate Science in the 2nd Decade of the 21st Century

February 22, 2016 – Yesterday while walking my dog and digesting the primary results from South Carolina, there was at least good news on one front. The robins are back here in Toronto making a mass appearance in the cemetery next to where my wife and I live. Literally hundreds could be spotted flitting around the park-like setting in search of the early worm. The robins the last few years have made their appearance earlier than the norm. I remember just a decade ago that the first week of March usually coincided with first robins. Now it is happening a good 10 days earlier. Do these “bird brains” know something we don’t? They certainly seem to know more than the “bird brains” to the south who seem to value concocted truths over evidence.

It is hard to ignore the race for the Republican nomination for the American President from here in Toronto. After South Carolina’s primary the fight appears to be among a blowhard billionaire, a God-spouting anti-science conservative, and a Florida rookie senator still trying to figure out for what he stands. Whomever emerges to be the Republican nominee, the three have proven to be the least science-aware candidates to run for the high office of President since George W. Bush. In fact Bush looks like a genius compared to these three. In a post COP21 world, where America must take the lead in carbon reduction if humanity is going to meet its target global warming limit of a 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) limit, that is not a good thing.

Let’s look at the three and some of the things they have said.

Donald Trump has described climate change as a “tax grab.” He has used Twitter to espouse his opinions on the subject describing global warming as “non-existent,” “mythical,” a “hoax,” and those are just the polite words used. When President Obama, before the COP21 Paris meetings, described climate change as one of the greatest threats the United States has ever had to face, Trump stated it was one of the “dumbest things” a President has ever said. Here’s the full quote, “I think one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever heard in politics — in the history of politics as I know it, which is pretty good, was Obama’s statement that our No. 1 problem is global warming,”

Ted Cruz, who as Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, has demonstrated he has little grasp of scientific evidence, nor an understanding of geologic time. He ignores evidence with abandon or shapes different facts into an anti-science argument to pander to his religious and political constituency. Hence carbon dioxide isn’t a problem because the world has seen higher levels of it in the past (millions of years ago with a significantly different climate than today). Sea ice levels in the Arctic and Antarctic get mixed into a single bowl of misunderstanding. And saving the best for last he has stated, “It doesn’t matter that 97% of scientists agree about climate change, because 97% of scientists said the sun rotated around the earth in the 1600s.” So much for the emergence of the scientific method, experimentation, and validation checking that has began in the 17th century. And this from the guy who heads up a science committee.

Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, believes climate change is real. Or he doesn’t depending on the time of day. He once backed a cap-and-trade resolution as a Florida state legislator. But not now. For him any carbon reduction strategies whether a tax or cap are job destroying. He is fond of saying “I’m not a scientist” concomitant with any remarks he makes about global warming. It would be funny if he weren’t representing the state of Florida, probably the first area of the United States to feel the full impact of climate change in the coming decades. Rubio believes “our hands are tied.” Nothing can be done to reverse climate trends. In a February 1, 2016 article published in Mother Jones, the headline reads, “Florida is Sinking. Where is Marco Rubio?” Hard to tell where the senator is other than this one quote from a Republican presidential debate in which he states, “We’re not going to make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do absolutely nothing, nothing to change our climate….We’re not going to destroy our economy the way our left-wing government wants us to do. America is a lot of things, the greatest country in the world, absolutely. But America is not a planet.”

On the Democratic side one can breathe a sigh of relief. Whether Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders emerge as the nominee, science and evidence based reasoning will still have its place in the American political process.