Right-wingers skeptical on climate change

Emotional appeals from public figures with little — or in the case of Sharron Angle, no experience — in atmospheric sciences, geography, geology, or any field that might justify her statement, “I don’t, however, buy into the whole … Man-caused global warming, man-caused climate change mantra of the left. I believe that there’s not sound science to back that up.” Angle, the Republican senate candidate from Nevada, essentially lays out the right’s ideology vis-à-vis their undue politicization of an inherently apolitical issue: global warming.

There was a time when Conservatives took the effort to lend credibility to their arguments even if the arguements were wrong and were consciously fabricated. For example, in 2009 Washington Post columnist George Will asserted the validity of a University of Illinois study of ice-shelf levels that concluded that the amount of ice had not decreased therfore global warming was not a threat.

The University of Illinois was overjoyed at this finding, since Will had seemingly done their work for them; they had never conducted such a study, and when they did after his column ran, they found that “global sea ice levels are 1.34 million square kilometers (about 830,000 miles) less in February 2009 than in February 1979.”

And to believe this was only last year. Since then, discourse has devolved to the point where any Republican incumbent who believes tested theories, evidence, and factual information, must either be a democrat or a moderate Republican (who, as the Tea Party has politely informed us, are being purged).

Florida governor Charlie Crist, an independent senate candidate, left the GOP after many aspects of his political career (none of which had to do with small government or social conservatism) were called into question as proof of his growing liberalism; only his belief that godless automobiles do more harm than good.

As Roy Blunt, a Senate candidate from Missouri put it, the right’s opposition to this is rooted in the belief that, “There isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the Earth.” As opposed to all of the proof to the contrary that the skeptics have?

Enter Climategate, a non-issue that the right uses to propagate the myth that so-called falsified findings were used in a study by liberal climatologists. However, despite the right’s war on science, the actual results feature a conclusion that yields pretty troubling results all on its own, because no scientific malpractice was deemed to have occurred.

A more mainstream approach, though still short of admitting science is not a Communist plot, includes accusing solar wind, sun spots (which never, and could not have, yielded such drastic increase during any global warming or cooling period in geologic history), and even more odd but less outlandish (rest assured, the presentation sure is), microwave ovens. Even such high-profile figures like Jon Stewart (a comedian whose show often confronts more serious issues in interviews) commented on this apparent regression; “(Wisconsin Sen.) Russ Feingold … is losing to a challenger who believes global warming is being caused by microwaves and sun spots,” Stewart said on his Sept. 9 show.

But what all of these competing theories have in common — besides an extreme disparity with reality — is that they’re all coming from people eager to somehow turn scientific rigor into elitism; you know, what they said our President has (the guy who paid off his student loans sometime in his late 40s.) This is an issue that could not, yet wrongly is, lumped in with being a liberal.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any historian that conservatives are eager to distance themselves from scientific rigor. The Enlightenment in Europe was a movement young America rejected, choosing to embrace the religions they carried from Europe, seeking freedom from persecution; but in recent years, when such scientific advances are impossible to refute, they’re finding a way, persecuting those who choose to accept a heightened understanding of how the world works.

Joseph Marhee is a history junior and may be reached at [email protected].