Republicans on Science = “LaLaLa I Can’t Hear You”

A couple revelations have come out recently about the disdain for actual, rigorous science amongst Republicans — both in Congress and in the Administration.

First, Monday’s hearing at the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, examining “Political Interference with Climate Science.” According to Chris Mooney, a longtime watcher of the Republican war on science, the “revelations were whizzing by” at a dizzying pace. He even seems to think (though he buries the point somewhat in his HuffPo piece) that there was a smoking gun of sorts: internal emails showing NASA tried to block its most famous climate scientist, James Hansen, from performing an interview with NPR.

Quick on the heels of this hearing — and the mountain of damning evidence it produced — is an equally scathing account of how Republican members were appointed to Pelosi’s bipartisan Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. House Republican Leader John Boehner seems to have turned down anyone who had familiarity with the science of climate change (like the first research physicist to serve in Congress) or even those who simply wouldn’t tell him they thought humans weren’t causing climate change.

Now, ok, the science of climate change is complex. Really big, fiendishly difficult stuff. And we all know those elected to Congress tend to have big egos. But can they really think that they, lacking any scientific training and probably not even having read any of the (thousands of) relevant studies, could possibly know more about climate change than, say, the (hundreds of) highly respected scientists that make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? And if these Congressmen don’t really think they know better, they’re playing the worst kind of politics with their constituents’ lives and livelihoods.

Today should be even more interesting, as Al Gore testifies in front of, among others, noted climate change antagonist skeptic, James Inhofe.

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