A la John Anderson in 1980, Huntsman is destined to become the Democrats' favorite Republican in the presidential primaries. With time on their hands and nothing better to do, should Democrats and liberal Independents sneak into the Republican fold and support Huntsman? I say, "Why not?" It might move the process more toward the (relatively) rational center. Besides, from a purely scientific standpoint, hanging out with Republicans is sort of like taking a trip to Mars.

Lost in the "you're either with us or against us" partisanship of climate change "science" are the people who say, "even if I grant the scientific findings I doubt the regulatory fixes that, always, seem to come hand-in-hand (if not preceding!)". Until government exhibits greater transparency and honesty (check the "green jobs" con, check the political appointments to "science" positions ALA David Dicks), the public should - rightly, in my opinion - say no more money, no more regulation until government undertakes some mea culpas and house cleanings. Right now, to a lot of people, the issue of climate change appears have devolved to just another scare tactic (children will DIE!!!) being used to further myriad political agendas (growing government union membership, social "justice", ad nauseum).

I think Americans have to choose whether to put our energy into trashing our government, or trying to improve it. You can't do both.

And as to "with us or against us" partisanship. It takes two to tango. We all have the choice as to whether or not to indulge in the thrill of us-versus-them posturing--and the comfort of feeling that we're entirely right and that wrongness belongs 100% to some enemy or other. It's fun to hate government, it's a longstanding American tradition. It's more fun than owning responsibility for our problems. There's no real harm in it until people really act out their hate by attacking programs we're all depending on in one way or another.

@BlueLight, do you think there's any way that someone like me (progressive politically, and yes, actually worried about climate change) could communicate with the people you know who think that people like me are just engaging in stupid scare tactics? I know it can be very hard for conservatives to get a sincere hearing from people on the left. Why do we shut off our hearts and minds to each other's inherent worth, why do we decide before the other person opens their mouth that we already know nothing they have to say is worth hearing?

"I think Americans have to choose whether to put our energy into trashing our government, or trying to improve it. You can't do both."

Maybe, Carol, you can't achieve one WITHOUT the other. Do you add on to a rotting house?

As for whether there is a way to communicate... and why we close our hearts and minds...

See the headline broadbrushing political opponents/contrary viewpoints as "know-nothings"?

I think people, instinctively, bridle against arrogance and condescension.

@BlueLight: I think that contempt and blame are rotten planks to try to build anything with, and I think that's true whether the contempt is coming from the left or the right or where have you. I don't think you rebuild a house by attacking the house. I think it works better if you carefully examine the house to see which parts are sound and which ones need work, and then you do what you can.

I agree that arrogance and condescension are irritating. But I was wondering how to do better than that.

Whether we as a society value facts, logical thinking, and science, over personal prejudice, when it is time to take hard stands and solve problems, will determine the future of this country. Whether you believe in a truth or not doesn't matter to the truth. It does, however determine whether you will be run over by the truth or not. Science isn't perfect, but it is the best we have at improving our understanding of fact and truth. If the Republicans ignore it, it will crush them and anyone who is foolish enough to be led by them. The Chinese, Russians, and the friggin Canadians are not going to stop improving science and themselves while we play with this idiocy. We will be overtaken and destroyed if we don't stop being idiots.

"I agree that arrogance and condescension are irritating. But I was wondering how to do better than that."

Not engaging in it would be a good start.

But start ripping off all the boards that are infested with condescension and arrogance, and one quickly gets down to the foundation. A and C pervades: from the university system that teaches kids what to think instead of how to think, to the "press" that has decided it is easier (and more profitable, I suppose) to be propagandists than watchdogs, to the government edifice that claims all-knowingness even as it exhibits corruption and ineptitude.

"But instead, we've been driven into faith-based corrals, hoping magic will save our jobs, reduce our taxes, bring us enlightened leadership and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — all without having to be fully engaged."

It is not too much of a surprise that this occurs when the seemingly rational idea that public opinion should reflect public policy (or at least correlate) gets turned on its head as politicians largely disregard public opinion and instead pander to business and elite interests. While the woman in the food stamp line may have been a little petty, what about the people who wonder why little to nothing is being done on cliamte change, wall street reform, getting troops out of the Middle East, or taking a serious stand against insurance companies in healthcare reform. It was these ideas that Obama ran on and he hasn't delivered on any of them, or for that matter taken more than a half hearted stand on them. Similarly it seems that few politicians are actually concerned about the 30+ year stagnation of real wages for the non-elite, a frustrating reality for most anyone trying to find a candidate who cares about their interests and values.

Indeed, it is in these sorts of times that, sadly, people turn to hope, myth, and blissful ignorance for lack of a better option. It's no wonder that voter turnout is depressingly low when candidates consistantly fail to deliver for the people they theoretically represent.

Knowing truth in a sea of propaganda and unfufilled promises is almost impossible, and so, sadly, rational thought becomes largely an excercise in futility. So why not turn to myths instead?

There is another layer here that is not addressed. The Tea-Publicans, who are basically running the Republican Party now, are, when you get down to it, the same small minority that at heart want to turn this country into a theoocracy:

"So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government."
SOURCE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-party.html?_r=3&emc=eta1&utm;_source=Crosscut+Daily+Newsletter&utm;_campaign=ee9c7340ec-Crosscut_Daily_Newsletter_08_18_20118_18_2011&utm;_medium=email

It is hardly news that hard right wing fundamentalists don't believe in science or are anti-science, regardless of the benefits that science has brought them personally. Of much greater concern to me is the effect of their being financed by the far-right wealthy (e.g., the Koch brothers), which is what has enabled their ascendancy as a political force. The result is that the Republican Party has now become a national proto-facsist political party, a unified force of racist (or semi-racist, to be charitable) theocrats allied with the far-right wing rich and super rich. To "go all the way" and seize control of the political system they now lack two things: serious economic catastrophe and a "great" unifying leader. And it certainly appears that their actions are intent on bringing the first of these about.

What do you want Obama to "do" about climate change, staybailey. Impose more regulation on US business, governments and public? And what of China and India? Will their foul winds not blow our way? Shall America's unemployed console themselves as saving the world even as they breathe the exhaust of foreign prosperity?

Knute Berger: But the American public also consistently believes it can have all the benefits of government without personally paying for them. We can cut the budget without touching Social Security, Medicare, or defense.

I'm sorry that in this otherwise excellent piece, Knute feels obliged to call for cuts in Social Security and Medicare, rather than calling for a progressive restructuring of our tax system. As many experts have noted, including Nobel-winning economist Peter Diamond the other day, Social Security can be fixed for the long term with modest adjustments such as raising the wage level subject to payroll taxes. Here's a good piece on that:
http://www.truth-out.org/why-president-obama-so-anxious-cut-social-security/1314019361
Medicare is a wholly different story because it's embedded in the highly wasteful U.S. health care system, and cost control needs to be adopted throughout the entire system. Here's a good piece on that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/opinion/cut-medicare-help-patients.html?pagewanted=all

@BlueLight: ?? I don't know how I sound to you, but I'm very sure I'm not feeling arrogant or condescending, and I don't see how you get that from anything I wrote. I'm still very interested in figuring out how to have better conversations with people who see political issues differently.

Knute says: "Science was once utopian, then became a practical problem-solver, then part of the problem."

True, and at the same time there have always been people who saw science as a threat because they thought it competed with religion as a way to determine ultimate truth, instead of seeing science and faith as different means to find different kinds of truth.

The social conservatives have been making steady progress in driving a whole host of people out of the Republican party. Libertarians, atheists, gays and now (apparently) scientists who might otherwise be attracted to the traditional Republican creed of personal freedom and personal responsibility are being held to a religious litmus test and, by design, failing. On top of this, commentators like Rush Limbaugh continue to vigorously insist that the only chance the Republicans have at the polls is to run the most socially conservative candidates possible. The way that influential God-pop GOP agitators are driving people from the party, an observer is left to assume that it's only the Democrats' incompetence and adherence to the failed policies of the New Deal that cause Republicans to win any elections at all.

I wasn't referring to you, Carol.

I was referring to the "know-nothing" headline descriptor applied to everyone opposite the author's (or the editor's) politic. It is an attitude that walks arm-in-arm with climate change discussions, the "with us or against us" tact. Does Knute (or David) believe those broadly categorized as climate change deniers know "nothing"? Do they know nothing about raising their kids? Do they know nothing about getting up in the morning and going to work? Do they know nothing about paying taxes? Do they know nothing about serving their country?

I suppose Knute will call me (write me off as) a climate change "denier". And I'll accept it. Not because I deny "science" (that is not what many of our natural resource type government agencies practice, mind you), but that I deny 1) that global well-being is the true motivation of many "advocates" of climate change policies, and 2) that our government - with it's corruptions, ineptitudes and reach (China, India)- can do anything about it.

I think the climate change advocacy community would do themselves a favor with a little humility. They - frankly - are the ones I blame for sullying "science"; inserting political operatives (David Dicks) into position and, then, expecting the unwashed to cower when the word "science" is invoked. In the face of arrogance, don't be surprised if many people decide they would rather see the earth burn than handed off to those who hold them in such low esteem.

Carol, I think a good example of how politicized institutions use "science" to advance agendas can be found in UW's recent "study" that found widespread use of tolling (as the Democratic Party salivates over) would be "fair" to low income people. This "study" was requested by WA State Department of Transportation. Their problem? How to jibe two party planks: the desire for more money (tolls) AND the desire to appease a "social-justice" ethos/consituency. To the rescue: SEIU-Dub.

UW Study Finds Tolling Fair to Low Income Households

That's all most people see, that's all advocates need. Read the "study" however, and you will find the authors "assumed" a flat $1 toll on all roads. Is there any road on which a $1 toll is being considered? Not to my knowledge. But by inserting that into the equation, the study is able to spit out the desired result: Tolling is Fair to Low Income Households.

Climate change science may or may not (I honestly don't delve that deeply into it) be replete with that kind of outcome-based academics, but that is an example of how "science" (and public institutions) can be prostituted for political purpose.

I'm assuming the "know-nothings" in the headline was a reference to the Know Nothing movement of a century and a half ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing

I'm assuming the preceding "21st Century" references just that.

Yet at the same time Huntsman seems ever ready to hop in bed as VP with one of the anti-science nut cases who are running high in the polls. That does not speak well to questions of character...he has zero chance of either the P or the VP nomination, so it would be nice of him to really make a clean break with all the b.s.

The heart of Knut's conundrum: "The problem with science is an American problem because it means fighting our way back to a place where theories can be debated, tested, and explored in rational ways. Yet democracy has a strong bias toward the irrational and emotional for relying on beliefs — faith, patriotism, and fear. In short, we are susceptible to manipulation. It has been always thus."

If you read Richard White's new "Railroaded" about the arrival of business lobbying well over a century ago, you will note that since the beginning, no political party has been able to "rise above it all." In practice, only eventual exposure (the role of the press) and voters do any reining and both are easily manipulated. Routinely, the role of PR is to achieve objectives and advance values the public does not share (yet, or ever).

At infrequent occasions, the public does manage to work through its ambivalence and compartmented thinking and is no longer sharply divided no matter how anyone decides to phrase the questioning concerning the issue.

Yankelovich, who terms such occasions as "coming to public judgment," points out the variability as minutes to centuries for the time required to complete the working through stage. The Western world dithered for centuries on slavery and women's rights, but for the most part has come to public judgment on those questions. Yankelovich's "Coming to Public Judgment" book contemplates interventions that would speed up the process. His main theme supports the comments of both Carol AND BlueLight: improve the quality of public opinion by finding the most effective means to convert mass opinion into public judgment.

To my knowledge, the first conscious effort to separate rational inquiry from religion was made by Thomas Aquinas. It was Aquinas's goal not to protect Christianity from critical scrutiny, but to liberate rational inquiry from religious dogma. In subsequent centuries, as the Church ultimately failed to suppress scientific, philosophical, and political inquiry that was threatening to their authority, do we see the notion of the separation of science and theology as a means of protecting faith. I've come to the conclusion that this separation is important on strictly utilitarian grounds, even though it is unsatisfying intellectually. One needs only to survey the mischief caused by fundamentalism to see why.

Separation of religion from politics is a good idea, one that was learned in the aftermath of the Thirty Years War. Waged from 1616 to 1648, in large part over matters of dogma that cannot be proven one way or the other, the war created a "tolerance of exhaustion" in Europe. To those who today wish to use the political process to advance their religious viewpoints, I would suggest reviewing the Thirty Years War and (re)learning the futility of such an endeavor.

But America in the year 2012 will not be the same as Western Europe in the time of Aquinas or before the Peace of Westphalia. Some of the news reports I have read about the Republican primary have presented the candidates' unorthodox views as liabilities among conservative voters. This view is not only patronizing, but it does not square the party's recent history of presidential nominations. It will be interesting to see whether Mr. Huntsman is able to penetrate the media fog and demonstrate whether his views are more popular among the party than, say, those of Mr. Perry of Texas.

Knute Berger, aka "Mossback", mistakingly frames the current global warming debate as a scientific debate. It most definitely is not.

The global warming debate is in reality one concerning the role and size of government and is based an uncritical belief in American-style capitalism.

If one reviews the history of the opposition to global warming, it is apparent from the very initial debates in the 1980s that the denialists/skeptics considered global warming as an extension of the environmental/population movement from the 1960s. To the denialists/skeptics, Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" and the Club Of Rome "Limits To Growth" were both considered to be antithetical to the belief in the power of free markets and a trust that technological advancement and innovation could offset real limits to growth. To these individuals, the environmental movement was the start of a slippery-slope that would further empower a national level government and put US sovereignty at risk to international organizations.

As an example, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their book "Merchants of Doubt" document how cold-war era physicists, Robert Jastrow, Fred Seitz, Fred Singer and others associated with the George C Marshall Institute used their positions of influence to gain access to the political leaders in the Reagan and Bush White House. They document how they along with Libertarian think-tanks and the energy lobby took effective action through use of the media to create the impression that the science behind global warming wasn't "settled". Oreskes and Conway demonstrate that the methods used were the same as used with the debate over the science of DDT, second-hand smoke, and acid rain. In every instance, this group delayed government action due to the belief that any government regulation was antithetical to the principles of individual liberty.

If one now looks at where the current origins of denial/skepticism of global warming originate, they come from the same behind the scene Libertarian financiers--Charles Lambe, Charles and David Koch, Richard Melon Scaife--that control and fund the Tea Party movement. The billionaire Koch's fund CATO Institute, Reason magazine, Americans for Prosperity, and a host of other supposedly independent organizations. Scaife has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in inherited foundation money to Republican/Libertarian foundations and candidates. As an example, Scaife and Exxon are key funders of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and Marc Morano, former staffer to Senator James Inhofe, who runs the site Climatedepot.com.

It is said that the left turned the science of global warming into a political issue. Such is not the case, it has always been a situation where those with firm distrust in the role of government have viewed the science as a threat to their vision of limited national and international government. Action on global warming in their view serves only as a mechanism to entrench interests in government that will eventually co-opt democratic institutions. Under such a belief system, it is easy to make claims of conspiracy among scientists, of claims that scientists and politicians (e.g. Al Gore) are promoting the theory as means of personal enrichment, and of exaggeration of the risks associated with global warming.

Unfortunately, the scientific method eventually will disclose the truth. With every year and as the ice packs shrink, areas flood, droughts expand, and species are exterminated it becomes more difficult to maintain the charade. In the end as the science becomes impossible to deny, their efforts and zeal to discount global warming will be used to discount the free-market and individual liberty belief system that they hold so precious.

Good piece, Knute and very nearly even-handed. I would quibble with the implied equivalence between those who believe "God Created Earth in Seven Days" and "truthers" who, as I understand it believe carefully placed explosives inside the Twin Towers took them down rather than the airplanes we all saw on television. To begin with the religious explanation of the creation of the earth is harmless and has only to contend with the alternative explanation, the one in a quadrillion chances of life commencing on a hurtling rock (and where did the rock come from?) billions of years ago. If someone tells me God did it I am not going to argue. Other people? that's their choice. The Truthers though, apparently believe in a conspiracy beyond all rational imagining; that a huge, invisible conglomerate (including Jews, of course) that controls or wants to control nearly everything and destroy what is healthy and good. By comparison to religious explanations for the origin of life, it is a pathology. And one that was (and perhaps is) held by a prominent Democrat/Leftist who was, at least briefly, a member of the current administration. Questioning science sounds OK to me, mass paranoia? something we should worry about. US Presidents, up until the early 20th century very likely did not believe in evolution (even though the original "Origin" was published about 1870, I think) or surely did not admit it if they did. It's not clear to me just what they would have done differently if they had been closet evolutionists.

As far as AGW, there are folks much smarter than I who question the "A" part. Freeman Dyson is the only name I can remember but their are many others with scientific credentials who question whether humans are causing this apparent climate change (which, by the way, has been exceeded in previous epochs). I question AGW but I think we should act as if it were true. Unfortunately, "acting as if it were true" is probably going to hurt a lot of people economically and that is what inspires (I'm guessing) most of the resistance to the AGW campaign and not denial of scientific evidence.

Has Skip (and some of those making comments) considered that it is the global warming lobby that has turned its back on new science?

The recent dyspeptic outbursts from Al Gore (who refuses to debate anyone on climate change, in front of an audience or a microphone) reveals a petulance most unbecoming in someone supposedly driven by reason, logic and scientific truth. That his documentary is not standing the test of time well suggests that global warming alarmism is more of a fad (rather like the "We're Running Out of Oil!" scare of the 70's) than a revealed scientific truth.

Science is great, but all that claims to be science is not science. Man-made (anthropogenic) global warming is maybe happening, but the skeptics who say warming is due to natural causes (solar cycles, etc.) do seem to have some case.

The biblical young-earth creationism model is insupportable, but the theory of evolution is much weaker than its proponents admit. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between, something the no-God people cannot accept.

But what our nation most needs is better moral, better spiritual health. All the science in the world is useless if people do not govern themselves morally. That is why we have to have so many laws and regulations; so many of our problems are caused by the fact people do not behave morally.

And if there is no God to help and reward good behavior, and no afterlife after this one, there is far less reason to act with others' best interests in mind over your own, even though people who claim to be atheists may anyway simply because, whether or not we acknowledge God, we are still made in his image, that is with his moral nature, corrupted more in some people than others.

A key prediction of "Climate Science" back in 2007 was increasingly powerful hurricanes.

Yet, since then, and even at that time, fierce hurricanes have all but disappeared, becoming low speed tropical storms before landfall.

Isn't the value of "Science" in its predictive power?

The problem is the Pop Science brand promoted by Steven Hawking and his acolytes, where the book, dvd, software and website take over from simple observation, and confirmation.

Pythagoras wrote:

"Oreskes and Conway demonstrate that the methods used were the same as used with the debate over the science of DDT, second-hand smoke, and acid rain."

I might be missing your point. It seems to me in all three of these examples the remedies got way too far ahead of the science and ultimately had to be scaled back as more science came in.