"Climate Zombies" and the GOP's Anti-Science Syndrome

[LongTomH]

Cross-posted from Energy and Environment:

Joe Romm's Climate Progress Blog has a great post: Attack of the Climate Zombies! Anti-Science Syndrome goes viral within the GOP.

Romm goes into great detail about the anti-climate legislation stands of GOP senatorial candidates by state. A lot of his material comes from R L Miller's blog at Daily Kos:

They mindlessly deny the science of climate change.
Their stupid is contagious.
And if they win, humanity loses.

I'm tracking Climate Zombies: every Republican candidate for House, Senate, and Governor who claims that global warming is a hoax, doubts the science of climate change, and wants a new Dark Ages for America.

There has always been a strain of climate denialism in the GOP; according to Romm: "Climate zombies are now the Republican party norm."

First, a brief note on why. During the Bush years, most Republican politicians ducked questions on climate change, professed a desire to do something vague and unspecified about energy independence, and derided cap-and-trade. Only a few, led by James Inhofe (R-River in Egypt), openly mocked science. The emergence of the American Taliban has changed that. The respected science journal Nature, in a piece entitled Science Scorned:

Denialism over global warming has become a scientific cause célèbre within the movement. Limbaugh, for instance, who has told his listeners that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists”, has called climate-change science “the biggest scam in the history of the world”. The Tea Party’s leanings encompass religious opposition to Darwinian evolution and to stem-cell and embryo research — which Beck has equated with eugenics. The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government. Under the administration of George W. Bush, science in policy had already taken knocks from both neglect and ideology. Yet President Barack Obama’s promise to “restore science to its rightful place” seems to have linked science to liberal politics, making it even more of a target of the right.

US citizens face economic problems that are all too real, and the country’s future crucially depends on education, science and technology as it faces increasing competition from China and other emerging science powers. Last month’s recall of hundreds of millions of US eggs because of the risk of salmonella poisoning, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, are timely reminders of why the US government needs to serve the people better by developing and enforcing improved science-based regulations. Yet the public often buys into anti-science, anti-regulation agendas that are orchestrated by business interests and their sponsored think tanks and front groups.

Get it? The Republican War on Science that Chris Mooney detailed in 2005 is entering a new phase. Anti-science has joined Islamophobia as a major prop of the GOP's campaign for 2010.

A comment for this article put it beautifully:

Basically within the GOP if you are not a climate change denier, you do not get serious funding (if you’re a new candidate).

If you are an existing candidate and you don’t deny climate change (or work with Dems on the issue) then you will be cut off to large sources of funding which are contingent on this issue – and you will become targeted by one of the Koch brothers political front & funding organizations – they will ensure that a well funded GW denier / tea party candidate will be there to try to eliminate you in the next primary (Sen Murkowski R-AK is an example of this process working and Sen Snowe R-VT has already been publicly targeted for 2012).

This isn’t up to the individual candidates in the GOP, if they don’t toe the line on this (or are considered moderate) they are targeted for removal by extremely well funded libertarian political organizations, the process of which is eventually successful.

Check out Romm's article and see how the GOP candidate in your state stands.

This is another reason not to sit out this election! There's too much at stake!