The wonderful “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money” statement attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen may be apocryphal, but it remains a prescient warning to our nation’s leaders. At a time when Congress is throwing billions of dollars around like pocket change based on claims of scientists and engineers, a real quote of Dirksen may be equally important (Congressional Record: June 16, 1965, p. 13884):
…One time in the House of Representatives [a colleague] told me a story about a proposition that a teacher put to a boy. He said, ‘Johnny, a cat fell in a well 100 feet deep. Suppose that cat climbed up 1 foot and then fell back 2 feet. How long would it take the cat to get out of the well?
Middle America has awakened, and its slogan appears to be “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” At least, that seems to be the meaning of the Tea Party movement and the recent elections in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virginia.
But other than being “mad as hell,” what are the Tea Party’s positions on issues such as the environment?
There is no simple answer to this question because there is no “Tea Party.” There are, rather, a multitude of Tea Parties. The Tea Party is a movement and not an organized, monolithic political party. Tea Parties may support some candidates, and conservative candidates will claim they have Tea Party endorsement, but they will most likely be running as Republicans or Independents rather than as registered members of the Tea Party. …
According to M. Mitchell Waldrop, editorial page editor for Nature, “global-warming deniers . . . are sowing doubts about the fundamental [climate change] science.” Further, Waldrop argues in his op-ed “Climate of Fear, “scientists’ reputations have taken a hit.”
Let’s ignore the snarky reference to “deniers” and ask: is science and are scientists under attack? The answer is Yes. But in an intellectual sense, isn’t this the essence of falsifiable, non-verifiable physical science?
Climategate (et al.) is not simply about “deniers” and Waldrop’s complaint that skeptics are “stok[ing] the angry fires of talk radio, cable news, the blogosphere and the like.” It’s much more nuanced than that.
As a quick aside, perhaps Dr. Waldrop can be forgiven for failing to see the big picture. To critics (can he tolerate them?),…