Rick Perry should stop and think
By Richard Cohen,
WashPost
Published: August 22
Whatever global warming might or might not have done to polar bears, it has put Rick Perry’s presidential candidacy at risk. The Republican Texas governor clings to an ice floe of diminishing credibility, emerging in just about a week’s time as intellectually unqualified to be president. He engaged in a brief dialogue with a child about evolution and came out the loser. Perry said there are some gaps in the theory. If so, he is one.
Maybe more important, Perry waxed wrongly on global warming. He rejected the notion that it is at least partially a product of industrialization, asserting that “a substantial number of scientists have manipulated data” to make it appear that mankind — our cars, trains, automobiles, not to mention China’s belching steel mills — is the culprit. He said that an increasing number of scientists have challenged this notion and that, in conclusion, he stood with them — whoever they might be. In Appleton, Wis., Sen. Joe McCarthy’s skeleton rattled a bit.
The late and hardly lamented demagogue pioneered the political use of the concocted statistic. In his case, it was communists, and they were, literally, everywhere. There were some, of course, just as there are some scientists who are global-warming skeptics, but these few — about 2 percent of climate researchers — could hold their annual meeting in a phone booth, if there are any left. (Perhaps 2 percent of scientists think there are.)
Perry’s quaint belief in the utter innocence of mankind when it comes to polluting our precious atmosphere might seem like an innocuous tick, a conviction without consequence. In this, it could be likened to the entirely wacky conservative belief of yore that the fluoridation of drinking water was a communist tactic to addle the minds of youth: It was not designed to eliminate cavities but capitalism instead.
(More here.)
WashPost
Published: August 22
Whatever global warming might or might not have done to polar bears, it has put Rick Perry’s presidential candidacy at risk. The Republican Texas governor clings to an ice floe of diminishing credibility, emerging in just about a week’s time as intellectually unqualified to be president. He engaged in a brief dialogue with a child about evolution and came out the loser. Perry said there are some gaps in the theory. If so, he is one.
Maybe more important, Perry waxed wrongly on global warming. He rejected the notion that it is at least partially a product of industrialization, asserting that “a substantial number of scientists have manipulated data” to make it appear that mankind — our cars, trains, automobiles, not to mention China’s belching steel mills — is the culprit. He said that an increasing number of scientists have challenged this notion and that, in conclusion, he stood with them — whoever they might be. In Appleton, Wis., Sen. Joe McCarthy’s skeleton rattled a bit.
The late and hardly lamented demagogue pioneered the political use of the concocted statistic. In his case, it was communists, and they were, literally, everywhere. There were some, of course, just as there are some scientists who are global-warming skeptics, but these few — about 2 percent of climate researchers — could hold their annual meeting in a phone booth, if there are any left. (Perhaps 2 percent of scientists think there are.)
Perry’s quaint belief in the utter innocence of mankind when it comes to polluting our precious atmosphere might seem like an innocuous tick, a conviction without consequence. In this, it could be likened to the entirely wacky conservative belief of yore that the fluoridation of drinking water was a communist tactic to addle the minds of youth: It was not designed to eliminate cavities but capitalism instead.
(More here.)
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