Why scientists are smarter than politicians

Marco Rubio Disqualifies Himself

By JULIET LAPIDOS, NYT
May 12, 2014, 3:35 pm

If American presidents need to prove a basic ability to accept facts, then Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — who’s publicly mulling a run — just disqualified himself from competition.

In an interview with ABC on Sunday, days after the release of an alarming White House report on the present and future effects of climate change on the United States, Mr. Rubio said:

“I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.”

There’s something almost cute about the last part of that sentence — a hedge he can bring out in a general election if he’s accused of willful stupidity. I’m not a climate-change denier, he might say, I just don’t think scientists are giving us an accurate picture.

(More here.)