There are days I wonder if Santorum has a speechwriter or if the crazy stuff that keeps flowing out of his mouth is really all his own invention. Actually, that’s not true. I don’t wonder about this at all. No speechwriter would be that stupid.
In any case, Here’s Ricky making his case that it’s the Liberal Democrats, not the Conservative Republicans who are “anti-science.”
In his remarks Monday, Santorum went beyond his usual discussion of the importance of increasing domestic energy production to deliver a blistering attack on environmental activists. He said global warming claims are based on “phony studies,” and that climate change science is little more than “political science.”
His views are not “anti-science” as Democrats claim, Santorum said. “When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones. We are the ones who stand for science, and technology, and using the resources we have to be able to make sure that we have a quality of life in this country and (that we) maintain a good and stable environment,” he said to applause, and cited local ordinances to reduce coal dust pollution in Pittsburgh during the heyday of coal mining.
Yes, because denying climate science is real makes you pro-science, whereas doing research in the field for decades makes you a practitioner of phony science. Just ask Michael Mann.
Mann’s story of what he calls the climate wars, the fight by powerful entrenched interests to undermine and twist the science meant to guide government policy, starts to seem pretty much on the money. He’s telling it in a book out on 6 March, The hockey stick and the climate wars: Dispatches from the front lines.
“They see scientists like me who are trying to communicate the potential dangers of continued fossil fuel burning to the public as a threat. That means we are subject to attacks, some of them quite personal, some of them dishonest.” Mann said in an interview conducted in and around State College, home of Pennsylvania State University, where he is a professor. [….]
“A day doesn’t go by when I don’t have to fend off some attack, some specious criticism or personal attack,” he said. “Literally a day doesn’t go by where I don’t have to deal with some of the nastiness that comes out of a campaign that tries to discredit me, and thereby in the view of our detractors to discredit the entire science of climate change.”
And who can forget that Rick Santorum has openly called for the teaching of creationism in schools as a counterweight to evolution, despite no evidence that creationism has any validity outside those who believe the Bible is the only true source of knowledge about the world.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. and GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum says the “left” and “scientific community” have monopolized the public school system’s curriculum, only permitting the teaching of evolution and leaving no room for the introduction of creation-based theories in the classroom.
“There are many on the left and in the scientific community, so to speak, who are afraid of that discussion because oh my goodness you might mention the word, God-forbid, ‘God’ in the classroom, or ‘Creator,’ that there may be some things that are inexplainable by nature where there may be, where it’s actually better explained by a Creator, and of course we can’t have that discussion,” Santorum said in an editorial interview with the Nashua Telegraph. “It’s very interesting that you have a situation where science will only allow things in the classroom that are consistent with a non-Creator idea of how we got here, as if somehow or another that’s scientific. Well maybe the science points to the fact that maybe science doesn’t explain all these things. And if it does point to that, then why don’t you pursue that? But you can’t, because it’s not science, but if science is pointing you there how can you say it’s not science? It’s worth the debate.”
Isn’t it terrible that Scientists have dominated the discussion of what constitutes the science curriculum that should be taught in schools? Why that leaves no chance for religion to provide input into what science really is. Sort of like churches have dominated the discussion on what religion is, without allowing scientists to participate in that debate.
I have to admit, outside of the people who think we should make all our policy decisions based on prayer (preferably of the “right” Christian variety), I can’t see how this idiocy will play with the general electorate. I know such outrageous claims are helping Santorum now in the Republican primaries — that and the fact that his version of Catholicism is more acceptable to fundamentalist Protestants in the GOP base than Romney’s Mormon beliefs — but I fail to see how it will benefit him in the general election among people who do not share his beliefs that climate science and evolution are “phony” and are attempts to “deceive the public.”
I have to agree with BooMan, I want Obama to run against Santorum. The man is a walking, talking religious zealot and he apparently makes no bones about hiding that fact. In all honesty, I can’t see his brand of radical conservative extremism playing well with the general electorate this Fall.
Yup, no difference at all between Obama and republicans.
Useless, Steven D. No matter what you tell them, they will always say they’re not anti-science, they just don’t believe the same thing you do. Also, too, 0.002-3% of scientists agree with them, depending on who you poll and ask, so they have “scientists” behind them.
There’s no use. It’s been this way with evolution forever.
But my favorite quote was definitely, “Freedom isnt to do whatever you want to do, it’s to do what you ought to do” — Rick Santorum
By which he means that freedom is what he thinks people ought to do.
“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”
~Susan B. Anthony
Dr. Jeff Masters had a post late last week in which he discusses climate change denial, and recommends several books on what he calls the ‘manufactured doubt industry’. Check it out here: Heartland Institute documents reveal strategy of attacks against climate science
Oh, and one of the book he mentions is indeed the one that just came out by Michael Mann.
If facts mattered in this “debate” it would matter. But you can’t debate against “facts” with facts, because the “facty” people won’t/can’t listen.
Well, the books aren’t really about just the facts behind climate change. It’s more about exposing the machinations behind who is pushing the denialist agenda. That’s certainly a worthwhile topic to be informed on. And the more exposure that gets, the more opinions that can be changed will be changed.
As you say, there are people who will never change their minds, no matter the facts. But the majority of people will eventually come around as more and more of the picture becomes clear. Look at the Iraq War, for example.
Whether or not that tipping point is reached before it is too late is another question entirely.
Not that I would waste my time trying to explain this to Rick Santorum, but I think it’s important to understand that scientists are not people who primarily sit around just theorizing about stuff. Scientists generally want to get into the lab, or get out in the field, and do things. They want to do interesting research.
You can even bracket the question of whether a theory is “true” or not and look at it in terms of how useful it is–whether it leads to interesting and useful discoveries. That makes it easier to see how scientifically worthless intelligent design creationism is, for example, since the whole ID movement has yet to produce any original research of any kind.
I just heard a bizarre comment from a Santorum surrogate who made the case that Rick is just pointing out that God gave us Earth to occupy and use…that it is here for our use and we would be remiss in living God’s directives if we didn’t USE it for as long as we here.
Color me out of the Biblical loop, but I’ve never heard that particular directive. Ricky follows many of his statements up with the comment that we must be stewards of the Earth; but he isn’t using stewardship in the context of leaving a light footprint but instead of developing larger ways for mankind to USE the Earth that his God gave mankind to play with.
You’re right a speechwriter couldn’t come up with this.
That’s based on the New Testament and it’s overarching apocalyptic point of view – see especially Matthew 25: 14-30. the interpretation, especially among Reagan’s EPA, for example, was that Jesus would be returning and want to see that we had used all the resources he left in the earth. It’s not a particularly Catholic position and most Evangelicals now use the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament – especially Genesis – as the central texts re: stewardship of the earth. Doesn’t sound like ricky is talking with any religious authorities because over the past 10 years most have abandoned the position he espouses.
If Blessed Rick wants to keep fundamentalist Protestants more favorable to him than to that Mormon fellow, he shouldn’t talk about ‘Bible based theology’. That might remind the fundies that they don’t believe there is any biblical basis for things like the Papacy, the entire organization and hierarchy of the Church of Rome (aka “The Whore of Babylon”), clerical celibacy, transubstantiation, seven sacraments, the intercession of the saints, devotion to Mary, and many other things that Rick takes for granted as necessary to save his– and anyone else’s—- miserable soul.
In fact, Santorum may end up undermining the implicit alliance of convenience right wing fundies and right wing Catholics have made in the last twenty years or so. More than that, he (with an ample assist from many of the US Bishops) may make it more difficult for any Catholic to run for national office in the near future.
see my comment above. it certainly doesn’t look like Ricky is talking with any Catholic authorities unless opus die types. some important tenets of Catholic theology he seems to be omitting or ignorant of – viz. concern for the poor, very central to catholicism.
The way the GOP contest is going could turn into a miracle; it might just make a believer out of this atheist.
How the repugs view science and the practitioners thereof: