Congress's Scientific Illiterates Are Resigning the World to Ruin

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/congresss-scientific-illiterates-are-resigning-the-world-to-ruin




The scene played out like pitch-black comedy on March 26th at the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology's 2015 budget request hearing. In the hot seat, tasked with defending the president's call for steady funding for science programs: the renowned Earth scientist and top Obama adviser Dr. John Holdren. Accosting him from across the chamber: a parade of gleeful antagonists, some who seemed to relish their own scientific illiteracy.

They object to global warming, mostly. They do not believe it is our fault, or their fault, because nothing is.

Watching the hearing now, on YouTube, a once ubiquitous Latin maxim comes to mind: Ignoramus et ignorabimus. It means "We do not know and we will not know," and was deployed by scientists and philosophers in the late 1800s to describe the limits of human knowledge—what was then deemed unknowable. The origin of motion. The true nature of sensation. And here are some of our top statesmen, who abide by it still today, applying it to the realm of the demonstrably knowable, stamping its syllables with stubborn refusal instead of rueful perplexity.

"We've had climate change since the day the Earth was formed, whenever that was, depending upon whatever you believe," said Representative Bill Posey (R-FL). "I remember the 70s, that was the threat. We're going to have a cooling that's eventually going to freeze the planet, and that was the fear before Al Gore invented the internet and those other terms." He has already made up his mind, even though he clearly has only a cursory grasp of the science he is talking about.
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This is a very good read