A polemic documentary film centered on a demonized but doggedly courageous climate change crusader and his statistics-laden slide show—Sound familiar? While Cool It and its globetrotting subject, Bjorn Lomborg, author of the identically titled book upon which the film is based, offer the flattery of imitation, it quickly becomes clear this is not An Inconvenient Truth. Instead, the film positions itself as the rational middle-way between global warming denialism and Al Gore-styled catastrophism. In this it largely succeeds. Whether the middle way is the right way is another question.
The film’s thesis is that anthropogenic global warming is real and worthy of concern, but world leaders’ approach to the problem is not a solution at all. The answer to global warming lies not in treaties and carbon-cutting legislation, but in cost-benefit analyses, alternative energy research and development, and planetary-level geo-engineering. In other words, we should remove politicians and environmentalists from the debate and usher in the economists and engineers.
Many who sincerely worry about the effects of climate change are ready for a Plan B. As the film notes, despite repeated aspirational promises delivered from Rio de Janeiro in 1992 on up through the failure of Copenhagen in 2010, nothing much has happened on the world stage to rival the rise of China and India as carbon-emission superpowers, and they are unlikely to take their collective foot off the gas any time soon.
Crayon drawings of big houses and cars colored by neatly uniformed African schoolchildren drive home the point that the developing world wants to consume the American dream, and people there have little room for climate change fears when health care and education are foremost on their minds. Meanwhile, in the U.K., pampered children are losing sleep because of an exaggerated global warming nightmare that leaves no land for penguins and polar bears. Our fears in the wealthy West, the film argues, are generally overblown and our priorities are misplaced.
Lomborg, the Danish professor with a boyish face and a love of Anderson Cooper-style black t-shirts (what else would one wear to a congressional hearing?) is presented as a likeable person who loves his mother (the filmmakers make sure we learn that he visits her once a month) and has cared about the environment since he was a child. Staged flashback footage shows how he developed his current views after first setting out in the opposite direction—on an intellectual quest to disprove the work of planetary optimist Julian Simon, the late University of Maryland business professor and Cato Institute fellow. Al Gore and his film are battered, but not overly belittled, and lots of smart people with impressive titles (including contrarian but well credentialed scientists like Freeman Dyson and Richard Lindzen) show up to say how much they like Lomborg.
Even one grumpy climate scientist, the late Stephen Schneider, who has nothing good to say about the self-proclaimed “skeptical environmentalist” at the start of the film, later appears to be on board with several of Lomborg’s favorite ideas. Thankfully, the film asserts, if we will just let the professor’s Copenhagen Consensus group of economists and scientists divvy up the money we might otherwise spend on unproductive carbon reductions, we can tackle a world full of problems for the same price as a fractional reduction in temperature.
In contrast to An Inconvenient Truth, the tone of Cool It is thus largely upbeat. Indeed, the audience is never given much, if any, cause for alarm. Lomborg embraces the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, but he focuses on toning down the hysteria of those who go beyond the IPCC predictions rather than addressing the gloomy outlook of the predictions themselves. Like Julian Simon, now his intellectual inspiration, Lomborg believes that humanity has never had it so good. In short, the producers of Cool It are betting that a sugarcoated pill will go down easier than a bitter one.
Still, one should think hard about what is being swallowed. The philosophical basis of the film is that we humans can innovate our way out of any problem. As one self-congratulating scientist says, “The solution is us.”
The film operates in what British scientist Mike Hulme describes in his worthwhile book Why We Disagree about Climate Change as “the myth of Babel.” Using Hulme’s biblical terms, men like Lomborg and Simon look back and see that the good old days of Eden were not so good after all, and they look forward and see not an unstoppable coming Apocalypse but an opportunity to further flex mankind’s muscles.
Operating from a worldview diametrically opposed to Lomborg and Simon’s, Bill McKibben, author of the recent Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, or his philosophical mentor Wendell Berry would instead advocate for humbly accepting environmental limits and working in community within them. (Incidentally, both have argued for this approach from a biblical basis.)
But for Lomborg and his merry band, not even the sky is the limit. Like the tower builders of ancient Babel, modern geo-engineers are ready to make a name for themselves by raising a 25-kilometer high ladder to the stratosphere to deliver sun blocking sulfur aerosols. Meanwhile, down on earth, bio-technified algae and the newest generation of nuclear reactors will continue to power our high-energy lifestyle, and giant sea dams and floating houses aim to protect New Orleans from the next Katrina. It all sounds so very promising, as long as everything goes according to plan.
While the rich among us may indeed be able to survive and adapt, little is said of climate change’s impact on the world’s poorest nations which understandably have their attention directed elsewhere. And what of the world’s currently fragmented ecosystems, with their endangered flora and fauna? Such biodiversity—which may need a new Noah’s Ark to save it—is nowhere to be found in the cost-benefit analysis Professor Lomborg scrawls on his blackboard. And even though climate change may be the mother of all unintended consequences, no allowance is given for the possibility that a plethora of new climate change-fighting technologies will bring with them unintended—and environmentally unfriendly—side effects.
To be sure, Cool It raises worthwhile arguments and the filmmaking is top notch with two-time Sundance award winner Ondi Timoner at the helm. Any who think that simple tokenism like turning off the Eiffel Tower’s lights for an hour will be enough to make a global difference are rightly challenged by the film, as are those who place their faith in political processes that have so far produced only hot air.
Why those same politicians will now efficiently dedicate billions to Lomborg’s plan is left an unanswered question, though. Perhaps world leaders will be wowed by the supposed economic rationality of it all; or perhaps, as demonstrated in Cool It’s closing scene, when Lomborg politely but firmly turns a blustery congressman’s words back on him, we’ll be left in another decade to wonder why we still have not taken the problem of climate change seriously.
Maybe we need more than just a good plan. As commentators like David Brooks have pointed out, the emerging science of the brain is calling into question the fundamental basis of the economic theory that underlies Lomborg’s analysis, namely the assumption that man is primarily a rational actor. In Why We Disagree, Mike Hulme argues that there are elements of this debate that “lie beyond the reach of science, economics and politics.” Yet, neither Cool It nor An Inconvenient Truth move beyond these spheres, and in the end, both Lomborg and Gore are arguing, “I can fix this mess if you’d just listen to me and do as I say.” In fact, while disagreeing on the efficacy of an international treaty, both of their technology-based and sacrifice-lite solutions are surprisingly similar.
The gift of human creativity will certainly play an important role if the challenge of climate change is to be met, but the technological optimism of Cool It borders on hubris. As Mike Hulme notes: “The physical transformation of our climates now under way show both the extent of our inadvertent and unwanted agency, but also the limits of our science-saturated and spiritually impoverished wisdom. Humility thus becomes a virtue.” While it is hard to doubt Lomborg’s good intentions, this is not a humble film. Thus, many will be, and should be, left lukewarm by Cool It.
John Murdock works as a natural resources attorney in Washington, D.C. and serves as an editorial advisor for Creation Care magazine.
Cool It will be released on DVD on March 29th.
RESOURCES
Cool It film website.
Comments:
"Global Warming" is THE single biggest scam ever perpetrated upon the peoples of this planet.
What a sad, sad, costly joke.
from 2007,
Gravity Measurements Help Melt Ice Mysteries
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1315
from 2009,
New NASA Satellite Survey Reveals Dramatic Arctic Sea Ice Thinning
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-107
and the latest,
NASA: Ice Caps Overtake Glaciers as Biggest Contributors to Rising Seas
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/idUS239167091120110315
That's a 20-year study, buddy.
facts. Our primary category is not "faithful to God" or "unfaithful to God" but the shiboleth tribal category "conservative" or "liberal." American Evangelicals and many American Catholics are, on the whole, dubious of the overwhelming evidence for human caused climate change for cultural reasons. Even though our respective (and largely shared) traditions would predispose us to believe that unbridled consumption might have some negative consequences. The U.S. Bishops have a wonderful statement on climate change, but the "cultural orthodoxy" says otherwise. Guess which orthodoxy prevails in Alice's Wonderland? Excellent review.
The first point is that the magnitude of global warming has been grossly overstated. The average temperatures of the earth have not shown any definitive increasing trend for the last 15 years! None of the IPCC models, even the most conservative, predicted this possibility. They are all therefore greatly flawed. We cannot base public policy decisions on predictive theories that do not conform to reality. All the scientists who generated those models have clearly omitted one or more determinative factors from their calculations.
Lomborg is nor arguing that there is no need to be concerned about the potential impacts of global warming on the poorest people. What he is arguing is that they have much larger and more immediate problems that can be solved or ameliorated with only a fraction of the investment that is being demanded to combat global warming. Indeed, global warming is much more a concern for the rich nations, because they don't have the other problems that plague the poor nations. Once the pressing needs of the poor nations are cared for, they will be in a position to address the much less urgent issue of global warming.
The fact is that ocean levels are NOT inundating island nations, that their food supplies are NOT being decimated by global warming, and there is no concrete evidence that species are being harmed by average temperature changes, when the swings of temperature from day to day and season to season are so much greater in magnitude than any one or two degree average change--again, which has not happened for the last 15 years.
Polar bears are at their highest population since science started keeping track of them. The theory that they need sea ice to eat is on its face irrational. It is the seals and other life at the margiins of the ice that polar bears eat. Crossing a hundred fewer miles of sea ice to reach the fertile edge will decrease the stress and energy demand on polar bears. And slightly warmer water will only benefit the growth of the food species they depend on. Remember, during the dead of winter, the bears are hibernating. If the polar temperature rises from minus 60 to minus 55, it is not going to make one wit of difference to them.
Your critique of economic theory raises the question, What do you propose to replace it? Reasoning that is not quantitative and rational but emotional? Public policy that is imposed form above and not through th free economic choice of individuals?
Your concern about the unintended consequences of massive projects is certainly a legitimate concern, but it is far better aimed at the grandiose schemes of Al Gore and Barack Obama, who want to make energy, much more expensive to obtain. When heating oil, natural gas and electricity cost twice as much as now, to punish us all for the sin of consupmption, the poor will be suffering the most, will lose the most jobs, will starve for lack of affordable food and affordable transportation. The rich will survice no matter what happens. Addressing the true costs of any public policy, and all public policies together, not just global warming in isolation, is the intelligent way to be compassionate toward the poor.
Indeed, the IPCC itself says that the global warming that has reversed the cooling trend of 1935to 1975 is due to 2 specific causes: (1) the regulation of sulfur oxide air pollution by EPA and its counterparts in other nations, and (2) the adoption of the Montreal Protocol in 1990, and corresponding amendments to the US Clean Air Act, which has deployed substitute refrigerants that are voracious greenhouse gases. Indeed, the IPCC declared that the Montreal Protocol led to 2 times the warming that the Kyoto Protocol was intended to remove! In other words, government interventions, well intentioned, are the most specific cause of global warming. And now people like Al Gore want us to let the same idiots who brought us global warming create policies whose side effects may be even worse. We do know that their economic effects will be serious, and negative, for the world's poorest people.
Indeed, even the direct effects of the Gore--0Obama policies on global warming will be NEGATIVE in the first decades of their plan, because an accelerated discarding of existing capital investment in our energy-using infrastructure will cause a massive JUMP in CO2 emissions that will not go away until 2050 or later! Making a hybrid car requires more Greenhouse gas emissions than making and operating an SUV for ten years. Windfarms are fabricated using coal-fired electricity and erected using diesel-fueled trucks and cranes. A much more gradual transition to alternate energy tchnologies, as old ones wear out, will have less negative impact on CO2 levels than the "crash" program pushed by Gore--Obama.
The idea of lofting sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere is not hubris. Volcanoes do it all the time, and they are efficient in reducing global temperatures. Indeed, it could be done on a more modest scale by just returning the sulfur to jet fuels used by international jet flights over the polar regions on their Great Circle routes. It could prevent global warming at a small fraction of the cost of Gore-Obama's impoverishment schemes, solving that problem while leaving us resources to fight all the larger problems of global poverty.
It is silly to think that Gore-Obama's scheme is not a massive reeingineering of the environment. That argument is like the ones the Soviets used, that anti-ballistic missiles were evil "space weapons" while Russian nuclear ICBMs that would travel through space were not. As discussed above, their scheme would ADD tremendously to CO2 for decades.
Fundamentally, Lomborg argues for using human intelligence to deal with global warming and other issues, rather than making public policy decisions based on some primitive pantheistic ethic of "we have sinned against Gaia, and she is punishing us." And I am not aware of anything inherent to Christianity that says it is more virtuous and pleasing to God that we impoverish ourselves out of penance. Most people are not greedy; they are willing to obey the biblical injunction to Adam to live by the sweat of their brow. There is no virtue in the rich nations of the world making the poor nations suffer to expiate our supposed climatic sins.
While the ideas suggested by Cool It sound interesting, I wonder at our ability to carry them out for a sustained period of time. We see through a glass, darkly, and like our ancestors perhaps we fail to grasp the coming glory of God and only experience our desire to achieve glory for ourselves and our children. I agree with the author that we cannot scare, incentivize or legislate our way into a better future with a restored earth. Only a true change in the focus of individual lives can turn the course of history and such a change is not something an economic theory or a movie can accomplish.
It is a shame that those evangelical leaders who jumped on the global warming hysteria band wagon do not keep up with the science.
See a good summary see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJwayalLpYY&feature=relmfu
Just look at the out of date material on their website. The 'Science Info" button gives us info from two ocean ecology advocacy writers. Why don't they gives us info from actual climate Scientists and Christians like John Christy and Roy Spencer?
Like Lomborg, who also accepts the AGW hypothesis, they are too busy to carefully look at the science. [e.g. in an article where Lumborg mis-represented the views of one of the world's leading climate scientists, I sent his office the relevant quotes form Lindzen. His secretary replied that she would forward them but noted his busy schedule...movies etc.]
I do not doubt their good intentions nor the need to care for creation. But 'selling' an agenda that will severely hurt the poor of this world and have no effect on climate is unconscionable.
As Dr. Roy Spencer recently wrote: "Why should today’s warmth be manmade, when the Medieval Warm Period was not? Just because we finally have one potential explanation – CO2?
"This only shows how LITTLE we understand about climate change…not how MUCH we know.
"...Making our most abundant and affordable sources of energy artificially more expensive with laws and regulations will end up killing millions of people.
"And that’s why I speak out. Poverty kills. Those who argue otherwise from their positions of fossil-fueled health and wealth are like spoiled children."
1. If we define "human-caused climate change" to mean ANY change then we arrive at a simple truism which no sane person would dispute. I also do not dispute that as I type this the energy I impart to the keyboard ultimately changes the earth's orbit, however slightly.
2. Part of the problem with alleged catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is that people routinely make assertions to the effect that there is overwhelming evidence for its existence. This is simply false, as anyone who takes the time to research the issue would know. What we have instead is an overwhelming number of computer models which predict catastrophic warming. I am a computer scientist and like many others who have examined the source code to these models (on the rare occasion these "scientists" make it available as they must if their work is to qualify as science at all) I have found all such models to be beyond useless. Beyond useless because many if them are not simply wildly innacurate and laughably incomplete, but in many cases willfully contrived to produce a preordained result -- the antithesis of science, but e hallmark of the progressive attitude.
1. If we define "human-caused climate change" to mean ANY change then we arrive at a simple truism which no sane person would dispute. I also do not dispute that as I type this the energy I impart to the keyboard ultimately changes the earth's orbit, however slightly.
2. Part of the problem with alleged catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is that people routinely make assertions to the effect that there is overwhelming evidence for its existence. This is simply false, as anyone who takes the time to research the issue would know. What we have instead is an overwhelming number of computer models which predict catastrophic warming. I am a computer scientist and like many others who have examined the source code to these models (on the rare occasion these "scientists" make it available as they must if their work is to qualify as science at all) I have found all such models to be beyond useless. Beyond useless because many if them are not simply wildly innacurate and laughably incomplete, but in many cases willfully contrived to produce a preordained result -- the antithesis of science, but e hallmark of the progressive attitude.
Perhaps this was inevitable as, unfortunately, I must agree with Mr. MacDonald that climate change has taken on an emotional element that in some ways mimics the abortion debate. Like abortion, a new encounter with data (e.g. a sonogram image of an unborn child) is indeed still useful in turning some from “choice” to “life,” but many others have walls built of material that rational argument alone cannot penetrate. (Mike Hulme, who describes himself as an orthodox and evangelical Anglican, does an admirable job of dissecting these extra-scientific factors in “Why We Disagree about Climate Change.”)
Indeed as Joe Carter noted “on the square” on 3/16 (and The Economist in a cover story before that), the sonogram has paradoxically been turned into a weapon of mass destruction aimed at baby girls worldwide. Sadly, even the clearest evidence can be ignored if the motivation is high enough, whether that motivation be a cultural bias for boys or a cultural bias for the status quo on consumption.
Indeed, the same root cause drives both (1) many elective abortions and (2) much of the current hostility to climate science: a fear that the child/warming will negatively impact our personal lifestyles.
Many a pregnant co-ed will jump through a myriad of hoops (including ignoring evidence right in front of her face on an ultrasound screen while repeating “it’s just a blob of cells”) to protect “her future.” They (and the men they hook-up with) want the pleasure of sex but not the responsibility that would naturally come with it.
Similarly, many in the West---rightly intuiting that truly addressing climate change out of love for the least of these could involve significant changes to our consumption-driven lifestyles---defensively recoil in the face of rather solid information that on almost any other issue would be personally convincing. The standard of proof goes way up when things potentially get personal. Some of this is, of course, quite proper. More certainty is understandably desired when the stakes are higher. At some point, though, prudent caution slides into irrational excuse.
We see this same recoiling when attempting to deal with the realities of other slowly building, long-term problems that will require painful changes to remedy. Take the national debt, where our nation’s fiscally conservative party is now quibbling over whether to cut $60 or $100 billion from a budget that still borrows and spends $1trillion more than we have---at a time when we already owe another $14trillion, and much of that to hostile nations. Humanity often has difficulty addressing problems that do not manifest themselves in short term dramatic ways.
For those who are skeptical but still open to data, I would recommend Katharine Hayhoe’s helpful primer A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions. Dr. Hayhoe is an evangelical Christian and a climate scientist at Texas Tech and the book was co-written with her pastor husband. (http://www.katharinehayhoe.com/).
While being a Christian is no guarantee of correctness, I do personally find it comforting (and a likely hedge against dishonesty) that leading lights in this area like Hayhoe, Hulme, and Sir John Houghton bow to Jesus, not Gaia. Also important to me is the fact that 97% of practicing American climatologists---each one of whom could forever be famous if he/she debunked the whole thing---believe that anthropogenic climate change is the unfortunate reality we face. [http://articles.cnn.com/2009-01-19/world/eco.globalwarmingsurvey_1_global-warming-climate-science-human-activity?_s=PM:WORLD ].
All this and my own layman’s review of the science have me concluding that it is time to move the conversation from the question of “is it a hoax?” to “how do we deal with it?” (Though, amusingly, I note that my B.S. degree in the geosciences would be enough to qualify me as a “scientist” in the eyes of the questionable petition drive that has been used to muddy the waters--- http://www.petitionproject.org)
This is not to say that all who question the current majority scientific view are driven by selfishness. There are legitimate fears about the various solutions offered and this often gets morphed into a questioning of the underlying science (or scientists). Again, Hulme addresses these factors well. And certainly science is never settled; we always need people who will honestly and skeptically (in the best sense of the word) test and re-test our basic assumptions.
Still, at some point, society must make practical calls about when science is settled enough to start taking action. Mr. Lomborg and I may disagree on the extent that technology can save us, but we do agree that it is time to start talking about solutions, not just whether there is a problem.
[Sidenote: Even Lomborg’s own cost-benefit analysis has shifted since the filming of Cool It. Global warming is moving up his priority list and he now calculates that $100billion annually is a wise investment. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/30/bjorn-lomborg-climate-change-u-turn ]
[By the way, those interested in the similarities between the abortion and global warming debates might find my experience personally questioning Vice President Gore on his inconsistent theories of “life” interesting: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/current-events/features/16191-the-gospel-according-to-al-gore# ]
I'm glad First Things is covering this important issues. Conservatives have been AWOL in the debate as we've chased after hare-brained conspiracy theories. That needs to change if human flourishing is to be advanced. We need prudence, not ideology and paranoia. I hope that in the future we'll hear more of the common sense of writers like Lomborg and Murdock.
Mr. Murdock apparently misunderstands the scientific, academic and personal corruption that surrounds and grips the climatologists. They cooked the books and they got caught, and their credibility is shot. Further, they have so invested themselves in AGW that it is now a secular substitute for religion, effectively beyond disproof. And frankly, I don't trust CNN to handle this issue fairly either, and the 97% sounds false to me. If we're going with these unscientific surveys, how about the other side: http://www.petitionproject.com/.
The bottom line is that AGW is already debunked, but its true believers refuse to pay attention.
As just another layer in the "onion" of AGW corruption, check out the 3/23 post at http://climateaudit.org/ that peels it, and have a good cry.
Agree totally w/ last post: scientific illiteracy. Diminished ice sheets cause more sun on the water, raising moisture which becomes rain/snow. How else explain the floods this year or record snowfalls? But if affects someone's bottom line, that person will even lie to preserve profits. Who needs polar bears anyway or arborial forests?
Diminished ice sheets cause more sun on the water, raising moisture which becomes rain/snow. How else explain the floods this year or record snowfalls?
Andre
Of course! How else can we explain it? That must be the "answer". After all, never before in human history have we had floods and heavy snowfall.
Here is the context of that fact: "the source of the claimed 97% consensus reveals that it comes from a non-peer reviewed article describing an online poll in which a total of only 79 climate scientists chose to participate. Of the 79 self-selected climate scientists, 75 agreed with the notion of AGW. Thus, we find climate scientists once again using dubious statistical techniques to deceive the public..."
For further explanation of these kinds of 'facts' see:
http://www.heartland.org/events/newyork09/pdfs/lindzen.pdf
So how can you explain why the global temperatures over the past decade are flat, or down, while CO2 is increasing? And don't forget "Climategate", and the deceptions in "ccoking the data" to get funding. Take a look at the HadCRUT, RSS, UAH, NOAA & even GISS global temperature data sets.
Why don't you just admit, what most scientists believe, "we just don't know".
"Climate change is a matter of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself.” -- Nobel Prize Recipient Stanford University Physicist Dr. Robert B. Laughlin,
“Any reasonable scientific analysis must conclude the basic theory wrong!!” -- NASA Scientist Dr. Leonard Weinstein
I found it amusing, BTW, that you consider Bill McKibben's defense to be based on his Christianity. There is no place that his Christianity conflicts with his liberal politics that the politics don't emerge the victor and (shazam!) he claims it was what Jesus wanted all along. He is a sneering and deeply offensive person, and his debate with Lomborg at Middlebury an embarrassment of name-calling and impugning of motives. McKibben has no scientific training, BTW - he was a journalism major. He's a PR guy to the Arts & Humanities Tribe, to which even some Christians give their first loyalty.
There is another cultural item in play here. This is deeply tribal, with the subtext "you are supposed to believe us when we tell you things" prominent. Many climate skeptics disbelieve simply in reaction to this, which is of course not very adult or scientific. But the door swings both ways. As none of us is able to erect the entire edifice of either AGW or skepticism from scratch, we are all dependent or who we trust for sources.
On that score, I don't trust sources that A) have already lied to me, B) have made predictions that haven't come true, C) impugn my motives for disagreeing with them, D) gain more cultural dominance if their view prevails, E) claim a consensus of opinion that does not exist, F) game the system of peer-review, and G) insist a catastrophe is imminent.
Even at that, I fight through the science as best I can and conclude there is likely warming, and humankind may have something to do with it. BUt not a catastrophe. There isn't the evidence - it is more of a feeling by many that the world is going to hell in a handbasket because the wrong people are making money and building ugly houses and ruining the twee little villages where they like to vacation. Okay, that last was an overreach. But not by much. These folks worship a certain picture of how the world should look.
Be always suspicious of anyone who sells you an idea as Christian because it's not "materialist," or Against Greed. It's a sure sign you're being played.
1. A large proportion of TNA's readership seems studiously ignorant of the geophysical literature of the last few decades, or centuries.
2. A rising tide of theologically saturated and scientifically impoverished cant :
"Why don't they gives us info from actual climate Scientists and Christians like John Christy and Roy Spencer?"
threatens the Republican party with inundation as its must-reads eschew fact-checking and shun science policy in favor of a Conservapedia so parochial as to put The Great Soviet Encyclopedia to shame.
In the age of the electronic media, materialism remains too important to be left to the Marxists , or representatives of other gods that have failed . It matters not if the True believers are Dominionists , post-Trotskyites, PR men, neocons or evangelists of an ecclesiastic polity, like Christy and Spencer: science politicized is science betrayed.
