[GPSCC-chat] Morgan Hill Times Green Talk.

[Wes Rolley]

If you read the following, you might also want to pay attention to the 
interview of Sen. Inhofe by Rachel Maddow that aired last night on 
MSNBC.  Link to the interview plus additional comments by Joe Romm can 
be seen here:
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/16/446008/inhofe-maddow-global-warming/

My column:

Most remember the late Isaac Asimov as a writer of science fiction: I 
Robot, Caves of Steel, the Foundation Series, etc. He was also earned a 
PhD in Chemistry from Columbia and was a Professor of BioChemistry at 
Boston University.

I mention Asimov because I want to base this column on a single quote 
from a column he wrote for Newsweek back in 1980. It is so fitting to 
the present time.

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has 
been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread 
winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the 
false notio­n that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as 
your knowledge.'"

No one person so personifies this attitude as does Oklahoma's Senior 
Senator, James Inhofe. He deserves mention now for two reasons. One is 
the fact that should the Republican Party gain control of the Senate in 
2012, Inhofe would be come Chair of the Committee on Public Works and 
the Environment. The second is that he will use his position to 
perpetuate a hoax on the American public... one that is ironically the 
centerpiece of his new book: The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming 
Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. The irony here is that the real hoax 
is the being perpetrated by Sen. Inhofe.

You can read the book, should you really want to make up your own mind. 
It did get some rave reviews on Amazon within a few hours of being 
available. However, if you do, I would ask that you also read The Hockey 
Stick and the Climate Wars by Dr. Michael Mann. From the first book, you 
get reassurance that the Bible says God won't allow this to happen. In 
the second, you have the evidence that it really is happening along with 
a narrative of the extraordinary efforts that have been made to 
discredit Dr. Mann and a number of his fellow climatologists.

It is easy to check just how far Sen. Inhofe will go to perpetuate his 
hoax hoax. If you go to his US Senate web page, there is a link labeled 
"Hundreds of Scientists Dispute Global Warming Alarmism". It links to a 
list of names compiled by then Inhofe staffer Marc Morano and published 
in 2008. The only trouble with this is the fact that the entire list is 
itself a fake. Some of the people on the list are not scientists. Some 
that have credentials are not climatologists. But more importantly, a 
number of been misquoted, misinterpreted, misrepresented to the point 
that they have asked to have their names taken off the list... but of 
course that did not happen.

When rigid belief is threatened, some will lie, even to themselves. A 
few will publish the lie at tax payers expense.

Where does this all take us now? The news today was filled with 
discussion of a new study released by Dr. Ben Strauss at Climate 
Central. That study shows that we have been underestimating the rate of 
sea level rise associated with our warming climate and that significant 
areas will be exposed to increasingly high, and therefore damaging, 
storm surges even though the mean sea level does not itself yet threaten 
flooding.

Even though we sit comfortably high here in Morgan Hill, it will affect 
us. Two way are obvious. As tax payers, we will be asked to help in the 
recovery for more and more sites. Consider that Balboa Island begins to 
flood now. What happens to that with another 8 -- 12 inches, as is 
forecast by 2030. If the government does not pay, will we have to pay 
through increased insurance premiums? It is not going to be cheap, 
either way. According to a story in the LA Times, new sea walls for 
Balboa Island would cost $60 M. It would be $500 M to rebuild the sea 
walls for all of Newport Beach. And that is starting now for only one 
community. Imagine how much help you would get from a Senate where James 
Inhofe controlled Public Works funding.

As we move forward which of Asimov's figures will we follow, the one of 
ignorance of the one of knowledge. For myself, I have just gotten a 
sticker to put on my car. "Got Science?"





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