New York Times environmental reporter Coral Davenport surely delighted her paper's core readership of "sophisticated" liberals with her Friday report, an attempt to embarrass conservatives for their stubborn stands against the idea of "global warming" in "Why Republicans Keep Telling Everyone They’re Not Scientists."
Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a Republican who is fighting a Democratic challenge from former Gov. Charlie Crist, was asked by The Miami Herald if he believes climate change is significantly affecting the weather. “Well, I’m not a scientist,” he said.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is locked in a tight re-election race, was asked this month by The Cincinnati Enquirer if he believes that climate change is a problem. “I’m not a scientist,” he said.
Davenport painted global warming as a political problem for the GOP.
“I’m not a scientist,” or a close variation, has become the go-to talking point for Republicans questioned about climate change in the 2014 campaigns. In the past, many Republican candidates questioned or denied the science of climate change, but polls show that a majority of Americans accept it -- and support government policies to mitigate it -- making the Republican position increasingly challenging ahead of the 2016 presidential elections.
“It’s got to be the dumbest answer I’ve ever heard,” said Michael McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist who has advised House Republicans and conservative political advocacy groups on energy and climate change messaging. “Using that logic would disqualify politicians from voting on anything. Most politicians aren’t scientists, but they vote on science policy. They have opinions on Ebola, but they’re not epidemiologists. They shape highway and infrastructure laws, but they’re not engineers.”
As usual, it all goes back to the Koch brothers.
For now, “I’m not a scientist” is what one party adviser calls “a temporary Band-Aid” -- a way to avoid being called a climate change denier but also to sidestep a dilemma. The reality of campaigning is that a politician who acknowledges that burning coal and oil contributes to global warming must offer a solution, which most policy experts say should be taxing or regulating carbon pollution and increasing government spending on alternative energy. But those ideas are anathema to influential conservative donors like the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch and the advocacy group they support, Americans for Prosperity.
After insisting that "polls show that the political landscape has changed..." and that global warming had become a losing issue for those old cranky anti-science Republicans, Davenport glimpsed some hope for the future.
One result is that a cadre of Republican staffers and advisers, most under the age of 40, have started pushing their bosses to find a way to address the issue.
In Davenport's sealed universe, there has been no stubborn "global warming hiatus" over the last 15 years, with temperatures refusing to rise as climate models insisted they inevitably would.
Just as there were evidently no wildfires or droughts before climate change became an issue, circa the first congressional "climate change" hearings in 1988. (Hearings, by the way, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Tim Wirth of Colorado, who later bragged of opening all the windows in the hearing room the night before so the air conditioning wouldn't work during the hearings, scheduled on the hottest day of the summer. Another triumph for "objective" science.)
Davenport, as is her habit, eagerly pushed the simplistic, alarmist theory of weather extremes = climate change (while ignoring the stubborn absence of hurricanes of late), and concluding with that convenient "Republican adviser" worried that his party's stance on the matter will doom them.
While the politicians debate, the scientific evidence linking weather extremes to climate change continues to mount. Earlier this year, the National Climate Assessment, a study by 13 federal agencies, detailed the ways in which climate change caused by burning coal and oil is threatening the American landscape, from rising sea levels in Florida to more wildfires in Colorado to more devastating droughts across the Southwest. Major corporations, including longtime Republican donors like ExxonMobil, Walmart and Coca-Cola, have acknowledged the science of human-caused climate change and are planning for future taxes or regulations on carbon pollution.
For Mr. McKenna, the energy lobbyist and Republican adviser, the political future is clear. “We’re going to keep getting this question until we nail down a hard answer,” he said.
