Climate denial: The GOP war on science should be the Democrats' greatest political weapon

Home Imagine if there was one single issue of such import and magnitude, and on which the Democrats were so clearly paradigmatically better than the Republicans, that it could by itself recast the entirety of our national political dynamic. Imagine if it were an issue about which the facts were so clear, and unlike so many political issues scientifically verifiable, that there was no legitimate debate, with the Democrats clearly accepting the reality of those facts and that science and the Republicans denying them. Imagine if that Republican denial was of such a degree that their behavior was not only stupid and dishonest but of grave and impending danger to the very nature of not only our economy but our society and culture as well. You would think that the Democrats would want to discuss that issue, wouldn't you? You would think that the Democrats would want impress those facts and that science over and over, at every opportunity, both to educate the public and to create perhaps an unprecedented electoral political dominance. You would think.

The reality is that there is such an issue, the Democrats are that much better on it and the Republicans that incomprehensibly bad, and yet the Democrats almost never talk about it, and in fact allow the facts and the science to be ignored, distorted and denied as if there is legitimate scientific debate, which there is not. It's baffling and infuriating. It's not only about the issue itself, which to any responsible observer takes primacy and precedence, but it's also about the politics; and even the most calculating politician ought at the very least to be passionately eager to take advantage of what could be such a uniquely powerful political advantage.

The issue is climate change, and the mere mention of it often causes even many elected Democrats and Democratic activists to cringe, sigh, or otherwise turn away and hide. But it shouldn't. To many it is a given that climate change is at best a political irrelevance, and at worst a political loser, and this includes many if not most Democrats who do understand the reality of the importance of the issue itself. But they don't know how to play it, politically. Or they are afraid to play it, politically. And thus do Democrats fail not only the issue but also their own political self-interest.

The facts and science of climate change are clear. In the scientific community there is no debate about the reality of climate change. Humans are causing it. The burning of fossil fuels is the primary means by which humans are causing it. The consequences will be of the most devastating magnitude, and while the scope of the complexity of those consequences is beyond our full understanding, what we do understand is that those consequences are happening faster, and are of even greater danger than had been anticipated.

The professional denialists, who are well-funded by the most cynical, cruel, and craven special interests, can always find some deliberately dishonest stooges who have some semblance of scientific credential to spread false propaganda, but that small number of fools and liars is but a tiny fractional minority among the thousands of scientists who do accept what now is as settled science as are the theories of gravity and relativity. And that that small number of fools and liars never manages to get their false propaganda published in peer-reviewed science journals, because whatever their alleged credentials to speak on this issue they are not in fact conducting scientific research on this issue. The weight of evidence in peer-reviewed literature is overwhelming. The people who do actually study climate science are in broad and deep consensus, and the only scientists who ever succeed in publishing anything even remotely contrary fill their own reports with numerous caveats about the holes in their own evidence. How deep and broad is the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change? The number of scientific societies that acknowledge the reality and danger of human-caused climate change includes:

National Academies of Sciences, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), American Physical Society, American Geophysical Union, American Chemical Society, American Meteorological Society, Geological Society of America, American Institute of Biological Sciences, American Society of Agronomy, American Society of Plant Biologists, American Statistical Association, Association of Ecosystem Research Centers, Botanical Society of America, Crop Science Society of America, Ecological Society of America, Natural Science Collections Alliance, Organization of Biological Field Stations, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Society of Systematic Biologists, Soil Science Society of America, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Science Academies of the G8+5 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States, Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa), European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Australian Institute of Physics, and International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics

Any seeming debate on the basic fact of the existence of human-caused climate change is wholly concocted by the professional denialists and their also witting stooges in the irresponsibly execrable traditional media. But the public is not fooled. The public already overwhelmingly supports responsible action on climate change, which means that the public already understands the reality that the Republicans so assiduously deny. In other words, although making climate change an issue of primary importance to the widespread public won't be easy, the widespread public already has taken the first steps, all on its collective own.