Most remember the late Isaac Asimov as a writer of science fiction: “I Robot,” “Caves of Steel,” the “Foundation Series,” and others. He was also earned a Ph.D. 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 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 U.S. 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 taxpayer’s 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 ways are obvious. As taxpayers, 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 to 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 Los Angeles Times, new sea walls for Balboa Island would cost $60 million. It would be $500 million 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 Inhofe controlled Public Works funding.
As we move forward which of Asimov’s figures will we follow, the one of ignorance or the one of knowledge. For myself, I have just gotten a sticker to put on my car. “Got Science?”
