Contributors

Sunday, May 24, 2015

A Christian Scientist

Republicans are constantly telling us how little they know about science. Conservatives like Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and Mitch McConnell are constantly prefacing their remarks about scientific issues such as climate change with, "I'm not a scientist, but..." and then they proceed to issue an opinion contrary to established scientific facts.

Now that the pope is preparing to release an encyclical on climate change, Republicans aren't at all happy. Republican Catholics like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal are claiming the pope's acceptance of settled science is a "political opinion," and has no religious authority on this issue.

But the fact is, climate change isn't just an "opinion." It's not just some abstract measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere, ocean temperatures, decreasing arctic sea ice and the collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet. We can see it happening in our daily lives, with massive floods, killing droughts, and destructive storms.

Furthermore, when people inflict death and destruction on each other it is by definition a moral issue, whether intentional or accidental:
“Obviously, when it comes to science, the pope is not infallible. Galileo proved that,” said Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and Washington-based analyst for the National Catholic Reporter, though he noted that Francis did earn a master’s degree in chemistry before entering the seminary. “When it comes to, however, the question of the impact of climate change on humanity, this is a moral issue. We’re talking about death and destruction on an apocalyptic scale.”
Mankind is on the verge of making irrevocable environmental changes to the planet that will raise sea levels, kill off large segments of sea life, displace billions of people from their homes near the sea, and cause massive famine and disease over large segments of the planet. That's a profound religious and moral issue. We're causing this destruction incidentally, as a byproduct of our quest for ever-growing economies and industry, and the convenience of driving to work in our separate cars. But that doesn't make the destruction any less immoral.

After years of drought, Oklahoma and Texas are right now getting hammered by tornadoes and record floods. These are not solely due to climate change, but climate change is definitely making them worse. Instead of getting three inches of rain in 24 hours, they're getting six or seven inches of rain in a single day. Why? Climate change increases the air temperature. Warmer air holds more moisture. Which means when it rains, it rains a lot more.

But Republicans like Bobby Jindal refuse to acknowledge the reality of basic scientific facts like the evolution of species -- which the Catholic Church accepts. Jindal insists that government should accept the pope's admonitions against abortion, birth control, premarital sex and other issues. Yet Jindal thinks the government should ignore the pope on climate change, because it's "just politics." Might this have anything to do with the fact that Louisiana and the Republican Party get hundreds of billions of dollars from the petroleum industry?

Unlike Jindal and the rest of the Republican rabble, Pope Francis has had scientific training, like many Jesuits. He worked as a chemist and has a master's degree in chemistry.

So when the pope says that climate change is a threat, he has a hell of lot more scientific, moral and religious authority than all of those Republican climate change deniers put together.

1 comment:

Larry said...

Oh puhleez! This is the wettest sping (i.e. most days of rain) in 33 years, the most rain in 19 years. Which means Texas had more days of rain in the spring of 1982 and more rain in 1996. This is normal weather patterns for Texas (who knows about those calf-fuckers in Oklahoma?). This is far from unusual. Even considering that reputable weather records don't go back much more than 150 years. There is zero evidence that this is worse than living memory (no fair only polling people born in the Clinton administration), let alone in accurate records.