Why Do So Few Scientists Belong to the GOP? ANS: They HATE Dummies & Zealots!

As this WSJ  article from 2012 shows, the bulk of free market -brainwashed puppets are those that refuse to accept man-made climate change, global warming. This is driving real scientists away .


The issue has surfaced, in a recent report, that barely 6% of scientists belong to the GOOPr party. Some people want to know how this can be and others (critics) insist it's just that the terrible media (largely Neoliberal and free-market, war worshipping) paint the poor lil Goops as "more anti-science than they really are". Oh REALLY? I seem to recall during the Repuke debates last year, when the question was asked of the 'puke candidates if any accepted evolution, not one raised a hand! You call that painting them as more anti-science than they are!?

Another aspect that infuriates physical scientists (and which can be repeatedly seen in letters appearing in Physics Today) is the GOOPr questioning of  climate change. This alone has plausibly driven away thousands of climate scientists, as well as physicists and astronomers who essentially say they “just don’t get those people.”

Enter one Barry Bickmore, professor of geology at Brigham Young University and a  one-time Republican convention delegate for the state of Utah.. Bickmore told The Salt Lake Tribune that :

“my party is increasingly ruled by zealots and a demand for ‘ideological purity’ that turns off scientists.”

Duh! If it's one thing scientists detest it's zealots who appeal to either ideology or religion to attempt to insist their "models" of the cosmos or its origin are the only right ones.  Ok, so none of this is exactly news, but it is a major change from the past when the proportion of scientists was almost evenly split. The Tribune, for its part,  dedicates a lot of thought to what could be driving the rift, which is especially visible in red states. The discomfort, evidently, is mutual:

One theory goes that conservatives tend toward a single-minded, “authoritarian” world view, so they are less comfortable with the uncertainty that’s built into the practice of science.

The above is spot -on. Examine any born or bred authoritarian, of whatever stripe, and you will find someone who detests intellect, free inquiry and higher education or abstract research that exposes human beliefs as false. These authoritarian types, if they only had their way, would doubtless put all questioning scientists back on the rack or even burn them alive. They hate questioning, and they regard it as impudence or disrespect. Needless to say, none of them have any place in any scientific field. They are better suited to being military intelligence officers (note the oxymoron there), bible punchers, G-men or CIA water-boarders.

An even more interesting take (ibid.):

Another hypothesis holds that the stauncher someone is about free-market economics, the more likely they are to see conspiracies in science, such as NASA faked the moon landing, there’s no proof cigarette smoking causes cancer and climate change is a hoax.

This actually dovetails with a tendency I noted before, called agnotology - which free marketeers practice to a fault - in order to protect their free market idiom and economy!  Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has correctly tied it to the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic ends . In other words, the supporters of agnotology - whoever they may be- are all committed to one end: destroying the science to enable economic profit and hence planetary ruin. Proctor also notes these special interests are often paid handsomely to sow immense confusion on the issue.

A perfect example of what I am writing about is depicted in the graphic shown, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal last January.  The piece claimed to be "signed by 16 scientists at the end of the article". Before getting to some of their bollocks, let us inquire into exactly WHO these people are. Do they have the gravitas or the disputative basis of real climate scientists? Going through the list, one found:

Jan Breslow: Head of Biogenetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University

Edward David: Member, National Academy of Engineering

Michael Kelly, Professor of Technology, Univ. of Cambridge

Richard Lindzen, prof. of atmospheric sciences, MIT

James McGrath, prof. of Chemistry, Virginia Technical University

Bert Rutan, aerospace engineer

Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut

Nir Shaviv, prof. of astrophysics, Hebrew University

The only marginal climate scientist in the lot is Lindzen,  and I already lambasted his drivel in earlier blogs:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/06/richard-lindzens-fantasies-1.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/06/richard-lindzens-fantasies-2.html

But this is the type of phony setup that free-market pandering media employ to try to make the unwary or gullible believe: i.e. that most of academic science is on the side of the doubters, deniers. This is exactly the worst aspect of agnotology.

In many of my past  blogs I've repeatedly cited the actual results from REAL climate scientists, as opposed to pretenders. Specifically, I've referenced the scientific consensus on global warming reported in Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22, by P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman found that (p. 24) :

“the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.

The authors concluded (p. 24) :

“The challenge appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact (non-existent debate among real climate specialists) to policy makers and a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate exists among scientists”


The problem, of course, is that so long as a few pseudo-climate scientists are given large header displays and article space in the likes of The Wall Street Journal, this perception problem will continue and many people will mistake the views of these pretenders for those of actual climate scientists.

In the meantime, the reason so few scientists belong to the GOP ought to be obvious: they detest liars and zealots more invested in protecting a perverse economic system than in accepting scientific truths.