New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman has a must-read piece today noting the “cynical careerism” of climate deniers who won’t even acknowledge the truth when one of “their own” discovers that climate science is sound. Singling out Anthony Watts as an example of this head-in-the-sand approach, Krugman notes that Watts and other climate skeptics changed their tune about the Koch-funded Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project when its lead researcher testified in front of Congress last week that climate change is real and man-made. It wasn’t what the skeptics – or the anti-science GOP – wanted to hear.
UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller – whose reputation as a climate skeptic and funding by a Koch foundation the Republicans likely assumed made him one of “theirs” – instead shocked the hearing by reporting that his group’s preliminary results find a global warming trend “very similar to that reported by the prior groups.”
Krugman notes that Anthony Watts had recently “praised the Berkeley project and piously declared himself ‘prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.’”
But then of course when Professor Muller announced the preliminary results of his study upholding the scientific basis of climate disruption, Watts ridiculed the hearing Muller attended as “post normal science political theater.”
Krugman notes that the skeptic camp’s decision to ostracize Professor Muller provides further evidence of the divisiveness of the political discussion about what we must do as a society to fight global warming. This polarization, Krugman warns, “has probably ensured that we won’t do anything about climate change until catastrophe is already upon us.”
Read the rest at NYTimes.com: “The Truth About Climate Change, Still Inconvenient”.
