Opinion> Debra Saunders> Are Scientists Becoming The New Priests

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Are Scientists Becoming the New Priests?

"I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy," GOP presidential hopeful and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman recently tweeted. You've got to hand it to Huntsman; he sure knows how to endear himself to folks who won't vote in the Republican primary.

Huntsman has said that he fears that the GOP will be perceived as the "anti-science party." That is, he gave a nod to Democrats' conceit that theirs is the party of science. Why? Because the Dems don't tolerate questions about evolution or global warming.

For the record, I believe in evolution. But I also have respect for those who see God's handiwork in the process — and see little reason to try to marginalize those with different personal beliefs.

I also share the skepticism voiced by a number of scientists — yes, scientists — who reject global warming orthodoxy in defiance of a political/academic machine that enforces submission to one view. Those who do not agree with alarmist predictions on climate change do so at their careers' peril.

As then-Delaware state climatologist David Legates told me in 2007, he would tell students who were not true believers of global warming, "If you don't have tenure at a major research university, keep your mouth shut."

Huntsman's reverential tone, however, suggests that university science departments are havens of harmony, with scientists as priestlike figures to whose greater wisdom the public should defer.

With scientists on this pedestal, who needs religion? It's worth noting that among the Obama ticket and GOP field, Texas Gov.

Rick Perry and Rep. Ron Paul probably have the strongest science backgrounds. Perry — a farmer, rancher and former Air Force pilot — has a degree in animal science from Texas A&M University. Paul was an Air Force flight surgeon and then a practicing physician until 1996.

Both Perry and Paul are global warming skeptics. Paul rejects evolution outright, whereas Perry calls evolution "a theory."

Huntsman majored in international politics. Hence, he's made his decision to "trust scientists on global warming." Trust? Scientists know things that non-scientists don't know, but they are human, which makes them fallible. And as recent events have shown, not all scientists are above the political fray.

Consider Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. In 2009, Chu's staff approved a $535 million loan guarantee to the solar company Solyndra. Within two years, despite that half-billion in taxpayer dollars, Solyndra announced last week it was filing for bankruptcy, shuttering its remaining plant and laying off 1,100 workers. That was one miscalculation. Mistakes happen.

But the biggest blunder was made not by a scientist, but by a politician who so trusted the hollow promises of the climate change lobby that he bet the U.S. economy on green jobs that never did proliferate. That was President Barack Obama, and you see the fruit of his misguided faith.

Email Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@sfchronicle.com. To find out more about Debra J. Saunders and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Comments

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What a bunch of spineless garbage. An ideologically based, stupid investment decision has nothing to do with the respect for scientific method that has made our civilization great.

Saunders, you have a duty to inform your right wing followers that they need to grow up and stop flirting with ditching the great achievements of civilization that exemplify what got us out of the caves and into communication that goes beyond hooting like chimpanzees and scratching our armpits.

There is no room in this world now for an America that can't get beyond its religion-based aversion to the concept of evolution.

People like you who know better dance like crazy around these issues of basic science that the rest of the
civilized world takes for granted. Go ahead and criticize a bad investment decision, and for that matter blind ideology about "green energy" that empowers such decisions.

And feel free to criticize the insensitivity of those scientists who try to leave no room for spirituality. But don't try to turn the usual residue of idiots you find in any field who do a disservice to their peers into some kind of cover for a political movement based on superstition, fear, and yearning for the good old days of ignorance.

And don't try to confuse the kind of bad business decision Solyndra represents with the idiocy of a populace that can't get beyond the Scopes trial. We Americans were largely born into (or managed to immigrate into) this wonderful wealth we have. We aren't going to get many more breaks that bring us that kind of luck. More and more, we are going to have to earn the wealth we have by...actually earning it.

The world has become a competitive place for us just about as much as anybody else, and we aren't going to make it by turning to the Bible for clues about the next advance in cancer treatment, or for an explanation as to why the sea is rising.

There is no Noah's ark now, just shrinking ice caps that are going to dramatically change the shape of coastal real estate right before our very eyes.

Comment: #1
Posted by: Masako
Thu Sep 8, 2011 7:33 PM