Rick Santorum on Climate Change, Evolution, and Science In General

[Dogmudgeon]

Ricky is the top seed (or is that the "spilled seed"?) for this year's Golden Face Palm award.

I'm so astounded that I can't even work up a good comment. A few brief excerpts from the ex-Senator's most recent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon">Solon-esque exegesis follow.

The Elephant in the Room: Challenging science dogma
As with evolution, the 'consensus' on climate change has become an ideology.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/rick_santorum/20091217_The_Elephant_in_the_Room__Challenging_science_dogma.html">The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 17, 2009

Questioning the scientific consensus in pursuit of the truth is an important part of how science has advanced through the centuries. But what happens when the scientific consensus becomes an ideology that trumps the pursuit of truth? Answer: Those making legitimate inquiries are ostracized, the careers of dissenters are destroyed, and debate is stifled.

Unfortunately, I am referring not only to the current proponents of the theory of man-made global warming. In 2001, I offered a legislative amendment about teaching the subject of evolution. I caught more flak for this simple amendment than for almost anything else I championed in the Senate. What heresy did I propose? Here is the full text:

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My amendment passed 91-8. The next day, the High Priests of Darwinism went berserk. How dare the Senate suggest there is any controversy surrounding evolution? The amendment, they argued, was an attempt to bring God into the classroom.

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Given this uncertainty, I think most Americans find the experts' cocksureness unsettling. Despite the bravado and billions of dollars in media hype supporting the climate alarmists, only 37 percent of respondents agreed that man is causing global warming in a recent Rasmussen poll.

Why? Well, maybe because Americans don't like being told what to believe. Maybe because we have learned to be skeptical of "scientific" claims, particularly those at war with our common sense - like the Darwinists' telling us for decades that we are just a slightly higher form of life than a bacterium that is here purely by chance, or the Environmental Protection Agency's informing us last week that man-made carbon dioxide - a gas that humans exhale and plants need to live, a gas that represents less than 0.1 percent of the atmosphere - is a dangerous pollutant threatening to overheat the world.

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It's all there: the cries of the Oppression of the Strong, Science put to public polling, the "withering" Santorum sarcasm that we have come to expect as an inevitable part of the Inquirer's Editorial page, denunciation of the "High Priests of Science", calls for "fairness" and "equal time" in public scientific discourse, self-congratulation for being a "heretic", ad infinitum, ad nauseam, und so weiter.

And to think, my state (pardon me, my Commonwealth) voted not once but TWICE for this buffoon.

--d!