Saturday Open Thread [11.1.14]
The new Republican mantra when confronted with the issue of climate change is that they are not a scientist.”:
“‘I’m not a scientist,’ or a close variation, has become the go-to talking point for Republicans questioned about climate change in the 2014 campaigns. In the past, many Republican candidates questioned or denied the science of climate change, but polls show that a majority of Americans accept it — and support government policies to mitigate it — making the Republican position increasingly challenging ahead of the 2016 presidential elections.”
“For now, ‘I’m not a scientist’ is what one party adviser calls ‘a temporary Band-Aid’ — a way to avoid being called a climate change denier but also to sidestep a dilemma. The reality of campaigning is that a politician who acknowledges that burning coal and oil contributes to global warming must offer a solution, which most policy experts say should be taxing or regulating carbon pollution and increasing government spending on alternative energy. But those ideas are anathema to influential conservative donors like the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch and the advocacy group they support, Americans for Prosperity.”
If Republicans are not scientists, as they accurately state, they should perhaps stop acting like one. And they should stop substituting their layman (and idiotic) opinion for a scientific one. And our beloved media, ask the fucking follow up question.
GOP Dolt: I’m not a scientist.
Media: Then why are not acting like one, disagreeing with scientific opinion held by 98 out of 100 scientists?
Good news on the real Ebola outbreak in West Africa from NPR:
If you want the inside scoop about what’s happening with the Ebola outbreak, then just hangout at the Mamba Point Hotel in Monrovia.
It’s packed with scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, international reporters and a bunch of guys and gals in camouflage from the U.S. Army.They all like to hang out at the bar during lunch time. That’s where I met Joel Montgomery, a top epidemiologist at the CDC. We head off to a quiet side room, and he starts telling me about all of his trips to Monrovia.
“When I was here in August, not to sound like, making this too colorful but, I mean there were … literally dead people on the streets,” Montgomery says. “And the burial teams were picking up 50 to 60 bodies a day.”
At that point, the country had been on a devastating path. Clinics were stretched way past capacity. And even getting an Ebola test could take days, or weeks if you lived in the jungle. Samples had to be sent by a series of canoes and motorcycles to the only lab in the country.
The epidemic was doubling every few weeks. Some computational biologists were predicting more than 20,000 cases by the end of October.
But officials are seeing a very different situation on the ground now. The country has had about 6,500 cases. New cases are on a decline, dropping off by about a 100 a week, on average, since early October.
The American response prompted by President Obama is succeeding. It will be a true American success story.
