How often do you see scientists, engineers, doctors, etc. protesting? Not often. It is for that reason that ignorance have a tendency to hold. When those wanting to mislead in order to attain some gain many a time those on the side with the facts tend to view them with such incredulity and disdain that they ignore them under the assumption that Americans would not give credence to their lunacy or willful misinformation.
With the Republicans taking over the House Of Representatives fact based deliberations on policy will no longer reign. As such as stated in the article, scientists and those in the know must join the fight. They must join the dialog and confront those willfully misinformed as well as those purposefully misinforming.
One can only wonder if America realizes what it is doing by installing the new crop of Republicans that seem completely devoid of either the ability of processing scientific information or the ability to get out of their state of alternate reality.
As I have stated many time, the current crop of Republicans are a clear and present danger to our country.
My Book: As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom
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Climate scientists plan campaign against global warming skeptics
Reporting from Washington —
Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in Tuesday’s election.
On Monday, the American Geophysical Union, the country’s largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.John Abraham of St. Thomas University in Minnesota, who last May wrote a widely disseminated response to climate change skeptics, is also pulling together a "climate rapid response team," which includes scientists prepared to go before what they consider potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk radio and television shows.
"This group feels strongly that science and politics can’t be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists," said Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York.
"We are taking the fight to them because we are … tired of taking the hits. The notion that truth will prevail is not working. The truth has been out there for the past two decades, and nothing has changed."
During the recent campaigns, skepticism about climate change became a rallying cry for many Republican candidates. Of the more than 100 new GOP members of Congress, 50% are climate change skeptics, according to an analysis of campaign statements by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.Prominent Republican congressmen such as Darrell Issa of Vista, Joe L. Barton of Texas and F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin have pledged to investigate the Environmental Protection Agency‘s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. They say they also intend to investigate the so-called Climategate scandal, in which thousands of e-mails of leading climate scientists were hacked and released to the public last year.
Climate change skeptics argued that the sniping in some e-mails showed that scientists suppressed research by skeptics and manipulated data. Five independent panels subsequently cleared the researchers involved and validated the science.
"People who ask for and accept taxpayer dollars shouldn’t get bent out of shape when asked to account for the money," said James M. Taylor, a senior fellow and a specialist in global warming at the conservative Heartland Institute in Chicago. "The budget is spiraling out of control while government is handing out billions of dollars in grants to climate scientists, many of whom are unabashed activists."
Climate science: Climate scientists plan campaign against global warming skeptics – latimes.com
