But just as in Russia we have little idea who runs it. We have no idea how it works. We haven't even thought about Plan B if the rains fall in the wrong place at the wrong rate and a wall of water shows up at the window at 4 a.m. someday. Our complete negligence in dealing with runoff has pushed the whole system to its absolute maximum edge of instability. And if the big dam does look like it might blow one night and somebody does pull the plug on us, lots of luck ever finding out who did it. Or why.
So why is this about Republicans? I had forgotten about Anderson the oceanographer at Rice until I saw him again in Loftis' piece, but he's the scientist who raised a cry in October 2011 when the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality censored a report he had coauthored, removing all references to global warming or human activity as contributing factors to these and other environmental risks.
Jared Boggess
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As he and other scientists pointed out at the time, the factors they were pointing to in the report were broadly accepted by science across the board, no longer even in the same neighborhood with controversial theory. But TCEQ, ruled over by Governor Rick Perry's appointees, went through the report with a dull knife, hacking flesh and bone from it to eliminate any science that might get in the way of the Perry party line.
Then, as we know, our governor ran for president on a platform painting global warming as a godless lie fomented by people against bid'ness and freedumb. I think it's safe to say our nation saw through Perry and his approach to vote-getting, saw him for what he was, and the results were satisfyingly definitive.
But the approach we're hearing now from Ryan is only barely more clever — because it is a bit more vague — rendition of the Perry anthem. Ryan falls back on the East Anglia canard, taking a bunch of stolen emails from a British university, which proved some scientists have the social skills of 15-year-old emos, and using those emails to deny the legitimacy of science itself as a means toward knowledge.
Ryan has written of the emails, "... these revelations undermine confidence in the scientific data driving the climate change debates."
No they don't. They prove scientists can be assholes. But they prove nothing about science. Letter grades in science are not based on deportment. But Ryan also has written that, "there is growing disagreement among scientists about climate change and its causes."
No there's not. That's the exact opposite of the truth. There is growing, damn near overwhelming consensus that global warming is real, that human activity is a significant factor, and, may I mention, that the flood control strategies of the early 20th century are responsible for worsening flood problems and disasters in the 21st century.
Denying it is the sweet nothing, the wet little lie tongued softly into the ears of voters so they won't think they have to worry their little heads, let alone make any sacrifices to help the nation and the world get to effective new strategies.
Romney, who has been flip-flopping on earlier statements about global warming and human activity, joins Ryan, the so-called intellectual heavyweight of the pair who doesn't believe in science, and together they form the exact opposite of what they pose to be — tough realists not afraid of the truth.
We get this same stuff here at home. Dare to mention flood control and the city's leaders will accuse you of being against bid'ness and freedumb. And then they'll say there's no such thing as floods anymore.
Why would things divide up this way at this particular moment in history? Could it be we have arrived at a kind of physical and existential crossroads?
One way, the sign says, "Keep on Keepin' On." More cheap stuff from China, more chemicals, don't worry about it. The other way the sign says, "Whole New Deal." New morality taking personal responsibility for the planet, new concept of fulfillment, less cheap stuff from China, fewer chemicals.
Some people make their money off Keep On Keepin' On. They do not want people taking that other path in any significant numbers. Their problem is that science is more and more dead set against them, so they must set their chins dead against science.
That's crazy. Right? It's insane. But they either can't admit it's crazy, or they don't want us to notice it's crazy, or, very worst case, they don't know it's crazy.
I get all this via flood control. Like I say, you can choose your own window. Any way you look at it, Isaac in Plaquemines Parish and Paul Ryan in Tampa, all on television on the same night: That amounts to one very big nightmare for us all.
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