Republicans running climate change denier for Governor in Maine
Paul LePage, the Republican (and Tea Party) candidate for Governor in the State of Maine is on the record as early as two weeks ago stating that there is still no scientific agreement on the realities of global warming.
This is of course despite decades of research by some of the top scientific academies in the world like the US National Academy of Science, NASA and the UK Royal Society.
Here’s what LePage had to say in a recent interview:
“Next one is very difficult, is true science. I’ve been listening about global warming for years. You have the pros and the cons. Quite frankly, we need to get our scientific community to come up to a baseline of a common agenda, a common understanding of where we are. Science has to be proven to be fact and if the science is not true, it’s not proven, then it’s rhetoric.”
By LePages’ defintition, the only rhetoric is from those who continue to say climate change isn’t happening despite a complete lack of scientific evidence to back up their claim.
It is not a coincidence that LePage is listed as a member of the Heritage Foundation, a free-market think tank that has recieved hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years from the fossil fuel industry to seed doubt about the science behind climate change.
If the Heritage Foundation is where LePage is getting his scientific information, instead of actual scientific organizations, then Maine voters may wake up the day after the election to see their State looking backwards at a fake debate about the realities of climate change, instead of forward to the solutions.
Here’s the clip of LePage talking about climate change (at the 4 min. 37 second mark):
Maine Republican Party Plank
A plank in their platform calls for the investigation of climate scientists.
Tea Party activists took over the Republican party there. I doubt most Maine repubs have thought about climate scientists. More likely they were coached by outsiders.
So will Page start an investigation if he gets in?
Not only science loses with these types.
First the methodology of science is mangled:
"Quite frankly, we need to get our scientific community to come up to a baseline of common agenda, a common understanding..."
"Science has to be proven to be fact and if the science is not true, is not true then it's rhetoric."
Note to LePage, agendas and understandings are very different concepts and go check up on the scientific method and how it is pursued. Oh! And BTW LePage, that statement of yours is classic rhetoric.
LePage 2 Science 0
And now the language is broken:
"I've been listening about global warming for years..."
As Wolfgang Pauli once remarked, '...not even wrong.'
I am baffled as to how such people can rise to position of power. The democratic process in the US is clearly FUBAR.