The Week in Political Buffoonery

As someone who understands science and math, I know that when you look into a particular population looking for instances of a particular behavior, sometimes those behaviors will cluster in time. You might go a few weeks with very few instances, and then suddenly see a big clump of them happening at the same time.

Of course, when we’re talking anti-science buffoonery in politics, there is a vast, vast sample size. The statistics are pretty good.

Still, last week there were a large number of forehead-smackingly nonsensical ridiculosities. Out of them all, here are three guaranteed to put a dent in your desk where your head slams into it.

1) James Inhofe Disproves Global Warming Because Snow

Sen. James “Global warming is a hoax” Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) has never met an argument against climate change too silly and obviously wrong not to repeat. Last week, he actually stood on the floor of the United States Senate, and talking about global warming, he—and I can’t believe I’m typing this—pulled a snowball out of a plastic bag and said,

I ask the chair, you know what this is? It’s a snowball, just from outside here. So it’s very, very cold out. Very unseasonal.

Yes, Sen. Inhofe, it snows, because it’s winter. The planet is warming up, but it still gets cold in the winter (at least it does for now). If your average low temperature in February is, say -10° Celsius, then it can warm up a few degrees and still be below the freezing point of water. That’s grade-school math.

Clearly, Inhofe is an Axial Tilt Denier, too. I wonder how he’d feel knowing that he has a lot in common with a Saudi cleric.

As Stephen Colbert has said, the idea that winter disproves global warming is like nighttime disproving the existence of the Sun. If you want details, Jon Stewart did a great job slam-dunking the it’s-cold-outside-therefore-no-global-warming dumbosity.

Snark aside, Inhofe’s head is quite firmly in the sand, and he’s an embarrassment to the Senate.  I hope this is his “Michael Dukakis in a tank” moment. Thank heavens another Senate member, the wonderful Sheldon Whitehouse (D–Rhode Island), took him to task for this.

2) House Science Committee Member Doesn’t Vaccinate

Speaking of dangerous rhetoric, on the House side, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia) took a moment in a public town-hall meeting to let everyone know he didn’t vaccinate his kids:

Great, huh? He tried to follow up later saying he’s not against inoculation, but it’s clear he doesn’t understand the issue (and by the way Jenny McCarthy says she’s not anti-vax, either). And we know Tea Partiers tend to be anti-vax as well, though it’s usually about being anti-government, not anti-science per se.

Did I mention Rep. Loudermilk is on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee? It may be past time to change its name.

And Rep. Loudermilk, when a GOP strategist tells you to resign over something ridiculous that you’ve said, you really, really need to rethink your position.

3) A Load of Taurus

American politicians don’t hold the monopoly on anti-science nonsense. Unhappily, facing away from reality knows no country’s borders. Case in point: Tory MP David Tredinnick thinks that a lot of the U.K.’s health problems could be helped by turning to astrology.

Just go to that link and see if you can count how many logical fallacies he relies on to back up this sentiment. Have a calculator handy. In the meantime, I’ll just leave this here.

So yeah, I’m being a bit snarky, but remember, these are critical topics—the environment, public health, and the health of science itself. If these politicians are willing to dump evidence-based reasoning by the side of the road, then what else are they willing to do? And they make our laws.

It’s time to dump them. If your representatives don’t believe in reality, then next election time it’s your responsibility to show it to them.