Ted Cruz: Candidate of the KnowNothing Party

They say that, if you keep your mouth shut, people might wonder whether you're an idiot, but, if you open you mouth, you dismiss all doubt. Apparently, Senator Ted Cruz proved the truth of this sentiment, earlier this week. The video clip from "Late Night with Seth Myers" is all over the web. One place you can see it is in a Mother Jones article at http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/03/ted-cruz-seth-myers-climate-change.

Cruz actually said this about global warming: "Debates on this should follow science and should follow data. And many of the alarmists on global warming, they've got a problem because the science doesn't back them up." 

In fact, it isn't only a lunatic fringe of "alarmists" who are distressed by the prospect of global warming. It's 97% of all practicing climate scientists, the people who make it their business to know about this. 97% of climate scientists know that the science does back them up. They know because they understand the science and the data. Ted Cruz does not.

The article quotes one of the more prominent of those scientists, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, as saying that everything Cruz believes about climate change is "a load of claptrap…absolute bunk". Trenberth is right: The "science" and "data" that Cruz refers to are very clear about this. Climate change is occurring, including warming of the globally averaged surface temperature, and it's caused by human activities that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. I can't illustrate what's wrong with Cruz's thinking any better than Mother Jones does, so I won't try. Do please go read their article.

What I will do is wonder how Cruz thinks that his stance makes any kind of sense. Recent public opinion polls increasingly show that Americans are overwhelmingly on the side of science. A poll taken last December found that 83% of Americans believe that climate change is occurring. A poll taken in January showed that even 48% of Republicans would vote for candidates who want the government to do something to fight global warming.

It's pretty clear that Ted Cruz wants to be President. If polls are to be believed, a minority of Americans are going to score him positively on this particular issue. In what universe does Ted Cruz think that his position is making him look electable?

Oh. Right. In the universe known as "Texas".

As I happen to be a Texan, I can understand how somebody who spends all of his time here might well not realize that denial of global warming is a strategy for political failure. It plays well in some parts of this state. There are folks here who seem to have a major disconnect between the part of their brain that depends on the products of science and the part of their brain that controls what they say about climate change.  On the one hand, they want all those tech goodies that result from scientists using scientific method to learn how the universe actually works. But, whenever global warming is mentioned, they either take the position that science is irrelevant or, as Cruz does, they claim that scientists don't know what science has revealed.

Some days, I'm not all that proud to be a Texan.