Year 3, Month 1, Day 9: Morans.

The L.A. Times runs a story on the Pacific Institute’s “Bad Science” Award, which goes to a deserving cast of characters (Murdoch was runner-up, which will give you an idea):

The 2011 “Climate B.S. of the Year Award” goes to the entire field of candidates currently stumping in New Hampshire for the Republican Party presidential nomination, the Pacific Institute announced Thursday.

The awards, in their second year, are intended to distinguish the most active among so-called climate change deniers.

In this case, “B.S.” stands for bad science, according to hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

“There’s a lot of very serious pushback in the scientific community about bad climate science being pushed by a small group of skeptics,” said Gleick from his office in Oakland. “There’s plenty of formal pushback in the literature. This was an attempt, really, to highlight some of the most egregious examples over the past year in a way that was a little more lighthearted.”

The Republicans seeking the White House won this year’s contest “hands down,” the institute’s announcement says: “Not a single one of the Republican candidates for president has a position on climate change that is consistent with the actual science accepted by 97-98% of all climate scientists and every national academy of sciences on the planet.”

It gave me a chance to use the China Hands reference again. While this letter works fairly well I am not entirely pleased with it; it could be more euphonious if I had more time to devote to its creation. But it’s 149 words. What the hell. Sent January 5:

It is only in the past fifty years that the GOP has made a rejection of science a linchpin of its policies and electoral strategy. Capitalizing on a long-standing undercurrent of anti-intellectualism in American society, Republican politicians have long stigmatized professors, scientists and experts as “liberal elitists.” While they’ve won applause from constituents, these attacks ultimately redound to the detriment of the country as a whole.

The Republican party’s arrogant rejection of the crucial findings of climate scientists is of a piece with the McCarthy-era purge of “China hands” from the State Department, rendering America’s East Asian policy rudderless in the face of Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnamese nationalism. Ignoring the experts didn’t work out then, did it? It won’t work out well now, either, as GOP presidential aspirants eagerly dismiss scientists’ urgent warnings of runaway climate change. Ignorance may be politically blissful, but it always makes for bad policy.

Warren Senders