Year 2, Month 10, Day 22: Today Is The Tomorrow You Worried About Yesterday

The Columbus, Indiana “Republic” runs an AP article on the censorship of climate science in Texas:

GALVESTON, Texas — A Rice University oceanographer says the state’s environmental agency is refusing to publish his research article on a Texas bay unless he agrees to delete key references to rising sea levels and human involvement in climate change.

Professor John Anderson has declined the proposed edits by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, calling the changes to a report on Galveston Bay “censorship” and an attempt to mislead the public.

Consequently, the state agency said it will remove Anderson’s article, which deals with long-term sea level rise and mentions manmade climate change, which commissioners have publicly questioned in the past.

Republicans are the hardest Sapir-Whorfians of us all. If there are no words for the problem, there is no problem. Presto! Sent October 18:

It is an axiom of many politicians that many difficult problems are easily solved by eliminating them from the historical record. Military records and embarrassing photographs can be destroyed or made to vanish; statements are rendered “inoperative”; actions can simply be firmly denied. A compliant media enables this behavior by fostering a simulacrum of journalism in which the presentation of two divergent opinions is considered “objective.”

But when policy is based on science, absolute veracity is essential. The recent censorship of climate scientists’ work in an oceanographic report on Galveston Bay is a case in point.

Climate-change denial may be electorally convenient for Texan lawmakers, but rejecting actual measurements and analysis when they don’t fit a preset ideology is both unethical and stupid. Rising ocean levels aren’t Republican or Democratic; the greenhouse effect is neither conservative nor liberal.

Those who politicize scientific research destroy the value of both politics and science.

Warren Senders