ManicDDaily

Yesterday, I wrote about Palin’s tweets on climate change.   (Twitter–such an intelligent way to discuss complex scientific and political issues.)

Palin’s complete-sentence comments on climate change, posted on Facebook (another high level political forum) and in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, are a little less fragmented than her tweets.  But they illustrate a similar disjointed logic that is geared towards “catchy” reductiveness, self-promotion, and a refusal to face true choices (a “have your cake and eat it too” mentality.)

Catchiness comes in “word bites:”   for example, she accuses California Governer Schwarzenegger of harboring a vain “greener than thou” attitude.  (This put-down does not make a huge amount of sense since she also accuses him of being too green.)   She  accuses Gore and other environmentalists of promoting “Doomsday scenarios.”  (This last is also strange coming from someone who, seemingly, believes in the Book of Revelation.)

Any science that finds a connection between man’s activities and climate change is “agenda-driven,” even “fraudulent”.  (Another odd comment given the known efforts of the Bush administration to politically manipulate scientific data.)  Nonetheless, Palin promotes the idea that there has been a huge conspiracy of scientists for the last twenty years falsifying scientific records related to climate change:  “Vice President Gore,” she writes, “the Climategate scandal exists. You might even say that it’s sort of like gravity: you simply can’t deny it.”

The purpose of this vast scientific conspiracy is never specifically stated by Palin; the scientists seem somehow motivated by a vaguely elistist wish simply to make the American people suffer.

Palin, eager to seem pleasing and maverick at once, typically attempts to pay lip service to both sides of the debate.  She proclaims herself a believer in climate change, and to have initiated “common-sense” efforts in Alaska to deal with its effects.  (Presumably, these efforts did not involve any limitations on snowmobiling, drilling, or safeguarding of polar bear habitats.)   Her bottom line, however, is that she refuses to believe, no matter what,  in any connection between man’s activities and climate change, while she is completely certain that there will be an irremediable economic cost in reducing emissions.  Ergo, emit, baby, emit.

A “real world”, as she calls it, analysis.