Character flaws as virtues

I get really tired of so-called conservatives who wear their character flaws as badges of honor. This week it was William Schroeder, a former State Senator and spokesman for the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), who was trying to convince an audience of about 30 Parker Democrats that global warming is a myth. Actually worse than a myth, a "swindle."

This guy apparently goes around to community groups across the state and gives the same presentation, which can be found on the IREA web site. He doesn't believe in scientific consensus, he says. A lack of hurricanes last year is evidence that a thousand-year trend of rising temperatures is invalid, he claims. A mistake in one researcher's report means all reports by all researchers on the same topic are wrong. The sharply rising long-term trend in worldwide temperatures goes away, if you conveniently cut off the temperature graph at a specific point in time 30 years ago.

When asked about the errors and falsehoods in his presentation, his universal answer was "I don't know." He doesn't know or care that his facts are fabricated, his conclusions distorted. He's paid to speak on behalf of IREA, so everything that puts IREA in a positive light, that support's the utility's pro-carbon policies, must be gospel. Everything contrary to IREA's interests is wrong. In the style of president Bush and his imitators, there is no such thing as truth, just perceptions and moneyed interests.

I think it would be interesting to see IREA's engineers try Mr. Schroeder's brand of faith-based science. If they want to believe cold fusion can spontaneously generate in copper wires, they can make it happen. If they want to find out how much weight a transmission tower can carry, but don't believe in evidence, computations, and scientific prediction, they can try an alternate approach: maybe keep hanging more and more weight on each tower until it falls down, then rebuild it.

Sheesh. The group of Democrats politely applauded him for coming before a group that plainly was going to disagree with him. But he didn't deserve any applause. The guy pretends to be stupid, but in fact he is a liar. He doesn't care about the truth, and so his point of view does not deserve any respect. If you want the truth, you need to demand it.