U.S. Senate Votes Against Affirming Climate Science Validity

Would you trust a politician who believes the earth is flat? Or that the sun revolves around the earth? Or that the Holocaust never happened?

No? Then what do we make of politicians who continue to deny the accepted scientific consensus that human activity is affecting the climate?

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In fact, should denying that climate science is valid disqualify a politician from holding public office in which he or she can make public policy?

That's the question posed by political analyst Jonathan Chait in a provocative and angry essay on New York Intelligencer, "Why Climate-Science Denialism Should Disqualify Anyone From Holding Office."

The essay responds to the failure of an amendment in the U.S. Senate simply affirming that “human activity significantly contributes to climate change.”

That amendment failed to pass on Wednesday; the vote was 50 to affirm, 49 against.

In other words, half the Senate will not go on record supporting the near-unanimous scientific conclusion that human activities that have vastly increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are affecting the globe's climate.

Wired offers a helpful list of which senators voted to support science--and which didn't--allowing U.S. readers to see how their own senators voted.

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Meanwhile, the new head of the Republican-led U.S. Senate committee on the environment and public works, James Inhofe [R-OK], called the idea that human activity could affect the earth's climate "arrogant."