Green Politics: Politicizing Science

The Feb. 21 2012 Rutgers Environmental Stewards‘ lecture on “The Limits of Science” was given by Dr. Jan Zientek from Rutgers Cooperative Extension.

It was utterly, completely fascinating. We discussed what science is, what it isn’t, how it is defined by scientists and how it gets used by politicians and everyone else on the way to becoming environmental policy.

Here are his 2010 lecture slides. I’ll update them once this week’s 2012 lecture slides are posted.

With these new ideas in my head, I was especially interested in this news piece about the uncomfortable position faced by Republican climate scientists. Rock, meet hard place.

Via Insideclimatenews, by way of EnviropoliticsBlog:

Republicans don’t want to hear from scientists on climate

Inside Climate News reports today that a number of prominent U.S. climate scientists who identify themselves as Republican say their attempts in recent years to educate the GOP leadership on the scientific evidence of man-made climate change have been futile. Now, many have given up trying and the few who continue notice very little change after speaking with politicians and their aides.

In my opinion, just because you stop listening to the truth, doesn’t stop it from being true.