Polar opposites

A new study out of Michigan State University has confirmed what a lot of us sensed all along: the polarization between the Right and the Left in the United States is about as bad as it's ever been.

Zachary P. Neal, a professor of psychology at MSU, did a statistical analysis of bill sponsorship and support from members of Congress, from the 1970s to the present:

Claims that the United States Congress is (becoming more) polarized are widespread, but what is polarization?  In this paper, I draw on notions of intergroup relations to distinguish two forms.  Weak polarization occurs when relations between the polarized groups are merely absent, while strong polarization occurs when the relations between the polarized groups are negative.  I apply the Stochastic Degree Sequence Model to data on bill co-sponsorship in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, from 1973 (93rd session) to 2016 (114th session) to infer a series of signed networks of political relationships among legislators, which I then use to answer two research questions.  First, can the widely reported finding of increasing weak polarization in the U.S. Congress be replicated when using a statistical model to make inferences about when positive political relations exist?  Second, is the (increasing) polarization observed in the U.S. Congress only weak polarization, or is it strong polarization?  I find that both chambers exhibit both weak and strong polarization, that both forms are increasing, and that they are structured by political party affiliation.  However, I also find these trends are unrelated to which party holds the majority in a chamber.

The last sentence is, I think, the most important.  It's easy for liberals to point fingers at conservatives (and vice versa) and lay the entire blame for polarization at the opposition's feet.  The truth, predictably, is more complex than that.  "In truth," Neal said, in a press release from MSU, "the only thing that is bipartisan in Congress is the trend toward greater polarization."

These results are discouraging, to say the least.  "What I’ve found is that polarization has been steadily getting worse since the early 1970s," Neal said.  "Today, we’ve hit the ceiling on polarization.  At these levels, it will be difficult to make any progress on social or economic policies...  We’re seeing lots of animosity in politics.  Although bills do occasionally get passed, they don’t stick around long enough, or never get fully implemented, and therefore don’t have lasting impact.  This kind of partisanship means that our democracy has reached a kind of stalemate."

[Image is in the Public Domain]

Neal doesn't look at cause (except the fact that the blame can't clearly be assigned to one party).  But I wonder how much of this is exacerbated by the rise of talk radio and partisan news channels.  When the goal becomes getting viewers (or listeners, or clicks), not accuracy and fairness, there's an incentive to play to people's basest motives -- fear, tribalism, resentment, retribution.  If you look at the rhetoric from people like Tucker Carlson (on the Right) and Ted Rall (on the Left) you'll find they do business with the same currency -- whipping up the righteous indignation of the people who already agreed with them.  It no longer depends on looking at the evidence in a dispassionate fashion, it has become instead a contest to see who can be the most outrageous and incendiary.

That, after all, keeps people watching, listening, and clicking, which pays sponsors -- who pay the commentators.

Until there's more of an incentive to report and analyze the news fairly, it's only going to get worse, as each party does what it takes to stay in power, which means keeping the voters convinced that if they don't vote the party line, BAD STUFF WILL HAPPEN.  The result?  We've tended to elect partisan hacks who don't care about anything but their own corporate sponsors, and the whole thing comes full circle.

"The solution could be electing more centrists to Congress," Neal said.  "But that’ll be tough because centrists often don’t appeal to American voters."

So the sad truth is that we're probably in for more of the same, and things getting worse before they get better.  I can only hope that at some point, people realize that the members of the opposition party are their neighbors, coworkers, teachers in their schools, members of their churches, and they can realize that disagreement has a human face.  That, I think, is the only way this will ever change.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a fun one -- Hugh Ross Williamson's Historical Enigmas.  Williamson takes some of the most baffling unsolved mysteries from British history -- the Princes in the Tower, the identity of Perkin Warbeck, the Man in the Iron Mask, the murder of Amy Robsart -- and applies the tools of logic and scholarship to an analysis of the primary documents, without descending into empty speculation.  The result is an engaging read about some of the most perplexing events that England ever saw.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Inquiries into inquiries about inquiries

I'm increasingly appreciating the quip that if "con" is the opposite of "pro," then "congress" is the opposite of "progress."

At the moment I'm thinking of Lamar Smith, the Texas Representative who chairs the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology despite being an anti-science climate change denier who back in 2014 said the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "said nothing new," despite its predictions of massive sea level rise, extreme weather, and catastrophic drought if nothing is done to rein in fossil fuel use.  Of course, what Smith meant by that was that the IPCC didn't say, "Ha ha!  We've been kidding all these years!  Climate change has nothing to do with fossil fuel use!"  Which is what he was hoping, given that he's proven himself over the years to be nothing more than a hired gun for Exxon-Mobil.

Rep. Lamar Smith [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Don't believe me?  In 2015 he started lashing out at climate scientists who were funded through government grants as an attempt to muzzle climate research and put a chill on anyone thinking of writing a paper further illustrating that climate change is anthropogenic (which it is).  He had a subpoena issued to Kathryn Sullivan, chair of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, stating, "NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data to get the results they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda."  Which is ironic given that Lamar Smith and his cronies suppress data to advance their own extreme pro-fossil fuel agenda.

Earlier this year, Smith went even further, launching a witch hunt against scientists even for communicating with each other about the topic.  He issued a subpoena for any internal documents containing words such as "global temperature" and "climate study," better to identify and harass scientists who were still trying to, you know, do science.

So it was no real surprise when the story hit two days ago that Lamar is at it again, this time launching an investigation to “examine Congress’s investigative authority as it relates to the committee’s oversight of the impact of investigations undertaken by the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts at the behest of several environmental organizations.”  Or, as Huffington Post's Kate Sheppard put it, he's investigating the House of Representatives' ability to investigate investigations.  This came about because those attorneys general (and also the ones in California and the Virgin Islands) have launched inquiries to look into Exxon-Mobil's efforts to suppress research linking fossil fuel use to global warming, much as in a previous generation Big Tobacco suppressed research linking cigarette smoking to cancer.  Lamar Smith and his cadre of science deniers are desperate both to discredit climate research (and the researchers who do it) and to sever any link between climate change and the runaway use of fossil fuels, and if they can't do it by harassment via subpoena, they'll do it by tying up congress in endless inquiries into inquiries about inquiries.

Smith hasn't arrived at his strategy just 'cuz.  He has the backing of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a virulently anti-science group devoted to casting doubt on anthropogenic climate change, which calls itself "non-partisan" even though it receives the majority of its funding from Koch Industries, Crownquest Oil & Gas, AEP Texas, ExxonMobil, VF-Russia, Texas Western Energy Corporation, ConocoPhillips, Devon Energy, Chevron, and Henry Petroleum LP.   He is deep in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, and has no compunctions about using his position to forward their agenda.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has dismissed Smith's investigation as being a "small group of radical Republican House members... trying to block a serious law enforcement investigation into potential fraud at Exxon."  The problem is, Smith is in a position where he can do this kind of bullshit and get away with it.  He, and others like him, have sown such doubt in the minds of the American public about climate change that your typical American citizen can look outside and see record-breaking temperatures in 2016, which broke the record from 2015, which broke the record from 2014 (and so on ad nauseam), and still claim it isn't happening.

What I'm wondering is how the hell we can get this guy out of his position as chairman of the committee in the House of Representatives that oversees science.  I mean, for cryin' in the sink, the man doesn't believe in science.  Having Lamar Smith chair this committee is like having a creationist appointed to chair a university's Department of Evolutionary Biology.

The whole thing leaves me with that awful feeling that is a combination of anger, desperation, frustration, and disgust.  The fact that this smirking weasel of a man is currently driving national climate policy -- or, more accurately, putting our climate policy on a leash to the fossil fuel industry -- makes me wish that there was a stronger word than "appalling."

Happy Xmas, the war is over

We have a lot of issues facing us as a nation.  How to keep the economy on track, including what to do about revitalizing cities with crumbling infrastructures and sky-high crime rates.  How to reform the health care system, the education system, and the prison system in a responsible and forward-thinking fashion.  What do to about the current volatile world situation, including our stance toward Russia, China, and the Middle East.

In such times, legislators have their work cut out for them.  Many of these problems are damn near intractable; any one of them would be a difficult puzzle for our best and brightest.

So it's no wonder that, given the desperate need our country has for sound leadership, last week three dozen members of the House of Representatives turned their attention to...

... the War on Christmas.

Sadly, I'm not making this up.  Representative Doug Lamborn of Colorado joined with 35 other representatives to sponsor HR 564, "Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected for use by those who celebrate Christmas."  Here, in toto, is what the resolution says:

Whereas Christmas is a national holiday celebrated on December 25; and 

Whereas the Framers intended that the First Amendment of the Constitution, in prohibiting the establishment of religion, would not prohibit any mention of religion or reference to God in civic dialog: Now, therefore, be it 

Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 

(1) recognizes the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas; 

(2) strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas; and

(3) expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.

Yup.  That's how I want our government leaders spending their taxpayer-funded time on the job.

You know, maybe I and others of my stripe have not made this clear enough.  So if anyone who believes in the "War on Christmas" is reading this, put on your glasses and get right up close to your monitor, 'cuz I'm gonna make this as clear as I know how.

THERE IS NO WAR ON CHRISTMAS, YOU NIMROD.  WE ATHEISTS DON'T GIVE A RAT'S ASS WHAT YOU DO ON DECEMBER 25.  AS FAR AS WE CARE, YOU CAN STAND ON YOUR ROOF WEARING NOTHING BUT A SANTA HAT AND SHRIEK "MERRY CHRISTMAS" AT PASSERSBY ALL DAY LONG.  YOU CAN HAVE A DISPLAY OF CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS IN YOUR FRONT YARD SO BRIGHT THAT IT DISRUPTS FLYOVER JET TRAFFIC.  YOU CAN HAVE A NATIVITY SCENE ACTED OUT BY LIVE HUMANS, FEATURING REAL BARNYARD ANIMALS AND GENUINE GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND MYRRH.

WHATEVER THE HELL MYRRH IS.

WHAT YOU CAN'T DO IS TO DO ALL OF THIS AT PUBLIC EXPENSE, NOR HOST IT IN A PUBLIC SPACE.  "PUBLIC" MEANS FOR EVERYONE, CHRISTIAN AND NON-CHRISTIAN ALIKE.

GET IT NOW?

Okay, I'll stop yelling.  But really.  This is getting idiotic.  From the way these people talk, you'd swear that we atheists are proposing carpet-bombing Whoville.  Okay, there may exist atheists who would make a big deal out of being told "Merry Christmas," insisting that everyone telepathically absorb the information about what greeting they prefer without being told, and taking horrific offense if people don't do so.

[image courtesy of photographer David Singleton and the Wikimedia Commons]

But you know what?  These people (1) are few in number, and (2) are not doing this because they are atheists, they are doing this because they are assholes.  These people would still be assholes if they were devout Christians.  If they were Christians, they would be the type of people...

... who think that everyone who is different than they are is waging a "War on Christmas."

The point is, most people, atheist and religious alike, are perfectly content to live and let live, and only get twitchy when important little pieces of the Constitution like "separation of church and state" are openly flouted.

So there you have it: congressional priorities.  My own opinion is that instead of worrying about a War on Christmas, we as a nation should be more concerned about the War on Intelligence, in which, to judge by the majority of our leaders, Intelligence appears to be losing.  All of which brings to mind the quote by Joseph de Maistre:  "A democracy is the form of government in which everyone has a voice, and therefore in which the people get exactly the government they deserve."

Lamar no like science!

It is a minor mystery why someone would volunteer for a job (s)he is clearly unqualified to do.

For example, I would not volunteer for my school district's Technology Advisory Committee.  My prehistoric understanding of technology is legendary in my school.  My general approach to computers is, "Thag push 'on' button."  If that doesn't work, my reaction is, "Thag no like!  Thag hit computer with rock!"

So any input I might have about advancing our school's technology program would be more or less meaningless, unless it involved making sure each classroom came equipped with a rock.

The whole thing comes up because of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.  Because it seems to me like this committee -- which, by the name, you would think is comprised of people who are well-versed in science -- is largely populated by people who would make the aforementioned Thag look like a Rhodes Scholar.

First, we have Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a climate change denier who referred to the findings of 97% of the world's climate scientists as "liberal claptrap."  About the issue, he made the following baffling statement:

Once again those with a global agenda have created a straw man by misrepresenting the position of their critics. I do not believe that CO2 is a cause of global warming, nor have I ever advocated the reduction of CO2 through the clearing of rainforests or cutting down older trees to prevent global warming.

In what pretend world would scientists suggest clearing rainforests to combat global warming?  This is either a straw man about straw men, or it's just idiotic.

Then there's Randy Weber (R-TX), whose lack of understanding of basic science led him to say, "I just don’t know how you all prove those theories going back 50 or 100,000 or even millions of years."  Really, Representative Weber?  You could fix that, you know.

By taking a damn science class.

How about Bill Posey (R-FL)?  He's another climate change denier, whose idea of a scientifically-sound argument goes like this:

I remember in the ’70s, that [cooling] was the threat, the fear.  I’ve read that during the period of the dinosaurs, that the Earth’s temperature was 30° warmer.  Does that seem fathomable to you?

The "period of the dinosaurs?"  Oh, you mean that span of time that lasted 200 million years, and during which there were numerous climatic ups and downs, including at least one ice age?  Perhaps you're referring to the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum, in which the average sea surface maximum temperature seems to have been a whopping five degrees warmer than it is today.

Or perhaps you're just a moron.

Then there's Paul Broun (R-GA), who famously referred to evolution as "lies straight from the pit of hell," and that the Earth was created "in six days as we know them."  Of course, Broun is now a lame duck, but he was replaced by Jody Hice (in congress if not necessarily on the Science Committee).  Hice, if anything, may be worse.  He is not only a creationist and a climate change denier, he believes that "homosexuality enslaves people," that women could hold political office "if it's within the authority of her husband," and that "blood moons" -- better known to actual astronomers as lunar eclipses -- could be omens that signal "world-changing events."

And, of course, the whole committee is under the leadership of Lamar Smith (R-TX), who laments the the latest report by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) "says nothing new" in its statement that "severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems will occur if humanity keeps its carbon emissions on a business-as-usual course."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Exactly, Representative Smith.  Exactly.  It says precisely what all of the other scientific reports from the past ten years have said.  And the scientists wouldn't have to say the same fucking thing over and over if people like you would listen.

I'm not nearly well-versed enough in the machinations of politics to get how people like this could end up leading science policy in the United States.  My suspicious side can't shuck the niggling feeling that it's a deliberate disinformation campaign, designed to keep gullible and/or poorly-educated voters in a state of ignorance about how science works.  It's possible, of course, that these lamebrains are simply an example of the Peter Principle -- the idea that in the business world, people keep getting promoted until they finally find themselves in a job they have no idea how to do, and then they stay there forever.

Whatever the cause, one thing is clear, though.

Lamar no like science.  Lamar hit science with rock.

Climate change, congress, and ice cubes

I'd like to say, for the record, that it would be a nice thing if I felt confidence that the people elected to public office in the United States were smarter than I am.

Isn't that a good thing to wish for?  I know I don't have what it takes to be in congress, or (heaven forfend) to be the president.  The number of disparate fields that you have to be conversant with in order to be effective, the degree to which you have to understand the government, law, foreign policy -- I'm overwhelmed just thinking about it.

It is, therefore, a little terrifying to me when I see people in leadership roles in our government who seem to be kind of... dumb.

I don't make this statement lightly, and it's not just on the basis of the fact that I might disagree with some of them.  I would expect that, considering the complexity of what they deal with.  But when someone in government, an elected official that a majority of voters thought the best person for the job, makes a statement that is pure, unadulterated idiocy -- that I find alarming.

Take the pronouncement that came from Representative Jeff Miller (R-FL) this week, regarding an increasingly hot-button issue -- climate change.

During a "Coffee With a Congressman" event held on Tuesday, Miller was confronted by some residents of the district he represents, and asked to defend his views on the environment.  Miller railed against the people who are in favor of tougher environmental safety standards as follows:

There are people who want to shut down that entire facility [a factory in his district].  The president wants to shut down all coal facilities.  He wants to bankrupt the entire state of West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, too...  All these people who drive electric cars around, talk about how great they are, forget that when you plug that thing into the wall, it's getting its electricity from a power plant somewhere, and it probably is a coal plant.

Well, so far, okay; maybe he got a little carried away when he claimed that the president wants to bankrupt two entire states, but he's got a point that unless we clean up electrical production at the source, electric cars are just one step away from producing the pollution ourselves.  But then he goes right off the deep end:

Lemme tell you, this whole Al Gore thing of climate change, unfortunately, it's not doing this nation any good...  The scientific community is not at consensus with this... I will defund the EPA, it has done more to slow the growth of industry than any agency out there...  You ask, why do I go against the scientists?  Well, I have scientists that I rely on, the scientists that I rely on say our climate has changed [sic].  Look, it wasn’t just a few years ago, what was the problem that existed?  It wasn’t global warming, we were gonna all be an ice cube.  We’re not ice cubes.  Our climate will continue to change because of the way God formed the Earth.

 I... okay.  What?

Look, I know that there are still questions about climate change.  We don't know to what extent the current warmup is a natural rebound, and to what extent it is anthropogenic in origin -- although the vast majority of climatologists attribute the rapid rate of warming to anthropogenic causes.  We don't know how far it will continue, or how much we could slow it down if we cut back on fossil fuel use.  We can still discuss those issues, as well as discussing what, if any, response our government should have toward them.

But to have someone like this guy, behind the microphone, and clearly babbling incoherently... about "ice cubes?"  And the "scientific community not being at consensus?"  And that he consulted "scientists he relies on" and they say the climate is changing because of god?  I don't know about you, I sure as hell don't want the decisions regarding the welfare of this nation made by people who seem to have trouble stringing words together into sentences, and whose understanding of scientific principles apparently leveled out in fourth grade on a visit to the Creation Museum.

Like I said, it's not that I think being a congressperson would be easy.  It's not a job that I would ever want.  But at least I am honest enough to admit it when I don't know something.  I guess that's taboo in politics, though, isn't it?  You can't ever say, "I'm sorry, I don't know about that."  But is it really any better to stand in front of a large, increasingly surly crowd, yammering on about climate change happening because god wants it to?

And regarding climate change, it's an answer we'd better get right, because as a friend of mine put it, it's an experiment we only get to run once.  Getting it right will mean having people in charge who have some basic knowledge of the science involved.  Not, unfortunately, talking heads like Representative Miller, who frankly sounds to me as if his IQ doesn't exceed his shoe size.