David Barton's Science Lesson

People who follow the wide world of wingnuts are probably aware that Glenn Beck's favorite pseudo-historian, David Barton, is mulling over a primary challenge on Big Bad John Cornyn (R-TX). Where, one might well ask, does he stand on important issues like climate change? Well, here's a clip where he discusses climate change with televangelist Kenneth Copeland:



As you may have expected, abortion is causing global warming. This makes lots of sense, because obviously, if God is furious about the waste of human life, he is going to send storms that kill thousands of innocent people, along with famines and floods that kill thousands if not millions more. One might conclude that on the upside, at least he acknowledges that climate change is happening. I would add, however, that in the kind of apocalyptic worldview on display, something terrible has to be happening, so that one can have somebody to blame it on.

I usually associate this type of disaster-blaming, science-by-rectal-extrusion with Pat Robertson, but it's sadly not that rare. It's scapegoating. Looking for scapegoats, while it may satisfy some need people have to make sense of horrible events, overlooks the possibility that while cause and effect relating to climate science is real, we don't have to read the mind of some chastising deity to understand what the problem is.