If you thought Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Committee on Science, was as dumb as a stump on climate change, you would be correct. Unfortunately, it's having a horrendous effect on the science community at large.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, has subpoenaed scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and demanded that they turn over internal e-mails related to their research.
And if we look at all the presidential candidates of 2016, it's not surprising that we find Senator Ted Cruz coming in at the bottom of the barrel as being the most ignorant politician of them all.
The fact that Cruz scored a six out of a possible one hundred, shows that children in kindergarten have a better grasp of the facts than he does. This also means that most of the Republicans are outright lying about what say about global warming.
When it comes to climate science, two of the three Democratic presidential candidates are A students, while most of the Republican contenders are flunking, according to a panel of scientists who reviewed candidates' comments.
At the request of The Associated Press, eight climate and biological scientists graded for scientific accuracy what a dozen top candidates said in debates, interviews and tweets, using a 0 to 100 scale.
To try to eliminate possible bias, the candidates' comments were stripped of names and given randomly generated numbers, so the professors would not know who made each statement they were grading. Also, the scientists who did the grading were chosen by professional scientific societies.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had the highest average score at 94. Three scientists did not assign former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley a score, saying his statements mostly were about policy, which they could not grade, instead of checkable science.
Two used similar reasoning to skip grading New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and one did the same for businesswoman Carly Fiorina. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas had the lowest score, an average of 6. All eight put Cruz at the bottom of the class.
"This individual understands less about science (and climate change) than the average kindergartner," Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor, wrote of Cruz's statements. "That sort of ignorance would be dangerous in a doorman, let alone a president."