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Sarah Palin Still Butchering Science, Redux

Reality Base
By Melissa Lafsky
Oct 3, 2008 9:42 PMNov 5, 2019 1:30 AM

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Despite her running mate's acknowledgment of the scientific consensus, Sarah Palin has once again affirmed her denial that man is the primary (or only) cause of global warming, this time on the national stage:

IFILL: Governor, I'm happy to talk to you in this next section about energy issues. Let's talk about climate change. What is true and what is false about what we have heard, read, discussed, debated about the causes of climate change? PALIN: Yes. Well, as the nation's only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it's real. I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet. But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

The first half of this political sidestep comes as no surprise. The last paragraph is, in a word, nuts. Here are a few past examples of the Palin method—i.e., "solving" scientific problems without first determining the cause:

UlcersSchizophreniaEpilepsyAutismJust About Everything Ever Treated with Bloodletting

Maybe we should try slapping a few leeches on the Earth—1,000 years of medical history can't be all wrong.

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