The Weekly Sift

Climate change was hard to ignore this week. Not only did we learn that a big chunk of the Antarctic ice shelf is doomed, but Marco Rubio picked a bad moment to come out publicly as a climate-change denier. Every day or two he found a new way to stumble over follow-up questions that weren’t much more complicated than “Seriously?”

By coincidence, this week I found myself looking at a research report from an investment firm that gives most of its political cash to Republicans. It said in no uncertain terms that climate change is happening, and suggested ways to invest accordingly. And that got me wondering: How many conservatives cheer when a candidate denounces all this climate-change nonsense, and then apply a completely different worldview when they’re making decisions about something they take seriously, like money?

There’s an obvious parallel to religion, where a man might yell “Amen!” during a Sunday-morning sermon about young-Earth creationism, then Monday go to work as a geologist and look for oil in rock formations that he knows are many millions of years old. In religion, such things are called “Sunday truths”, and scientifically educated believers handle them by “checking your brain at the door”. And that led to this week’s featured article: “Climate Denial is a Sunday Truth”. It should be out in an hour or so.

Later this morning, the weekly summary will say more about that Antarctic ice, the scandal at the VA, the strange apparent outcome of the Republican Civil War (the establishment is winning at the ballot box by surrendering to the Tea Party on policy), and a number of other short notes, closing with a couple who have a big dream: paving the roads with solar panels.