Republicans have developed an abiding love for Inspector General investigations, and now a group of Senators including Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, James Lankford, and James Inhofe are calling for another critical deep dive into a threat facing America—the National Science Foundation. The Republican quartet has requested that the Inspector General charged with reviewing the NSF dig into the fact that grants were awarded just for conducting research, but for telling people the results of research. Or, as Ted Cruz puts it for seeking “to influence political and social debate.”
After all, if Republican positions are dependent on lies, then attempting to educate the public becomes a political act. And that’s exactly the position Republicans are taking.
At the center of the furor is a project headed by researchers from George Mason University, NASA, and NOAA called “TV Meteorologists as Local Climate Change Educators.” The point of this project is that climate change is already affecting the lives of Americans across the country. Climate change may not be the direct cause of every storm or every drought, but it’s behind them all, reshaping the weather that Americans experience and steadily bringing new, unprecedented conditions that affect all of us. It’s a program designed to do exactly what it says—help inform local meteorologists about how climate in affecting their forecasts, so they can pass that information along to the public. Because an informed public is critical to making rational decisions.
Like people in many countries, most Americans view climate change as a threat that is distant in space (i.e., not here), time (i.e., not now), and species (i.e., not us). To manage risk and avoid harm, it is imperative that the public, professionals, and policy-makers make decisions with an informed understanding of our changing climate.
However, an ignorant public is critical to making Republican decisions. So Cruz, Paul, Lankford, and Inhofe are deeply, deeply concerned about the idea that weather people on the local TV might spread information that goes beyond today’s high temperature—such as explaining why those temperatures are so high. In a familiar act of Republican kung-fu, Cruz and company have declared that since climate change is a “politically contentious viewpoint” then attempting to inform anyone about it represents “propaganda.” One more time: Republican senators are saying that providing scientific information to people who are themselves scientists in the public view … is propagandizing.
It’s not the only grant they are attacking. Also worth of investigation according to these Republicans—a program to encourage engineers to help the poor.