I NOAA When I See Her

Picture a nation where deeply-felt religious precepts trump (sorry) all other forms of legislative, constitutional or regulatory mandates implemented by the majority of voters. Allow a select body of legislators and regulators to determine how to interpret those religious provisions in order to make sure that their own views of God form the basis for the ultimate laws that all in that society must follow. The form of government is a ‘theocracy.’ It is what governs such benign nations and nation-states, like the Vatican, and more murderous and malevolent countries like Iran and the Islamic State. It is supposed to be the opposite of what our Founding Fathers wanted for the United States, hence the First Amendment, which theoretically pulls religious mandates out of our governing process.

But for a political party that constantly screams about getting government out of our lives as much as possible, the socially conservative Tea Party Evangelical wing of the Republican Party – which has pushed the GOP’s overall philosophy way to the religious right – wants Big Government to control your bedroom, women’s own bodies, whom you can marry, what ‘science’ textbooks can teach, requiring prayer in public classrooms, which scientific findings you must ignore and what forms of research and truth the government can support. If you really listen to the utterings of these social conservatives, it’s pretty clear that they are moving heavily towards their ideal form of government: an Evangelical theocracy.

Take for example the statements of Kim Davis, Rowan County (Kentucky) clerk, who refused to follow her sworn legal mandate to uphold the law and marry same sex couples: with support from bona fide GOP presidential candidates, and in full defiance of court orders, Davis stated that she was acting "under God's authority," which trumped (sorry again) any statute or constitutional ruling to the contrary. This is the very basis of a theocracy. She continues to defy court orders, having lost her latest round in a Sixth Circuit appellate decision on November 5^th. The newly-elected Governor of Kentucky, Matt Bevin (Tea Party Evangelical) gave Davis his “absolute” backing for her position. Another advocate for a new American theocracy.

Evangelicals have opposed constitutional rulings from the United States Supreme Court, justifying some pretty nasty statutes that have attempted to circumvent rather clear judicial directives (all of which ultimately fail under federal judges), nasty and sometimes violent actions against unpopular venues (like abortion clinics), mandating the teaching of Christian perspectives in local textbooks (Texas, a huge bundle of school districts, has force publishers to tow their line) and generally working to impose Evangelical biblical views of God and humanity to every man, woman and child in the United States regardless of their personal beliefs. Simply, this would form an anti-democratic theocracy where voters are trumped by the restrictive religious interpretations of a minority of Americans.

One of the rather clearly-proven scientific facts – man’s burning of fossil fuels as a principal contributor to global warming – runs counter to a belief that a majority of Evangelicals (at least in the United States; many Evangelicals in other countries do not share this perspective). To them, in Genesis 1:26-29, God gives humans “dominion” over the earth and all forms of life on the earth. Man was, they believe, authorized to subdue the earth and rule over earthly creations. 

This gets “interpreted” as giving mankind the carte blanche to do whatever they want with the earth’s resources. After the Great Flood, Noah was further directed to command and use earth’s resources (Genesis 9:1–3;  2:15–16) with an ‘apparent’ heavenly pledge not to repeat harming mankind with another parallel global catastrophe (like that Great Flood). Another Evangelical interpretation: God would never allow man’s action to cause the kinds of horribles scientists are predicting (and which are already occurring in droves worldwide) as a result of man’s abusive exploitation of our environment. Even the Pope sees such statements as a dramatic failure to understand the Biblical mandate to care for the earth, God’s precious but vulnerable gift to us all. But self-righteous American Evangelicals are deeply offended that their own government is funding scientists to prove they are absolutely, unequivocally wrong. To them, God has spoken and that’s that. If others believe otherwise, they must be silenced. Even the Pope.

A battle royal is brewing over funding of the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency that is generating the bulk of weather information that substantiates continued proof of man-induced climate change statistics. Tea Party stalwart, Texas Representative Lamar Smith, is a die-hard Evangelical who is deeply angry that the government, through NOAA, is generating scientific information that contradicts his Evangelical religious beliefs. He wants to stop NOAA in its tracks, defund their contradictory research, and impose his climate-change-denying Evangelical beliefs as the law of the land.

As Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, Smith is a powerful foe to modern science and those governmental agencies charged with scientific research and oversight, whenever those findings contradict Evangelical teachings. Like NOAA. And Smith intends to make life for NOAA administrators miserable. Scientists are rallying to support truth and facts, but Smith is undeterred.

“The country’s chief society of meteorologists weighed in this week with a letter to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), warning the prominent congressional skeptic on climate change that his demands for internal communications and documents from NOAA ‘can be viewed as a form of intimidation’ that could thwart federally funded research.

“And Smith… stepped up his pressure on agency Administrator Kathryn Sullivan to divulge its scientists’ internal deliberations, demanding in a letter that she turn over the documents requested in a House subpoena by [November 6^th]… ‘Your failure to comply with a duly issued subpoena may expose you to civil and/or criminal enforcement mechanisms,’ the congressman wrote.

“What has exploded into a very public dispute started in October, when Smith issued subpoenas demanding e-mails, correspondence and other records of internal deliberations from NOAA scientists who participated in a study refuting claims that global warming had ‘paused’ or slowed over the last decade… The study, released in the peer-reviewed journal Science in June, undercut a popular argument used by critics who reject the scientific consensus that man-made pollution is behind global warming.

“The subpoenas ordered NOAA to turn over scientific data as well as internal ‘communications between or among employees’ involved in the study. The demand was immediately denounced by the science committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (Tex.) as an effort to discredit the study and its authors…

“Andrew Rosenberg, a fisheries scientist at NOAA during the Clinton administration who is now with the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists, summed up the dispute this way: … ‘This is mostly about climate change. But it is also about a congressman attacking answers he doesn’t like. I sincerely hope that federal scientists don’t have to lawyer up because they’re doing their jobs.’ The Washington Post, November 6^th. And thus spake the Ayatollah Lamar Smith.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is deeply offensive to me that a vociferous minority of Americans is attempting to usurp the U.S. Constitution and impose their distorted theocratic views on the majority of the rest of us.