Contra Kopp, Climate Change Stunts Global Flora

Remember Don Kopp? You know, the Rapid City Republican legislator who made us South Dakotans look like meatheads with his anti-science resolution about "astrological" forces causing global warming? (Oh yeah, HCR 1009, the crazy resolution GOP House candidate Kristi Noem voted for, too. Thanks for reminding us, Badlands Blue!) Rep. Kopp backpedaled madly from that embarrassing mistake, but he averred in other interviews that global warming, if it happened would be a good thing. Knowing just enough science to be dangerous, Kopp talked about carbon dioxide as the gas of life and suggested that increased CO₂ would make more plants grow.

Too bad any green gains in currently marginal areas are wiped out by drought decimating plant life elsewhere:

Research over the past two decades had shown terrestrial plant growth on the rise, with higher temperatures and longer growing seasons linked to a 6 percent increase in global plant productivity from 1982 to 1999. Between 2000 and 2009, terrestrial plant growth declined by 1 percent.

“This is a pretty serious warning that warmer temperatures are not going to endlessly improve plant growth,” Steven Running, a biologist at the University of Montana in Missoula and co-author of the report, said in the NASA statement [John Collins Rudolf, "Earth’s Plant Growth Fell Because of Climate Change, Study Finds," New York Times: Green, 2010.08.23].

My plan to haul seed corn north and buy a quarter section in the Yukon might still work... but I'll be competing with a few hundred million refugees from the new South American desert. Dang.
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Learn more (yes, I'm talking to you, Don and Kristi):

1. NASA's statement on the research (with map, chart, and video!)
   
2. Read the abstract: Zhao, Maosheng, and Steven W. Running. “Drought-Induced Reduction in Global Terrestrial Net Primary Production from 2000 Through 2009.” Science 329.5994 (2010): 940-943. (Silly academic journals, charging people to read science When will they learn?)
   

Climate Science Consensus Strong as Ever

State Representative Don Kopp (R-35/Rapid City) wanted to force South Dakota teachers to teach "the skeptical view of climate change." In this year's Legislative session, he sponsored an embarrassing resolution to that end... a resolution that, to our state's great discredit, passed thanks to the votes of folks like GOP House candidate Kristi Noem and my Democratic neighbor and candidate for re-election Gerry Lange.

If Kopp hasn't completely backpedaled from his absurd Big Brother anti-science position, he'd better write that alternate curriculum fast: he's running out of skeptics to cite. New research from Stanford University finds the consensus on climate change is as strong as ever:

...[T]he vast majority of the world’s active climate scientists accept the evidence for global warming as well as the case that human activities are the principal cause of it.

For example, of the top 50 climate researchers identified by the study (as ranked by the number of papers they had published), only 2 percent fell into the camp of climate dissenters. Of the top 200 researchers, only 2.5 percent fell into the dissenter camp. That is consistent with past work, including opinion polls, suggesting that 97 to 98 percent of working climate scientists accept the evidence for human-induced climate change.

The study demonstrates that most of the scientists who have been publicly identified as climate skeptics are not actively publishing in the field. And the handful who are tend to have a slim track record, with about half as many papers published as the scientists who accept the mainstream view. The skeptics are also less influential, as judged by how often their scientific papers are cited in the work of other climate scientists [Justin Gillis, "Study Affirms Consensus on Climate Change," New York Times: Green, 2010.06.22].

In short: the scientists doing the hardest, most regular and reliable work agree we're changing the planet. The deniers do less science and less good science. Rep. Kopp would have us place our educational bets on scientific third-stringers and retirees who aren't keeping up with reality.

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Update 12:45 CDT: Possibly related—79% of Europeans say they are moderately or very interested in science; 65% express the same interest in sports. In America, more people say they follow sports very closely than say they pay the same attention to science. Plus, the percentage of Americans following science news very closely has dropped by more than half since the 1980s.

Kopp Backpedals on Intent of Ridiculous Global Warming Resolution

Bob Newland is on to something (no, not on something, you jokers—pay attention!). On the Decorum Forum, South Dakota's best blogger on probation suggests Rep. Don Kopp (R-35/Rapid City) is making stuff up as he defends his HCR 1009, the newly amended and passed anti-science resolution on global warming that has won South Dakota widespread mockery and scientific correction.

Rep. Kopp has been backpedaling for a week, trying to distance himself from the embarrassing belief in astrology that the original resolution declared before the Senate amended the resolution into meaninglessness. He repeated on SDPB's Dakota Midday today his claim that some of the nuttier text in the resolution was slipped into the resolution by someone in the Legislative Research Council and that he didn't catch it before the House vote.

Wait. Really? If Kopp is suggesting the LRC fudged a bill, that's more than a screw-up or a prank. That's an unelected bureaucrat attempting to subvert the legislative process by hijacking legislation written by an elected official. Even on a resolution, that's an enormous accusation. If it were true, I would expect a lot of shouting and heads rolling.

But I seriously doubt the Legislative Research Council would risk the public trust by daring to insert an entire paragraph of "goobledy-guck," as Kopp called it on SDPB this noon. And even if that remarkable claim were true, can we accept Kopp's further claim that neither he nor the 35 other House members who approved the original laughable text noticed the gobbledy-guck? Only if we assume that resolutions really mean so little to legislators that they aren't paying attention.

Kopp certainly seems to wish now that no one were paying attention to his resolution. More than once in today's SDPB interview, Kopp emphasized that his proposal is just a resolution, not a bill, and doesn't require anyone to do anything.

Well, a non-binding resolution certainly doesn't seem to have been his original intent:

Schools in South Dakota should teach both sides of the global warming issue, Republican state Rep. Don Kopp of Rapid City says. Kopp plans to push that idea during the upcoming legislative session with a bill that would require public schools that teach the threats of global warming to also provide students with the skeptical view of climate change.

“If a school is paid for with public funds, if they teach global warming or show Al Gore’s video, as most of our schools here in Rapid City did, then they will have to show the opposing view,” Kopp said Monday. “I believe that’s only fair. If they only hear one side of the story, that’s all they get.”

Kopp said he has pre-filed legislation in the Legislature that would change the law requiring both sides of global warming to be covered in school classes, if the issue is brought up at all. He doesn’t intend to include a penalty for schools that don’t follow the law but also doubts it would be necessary.

“If it passes, I assume they (schools) will follow the law and show both sides of the issue,” he said [emphasis mine; Kevin Woster, "Rapid City lawmaker: Schools should teach both sides of global-warming," Rapid City Journal, 2010.01.04].

Bill. Law. Require. Kevin Woster makes mistakes... but I doubt he'd make that many in one article.

I suspect the GOP leaders talked enough sense into Kopp to get him to go for a resolution. But the above text tells me Kopp wanted a law. He wanted to force science teachers to give equal time to global warming denialism... and maybe astrology. Kopp's resolution, watered down as it is, still declares the anti-science agenda that he wants, and now that the South Dakota Legislature officially wants. By trying to dodge responsibility with more unlikely claims, Kopp only makes his legislative effort more derisible.

I hate to say it, but on this issue, our fair state deserves all the mockery it gets.

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Update 2010.03.04: Badlands Blue agrees: Kopp's claim of LRC mischief means real scandal in Pierre: either heads roll on the Capitol third floor, or Kopp gets censure for insulting institutional integrity.