This is a perfect example of why scientists don't vote Republican

[ErikJ]

For the past decade and more, conservatives have trumpeted to the heavens any scientist with respectable-sounding credentials who is willing to dispute the international consensus on climate change. This week brought one more sad example of this phenomenon, with Red State editor Erick Erickson tweeting this Breitbart post, which gleefully parrots the views of one Professor Les Woodcock. He is that rarest of beasts, a climate denier with a science degree — but not in climatology, naturally.

So some doddering chemist emeritus doesn't believe in climate change. So what, right? But Woodcock's assertions are noteworthy for just how magnificently bogus they are. And the fact that he has been embraced by influential people in the conservative media-sphere shows both the intellectual bankruptcy of movement conservatism and the way it has poisoned the climate change debate.

Here's the line in question: "There is no reproducible scientific evidence CO2 has significantly increased in the last 100 years." That is an extraordinary statement, and a position that cleverer climate deniers tend to avoid. He's not just saying that warming isn't happening, or that warming is happening but humans aren't causing it. He's flatly asserting, with no hedging whatsoever, that carbon dioxide concentrations haven't increased.

There's just one flaw with his analysis: carbon dioxide concentrations are very easy to measure! All you do is shine a beam of infrared light through an air sample, look at the absorption frequencies of carbon dioxide, and then deduce the concentration using Beer's Law. It's a classic experiment in Chemistry 101.
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http://theweek.com/article/index/260711/this-is-a-perfect-example-of-why-scientists-dont-vote-republican

[chknltl]

1. Strange, the link failed to mention where the good chemist emeritus was....

....repeatedly dropped on his head as a child!

[Enthusiast]

2. Republicans are not interested in the facts.

Scientific facts or any other sort of facts. They make up the facts to suit their narrow world view.

This Professor Les Woodcock will be quoted time and again by all the climate propagandists.

[NutmegYankee]

3. A modern day Kehoe.

Cosmos had a nice special on that two weeks ago addressing how a scientist in the pay of big industry tried to claim that lead levels had not increased.