One of my daughters and I have been watching the new Cosmos, and it is interesting to see how various misconceptions have been handled. Continental drift was misunderstood until a few decades ago, but once the scientific community was on board, everyone understood and believed it in short order. No pushback.

Environmental lead was a tougher sell - the leaded gasoline industry pushed back with their own paid-off experts, and it took a while to do something about lead. But liberal Democrats were running the government then, and they did remove lead from gas despite the screeching. Once it was a done deal, the industry people gave up and moved on to new battles.

Climate change? Apparently there will be no acceptance of the science. The industrial interest groups have kept anything from happening so far, and I don’t know when we will have a liberal government again that would be willing to stand up to them. So climate change is “controversial” and nothing will be done, even though the science is as plain as continental drift and environmental lead.