I’m going to repost a very lucid post from Ming in the last thread.

littlegreenfootballs.com

A big part of America’s past strength was that it often attracted the best and brightest scientists from other countries. This American advantage is already in decline, but the decline will get much worse if people all over the world can see on television scientists dragged into Congress and asked hostile and insulting questions by those who don’t believe that any climate change is caused by any human activity.

This is a key thing. Being anti-AGW, being anti-science, is the largest attack on the foundation of American economic, political, and military power that this nation has ever seen. There is nothing that will doom us as a power more quickly than a lack of scientists, engineers, and the like flowing into this country. We depend on the ‘brain drain’ from other countries.

By tapping into the anti-science streak in the US and nourishing it and channeling it and growing it into a huge flood, the GOP is doing immeasurable harm to the US.

So even if they’re making the cynical ploy that the US can weather climate change better than other nations— which is a stupid, stupid, stupid gamble— they’re dead wrong. We can’t do so while driving away our scientists.