Wesley Clark touts science at YearlyKos

Saturday, June 10, 2006 | 7:18 a.m.

A panel of Internet writers and a former Democratic presidential candidate ripped the Republican Party on Friday for undermining America's historic relationship to science and engineering.

Speaking at YearlyKos, a conference of liberal bloggers, retired Army general and former presidential candidate Wesley Clark told about 150 people that science "is the lifeblood of our civilization. It is what has made our modern lifestyle possible."

Electric lighting, lasers, penicillin, the uses of petroleum, and key advances in genetics and nuclear science all come from the United States, Clark said. He noted that he was in ninth grade at the time the United States was embarrassed by the success of the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite in 1957. Concern over the perceived Soviet dominance in the space race made the United States "real serious about science and technology."

"Science and math were the lifeblood of competing with the godless Soviet empire," Clark said. Investments in science, engineering and education paid off decades later with computers and other technologies, but those advancements are threatened by funding cuts and the "politicization of science."

"It is shocking the purest demonstration of political hypocrisy you can see today," said Clark, who is considered a 2008 presidential candidate.

Battles are waging on the issues of global warming, stem cell research and evolution, he said. Clark, who said he believes in a Supreme Being or creator, said teachers are being forced to throw the key biological concept of evolution from public classrooms: "Across America, well-meaning teachers are running scared."

Friday's panel included a Minnesota biology professor, writers from several blogs and Chris Mooney, author of the "Republican War on Science."

Mooney said the consensus of mainstream scientists is that evolution and human-induced global warming, for example, are both real, but Republican-affiliated institutions, aided by the media, continue to generate the impression that the questions are not settled.

Mooney specifically criticized President Bush and made passing reference to Nevada congressman Jim Gibbons, a Republican candidate for governor. Mooney noted that Gibbons wrote and released a report last year, with Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., titled "Mercury in Perspective: Fact and Fiction About the Debate Over Mercury."

Billed as an exhaustive review of the science on mercury, the Gibbons/Pombo report downplayed many concerns about the health effects from environmentalists and even federal regulators. The report focused on mercury produced by fossil fuel-burning power plants, but environmentalists also are concerned about mercury produced by the metal mining industry, a politically potent industry in Nevada that has supported Gibbons.

Mooney, a regular contributor to the American Prospect, a monthly magazine with a liberal perspective, has written about the mercury issue and the Gibbons/Pombo report in the magazine.

In February 2005, Mooney said the report brought scientific debate on an already politicized issue to a new low, and called it a "misleading contrarian pamphlet aimed at convincing Americans that despite everything they may have heard, mercury levels in fish aren't dangerous and U.S.-based mercury emitters aren't a significant part of the problem."

Robert Uithoven, Gibbons' campaign manager, responded to Mooney's jab, noting that his boss has a master's degree in geology from UNR: "Jim Gibbons is a scientist. He's educated as a scientist in Nevada's schools and educational system."

Uithoven also condemned what he called a blanket attack on all Republicans, saying it "shows the shortsightedness of some of these critics." He said critics could cherry-pick the positions of candidates from both Democrats and Republicans, but that to do so was unfair.

Gibbons has not had to address the issue of evolution in the House, but believes that God created evolution, Uithoven said. "He would never as a governor try to push an agenda on our schools."

On global warming: "There's a lot of people who believe the Earth is warming, but don't have empirical proof that it's the fault of the people of the United States."