Sounds fishy

It was a whopper almost big enough to top all whoppers. Even the Miami Herald said it was an exaggeration. You might better call it the ultimate fish story.

President Barack Obama was speaking a few days ago to the Paris conference on climate change and offered this remarkable report:

“I think that as the science around climate change is more accepted, as people start realizing that even today you can put a price on the damage that climate change is doing—you know, you go down to Miami and when it’s flooding at high tide on a sunny day and fish are swimming through the middle of the streets—you know, that there’s a cost to that. You know, the insurance companies are paying attention.”

A couple of weeks earlier, Donald Trump had been the focus of media attention when he claimed he had personally seen “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey in 2001 celebrating the attack on the World Trade Center across the Hudson River in New York City. “Prove it!” his skeptics said. For a few days, among the crowded field of world leaders and presidential candidates, Trump was the champion prevaricator.

If the word ‘truth’ ends up attached to ‘Obama’ in the years ahead, it’s more likely also to include words like ‘disdain,’ ‘disparage,’ and ‘contempt.’

But then came the incredible bit of Miami reporting—from a president who had pledged in his first inaugural address that his administration would be known for its allegiance to sound scientific process. And then, less than a month after taking office, the new president had emphatically declared in a memo, “Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health, protection of the environment, increased efficiency in the use of energy and other resources, mitigation of the threat of climate change, and protection of national security.” It was a theme he sounded again and again.

But if the scientific method gets sloppy with the basics of truth-telling, the ballgame is over. It’s more than a little breathtaking to see a president—so supposedly committed to sound evidentiary process—so blatantly and repeatedly ignoring his own lofty standard. Note that the focus here is not so much on who is right in the debate between backers and skeptics of climate change theory. The focus instead is on the process we use and the tools we choose to pursue the truth of the matter.

Where, when we so much need them, are George I-cannot-tell-a-lie Washington and Abraham Honest-Abe Lincoln? No, I’m not so naïve as to suppose that even these heroes of our past never shaded the truth from time to time. That seems to go with the political process.

(And for the record, since the focus here is on truth-telling, I am well aware that his opponents will always seek to fasten dark clouds to the reputation of George W. Bush. He led us into the war in Iraq, they charge, on the basis of lies about Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. I believe the evidence, if you take time to pursue it, proves that the accusation itself is a lie. While the assumption about such weapons proved to be wrong, not a smidgen of evidence suggests that Bush or his top advisers believed one thing to be true while telling the American public the opposite. If Bush’s opponents want to tar him as a liar, they’d best come up with a few better examples than this one.)

The president’s remarks in Paris come not long after one of our nation’s biggest health insurance companies said it can no longer deal with what we all have known are the phony assumptions of Obamacare. The company is sending signals that it may no longer participate in a program riddled with falsehood.

So it’s a huge stretch from George Washington to Barack Obama—and if the word “truth” ends up attached to “Obama” in the years ahead, it’s more likely also to include words like “disdain,” “disparage,” and “contempt.” It’s no longer enough for the president to warn the world about scary things that might possibly happen over the next 30 to 50 years. Now he’s got to up the ante and pretend that such evils are already on us.

Floridians know better. The conditions Obama described in Paris have been part of life in Miami Beach, and a few other low-lying areas, for years. Anyone serious about a proper practice of science should be embarrassed. And those of us who aren’t scientists, but simply concerned about the practice of truth-telling, should also be ashamed.

Email jbelz@wng.org

Listen to Joel Belz’s commentary on The World and Everything in It.