Bay Area cartoonist and animator Mark Fiore has given us another great cartoon narrated by Flamey McGassy. You might know Mr. McGassey from the educational video “Your Guide to Global Warming.” His follow up is entitled:

“If only we could pinpoint something that’s been reducing CO2 at high levels over the past few decades…”

If only.

You can view the cartoon here (requires Flash player).

As a 700 Club host and founder of both the Christian Broadcasting Group and the Christian Coalition of America, Pat Robertson has made many divisive and headline grabbing statements. One he made last week may be dividing a different camp, however. (Hat tip: Real Reason)

I tell you stay in doors ladies and gentleman. Stay cool. Get fans or whatever. And the poor, they need emergency fans and ice to cool down — the number of people dead. I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers. They have broken heat records in a number of cities already this year and broken all-time records and it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels. If we are contributing to the destruction of the planet we need to do manage about it.

Robertson is not especially noted for his scientific prowess, and we join others cautioning against in uncritically conflating heat waves and climate change. But Robertson’s tone and candor is a quick and welcome change for his popular 700 Club. Just last month, Media Matters reported on the show’s uncritical airing of the views of climate skeptics.

On the July 10 edition of … the 700 Club, Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell III misleadingly suggested that there is no scientific consensus on the existence of global warming. Asserting that the media “can’t decide” on the science because “[o]ne moment they’re declaring … there’s global warming. The next moment … there’s global cooling,” Bozell revived a favorite argument of some global warming skeptics that, in the 1970s, scientists were warning that the earth was cooling at an alarming rate. In fact, the magnitude of the consensus among scientists that global warming exists and that human activity is a contributing factor dwarfs the pool of scientists 30 years earlier who warned that the earth was cooling.

Robertson’s statements have also put him at odds with fellow evangelical leader Jerry Falwell, who has gone out of his way to instill doubt in the public’s understanding of climate science.

Writing for the National Journal, political writer Paul Starobin has produced an excellent, balanced article on scientific integrity called “Who Turned Out the Enlightenment?” Before you leave the office Friday (and before they make you pay to get it from the archives) print it out. Starobin traces the parallel lines of an ascending United States and an ascending scientific understanding, citing Franklin, Jefferson, Newton, and others. He gets to his thesis halfway through the essay:

“Shout popular democracy … get to decide what is and what is not credible science?”

He doesn’t answer the question, but he suggests what the answer might bring. Starobin goes to great lengths to show historical examples of both the left and the right trumping science with values. In doing so, he reveals the political thread connecting evolution, sociobiology, big tobacco, gender politics, tobacco, and climate change. The pattern produces a warning:

“In the long run, as the smoking-causes-cancer ‘debate’ proved, science cannot be cheated. And its punishment is merciless.”

While his argument that scientists skew Democrat because of a generally shared belief in government solving problems would seem to hold water, his portrait of the new “Lab-Coat Liberal” rests on too little evidence and not enough explanation. And while he is to be commended for pointing out attacks on science from both political extremes, he fails to give weight to their efforts. He may be able to balance attacks on sociobiology with attacks on evolution philosophically, but in political history they hold vastly different weights. However, his interest lies with science and political science, not with partisanship.

A fascinating, if somewhat frightening, societal experiment is under way. The question is whether democracy naturally advances science, or whether modern progress in science actually has less to do with heralded forms of government than with the fruit born of a special moment in historical time, the modern European Enlightenment, from which America, courtesy of the Founders, greatly benefited.

We think it’s a bit more frightening than fascinating, given that we’re not in the control group. But bravo to Starobin for this thought-provoking article.