Volcano Monitoring

I've written before about the strange position conservatives have put themselves in recently in relation to science. Partially because of the religious fundamentalist struggle with the theory of evolution, and the right wing capitalist position against global warming, we've seen steadily increasing scorn at the least or outright attacks at the worst by Republicans against science.

Now that they are out of power, the Republicans have reverted to their tactic of picking apart the budget and holding up some examples of wasteful spending. Setting aside the fact that they didn't seem to mind wasteful spending when it was being directed in palletfuls of $100s at crony contractors, the examples they pick are almost always scientific studies.

I remember during the presidential campaign, Sarah Palin brought up as one item of scorn and derision, a study on fruit flies. She probably didn't comprehend that we weren't trying to understand fruit flies, but using them to understand genetic traits about humans. In this case, a science commentator connected fruit fly research to autism and downs syndrome research, and tied it all together by asking if Sarah Palin, who has a child with downs syndrome, is not interested in research about the condition.

The latest example of stepping in their own stupidity came from Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, Governor of Louisiana and former Representative of their 1st Congressional District. He scoffed about the waste of federal money on Volcano Monitoring. The Scientific American podcast jumped on this immediately, asking him what private entity could possibly be motivated to monitor volcanoes. That it is a necessary endeavor should have been self evident, but it took Jon Stewart of the Daily Show to put it in perspective. He equated it with not monitoring the weather, and then being surprised when Hurricane Katrina struck Jindal's own home state.

The truly ironic thing that happened next was when Mt. Redoubt in Alaska erupted just a few days later. No word if any ash fell on Governor Palin, she probably had a Prayer Shield up to protect her. Governor Jindal was strangely silent on the issue.