ARROGANCE – AT 7:26 P.M. ET:  This administration is heading off a cliff, and arrogance is the main cause. 

Consider global warming.  Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, an Obaman through and through, appeared before a Senate panel today.  You'd think, after all the recent climategate scandals, that there would be, on her part, some humility and reflection.  Think again:

U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson today defended the science underpinning pending climate regulations despite Senate Republicans' claims that global warming data has been thrown into doubt.

"The science behind climate change is settled, and human activity is responsible for global warming," Jackson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "That conclusion is not a partisan one."

Boy, I must really be dumb.  I thought scientists debate these things all the time.  Science, of course, is never settled.  If it were, you'd never know the name Albert Einstein.

Senate Republicans used the hearing as a platform to blast EPA over its plans to begin rolling out greenhouse gas regulations next month after it determined last year that the heat-trapping emissions endanger human health and welfare.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the panel's ranking member, called on EPA to reconsider that determination after recent reports have revealed errors in the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that were used to underpin EPA's finding and a recent controversy surrounding e-mails stolen from climate scientists that some have dubbed "Climategate."

But no, no, no, James.  It isn't about that.  It's about a new secular religion.  And one does not doubt a religion. 

And get this, from self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) angrily blasted his Republican colleagues for their implications that global warming science had not been settled. "This country faces many many problems, not the least of which, we have national leaders rejecting basic science," Sanders said. "I find it incredible, I really do, that in the year 2010 on this committee, there are people who are saying there is a doubt about global warming. There is no doubt about global warming."

Thank you, Senator Sanders, for that deeply intellectual statement.  You're a role model for students of science the world over.

Not.

February 23, 2010