Occupy Iowa: Mitt Romney

It's all led up to this. 2012 is upon us and with it comes months of media coverage focusing on the Presidential Election. Tuesday is the official starting line with the Iowa Caucus, and with no clear cut front-runner political junkies like myself are watching with great interest. With the coming weeks, I want to use my posts to go over the candidates and how they view science, with particular attention paid to the most politicized topics, evolution and anthropogenic global warming. The first in this series will look at presumed leader of the pack, Mitt Romney.

You may remember Romney from previous election cycles, including the 2002 Massachusetts Governors race and the 2008 Republican Primaries. Mitt has made a vast amount of money in the business world through smart investments including one of his first large investments which opened Staples stores around the country, insuring that white-out and 2'' binders were just a short drive away. Mitt then began running for public office in the mid-90's culminating with becoming the 70th Governor of Massachusetts in 2003. After failing to win the Republican ticket in 08', Mitt has been priming for 12' ever since, and as I stated earlier will probably be challenging Obama barring any major flub.

But what of his views on science? You may remember the famous, "Does anyone on this stage NOT believe in evolution?" question from the 07' Republican debates --three people raised their hands, not among them was Romney. So from that, we are to assume that Mitt 'believes' in evolution, correct?   

  “I believe that God designed the universe and created the universe, and I believe evolution is most likely the process he used to create the human body.”

Those quotes came from an interview Romney gave not long after that 07' debate when asked to clarify his take on evolution. Sounds like Intelligent Design lite to me, and Romney was asked about that:

“I’m not exactly sure what is meant by intelligent design,” he said. “But I believe God is intelligent and I believe he designed the creation. And I believe he used the process of evolution to create the human body.”

Meh. Sounds like the correct political answer for someone on the Right to give if they do accept evolution. I'm sure my fellow bloggers like Myers or Coyne would call it accommodation, but what are we to expect from someone who has to pander to the extreme religious right? Mitt was much more black and white when it came down to should intelligent design, or creationism be taught as a valid theory along side evolution in science classes:

“In my opinion, the science class is where to teach evolution, or if there are other scientific thoughts that need to be discussed,” he said. “If we’re going to talk about more philosophical matters, like why it was created, and was there an intelligent designer behind it, that’s for the religion class or philosophy class or social studies class.”

Seems clear cut to me. Mitt Romney seemly is science friendly when it comes to evolution. What about Global Warming? Well, that my friends is a different beast. Depending on what day, what forum, and how hot it is outside, Mitt's opinion seems to shift on climate change, it's causes and how best to deal with it. In his 2010 book, No Apology (A direct jab at Obama's World Apology tour), Romney lays out in print his take on climate change.

“I believe that climate change is occurring.… I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor. I am uncertain how much of the warming, however, is attributable to man and how much is attributable to factors out of our control.”

This past summer speaking to a New Hampshire town hall: See the video here

"I don't speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that," Romney said. "I can't prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer....I don't know how much our contribution is to that, because I know there's been periods of greater heat and warmth than in the past, but I believe we contribute to that. And so I think it's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and global warming that you're seeing."

Romney was #TeamScience all the way until a handsome gunslinger from Texas pulled up his boot straps and moseyed into the race in August. Gov. Perry's take on science --which I will get to in a later post-- is different than Romney's to say the least. Once Perry enter the race and began racing up the polls with his denialist six-shooter, Romney began to feed denialism seeds to the ignorant chirping birds. In mid-October at a fundraiser in Pittsburgh which took place at the Consol Energy Center, Mitt's opinion shifted:

“My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO₂ emissions is not the right course for us....My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO₂ emissions is not the right course for us. My view with regards to energy policy is pretty straightforward. I want us to become energy secure and independent of the oil cartels. And that means let’s aggressively develop our oil, our gas, our coal, our nuclear power.”

Play to your crowd, Sir. Play to your crowd. Every politician has flip-flopped on issues here and there, and it should come as no surprise that you play the puppet when speaking to a group of people invested in energy. While I don't find it encouraging that he seems to waver, he has on multiple occasions came out and said that climate change is occurring, which is at odds with a majority of his colleagues. Like most other Republicans, Romney questions how best to deal with it, and what part humans have played in causing it.

So if I had to choose, "Mitt Romney: Friend of Science" or "Mitt Romney: Bully of Science", I would lean towards friend. I just hope that should any science policy question arise in front of him on any particular day he hits correctly on his "My take on this scientific issue" dartboard. 

***UPDATE
I forgot about stem cell research! How could I be so blind! Worst. Science blogger. Ever. Oh well, forgive me. So here are some pulled quotes that should give you some insights into Romney's take on the issue:

"I am in favor of stem cell research. I am not in favor of creating new human embryos through cloning." “Stem cell research does not require the cloning of human embryos. Some stem cells today are obtained from surplus embryos from in-vitro fertilization. I support that research, provided that those embryos are obtained after a rigorous parental consent process that includes adoption as an alternative. Further, the greatest successes in stem cell research to date have come from the use of adult and umbilical cord stem cells. Stanford professor William Hurlbut, a physician and member of the President's Council on Bioethics, has proposed a promising approach. Known as altered nuclear transfer, this method could allow researchers to obtain embryonic stem cells without the moral shortcut of cloning and destroying a human embryo.”

There you go. This is a more moderate position than most in the field and still leaves me to believe Romney is not anti-science nor anti-research. My apologies for leaving out such an important issue. My colleagues have already threatened to fire me, I quickly reminded them the Ad money was in my name. Suckas.