As the 2016 electoral race gathers momentum, and new candidates like the proverbial rock rolling downhill, political parties and action groups are engaged in a Gadarene stampede to control the language used to shape the issues in the contest.  And sometimes, it appears, those issues are best shaped by saying nothing at all.  Or else.

Published reports this week took up the strange case of Florida Gov.Rick Scott, who received 15 additional minutes of fame when employees at the Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection confided to reporters that they had been ordered never to use the terms “climate change” or “global warming” in any official departmental communications, either written or oral.

Apparently, it is a firing offense for employees to be caught using the offending phrases as they go about the business of mutely protecting the environment.

 

Many candidates have recently dodged questions on the offensive topics of climate change and global warming by saying loudly: “I am not a scientist!”  And that may well be so, with some presumptive presidential candidates being just that little bit short of an actual college degree (though all so far have finished high school).

 

However, for the non-scientist majority, this simple test should suffice:  If you’ve ever had a cocktail, you may have noted that the level of liquid in the glass rises as the ice inside melts from the heat generated by your hand (if you are patient enough).  In this way, think of the planet as a deep space highball, with trapped carbon gasses and a depleted ozone layer functioning to hold in the heat from the giant cosmic hand we call the sun, which in turn will cause glaciers to melt, sea levels to rise and surface temperatures to climb to new heights, as they did here in Minnesota last year.

 

Hurricanes, tornados, floods, drought, sand storms and crop-destroying heat are all cause for concern, and it is not hard to see why ocean-side properties like Boston, New York, Miami, New Orleans, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle might experience unease at the thought of an additional 12 to 15 feet of high tide changing their landscapes in the next decade.

 

Or not. 

 

And maybe “deniability” is the ultimate answer.  According to the Bloomberg Business Report, the Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands has enacted a staff ban on the use of climate change language.  State Treasurer Matt Adamczyk, who is also a board member, was quoted as saying that “concerns about the climate crisis fall outside of the board’s mission.”  Apparently so, since workers are banned from even responding to any communications they receive asking for information about climate change issues from state residents.

 

When asked what board executive director Tia Nelson should do with e-mails she might receive from the public that ask questions about climate change, Bloomberg quoted Adamczyk as saying that she could “forward it to us, and we can all look at it.”

 

Nelson headed a global warming state task force under Gov. Jim Doyle in 2007 and 2008, and is the daughter of former U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI), the man who established Earth Day in 1970.

 

Secretary of State and board member Douglas La Follette, scion of another famous Wisconsin political family, summed it up neatly:  “I’ve never seen such nonsense.”