If I may be so bold, I would like to reiterate something I wrote in a book that—judging by the current presidential campaign—has had little or no impact on American politics.

THE THREE GREAT PREMISES OF IDIOT AMERICA:

1) Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units.

2. Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.

3. Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.

I would like to brag that I saw coming Donald Trump's unique ability to activate—nay, to embody —all three of the Great Premises at once, but I can't really do that. However, in no field of argument, and on no other issues, are the Three Great Premises engaged to more destructive effect than on the issue of the climate crisis that continues to confront us no matter how hard we wish it away.

Just today, for example, the folks at Breitbart's Mausoleum For The Chronically Unemployable introduce us to one Dr. Friedrich Karl Ewert, whom the folks in the mausoleum tout as the most recent Actual Scientist to debunk the worldwide scientific consensus regarding climate change. (It likely will not surprise you to learn that Ewert's been slinging this stuff for quite a while now.) Ewert is very big on the scientists-in-conspiracy approach to the problem and, naturally, he found himself a willing megaphone in Breitbart to peddle his wares in the United States. Of course, back here on planet Earth, we learn this week that things are not improving at all.

The report is not surprising: Scientists at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and elsewhere already were saying that 2015 likely would be the hottest. The U.N. agency, NOAA, NASA and Japan's weather agency all say 2014 is the current record hot year with a global temperature of 14.57 degrees Celsius, 58.23 degrees Fahrenheit. "I would call it certain," NOAA's chief climate monitor, Deke Arndt, said on Tuesday. "Something game-changing massive would have to happen for it not to be a record." Records go back to 1880.

Or, if you choose not to believe the scientific consensus, you can take matters up with the Quinault Tribe in Washington state, the members of which are on their way to becoming some of the first climate refugees in the Lower 48. First, the seawall that keeps the ocean from swamping their villages keeps giving way as the level of the Pacific rises, and second, the rivers are heating up and screwing up the migratory patterns of the salmon on which the Quinaults rely for a living.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers repaired the sea wall but it's a temporary fix. A more permanent solution is on the table, but it won't be cheap or easy. The Quinault tribe has developed a $60 million plan to move the entire village of Taholah uphill and out of harm's way. That will mean moving the school, the courthouse, the police station and the homes of 700 tribal members a safer distance from the encroaching Pacific. "It's a heavy price tag," Sharp acknowledged, adding that she and others with the Quinault will be turning to Congress, philanthropists and the tribe's own financial resources to pay for the project. "When it comes to extreme measures taken to adapt to climate change it does take an entire collaborative approach among agencies it can't be done alone," she said.

I admire her optimism. I truly do.

As for the fish, it's a little more complicated. For millennia, the salmon depended on the melt-off from the Anderson Glacier to cool the waters of the Quinault river, thereby making it easier for the fish to swim up to their spawning grounds. Unfortunately, the Anderson glacier is, well, gone. Complications have ensued.

The warm ocean waters and dry summer made for a confusing and hostile environment for salmon, which rely on cool river flows to find their way home to spawning grounds above Lake Quinault. Normally at this time of year with the chinook and coho running, the Quinault seafood plant processes 70,000 pounds of salmon per day. But Underwood said tribal fishers were catching half of that this season. The tribe decided to stop fishing to help more salmon live long enough to spawn.

Frankly, given the choice between believing a salmon and believing Dr. Ewert, I'm going with the fish every time.

Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Trump's success at peddling nonsense is prompting his rivals to throw caution–and the truth–to the wind, and to say out loud any wild-hair notion that pops into their heads. Take, for example, Marco Rubio, still stumbling through a wilderness of rakes, but now reckoned to be a serious contender for the White House because he is regarded to be a more "serious" candidate than the Libidinous Visitor is. This has emboldened him to speak out on the issue of the Supreme Court.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) says religious believers are called to "ignore" laws that violate their faith. "In essence, if we are ever ordered by a government authority to personally violate and sin — violate God's law and sin — if we're ordered to stop preaching the Gospel, if we're ordered to perform a same-sex marriage as someone presiding over it, we are called to ignore that," Rubio said in an interview with CBN on Tuesday. "So when those two come into conflict, God's rules always win," he added.

Because you are sensible, you may be asking yourself now, "Who exactly is it that is making laws to stop people from preaching the gospel?" You also may be asking yourself, "Who exactly is it that is forcing clergy to conduct same-sex marriages?" Elected county clerks and appointed judges and justices of the peace are stuck, I'm afraid. The same First Amendment that protects the clergy obligates them to do their secular duty. If they can't do them in good conscience, then quitting is their only option. There's more.

Rubio said Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision creating a constitutional right to abortion, is open to revision. "It's current law; it's not settled law," he said. "No law is settled. Roe v. Wade is current law, but it doesn't mean that we don't continue to aspire to fix it, because we think it's wrong."

This is right along with his tinpot hairsplitting on marriage equality as "not about discrimination, but a definitional debate." And…whap.

There are real consequences to believing nonsense. Bad things happen. People get killed. Lives get ruined. This was a country founded on the notion that only with an educated population can freedom survive, and that a mal-educated population was a quick road to ruin. When we, as a democratic self-governing people, are not as smart as the salmon are, something has gone perilously wrong.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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