California Governor Jerry Brown heard about GOP candidate Ben Carson’s rote recital of the Republican Party’s anti-science talking points on climate change, and sent him the following official letter, accompanied by a flash drive filled with scientific evidence:

Dear Dr. Carson,

I hope you enjoyed your visit to the Golden State. It’s come to my attention that while you were here you said the following regarding climate science:

“I know there are a lot of people who say ‘overwhelming science,’ but then when you ask them to show the overwhelming science, they never can show it… There is no overwhelming science that the things that are going on are man-caused and not naturally caused. Gimme a break.”

Please find enclosed a flash drive with the complete United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “Synthesis Report,” the concluding installment of the Fifth Assessment Report, published earlier this year. This report assessed over 30,000 scientific papers and was written by more than 800 scientists, representing 80 countries around the world, who definitively concluded that: “…human influence on the climate system is growing, with impacts observed across all continents and oceans.”

This is just one of the thousands of reports authored by the world’s top scientists on the subject, including a study published just last month by Columbia University, University of Idaho and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies scientists that found climate change has intensified California’s drought. These aren’t just words. The consequences are real.

Please use your considerable intelligence to review this material. Climate change is much bigger than partisan politics.

Sincerely,
Edmund G. Brown Jr.

Excellent try, Gov. Brown. But remember, Ben Carson is a young Earth creationist, and I suspect he will neither read nor understand the material on the flash drive you sent him. The entire Republican Party is denying the reality of climate change, and nobody who expects to run for president as a Republican will buck that trend. They’re anti-science and proud of it.