I ran across Tierney’s latest post in the NY Times, Politics in the Guise of Pure Science and, as it too often does, it left a bad taste.

Why, since President Obama promised to “restore science to its rightful place” in Washington, do some things feel not quite right?

First there was Steven Chu, the physicist and new energy secretary, warning The Los Angeles Times that climate change could make water so scarce by century’s end that “there’s no more agriculture in California” and no way to keep the state’s cities going, either.

I couldn’t help but notice that Tierny doesn’t actually rebut the claim, or give any context at all for it. Just simple appeal to ridicule, with fragmentary quoting, which always raises the question of whether the remarks are being quoted out of context. Not to mention that I think Tierney is missing the point. There is science, and there is policy. Policy will encompass more than science, but it’s critical that policy be based on science, rather than basing policy on ideology and rewriting or suppressing contradictory science.

Via The Inverse Square Blog I see that my spidey-senses were spot-on. Siegel at Daily Kos provides more complete quotes and context to Chu’s comments, and makes it clear that Chu was describing a range of possibilities, with the loss of agriculture and severe reduction in water for the cities at the extreme end of the spectrum of outcomes.

Update: Carbon Nation takes a swipe, too.