Bird’s Eye: Reality, as Stephen Colbert noted, has a well known liberal bias. That’s why right-wingers are trying to prevent reality from infiltrating their decisions. A US look at the denial of climate-change, two more examples of Canada’s “government” shooting messengers, and a brilliant Rick Mercer skit that sums it all up.

*  Why Even Educated Conservatives Deny Science – and Reality Truthout (Thanks, Rick!)

Since about 1995, scientists have not only confirmed that this warming is taking place, but have also grown confident that it has, like the gun in a murder mystery, our fingerprint on it. Natural fluctuations, although they exist, can’t explain what we’re seeing. The only reasonable verdict is that humans did it, in the atmosphere, with their cars and their smokestacks.

Such is what is known to science–what is true (no matter what Rick Santorum might say). But the Pew data showed that humans aren’t as predictable as carbon dioxide molecules. Despite a growing scientific consensus about global warming, as of 2008 Democrats and Republicans had cleaved over the facts stated above, like a divorcing couple. One side bought into them, one side didn’t—and if anything, knowledge and intelligence seemed to be worsening matters.

Buried in the Pew report was a little chart showing the relationship between one’s political party affiliation, one’s acceptance that humans are causing global warming, and one’s level of education. And here’s the mind-blowing surprise: For Republicans, having a college degree didn’t appear to make one any more open to what scientists have to say. On the contrary, better-educated Republicans were more skeptical of modern climate science than their less educated brethren. Only 19 percent of college-educated Republicans agreed that the planet is warming due to human actions, versus 31 percent of non-college-educated Republicans.

* Canada to lose its ‘PEARL’ of Arctic research

Canada’s most northerly research station is ceasing year-round operation, a “draconian” move decried by scientists both nationally and internationally. “Its closure shows a stunning lack of interest on the part of the Canadian government in long-term Arctic issues,” atmospheric scientist Jim Drummond, at Dalhousie University, said of the loss of the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory.

…A network of university and government researchers has operated the lab since 2005. It costs $1.5 million a year to run, but the federal government has eliminated the atmospheric research program that had been funding the operation. …“This loss comes at a highly significant time when Arctic conditions are changing rapidly: Witness the recent rapid loss of permafrost, the appearance of the first large Arctic ozone depletion last year and many other harbingers of significant Arctic change,” the researchers said in a statement Tuesday. “Without PEARL there will be no continuous active measurements in the High Arctic of many atmospheric quantities scientists believe greatly affect both our Arctic and the whole planet.”

* Ottawa Axes Network Of Immigration Research Centres Toronto Star

Ottawa plans to stop funding a research network whose findings have helped improve Canada’s immigration policies and settlement programs, the Star has learned. The federal government will not renew its $9 million, five-year funding to the five Metropolis research centres in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax when the grant runs out in 2013.

Critics say the cut is another blow to researchers and community groups who have already lost the reliable data gleaned from the mandatory long-form census, which the Conservatives ended in 2010. “If you want to make policies based on opinions instead of what the facts are, you get rid of the facts,” said John Campey, of Social Planning Toronto, which founded the Ontario centre in 1996,

*  PMO Pest Control Rick Mercer Report YouTube (Thanks, Dave!)