Gaffe: n 1. The accidental telling of a truth by a politician.

Howard Dean gets to the heart of the problem with AGW hysterics, albeit inadvertently, in this clip from an ABC interview posted by Mediaite today. He vents his frustration at Republicans who refuse to adopt the belief system of global warming, annoyed at the jibes from skeptics over the snowstorm that has socked in the mid-Atlantic region this month:

“One of the most disturbing things about the Republican Party over the last couple of decades is that they just don’t believe in science any more. And that is not an approach that is likely to generate any kind of creative thinking…People who use snowstorms as an example of why global warming doesn’t exist don’t understand the science and they don’t care.”

Actually, we do respect science. What we don’t do is adopt belief systems based on hypotheses from so-called scientists that use incomplete and unreliable predictive modeling, include wild conjectures as fact, pass off student dissertations as reliable research, and accept advocacy claims without testing, all while conspiring to hide contradictory evidence and scheme to ruin the careers of those who question them. Science requires that claims get tested, that predictive models that fail get discarded, that data and process remain open for review, and that critical thinking get welcomed instead of demonized.

Now, when Howard Dean wants to discuss scientifically how anyone can represent what the IPCC did as rigorous and reliable science, and how the “science” that predicted unstoppable increases in global temperatures for the last 12 years got it wrong but still remains reliable as a basis on which to enact public policy that massively intrudes on private enterprise, property rights, and energy production, well, I’d bet the GOP would welcome such a forum. But while we’re there, perhaps Dean and the scientific acolytes in the Democratic Party can scientifically explain how a group of cells with a unique, human DNA that divide and multiply within a uterus is somehow not human life.

You know, since we’re being scientific and all.