Given the now well-known fact that Gov. Palin is a creationist, it would be interesting to ask her whether or not she’s ever thought about the geological origins of Alaska’s black gold.
It should be the case that Gov. Palin- a self-proclaimed energy expert- would know some basic facts about petroleum and other fossil fuels. She should be able to rattle off a bit of basic geology when it comes to her state’s most important export.
We would expect Gov. Palin to recite a simple fact: That the deposits of oil and other hydrocarbons being pumped out from under Alaska’s soil are the products of millions of years of heat and pressure applied to the fossilized remains of plants and animals.
But it turns out that this basic fact is at odds with the ideology of creationism. Many creationists believe the Earth is only five to ten thousand years old. They think that all the creatures on the planet were created in their current form and that the fossil record only represents snapshots of creatures killed in the “Great Flood!"
So how could it be that petroleum and other fossil fuels were formed, given the creationist story? Well, like all of their other fairy tales, creationists provide an untestable just-so story to fill in theoretical gaps. Some claim that the earth spontaneously and continually creates petroleum in its core, pumping it up to the crust where it is deposited in reservoirs. If only we were so lucky.
In the off chance they are given access, journalists should ask Gov. Palin a very simple question: How was Alaska’s oil created? Given her belief in creationism, her answer will be interesting.
The time is now to make Sarah Palin's lack of scientific knowledge a major issue.
Bottom line: The stakes are too high for America to have a second-in-command who believes creation mythology instead of science.
UPDATE 1: As reported by the LA Times, via the Huffington Post:
Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said.
After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs.
Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks," recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.
The idea of a "young Earth" -- that God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs and humans coexisted early on -- is a popular strain of creationism.
Though in her race for governor she called for faith-based "intelligent design" to be taught along with evolution in Alaska's schools, Gov. Palin has not sought to require it, state educators say.