Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 06/30/2008 8:08:54 PM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
Truth may enter the world by many doors, but she is never escorted by force. I thought that was a lesson learned long ago, and learned by none more tellingly than scientists. Real scientists, actually, have learned it. A new amalgam has emerged however, the scientist-activist, and for that specimen it's a lesson passed by.
In the dawn of the Enlightenment, it was scientists who were hauled before tribunals and inquisitions. Galileo is the arch example, the pioneer empiricist who rejected the ancient Earth-centric model of the (then known) universe, and for his pains earned the attention and wrath of the distinctly unscientific Inquisition.
I am drawn to these thoughts, and to the long-decayed example of the Inquisition, by a most curious outburst this week by James Hansen, the principal voice of NASA on the subject of global warming, a man who played – as it were – John the Baptist to Al Gore's messianic teachings on the subject. Dr. Hansen is largely credited with “sounding the alarm” on man-made global warming, and he has been a persistent, high-profile and very aggressive proponent of the cause for over two decades now. Dr. Hansen doesn't take kindly to those who dispute his apocalyptic scenarios. I choose the term, apocalyptic, deliberately. According to Dr. Hansen, mankind may have reached the tipping point with global warming. Should that be the case, wide-scale calamity and catastrophe are inevitable. And should we not have reached the point of absolute crisis, should there be a minuscule interval for the human species to act and avert the very worst, according to Dr. Hansen, what yet remains to be faced is still horrible enough indeed.
Not all the world shares Dr. Hansen's vision of imminent ecological Armageddon. Serious minds, seriously disinterested in the subject, throw up caveats all......
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
Sounds like material for Ben Stein’s next movie.
Of course, he's not.
To claim that ANYTHING about the Earth's climatological reactions is due to ANYTHING, in the majority, OTHER than the sun, is a claim so stupendously ignorant as to be nearly incomparable to any other form of ignorance.
But, please note, that perfectly obvious statement of fact hardly deters the ignorant bastards at all, now does it?
More's the pity, and I cannot yet imagine how much the world's citizenry will suffer because of these ignorant bastards' ignorance.
Bingo.
I am going to take your quote, enlarge it, and put it on my office wall right next to the “Climate Change for Idiots” photoshop I also pilfered off of FR. This stuff drives my global warming boss bananas, good thing he is in dire need of the work I do....snicker snicker....
More than welcome, mein Herr, and FReegards to you!
Science has no need of tribunals or trials, no need of Nuremberg justice, or analogies with the Holocaust. James Hansen's words this week were an offence, an offence against inquiry, against science, against moral seriousness. They were a piece of insolence against the idea of debate itself.
Please let some grown up fire this abomination.
And don’t forget the underwater volcanoes in the Arctic that is melting the ice up there!
INTREP
Hansen, my favorite impending catastrophe, not as a spokesperson, but as the catastrophe itself.
Poetic, but dumb.
Achtung, Volcanoes -- up mit zis ve vill nicht putsch!
With ya, mate!
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