PrintOctober 4, 2009
The New Scientist?
I enjoy my subscription to The New Scientist in large part for seeing to what lengths they are willing to go to support global warming orthodoxy. This week's issue, for example, describes a hitherto unobserved and completely unexplained phenomenon involving sudden changes in the temperature of the stratosphere associated with agitation of the wind speed and direction of the ionosphere:
No process known to atmospheric physics would allow a specific local phenomenon like the stratwarm to propagate all the way from the stratosphere above the North Pole to the ionosphere above the equator...Some speculate that this trend is a product of climate change
Just last week we read the following:
Global population growth has slowed significantly, but it hasn't stopped. By 2050 there may be about 35 per cent more people on Earth than there are today. We are already seeing increasing shortages of food, water and other resources and growing numbers of hungry people.... Nowadays it is understood that the key population-related issue is the destructive pressure human activity is exerting on our life-support systems, posing a growing threat to the sustainability of civilisation... Yet many people still assume that humanity will easily manage to support more than 9 billion people in 2050 and beyond. Such confidence ignores some grim possibilities.
The really surprising thing about this tirade is the name of the authors: Paul and Anne Ehrlich...you know, the guy who wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, which begins:
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death...
and goes on to state
... nothing can be done to avoid mass famine greater than any in history, and radical action is needed to limit the overpopulation.
a prediction that, in the event, fell rather wide of the mark. Who would believe that he's still at it? He sorta reminds me of Monty Python's Black Knight...I'll never give up!
Anyway, the article that inspired me to respond with this essay is a review by Michael Brooks, also in this week's issue, of Don't Be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson. Mr. Brooks makes the following astounding statements:
If you want to get a message across to the public, don't obsess about facts. Just look at Al Gore's climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Olson says. The film contained more than a few factual errors, but it also had a profound influence on the world's attitude to climate change. Perhaps compromising on accuracy is a necessary evil...is this really the right way for scientists to go? With climate change, perhaps the end justifies the means... given Gore's success and the prevalence of scientific illiteracy, it remains an interesting path to consider.
Let me get this straight: It's OK to lie.
In an entirely unrelated matter, various artists and other celebrities are rushing to the defense of somebody who drugged and raped a 13 year-old girl.
As someone who was taught to love and revere science since his earliest childhood, I don't know which of these two positions is more revolting. Shakespeare, as usual, has the final word:
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.
