Arrggh. My favourite cosmologist/physicist Frank Tipler continues his global warming skepticism in articles appearing in (of all places) Men's News Daily.
This recent article is just ridiculous, and indicates he should also write for that esteemed website of all things Carbon and green, CO2 Science, which promotes the philosophy that too much CO2 could never be enough.
Ah well, he is getting old after all. Hasn't everyone noticed that CO2 climate skepticism attracts people primarily on the far side of 50, and the degree of silliness such skeptics are willing to promote increases proportionately with increasing age? Add to age a conservative religious belief (as I think Tipler shares), and you have the perfect storm for an impervious skepticism that is, oddly, willing to risk the future wellbeing of the grandchildren they probably already have.
The only thing that consoles me is that, according to Tipler's own ideas, there is another universe nearby in which there is an alter-Tipler who is quite reasonable about climate science.
Prof. Frank J. Tipler didn't write the article for MDN. He published it at Pajamas Media on August 5, 2009.
ReplyDeleteNor does Prof. Tipler state in the article what you claim he did. Did your mother never teach you that lying is wrong? Perhaps not.
Regarding the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (A.G.W.), as Prof. Tipler elsewhere points out, this is a hypothesis which has been repeatedly experimentally disproven. Recall that it only takes a single experiment to disprove a theory (so long as the experiment and its data are correct). For more on that, see "The ETS: Completely unnecessary," David Evans, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), December 19, 2008.
As you do a good job of pointing out, A.G.W. theory is an irrational dogma. Those heretics who insist upon actual scientific empiricism will be accused of engaging in denialism, with mendacious criticisms made against them.
The reason why A.G.W. theory has become such a virulent dogma is due to the political power that it's being used to justify. If government and its connected interests could find a way to get as much power out of which sock, the left or the right, a person puts on first in the morning then we would never hear the end of the alleged horrors brought about by putting socks on the wrong foot first, and that if the government doesn't step in to save humanity from itself then it could well mean our extinction. Anyone who doubted the sock-crisis and pointed out that it's disproved by the empirical evidence would be accused of being party to denialism. Later on they would be charged under state edicts which threaten loss of their tenure (such as A.G.W. heretic Bjørn Lomborg). And if the government's anti-sock-on-wrong-foot-first efforts managed to actually cause humanity's extinction, then this result would be cheered (before their own deaths) by those who consider humanity as a cancer, with the sock-crisis regarded by them as merely being one example of mankind's cancerous ways.
A.G.W. theory attracts etatists of multifarious stripes. They see in it a means of empowering the government and micromanaging people's lives. The theory of A.G.W. is a collectivist's wet dream, as not only do they have their misanthropy confirmed (to the effect that mankind is a cancer), but so also they have a pretext for social engineering.
It's very unfortunate that A.G.W. isn't true, as life loves a warm, carbon dioxide-rich Earth. It would be quite a life-giving boon to humanity and the other critters if A.G.W. had been true.
As it now stands, unfortunately the Earth has been cooling since 1998. This is due to the lowered activity of the Sun (i.e., the considerable reduction in sunspots), which drives not just the Earth's weather, but the solar system's weather. Such cooling is neither good for mankind nor life in general upon the Earth.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."--H. L. Mencken, "Women as Outlaws," A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 29 (1949); first published in The Smart Set, December 1921.