Thursday, February 27, 2014

The Original Sin of Global Warming

That’s a lesson I learned from Carl Sagan, and while he had some role in launching the current global warming orthodoxy, I suspect he would be appalled at the unscientific fanaticism with which it is now enforced. Consider Sagan’s treatment of Immanuel Velikovsky, whose crackpot theories about the development of the solar system enjoyed a brief vogue in the middle of the 20th century. After dissecting the various absurdities of Velikovsky’s theory, Sagan offered this conclusion:

The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that many of his idea were wrong or silly or in gross contradiction to the facts. Rather, the worst aspect is that some scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky’s ideas. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science.



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