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A conservative news and views blog.

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Location: St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

A Popular Delusion and the Madness of Climate Science

Timothy Birdnow

Here is a good piece by William Happer that gives a general overview of what is wrong with Global Warming theory - and climatology as it is currently defined.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-truth-about-greenhouse-gases

From the beginning of the article, a quote from Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds:

"The object of the Author in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes,” wrote Charles Mackay in the preface to the first edition of his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. The “climate crusade” is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types—even children’s crusades—all based on contested science and dubious claims."

End excerpt.

Global Warming is an attempt to stampede people. As Happer points out:

"I began with a quotation from the preface of the first edition of Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and it is worth recalling now a quotation from the preface of the second edition: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”'

And that about sums up the generation-long War of the Worlds scare nicely.

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