The Galileo of Texas
Another coyote named to oversee the rabbit house.
President-elect Donald Trump has picked Rick Perry to head the Energy Department, said two people familiar with the decision, seeking to put the former Texas governor in control of an agency whose name he forgot during a presidential debate even as he vowed to abolish it.
Perry, who ran for president in the past two election cycles, is likely to shift the department away from renewable energy and toward fossil fuels, whose production he championed while serving as governor for 14 years.
Let’s revert to putting more carbon into the atmosphere. Let’s do what we can to speed up global warming. Let’s really put the change in climate change.
[E]nvironmentalists take a dim view of Perry. The former governor has repeatedly questioned scientific findings that human activity is helping drive climate change. In 2011 during a presidential debate, he compared the minority of scientists who challenged this assumption to 17th-century astronomer Galileo, who was persecuted by the Catholic Church after suggesting that the Earth revolved around the Sun, rather than the reverse.
“The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet to me is just nonsense,” Perry said at the time. “Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said here is the fact. Galileo got outvoted for a spell.”
Therefore everyone who gets “outvoted” is correct. That’s logic.
In his 2010 book, “Fed Up!” Perry described the science showing that climate change was underway and caused by humans as a “contrived phony mess,” writing that those who embraced this idea “know that we have been experiencing a cooling trend, that the complexities of the global atmosphere have often eluded the most sophisticated scientists, and that draconian policies with dire economic effects based on so-called science may not stand the test of time.”
Who ya gonna believe, thousands of scientists or Rick Perry?
Hmmm, if I recall my history correctly, Big G found new evidence, recognised its importance and modelled the implications. The existing power structure persecuted him for it. Perry seems to have the roles confused. In terms of climate change the scientists are Galileo and he and people like him are the catholic church.
Break on through to the other side?
Dear Mr. Perry,
a scientific theory that has not been settled is not a scientific theory. Can you say ‘hypothesis’? Good boy. Now can you say ‘willful ignorance’? Oh, that was good. Now for the biggy; can you say ‘short-term profits before long term climate stability’? Ooh, I see you’re struggling with that. Try ‘screw the environment, me and my corporate buddies love dollars’.
There, wasn’t that easy?
Yours Sincerely,
Acolyte of Sagan.
What Rob said…but also, what Carl Sagan said: “Just because some geniuses were laughed at, it does not follow that all who are laughed at are geniuses.”
When people throw the “they laughed at the Wright brothers” line on me, I like to come back with “they laughed at the Marx Brothers”. But in many cases, like the Wright brothers, other scientists weren’t laughing, they were trying to beat them to the finish line!
what 2 said
yep let’s make sure our super rich friends and enemies make as much $$ as possible before the rest of us cook to death.
This is going to be a real termitocracy: government by termites.