Neil deGrasse Tyson in some recent remarks:
…when it comes time to make decisions about science, it seems to me that people have lost the ability…to judge…what is true, and what is not. What is reliable, what is not reliable. What should you believe, what should you not believe.
And
When you have people who don’t know much about science, standing in denial of it, and rising to power, that is a recipe for the complete dismantling of our informed democracy.
Indeed. And yet guys like Tyson are loathe to look into the mirror and see who it is that stand in denial of science, even of the basic tenets of science, like constant questioning, comparing theory with observation and adjusting theory to fit the observations—rather than the climate pseudo-scientists’ practice of ignoring those offending observations while decrying those who disagree with their settled science.
Climate pseudo-science has a long and venerable track record of failed predictions; it’s models still can’t predict simultaneously the past and the present. Indeed, its predictions of the present are wildly at odds with empirical observations from satellites and high-altitude balloons. Global temperatures haven’t risen significantly for nearly 20 years, and the rise since the early 19th century still leaves us below the long-term global average. Atmospheric CO2, far from being a pollutant (a bald, unsubstantiated declaration of the EPA’s pseudo-science), is a well-known plant food.
The only tangible effect of anthropogenic CO2 to date is that CO2 is greening the Earth, stimulating faster plant growth, and more drought resilience across a broad range of species.
And so guys like Tyson decry the failure of democracy and of democratic principles because other guys, of whom they disapprove, get elected.
Because only the correct outcome is democratic.
This isn’t petty hubris. It’s dishonesty.