Dear editor,
Tim Chaisson (Science trumps fiction for global change, Letter, Dec. 29) directed some mocking and abrasive comments at someone who commented on the Group Think on Climate Change. Are the comments naive?
To suggest “proven science that has no vested interest other than the truth” is willful blindness. In the face of scientism, this view is nonsense. The phenomenon of scientism is found everywhere, from metaphysics to climate change.
The Grand Design written by Stephen Hawking, maintains that science answers everything. This argument was shredded by Dr. John Lennox, pointing to three errors of logic in the opening paragraph alone. This puts us on notice about the hubris of some scientists.
Why did Patrick Moore quit Greenpeace, and write Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout? Greenpeace had been taken over by social engineers, who were not reading from that science book Mr. Chaisson mentioned. Moore, found himself as the only scientist on the board; and quit. Perhaps there are scientists with pure hearts after all!
Retired physics professor Freeman Dyson stated “I’m 100 per cent Democrat, and I like Obama, but he took the wrong side on this issue (climate change).” Dyson is also quoted recently as saying “Pollution is quite separate from climate change problem: one can be solved, and the other cannot, and the pubic doesn’t understand this.”
Should the professor be ‘pushed aside’ too?
Can Mr. Chaisson square his comments on war and religion with the actions of Stalin and Hitler who were avowed atheists? Some argue that atheism and environmentalism are religions.
Lenin coined the phrase ‘Useful Idiot’; taken to mean intellectuals who saw Stalin as the saviour of mankind. Doris Lessing visited Russia in the early 1950s. Originally deceived, she later stated that she had been used by Stalin, and in fact was a Useful Idiot. Many are keen to worship at the altar of something they view as the saviour to mankind. How many have Lessing’s courage to admit they have been duped?
Christopher M. Kutyn
Comox