David Harsanyi Quotes
Admittedly, I possess virtually no expertise in science. That puts me in exactly the same position as most dogmatic environmentalists who want to craft public policy around global warming fears.
Harsanyi, David. "The Global Warming Lock Step." The Denver Post, 2007.
Many scientists saw this quotation as indicative of the problem of non-scientifically trained people having to make scientific judgments. This view was not typical of members of Congress. See {611678}.
For an example of what Senator Jeffords was referring to, see {610719}.
He had been a vigerous global warming skeptic for some theoretical reasons having to do with how the theormometers measured temperature. He and his daughter put together a project to examine most of the data and make what he thought was a proper analysis. A significant part of his funding came from the ultra-conservative billionaire, Charles Koch who also funded the anti-global warming Heartland Institute. However, after Muller and his daughter finished their analysis, he surprised most and angered Koch, with this statement. The data had changed his mind.
What makes this quote particularly memorable is that Inhofe was actually the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and thus will go down in history.
Eugenics was an intellectual movement of the first half of the 20th century that was mostly junk science and was debunked. While the analogy is clever and makes her political point about climate change science, there are actually several major differences. Eugenics was never a set of scientific laws that had near unanimous support of all the scientists in that and related fields while climate science is. Eugenics was not an experimental science where its principles were subject to refutation with data. So called Eugenic scientists did no experiments, analyzed almost no data, and were more philosophical and political than scientific. Most of the Eugenics advocates were not scientists at all and had little or no training in science.
David Harsanyi is an American conservative writer, opinion columnist, and author.