Physicist William Happer arrives for a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York City on Jan. 13. (Albin Lohr-Jones/European Pressphoto Agency/Pool).
Trump met with crank physicist William Happer, the climate change denier’s climate change denier. Happer sings the wonders of carbon dioxide, extolling its virtues at every opportunity. He doesn’t get every little thing wrong, but he denies the big picture, human responsibility, and the rather serious question of balance, and what happens when instead of balance, you have a tipping point. What we have here is yet another omen of our impending doom.
…In a 2011 essay in the journal First Things, Happer further argued that “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.”
The essay triggered an in-depth rebuttal from Michael MacCracken, a climate scientist who formerly directed the U.S. Global Change Research Program in the Bill Clinton administration, and who characterized it as “so misleading that, in my view, it merits a paragraph-by-paragraph response.”
The meeting may be most noteworthy as an example of how Trump plans to get scientific advice — through meetings with people whose views are not necessarily part of the mainstream. It’s not a model that most scientists will approve of.
Trump has met individually not only with Happer, but also with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose views on the safety of vaccines have been rejected by scientific authorities. The meeting has caused alarm in the medical community.
The president-elect has not yet named a presidential science adviser.
This story is covered by The Washington Post, Gizmodo, and Raw Story.
He should try being locked in a coffin-sized space full of carbon dioxide for an hour. That’d teach him about the other virtues of carbon dioxide.
The president-elect has not yet named a presidential science adviser.
Otis Eugene Ray to the white courtesy phone, please!
The paragraph by paragraph rebuttal is worth reading.
It is so hard to determine if someone is a lying evil fuckwit or just a misguided evil fuckwit.
Gobi:
I’m not sure it matters. It should be incumbent on all people to do their best to not be an evil fuckwit of any kind when you have the ear and empty head of a president.
@Caine
I guess I was thinking if it is worth engaging them at all -- is there any point engaging the former and is there a thin sliver of a chance of bringing the latter a bit closer to humanity.
Going by Happer’s history on this subject, there would no point in engaging them at all. There’s no crank quite like a physicist gone crank.
gobi’s sockpuppet’s meatpuppet @ #3:
I can tell you from personal experience that the Happerition has never been one to consider whether something makes sense.
“We can’t figure out how to even get started on this problem.”
“Well…” [15 minute gap while he thinks about it] “… use the variational principle.”
“The what?”
“It’s explained here in chapter 7”
“Which… we get to in 3 weeks…?”
So, I’m actually willing to go with “misguided evil fuckwit”.
As if it matters.