Paul Ehrlich treated his intellectual rival Julian Simon with great disrespect during Simon’s lifetime. Ehrlich refused to debate Simon or even meet him in person. He insulted Simon in print. Ehrlich even scolded Science magazine for publishing Simon’s 1980 breakthrough essay “Resources, Population, Environment: An Oversupply of Bad News,” with the words: “Could the editors have found someone to review Simon’s manuscript who had to take off this shoes to count to 20?” (quoted in Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource II, 1996, p. 612)
Such intolerance for reasoned dissent, unfortunately, has also been a trait of Ehrlich protégé John Holdren. After I published my review of John Holdren’s criticism of Bjorn Lomborg in 2003, I emailed Holdren my paper, “The Heated Energy Debate,” and alerted him to a new book I had coming out, Climate Alarmism Reconsidered.…
Historian of science Thomas Kuhn warned of “scientists … behav[ing] differently” and experiencing “pronounced professional insecurity” when one of their long-held beliefs comes under increasing pressure from new science (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1962. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970, pp. 24, 67–68).
Is this the case with NASA scientist James Hansen, who (in the opinion of his many and growing critics, and even some friends) keeps putting his foot where his mouth is?…
“Oh how David Koch wishes he could have donated more to the arts and medical science and less to political causes. In this regard, when will the Left demand that private foundations stop propping up climate alarmism and redirect their donations to, say, pediatric research?”
In “David Koch Steps Down from Business and Conservative Political Group,” New York Times writer Jeremy Peters misses a very important common denominator in the business and political philsophy of David Koch and Charles Koch. This error is common and cannot be corrected enough.
Below, I comment on three quotations from Mr, Peters’s article.
“Using their powerful political group, Americans for Prosperity, they ramped up their political giving during the presidency of Barack Obama, whom Charles and David saw as seriously misguided and driven by a socialistic agenda that threatened the free-market, libertarian philosophy they espoused.…