Al sagan

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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:31 am

A beautiful piece by Colby Cosh:

Any body of received knowledge stops being science the moment it starts being a priesthood. Sadly, [Carl] Sagan’s promotional playbook has proven more influential in the hands of environmentalists and health fanatics than anything he ever accomplished in astrophysics. Al Gore, for one, is doing an ongoing Sagan imitation that borders on the clownish, borrowing the vocal style and even the wardrobe without one iota of the genius. Shakespeare had it right: Too often, the evil that men do lives after them.

Read on.

Posted by Tim B. on 12/23/2006 at 08:46 PM

Too often, the evil that men do lives after them.
And too often the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Posted by RebeccaH on 2006 12 23 at 08:56 PM • permalink

Cliches are just so old hat.
Posted by CB on 2006 12 23 at 09:15 PM • permalink

Too often, the evil that men do lives after them.
If that’s a dig at my children, I’d like to say that they’re good boys, really; just a mite high spirited, that’s all.
Posted by paco on 2006 12 23 at 09:24 PM • permalink

#2: No way, cliches are the new black!
Posted by morbo on 2006 12 23 at 09:32 PM • permalink

does this make big al a goregan?
‘the Goregan, grim of aspect, glaring terribly, and about him were Terror and Unseasonably cold weather’. (apologies to Homer)
Can’t we ship this lot off to antarctica where they can spend the rest of their days praying for the global warming they so fervently believe in?
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2006 12 23 at 09:48 PM • permalink

eeniemeenie
How many of the greenies have brought vast tracts of tundra and icy waste in Russia because they are so confident it is going to happen??
If I were Putin Id be pumping out more CO2 than a bull could shit, all that icy coastline just waiting to become the new “club med”.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 12 23 at 10:18 PM • permalink

the frollicingmole
it also makes me wonder why Canada signed Kyoto
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2006 12 23 at 10:46 PM • permalink

Envirowackos you say? Lets head em off at the pass!
Posted by Grimmy on 2006 12 23 at 11:09 PM • permalink

Eenie
The Prime Minister of the time was the Right Honourable Jean Chretien (the RH bit is protocol vice descriptive). He held to the view that a promise is valued by its intent rather than its fulfillment. Thus Canada signed Kyoto because it was a good and noble idea; the fact that we could not meet any of its goals could await discovery in the future when it would be too late to repair the consequences.
Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2006 12 23 at 11:40 PM • permalink

Slightly O/T:
In a South Park episode, a recycling centre is labelled “Green Toss”.
Wonder how much ends up as landfill, as opposed to actually being recycled?
Posted by egg_ on 2006 12 23 at 11:41 PM • permalink

Thanks for having a Canada piece for my vacation in Oz. Cosh says it for me. Sagan fired the public’s imagination with his rhetoric but was a communicator and publicist and not a scientist. And he was also wrong on some things.
He did create a role model for Suzuki et al, though.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 12 23 at 11:42 PM • permalink

#10 egg,
Very little, usually none of it.
Posted by Daniel San on 2006 12 24 at 12:06 AM • permalink

#5- I agree! Let Al and his Goreball Warmening toadies put their hot air to good use: fueling lighter-than-air craft that will transport them to the South Pole, where they will be exchanged for a dozen penguins of no appearance.
Posted by Tex Lovera on 2006 12 24 at 12:24 AM • permalink

Gore, the poor little rich boy, the almost man, Walter Mitty writ large. Almost invested the internet, shoulda been a president and now presented as Gaia Guardian.
Posted by boxofmatches on 2006 12 24 at 12:36 AM • permalink

#12
Achieve @100% recycled?
I’ve heard in the media that they ‘endeavour’ to recycle all of the stuff, with various centres achieving different results.
Posted by egg_ on 2006 12 24 at 12:37 AM • permalink

Except Sagan would be rolling over in his grave at being hijacked by envirofascists.
My guess is Sagan would have been siding with Michael Crichton when he got severely dumped on after “Crisis”
Posted by wanglese on 2006 12 24 at 01:47 AM • permalink

talking about hypercrites- bono ‘sunday bloody sunday’ vox is about to become Sir Bono KBE
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2006 12 24 at 02:57 AM • permalink

Here is Michael Chrichton’s lecture where he criticizes Carl Sagan for the nuclear winter nonsense. It’s worth a read.
Posted by Brian O’Connell on 2006 12 24 at 03:36 AM • permalink

Pre-nuclear winter Sagan is one of my favorite authors. I immensely enjoyed his book “Cosmos”. I realized that he was all too human when he began to preach his nuclear disarmanent nonsense. However, Sagan was an original, and quite creative as a communicator. He stands quite in my book.
Algore and the other envirowhackos of today? They aren’t even a shadow off of one of Sagan’s turds.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 12 24 at 03:40 AM • permalink