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JAMES_HANSEN_VS_LINUS_PAULING

                                             November 14, 2013


My fellow environmentalists:
Is James Hansen our hero?             (Of course I'm an environmentalist,
                                       who isn't?  The question is what kind.)


If so, do we regard him as an infallible source?
Then how can we continue to ignore his pro-nuclear stance?

   The other way we might take someone
   like Hansen, however, is that he's
   someone like Linus Pauling, who             A theory that I like: The Linus
   achieved many great things but spent        Paulings of the world reach
   the last years of his life promoting        both higher and lower than the
   a crackpot theory about mega-doses of       rest of us because of the same,
   Vitamin C.                                  in-built characteristics. If
                                               Pauling were not capable of
   But then the question becomes:              Vitamin C delusions, he might
   how do we know the good Hansen              not have been capable of such
   from the bad?                               insight into quantum mechanics
                                               and chemistry.
   How can you celebrate someone for
   promoting a truth inconvienient for                 It takes quite a bit
   the opposition, and then reject him                 of self-confidence if
   for saying something inconvienient                  not deranged egotism
   for ourselves?                                      to assume that your
                                                       understanding is
                                                       greater than any one
          The answer of course, is that                else's.
          we need to dig into the truth of
          these positions, you might say,
          "on their own merits", where the
          prestige of the speaker is just
          one rule-of-thumb to employ
          among many others...





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