Stirred up into a Fever

Kay Hagan didn’t put it quite this bluntly but, basically, what she said was Thom Tillis is a Neanderthal.

 
Now, no one, except for State Senators, believes being called a relic of the Stone Age is a compliment so, understandably unhappy, Tillis blasted Hagan right back saying the environmental regulations she supports (to end global warming) will cost jobs.
 
The press then asked Tillis if it was true – as Hagan said – that he didn’t believe in global warming.  And Tillis dodged.
 
Then the press asked Hagan which environmental regulations she supported and she not only dodged but added saving the planet might have to wait because new regulations might cost jobs.
 
That, of course, left Hagan in a fix.
 
But it left Tillis in a fix, too, because disagreeing with Al Gore (about saving the planet) means opening the newspaper and reading that all the scientists and every intellectual and every sensible person walking around on two legs believes the icecaps are melting – except that troglodyte Thom Tillis.
 
And lying in the dust, nursing his wounds, after being trampled by scientific infallibility what could Tillis say?
 
There are possibilities.
 
Like the words: Malthusian Catastrophe.  Piltdown Man.  And Population Bomb.
 
Back in 1798 an English scientist-economist, Thomas Malthus, produced a study that proved beyond a doubt the population was growing so fast doom was unavoidable. And just about every scientist and intellectual agreed.  The coming Malthusian Catastrophe was a fact. It was just a matter of time.
 
In 1912 an English scientist dug up a skull and jawbone from the Pleistocene Era buried in a pit in Piltdown, England, rushed back to London and announced he’d found the missing link – ‘Piltdown Man’ – and that was accepted as scientific fact, too, until, years later, carbon testing proved he’d found the skull of a man and jawbone of an ape.
 
In 1968 Paul Ehrlich, a scientist at Stanford University, wrote The Population Bomb and prophesized, ‘The battle to feed humanity is over…  In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.’
 
Ehrlich’s book sold 2 million copies and the intellectual community went wild – it was required reading at UNC.  Only Neanderthals disagreed.
 
All those scientific facts turned out to be fads.
 
Of course, ‘Piltdown Man’ doesn’t mean Al Gore’s prediction of doom is wrong but on the other hand it is cause for a reasonable man to cast a discerning eye on scientific infallibility – without being a Neanderthal.
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Carter Wrenn

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Stirred up into a Fever

Kay Hagan didn’t put it quite this bluntly but, basically, what she said was Thom Tillis is a Neanderthal.

 
Now, no one, except for State Senators, believes being called a relic of the Stone Age is a compliment so, understandably unhappy, Tillis blasted Hagan right back saying the environmental regulations she supports (to end global warming) will cost jobs.
 
The press then asked Tillis if it was true – as Hagan said – that he didn’t believe in global warming.  And Tillis dodged.
 
Then the press asked Hagan which environmental regulations she supported and she not only dodged but added saving the planet might have to wait because new regulations might cost jobs.
 
That, of course, left Hagan in a fix.
 
But it left Tillis in a fix, too, because disagreeing with Al Gore (about saving the planet) means opening the newspaper and reading that all the scientists and every intellectual and every sensible person walking around on two legs believes the icecaps are melting – except that troglodyte Thom Tillis.
 
And lying in the dust, nursing his wounds, after being trampled by scientific infallibility what could Tillis say?
 
There are possibilities.
 
Like the words: Malthusian Catastrophe.  Piltdown Man.  And Population Bomb.
 
Back in 1798 an English scientist-economist, Thomas Malthus, produced a study that proved beyond a doubt the population was growing so fast doom was unavoidable. And just about every scientist and intellectual agreed.  The coming Malthusian Catastrophe was a fact. It was just a matter of time.
 
In 1912 an English scientist dug up a skull and jawbone from the Pleistocene Era buried in a pit in Piltdown, England, rushed back to London and announced he’d found the missing link – ‘Piltdown Man’ – and that was accepted as scientific fact, too, until, years later, carbon testing proved he’d found the skull of a man and jawbone of an ape.
 
In 1968 Paul Ehrlich, a scientist at Stanford University, wrote The Population Bomb and prophesized, ‘The battle to feed humanity is over…  In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.’
 
Ehrlich’s book sold 2 million copies and the intellectual community went wild – it was required reading at UNC.  Only Neanderthals disagreed.
 
All those scientific facts turned out to be fads.
 
Of course, ‘Piltdown Man’ doesn’t mean Al Gore’s prediction of doom is wrong but on the other hand it is cause for a reasonable man to cast a discerning eye on scientific infallibility – without being a Neanderthal.
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Carter Wrenn

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