Confession: The best grade I ever got in a science class was a B-minus in 11th grade physics. That said, I am pretty damn sure of two things:
1) Man made climate change is a very real, and utterly terrifying phenomenon.
2) Likening elements of global warming to “The poor Jews” during the holocaust is a terrible, terrible idea.
And yet, in total disregard for those truths, which the vast majority of people hold to be fairly elementary, William Happer, a professor of atomic physics and optics at Princeton university, during a recent interview on CNBC, said, in an attempt to clarify comments he made in 2009:
The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler. Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews
At that point, it might have been appropriate for CNBC’s graphics editor to animate a lone tumbleweed, slowly rolling across the bottom of the screen.
Watch the whole thing here:
As io9 points out, this is far from Happer’s first time dancing the Jews-as-CO2 tango. In a 2009 Daily Princetonian interview, the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics is quoted as saying:
“This is George Orwell. This is the ‘Germans are the master race. The Jews are the scum of the earth.’ It’s that kind of propaganda,” […] “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Every time you exhale, you exhale air that has 4 percent carbon dioxide. To say that that’s a pollutant just boggles my mind. What used to be science has turned into a cult.”
And what used to be a respected professor with an endowed chair at an ivy league school, has turned into another cringe-worthy example of Godwin’s law.
[via io9]
Leave a Reply