Everybody's favorite cosmologist and climatologist, Rush Limbaugh, did a little bit yesterday on how global warming can't possibly be happening, because, come on, climatologists can't even accurately predict how many hurricanes are coming each year.
Which, uh... I'm not sure that makes any sense at all. But we'll move on.
He also wraps his mind around quantum physics and cosmology, as illustrated by the story we wrote about yesterday, in which scientists appear to say (but don't really) that we have actually shortened the life of the universe just by looking at it. (Read yesterday's post for a longer explanation)
Rush thinks that idea's silly. Fair enough. So did most scientists, and the author of the paper involved turned out to be mortified at the way the ideas got portrayed in the headlines. I'm actually quite pleased that a cosmologist got on the radio and explained the concept of dark matter nicely. I'm not sure that Limbaugh was quite justified in connecting abstract cosmological speculations to liberals "sterilizing" themselves to avoid adding to the population growth, but at least he's thinking about it.
Then he goes on to connect his cosmology and environmentalism with the following argument:
I'd make some hot air joke, but really, it's almost a serious argument.
It makes no logical sense, and can be refuted by just looking at how weather patterns change over a city, but I suspect it's widely held.
We're small, how could we affect the whole globe?
Yet we can. Any scientist will tell you this. Science is about understanding how small things can have big effects. It's far past time to listen to the scientists on this, not Rush Limbaugh's gut feelings.
Global Warming, Quantum Physics [Rush Limbaugh transcript]
(Image: Hurricane Katrina from space. Credit: NASA)
