| MERCHANTS OF DESPAIR Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism Robert Zubrin New York: Encounter Books, April 2012 |
Rating: 3.0 Fair |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-59403-476-3 | ||||
| ISBN 1-59403-476-1 | 318pp. | HC/BWI | $25.95 | |
| Page 16: | "It therefore follows that if we get rid of some—especially those we don't like anyway—we'll all be better off." |
| This comment weakens the focus section. Zubrin should have stuck to factual statements here. |
| Page 24: | "Here is a thought experiment: Thomas Edison and Louis Pasteur were approximate contemporaries. Edison invented the electric light, central power generation, recorded sound, and motion pictures. Pasteur pioneered the germ theory of disease that stands at the core of modern medicine. Which of these two would you prefer not to have existed? Go ahead, choose." |
| False choice. You cannot guarantee that an invention will not appear by removing the man who did invent it from history. It is not the number of people living that makes innovation, but the quality of their education, the level of technology at the time, and the presence of a culture that rewards creativity in science and technology. |
| Page 25: | "The world needs more children." |
| Non sequitur. |
| Page 30: | "While other animals cannot inherit acquired characteristics, let alone obtain beneficial adaptations from those with whom they are unrelated, human beings can." |
| Human beings cannot inherit acquired characteristics either. They certainly can, through learning, pick up innovative cultural adaptations. The classic example would be stone tools. Some other animals can do this too. Japanese macaques learn to wash sand off their food, for example. |
| Page 58: | "...the two [Madison Grant and Henry Fairfield Osborn] took the lead in launching such early environmentalist groups as the Sierra Club and the Save the Redwoods League." |
Not according to the Sierra Club's own account of its origins. (See Chapter Three.)
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| Page 62: | "Muller went on to win the Nobel Prize for his work in genetics in 1946, help found the Pugwash movement attempting to arrange for collaboration between Anglo-American and Soviet elites, be the university mentor of astronomer Carl Sagan in the 1950s, and help start the institution that would be informally known as the 'Nobel Prize sperm bank.'" |
| On Hermann Muller's Wikipedia page, the only mention of Carl Sagan is that Sagan worked in his laboratory as an undergraduate. Sagan's entry says the same thing. Further it makes clear that Muller's influence was little more than incidental: Sagan wrote a thesis on the origin of life with Harold Urey at the University of Chicago and went on to obtain his Ph.D. there in astronomy and astrophysics. From his biography, I recall that his mentor was Gerard Kuiper. |
| Page 88: | "Other noteworthy close Sanger supporters included British eugenicists Havelock Ellis and H. G. Wells..." |
| On page 40, Zubrin describes Ellis as "Sexual-liberation radical Havelock Ellis" and Wells as "socialist futurist H. G. Wells". I never heard either of them called a eugenicist. |
| Page 99: | "Using evocative language, Carson told a powerful fable of a town whose people had been poisoned, and whose spring had been silenced of birdsong, because all life had been extinguished by pesticides." |
| Yes, it's a fable, and plainly labeled as such. This, and Zubrin's whole treatment of Silent Spring, reveals an intent to distort its message and impugn the quality of its science. |
| Page 99: | "While excellent literature, however, Silent Spring was very poor science. Indeed, considered as a scientific work, Carson's book can only be described as a mendacious fraud." |
| Even a cursory look at Carson's book will show its science to be quite solid, with numerous citations of supporting research. |
| Page 114: | "Thus Ehrlich laid out his brave new world—one whose purported lack of resources requires the abandonment of children, freedom, moral concern, progress, striving, and rational thought, but which, like Huxley's, compensates its inhabitants for these losses with the consolation of unlimited recreational sex." |
| Uh... no. |
| Page 115: | "Following the meeting, Aurelio Peccei, a wealthy former executive at Fiat and Olivetti, reassembled a select few of the participants at his home, a gathering out of which arose the Club of Rome, a prominent propagator of antihuman dogma." |
| Zubrin possibly perhaps meant to say a prominent propagator of pusillanimous perfidy. |
| Page 115: | "Jointly led by Peccei and Alexander King, [...] this cabal initiated a set of studies..." |
| If you disagree with Zubrin's position, you're part of a cabal. |
| Page 123: | "Finally we come to 'finitude,' a quasi-religious concept upon which the Malthusians stake the ultimate truth of their dogma. 'Yes,' they cry, 'you humans may be able to make more food and mine more metal using your clever little tricks that have foiled our predictions so far, but in the end, there is only so much matter in the Earth. It is not infinite! Sooner or later you are going to run out of mass, and when that day comes everyone will see that we were right all along!" |
| This is tone trolling. |
| Page 136: | "Realizing this, professional demagogues like Ralph Nader seized upon the issue." |
| And ad hominem. |
| Page 138: | "There are those who argue that the Earth's natural resources should be considered 'the common heritage of all mankind.'" |
| Some pages back, he was arguing that there was no such thing as a natural resource. |
| Page 140: | "...as well as several more neutrons which can be used to continue to process in a 'chain reaction.'" |
| Word choice: S/B "to continue the process". |
| Page 141: | "There may have been substantial nuclear-related casualties [at Fukushima] however—but these were caused by Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the Obama administration's Nuclear Regulatory Commission.'" |
| Zubin asserts that Jaczko's warning for Americans to stay fifty miles away from the stricken plant hampered rescue efforts. Jaczko did make the statement, and later defended it. . It may have hampered rescue efforts, but claiming it led to substantial casualties is a stretch. |
| Page 144: | "So the claim that nuclear reactors can go off like Hiroshima bombs is simply false." |
| I have thought so too. But recent research makes me wonder. |
| Page 145: | "After that, the waste is not going anywhere, and no one, by accident or design, will ever stumble upon it." |
| Not by design, certainly, since they would be seeking it explicitly. |
| Page 145: | "...has caused the Obama administration and many law -makers to oppose the project...'" |
| Improper hyphenation: the autospacing software inserted an unwanted space before the hyphen. |
| Page 154: | "While disposing of millions of dollars provided to them [...], the resources available to support their work were meager in comparison with their vast ambitions.'" |
| Dangling participle: S/B "they had meager resources". |
| Page 201: | "Not only that, experiments are now underway with corn varieties...'" |
| Missing space: S/B "under way". |
| Page 240: | "It is one thing to pay $75 per barrel [of oil] when you live in a country like the United States, where the average worker makes over $20 per hour.'" |
| Cites "Economy at a glance, http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm, data extracted on September 2, 2011." That page reports "Average Hourly Earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls" and says it was $23.25 in December 2011. |
| Page 247: | "With practically unlimited funds and media support, the campaign to create the cult is now well underway.'" |
| Missing space: S/B "under way". |
| Page 249: | "It could be that the climate alarmists have answers to rebut these critics and their data, but if so, they are not showing it.'" |
| Number error: S/B "them". |
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