Discussion: Ted Cruz To 'Global Warming Alarmists': Galileo Was 'Branded A Denier' Too

system1 · March 25, 2015, 7:10pm

Discussion for article #234691

austin_dave · March 25, 2015, 7:10pm

http://www.tofugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Galileo.jpg

bluinmaine · March 25, 2015, 7:14pm

“I am the child of two mathematicians and scientists,” Cruz said.

Well somebody screwed up when they spit in the test tube.

emilianoelmexicano · March 25, 2015, 7:15pm

Was Galileo mentally ill?

If so, that would be the only similarity between him and Cruz.

maxaroo · March 25, 2015, 7:16pm

“Today the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-earthers,” Cruz continued. “You know it used to be: ‘It is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat.’ And this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier.”

Most Republicans still believe the Earth is flat. That’s how the dinosaurs and humans were able to walk along, side-by-side.

sandyh · March 25, 2015, 7:17pm

It’s official. Cruz is off his rocker. Why doesn’t he compare himself to someone like Elmer Fudd which would be a lot more believable?Looney Tunes all the way, baby. The Koch Brothers should demand all their money back. This guy isn’t even trying to get himself elected.

Take away his ObamaCare.

gene_starwind · March 25, 2015, 7:17pm

Someone please explain to Canucky the Assclown that Galileo was denounced by the Church as a HERETIC for declaring the earth was NOT the center of the universe.

opinionated1 · March 25, 2015, 7:17pm

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) likened himself to Galileo as he defended his
position as a climate change denier in an interview Tuesday in New York
City with the Texas Tribune.

If Cruz had been around for Galileo’s trial, he would have been a vote to convict. And, by the way, the Church leaders at that time weren’t “flat earthers” like Cruz implies. They all knew the Earth was spherical. Their dispute with Galileo was about his claim that the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe, as Church doctrine asserted.

ralph_vonholst · March 25, 2015, 7:18pm

“I’m a big believer that we should follow the science and follow the evidence,” Cruz said. “If you look at global warming alarmists, they don’t like to look at the actual facts and the data. The satellite data demonstrate that there has been no significant warming whatsoever for 17 years.”

He’s citing a completely debunked study which I’ve drawn attention to before:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/07/29/282584/climate-scienists-debunk-latest-bunk-by-denier-roy-spencer/

When Root said that “most people say the science is clear,” Cruz was ready with a rebuttal. He cited a 1970 Newsweek article that touted “global cooling,” a trend that, he said, wasn’t supported by data, as support for his belief that we should “follow the science.”

That was over 40 years ago when Global Warming [AKA Global Climate Change, AKA Global Climate Disruption] was first being discussed by academics. There were few studies and few people were looking at long term trends and computer modeling was rare-- computers just weren’t that powerful. I remember, in the mid-70’s, my Plant Ecologist committee chairman wondering if the ocean’s capacity to absorb CO2 would stave off global warming. Nobody could answer that then.

“I am the child of two mathematicians and scientists,”

His parents were in the oil industry and owned a seismic data processing firm. His mother obtained an undergraduate degree in math, but then again so have a lot of junk bond salesmen and other scoundrels in the financial sector. His father appears to be a full time Dominionist pseudo-religious crank.

As for comparing himself to Galileo, I suggest he look to Baron Munchausen as a role model.

Edit: And Galileo wasn’t the denier, IT. WAS. THE. CHURCH.

gene_starwind · March 25, 2015, 7:18pm

Somebody shit in that genepool…

lestatdelc · March 25, 2015, 7:18pm

Ah Galileo was a scientist who was branded by deniers that the science showed that the geocentric model of the planets and stars was wrong.

Opposite-world continues unabated in Fright-Wing™ land and in Cruz’s addled mind.

But hey, Fright-Wingers™ never pass up a chance to play the victim of those mean liberal eggheads.

LOL

sherlock1 · March 25, 2015, 7:19pm

[”You know it used to be it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is
flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier,” Cruz said. ]

And you, dumbass, are the embodiment of a party that still thinks it IS flat still.

austin_dave · March 25, 2015, 7:19pm

So where’s your data, Ted?

sandyh · March 25, 2015, 7:19pm

He knows that. He’s just trying to play up to the people who thought it was cute that W was a smart ass, too. Must be something peculiar to Texas.

theod · March 25, 2015, 7:20pm

Unsurprisingly, Cruz is wrong. It was NEVER accepted scientific wisdom that the earth was flat. The conclusion that the earth was flat was at best first-order empiricism made somewhat firmer through self-interested ideological concerns. It was not really set up to be tested and proved true or false. Science is deliberate hypothesis-testing and verification. Religious-type thought is the former—assertion through ideology. Just as Cruz is denying global warming & anthropogenic climate change through specious bully-boy assertions. He gets Galileo wrong, too.

phhht · March 25, 2015, 7:21pm

Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo, it is not enough that you be
persecuted by an unkind establishment. You must also be right.

                                    -- Robert Lee Park

blue_grit · March 25, 2015, 7:21pm

I’m sorry Ted but the global warming deniers are NOT on the same side of history as Galileo, Copernicus and Einstein. They are in the pockets of people who have financial interests in denying what becomes more obvious everyday.

sherlock1 · March 25, 2015, 7:23pm

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists say that global warming is occurring and that human activity has been one of the driving forces behind it. On March 20, PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning project that fact checks the news, rated the satellite data claim of Cruz’s “Mostly False,” saying it ignored a longer-term trend.

Hmmmm…and remember. Galileo was an early proponent of the idea that the Earth rotates around the Sun, for which he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church and threatened repeatedly with death. Wonder how Cruz would respond against his infallible “church” on that? .

http://a.disquscdn.com/get?url=http%3A%2F%2Fimgur.com%2Fc0lF1Db.jpg&key=EQAcRLwhm8W02_tDiom9sA&w=800&h=367

brutus1910 · March 25, 2015, 7:23pm

I thought law school (Harvard, no less) teaches critical thinking and logic? Guess Cruz missed class that day.

caltg · March 25, 2015, 7:23pm

Cruz not only does not understand science, he also does not understand history. The notion of the earth as a sphere dates back to the 6th century BC and was a widely considered cosmological model by Plato, Aristotle and Ptolmey. The earth as an orb formed the basis of Aristote’s cosmology of a geocentric (earth centered) universe accepted as a physical given by the 3rd century BC Hellenistic scholars, and accepted as fundamental truth by the Roman Church until well into the Renaissance (ie; Galileo). By the time of Galileo, no educated person would have ever given credence to a flat earth.

Galileo’s “heresy” was that, based on his observations of celestial bodies, he concluded (as did Copernicus) that the universe was heliocentric (sun centered), effectively stating that the Earth was not the center of the universe. This was “new” thinking that challenged the traditional dogma of the church. Galileo was never accused of denying anything other than the erroneous (as it turned out) scientific dogma of the church, based on his objective scientific observation.

Based on this, climate change deniers, like Cruz, are much more the equivalent of the “flat-earthers,” or more accurately, of the colossally small-minded Roman church of the 16th-17th centuries in their blind faith in geocentric dogma.

Of course, I would not expect Cruz to understand any of this.