Check our George Will’s column today, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will1.asp, where he recounts the “global cooling†hysteria of the early 70’s. Here’s a quote:
“While worrying about Montana’s receding glaciers, [Montana Governor] Schweitzer, who is 50, should also worry about the fact that when he was 20 he was told to be worried, very worried, about global cooling.
“Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.” Science Digest (February 1973) reported that “the world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age.” The Christian Science Monitor (“Warning: Earth’s Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect,” Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers “have begun to advance,” “growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter” and “the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool.” Newsweek agreed (“The Cooling World,” April 28, 1975) that meteorologists “are almost unanimous” that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said “may mark the return to another ice age.” The Times (May 21, 1975) also said “a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable” now that it is “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since about 1950.”
Today, of course, Time magazine tells us the debate is over. Be worried. Be very worried, Time says, because all scientists tell us that the globe is warming.
I am not weighing in on the global warming debate. My point is that “all scientists†today are saying something that is mutually exclusive with what “all scientists†were saying only 30 years ago. No matter which way you try to slice or dice this, the plain inescapable fact of the matter is they were wrong then or they are wrong now. They are caught in the vice of what logic mavens call “the law of the excluded middle.†The earth may be in for a new ice age; the earth may be heading for sauna conditions. Whichever way its going, “all scientists†were wrong – either then or now.
What does this have to do with the ID debate? Everything. When one debates a Darwinist what is almost always the first thing that gets thrown in your face? Yes, that’s right – the logical fallacy of the appeal to authority. Except in this case, “all scientists†say that Darwinism is true. The global warming/cooling debate illustrates why the appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. So keep Will’s quote handy, and the next time the appeal to authority gets thrown at you, use it to illustrate the fallacy.