If a jury of suitably qualified scientists estimated that a given GW denier had already, with high probability (say 95%), caused the deaths of over one million future people, then s/he would be sentenced to death. The sentence would then be commuted to life imprisonment if the accused admitted their mistake, demonstrated genuine regret, AND participated significantly and positively over a long period in programs to reduce the effects of GW (from jail) – using much the same means that were previously used to spread the message of denial. At the end of that process, some GW deniers would never admit their mistake and as a result they would be executed. Perhaps that would be the only way to stop the rest of them. The death penalty would have been justified in terms of the enormous numbers of saved future lives.Professor Parncutt is no doubt an expert on climate science, not to mention ethics. No doubt he painstakingly collected this expertise while becoming Professor of Systematic Musicology. His proposal certainly does seem systematic, after all.
And the tell in his missive is this:
The sentence would then be commuted to life imprisonment if the accused admitted their mistake, demonstrated genuine regret, AND participated significantly and positively over a long period in programs to reduce the effects of GW (from jail)Such a totalitarian world view has been seen before. A grateful world thanks Professor Parncutt for his candor.
Extra credit assignment for Advanced Placement readers: compare and contrast the good Professor's argument about future deaths to Planned Parenthood (abortion), Greenpeace (the DDT scare that condemns millions of Third World babies to death from malaria), and to Britain's National Health Service and their "Liverpool Pathway" euthanasia program. Make sure to discuss why this question is not allowed to be discussed at the "University", and whether the Academy even pretends to include the Universe of knowledge in its scope these days.
Selective ethics. It also seems that for some reason natural selection seems to be working in negative mode in the academic world - they just get stupider and stupider.
ReplyDeleteLOL, and we're the crazy ones?
ReplyDelete+1 on PH... And there are a LOT of those LWLs teaching in universities today!!!
ReplyDeleteAnd people like him wonder why people like me own guns.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your Extra Credit:
ReplyDelete"Bollocks."
::turns in paper::
Gaaah. Or heh. Or both.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I start feeling like a slacker for having dropped out of more colleges than Sarah Palin, some cloistered git like this opens his yap to remind me that not all colleges are worth staying in.
His general mindset doesn't make me care much about his views on musicology, either.
Jeremy, careful about Our Sarah. ;-)
ReplyDeleteThe issue here is one of Class Warfare, as are the attacks on Palin. She seems no dumber than all sorts of current politicians, starting with the sitting Vice President. I'd bet on her's as the practical intelligence between those two.