This one is too funny, don’t know how I missed it.
The pitbull of climate denial, Marc Morano, recently won the Petr Beckmann Award from Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. Though you wouldn’t know it from the name, the DDP seems to be a dedicated climate-science denial organization with close links to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (the two groups share an address and some key personnel). And if you think the AAPS sounds legit, a quick scan through it’s journal turns up an article questioning the HIV – AIDS link, a study attempting to link breast cancer rates to abortion, one linking vaccines to autism, and a study on homosexuality that ends like so…
American concepts and attitudes about homosexuality have changed significantly in recent decades. Most of society and the medical profession now view it as an acceptable alternate lifestyle: a biologically determined, permanent “orientation”, rather than a learned, experiential, and often changeable choice. The concept of homosexuality as a permanent “orientation” is, however, without scientific validation; the notion is entirely politically grounded. One effect of this new view has been to understate the medical and societal harm produced by the promiscuous sexual practices typically associated with homosexuality.
In other words, the AAPS is yet another vile, right-wing organization that promotes junk science.
Meanwhile, the award Morano has won is given to “individuals who demonstrate courage and achievement in defence of scientific truth and freedom”. If you’re looking for the laughs in all this though, check out the Petr Beckmann the award is named after. He is remembered for being on the vanguard of Relativity denial. (Update at 9:39pm: About Beckmann’s Relativity denial, forgot to note that he wasn’t one of the people back in 1909 who thought this new “theory” was just too crazy. No. Beckmann was claiming to have debunked the Theory of Relativity on Usenet and in a book called Einstein Plus Two which was published in 1987. So, long after Relativity had been accepted by the scientific consensus.)
That’s right, there’s apparently an anti-Einstein underground that thinks one of the most-validated scientific theories ever is a bunch of made-up junk. You simply can’t be a bigger crank if you’re dissing on the Theory of Relativity.
So, congratulations Marc Morano on that award for being the most outrageous ignoramus at the lobotomy barndance.
But before we go, let’s add this up, shall we? Climate-science denial sits at the intersection of Relativity denial (I’m still shocked that this is for real), vaccine denial, HIV-AIDS denial, homosexual-rights denial, and (as we pointed out before) evolution denial.
At what point do we stop qualifying the views of anti-climate-science guys like Morano and just call them what they are: anti-Science?
