In 1633, opposition to the common viewpoint could mean death. This was the case with Galileo when he proposed that the Earth revolved around the sun. He was tried for heresy. Of course things are different today. People who question dogma are no longer burnt at the stake. Instead, they’re branded as having suspect motives, as reactionaries or simply as nutcases.

Consider global warming. The common viewpoint is that man-made carbon dioxide is to blame, but the Earth has been through ice ages and periods of global warming for millions of years. As recently as 1,000 years ago, the Earth was a degree warmer in the “Medieval Warm Period” and the Vikings could grow crops in Greenland. No one questions how this could happen so many years before our recent fuel consumption excesses. No one questions why man-made carbon dioxide would have any effect on global warming when it constitutes less than 1 percent of greenhouse gases (the major greenhouse gas is water vapor). No one questions the recent Antarctic ice cores from Dome Concordia, with ice up to 700,000 years old, which show increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration occurring about 1,000 years after global temperature rises, thus suggesting that high carbon dioxide levels are a result of global warming, not a cause.

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