Rupert Darwall > Quotes

“The orthodoxy produced by intellectual fashions, specialisation, and the appeal to authorities is the death of knowledge, and that the growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement. Karl Popper[2]”
― Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming: A History

“As a teenager, the future vice president and his sister read and talked about Silent Spring. A happy and vivid memory, Al Gore recalled. Rachel Carson’s picture hangs in his office and her example inspired Gore to write Earth in the Balance.[2] It is one of the most extraordinary books by any democratic politician seeking high elective office, for it constitutes an attack on Western civilisation and a fundamental rejection of two of its greatest accomplishments – the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions.”
― Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming: A History

“There’s no doubt that any man with complete conviction, particularly who’s an expert, is bound to shake anybody who’s got an open mind. That’s the advantage of having a closed mind. John F. Kennedy”
― Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming: A History

“The orthodoxy produced by intellectual fashions, specialisation, and the appeal to authorities is the death of knowledge, and that the growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement.”
― Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming: A History

“There’s no doubt that any man with complete conviction, particularly who’s an expert, is bound to shake anybody who’s got an open mind. That’s the advantage of having a closed mind. John F. Kennedy[1] Science is one of the very few human activities – perhaps the only one – in which errors are systematically criticised and fairly often, in time, corrected. Karl Popper[2]”
― Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming: A History

“Of the world’s top ten per capita carbon dioxide emitters in 2000, six are outside Annex I, including the top three, Qatar (with per capita emissions three times those of the US and nearly six times the average of the developed world), the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.[25] Neither is per capita GDP a criterion for inclusion. By 2009 for example, non-Annex I South Korea had per capita GDP of $23,407, just $278 less than the EU’s at $23,685.[26]”
― Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming: A History

“Global warming’s inability to meet the verifiability and falsifiability standards set by the Scientific Revolution constitutes a reversion to pre-modern modes of defining what should be accepted as knowledge based on appeals to authority. ”
― Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming: A History

“If science had kept its link with religion, Gore thought humans might not be threatening the earth’s climate balance.”
― Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming: A History