Dear Editor,
I remember learning from my grade school history classes that bloodletting was a consensus medical procedure used by most doctors. In fact, our first president, George Washington, strongly believed in the practice and actually ordered the bloodletting that took his life. Marie Antoinette was subject to bloodletting as she was birthing her first child. In today’s scientific world, one struggles to imagine, to comprehend, the consensus science of bloodletting, especially during childbirth.
We also learned that in 1961, President Kennedy expanded the space program with the ambitious goal to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Within a few years an army of people, industrialists, medical researchers, machinists, engineers, factory workers, businessmen, mathematicians, scientists, etc., were working together to achieve the president’s dream. It was on July 20, 1969, that President Kennedy’s dream was realized. We put a man on the moon.
In the early ‘60s, we were also being taught the consensus science that the next ice age was imminent. Thus, scientists were looking for ways to warm the earth. As a young child, this put a scare into me. I am sure this same scare is being put into children today with consensus science now telling us the exact opposite. Now, we are going to burn up in a few years.
My point here is that there is a stark contrast between our first president and our 35th president. Our first relied on consensus science and it cost him his life. Our 35th relied on exact science, and he put a man on the moon (not to mention bettering the lives of all humankind through the spin-offs resulting from the space program). The climate science projections are consensus science projections. Knowing all I know about the earth’s history, I am unwilling to bet my life or the life of my children and grandchildren on consensus science. We did not put a man on the moon using consensus science, and we will not solve climate swings using consensus science.
TJ Smith
Billings
