Reply #16: "Ex falso quodlibet" is, incidently, useless for scientific reasoning. [View All]

[struggle4progress]

It is of course useful for developing axiomatic systems, but it is completely void of scientific content.

"If .. anti-nuclear<s> .. had .. shut all of those <nuclear> plants .. the world's carbon dioxide burden would now be ..about 2% greater than it is now" is true only because the hypothesis is contrary to fact. It is equally true that

"If anti-nuclears had shut all of the nuclear plants, the world's carbon dioxide burden would now be lower than it is now,"

"If anti-nuclears had shut all of the nuclear plants, American would have a Mars colony today," and

"If anti-nuclears had shut all of the nuclear plants, cows would all be purple."

You are certainly welcome to reason about non-existent alternate histories in imaginary alternative universes, but you shouldn't pretend that such arguments are "scientific" in any meaningful sense, since they are based on fantasies.

The fact that you have apparently clad the results of some some arithmetic calculations in an "ex falso" wrapper doesn't redeem the argument.