Robert W. Felix

Robert W. Felix is a crank extraordinaire promoting his own brand of Earth changes, which acts as a framework that he can shoehorn various other types of crankery into. All of his "theories" revolve around pole shifts and cosmic rays.

The fault in our stars
Pseudoastronomy
Adding epicycles
Epicyclists
v - t - e
Some dare call it
Conspiracy
What THEY don't want
you to know!
Sheeple wakers
v - t - e
“”Is Felix a climatologist, a volcanologist or an oceanographer? Er, none of the above. His biography describes him as a "former architect". His website is so bonkers that I thought at first it was a spoof. Sadly, he appears to believe what he says.
—George Monbiot[1]

Ice Age Now

Felix believes the reversal of the Earth's magnetic poles is imminent and that their reversal causes environmental cataclysms which lead into ice ages. One of his two websites is Ice Age Now, which is where he peddles this facet of his theory of everything. Ice Age Now is mostly dedicated to global warming denial, survivalism (better stock up on dry goods and fuel), conspiracy theories (he believes the government is covering up evidence of the coming ice age), and abiotic oil crankery. The sidebar is a long laundry list of denialist PRATTs, which makes it like Skeptical Science without the rebuttals. The "news" section seems to exist mostly to document any time at which a snowflake falls anywhere in the world (proof of the coming ice age!) and parrot whatever the latest denialist idiocy is, usually something from Piers Corbyn or Tim Ball. He also hawks his thoroughly "researched" books here.

George Monbiot specifically debunked one of his claims, that 555 of 625 of the Earth's mountain glaciers are advancing.[1]

Evolutionary Leaps

Evolutionary Leaps is Felix's other site where he pushes a deranged (but somewhat original, at least) pseudoscientific version of evolution. He basically takes Stephen Jay Gould's ideas about punctuated equilibrium and shoehorns his Earth changes crankery into it. According to Felix, the pole shifts that cause ice ages are responsible for mass extinctions with one element of these events being fiery carbon nanodiamonds raining from the skies. That's where the abiotic oil crankery plays into his grand "theory." WorldNutDaily columnist Jerome Corsi occasionally makes guest posts on the subject. Felix claims evolution is driven by cosmic rays and other radiation in addition to these pole shifts. To do this, he draws on a number of old crank tomes (mostly Immanuel Velikovsky and some creationists) and fabricated "facts" and mixes it with generously cherry-picked and quote mined research done by actual evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, and archaeologists.

Quotes on Felix
“”With the publication of his chapter "Fatal Flaw," author Robert W. Felix joins such luminaries as Charles Darwin, Alice Walker, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Maya Angelou, Aldous Huxley and Walt Whitman.
—Robert W. Felix on Robert W. Felix
“”I remember thinking when I first read this in your book (about carbon raining from the sky) that I'm reading a book written by a nut job. But as I do more independent research, I keep finding supporting evidence for your claims.
—Richard Lacaba on Robert W. Felix[2]
gollark: Yes.
gollark: > Memento mori<@507584570485506059> no.
gollark: Allegedly, yes.
gollark: Apparently 5D chess with multiverse time travel is an actual thing? Steam just showed me it.
gollark: IKR, right?

See also

References
  1. Junk Science, Monbiot in The Guardian
  2. Book Written by a Nut Job, Evolutionary Leaps
This article is issued from Rationalwiki. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.