Science and Panic
We are bombarded with dire warnings about our environment, but nearly all of the research
purported to support those claims was funded by the political powers
advocating them. Political powers will pick-and-choose scientists who
provide useful factoids, despite what caveats those scientists attach to
preserve their credibility.
The topic of climate change brings this mixture to an extreme, such that some scientists have traded activism for credibility.
Politicians may further distort or lie about scientific findings,
especially when results are scarce, inconclusive or contradictory. For
the layman or dangerously educated,
point-by-point arguments are pointless, as it becomes difficult to
discern between fact, deception, science or politics. Resources are so
tainted by deception that individual study is frustrated, and most
laymen take sides out of political allegiance. Rather than arguing factoids, the truth can be revealed by exposing the modus operandi and true objectives of environmental activism.
Would Darwin have published On The Origin of Species
if he had to worry about the opinions of government scientists and
politicians? The issue was still touchy enough in 1967, that many
scientists proclaimed the Patterson-Gimlin film
a hoax, for fear that “Patty” might have been the “missing link.”
Answering why a stout, hairy, naked woman was roaming the woods could
have made careers. The opportunity is far from lost, as hairy, naked
and roaming the woods is humanity’s past and future, if the
environmental extremists get their way, and likely even if they fail.
Environmental extremism is a tool
of communist change. Any product of industry can be attacked as
harmful to the environment, until it is addressed or found harmless. If
something is truly harmful, the amount at which harm occurs can be
readily determined, and the problem solved. Eventually, all harmful
chemicals and behaviors will be addressed. This tool of anti-capitalism
is done, or so one would think.
What if activists allege that some chemical, definitely harmful at concentration [X], is also harmful at 1% of 1% of [X]?
Such levels may be undetectable, and allegedly take decades to show any
effect. Results may range from weak positives to nothings. The
positives can be lauded, while the negatives ignored or belittled as
“industry funded.” Studies might take decades and end inconclusively,
and so the activists can continue attacking, and the scientists can
continue studying, while John Q. Public is panicked into action over
something unmeasurable. Calcium supplements contain “unsafe” amounts of
lead; however, that lead is not a contaminant of industry, but the
normal background trace found in all calcium, present for countless
eons. Never try to find out what is in sea salt. Our world is so naturally polluted, it must never have borne life, by definition of the extremists.
Like
many school and university students, this author was deceived about the
environment. Given what was taught in high school, at this point in
time, the gas pumps should be empty, our boilers without coal, O-zone
nowhere, skin cancer everywhere, and the Midwest a desert covered in
trash. If what my parents were taught was true, the Midwest should be a
glacier covered in trash. My eyes were opened when I learned
environmental science from a real environmental scientist. During my
graduate years, my department invited many climatologists to present
their research. Not one of them showed anything to demonstrate that the
Earth had warmed, nor did any claim it had. Some of them presented
evidence that the Earth was unusually cool. All of them had been cited
by the extremists as part of the global warming “consensus.”
It is pointless to provide lists of scientific findings versus political dogma. If I told you that scientists are uncertain whether the Earth has warmed or cooled over the last century, that it depends on how the data is analyzed, that modern data shows cooling,
that glacial and ocean sediment data raise questions about the
relationship between CO2 and temperature, then what would happen when
you confront someone steeped in dogma? An argument. Both beholden to
what each was told, and neither an expert.
Even
catching the extremists in the fallacies of their own arguments is
tricky. The rage was “global warming,” but after temperature data
showed a multi-decade pause, and predictions were proved wrong, many of
the extremists switched
to “climate change.” Searching Google to find when the switch
occurred, one finds page upon page of activists attempting to convince
you that it never occurred, or that “climate change” is about more than warming,
and thus more correct. Activists now promote “unusual” climate events
as “proof”; but while infrequent, many of these events are recurrent
over decades, and very few of them have broken any records. The
extremists are constantly creating new lies
to cover for the exposed lies, and are forever slippery, never
admitting that previous lies were exposed or disproved, while
simultaneously abandoning them.
Deception
is the norm. One good example is the SkepticalScience website,
operated by anthropogenic global warming (AGW) advocate John Cook,
who did some shoddy and debunked research trying to prove a 97%
“consensus” (Bill O’Reilly cited it, unaware it was debunked). The
SkepticalScience website is designed to match Google searches about
points of scientific disagreement (e.g. consensus), lure in searchers
with deceptive titles suggesting an AGW skeptical article, and then
present convincing but questionable science, logic and references
decidedly advocating for AGW. Simply put; bait and switch, deny the
lie.
A
significant amount of resources have been thrown at measuring global
warming, but it has proved unmeasurable; a common theme in environmental
activism. Once again, this last year has seen numerous funding
opportunities seeking advanced sensors to measure minute environmental
changes, in the hopes of definitively detecting Man’s influence. If not
for the political desire to attack fossil fuels and the industries they
power, this funding would be non-existent, as would the “consensus” it
pays for. Instead of tallying overt opinions of scientists, that
“consensus” has been measured as John Cook did it, by the titles of
their research. It creates a strange logic: because government funded
thousands of climate research studies, AGW must be occurring, regardless
of study results.
The
Midwestern United States is a patchwork of unnatural green circles, and
the rolling hills of Scotland were once forested. Man definitely
affects the environment, but climate is a slowly changing average with a
lot of yearly variation. Over the next 2,000 to 4,000 years, this
interglacial period will end and the average temperature will drop by 2
to 3°C. Atlanta in the year 5,000 will be like Chicago now. Most
likely, our descendants will have no fossil fuels to warm their homes
(or planet), and will be grateful for their stout, hairy forms. The
10,000 years beyond that will see temperatures plunge another 4 to 8°C,
and people will complain about Orlandsberia; that
is natural and measurable climate change. We can make
super-instruments to detect a few atoms of lead in a calcium supplement
or molecules of CO2 in a liter of seawater, but if that is what it
takes, was it worth worrying about in the first place?
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