Simplemindedness on Climate
The bulk of the human race is ascientific. That is not a recognized English word, but I offer it as comparable to "amoral", which means (Merriam-Webster Online) "being neither moral nor immoral; specifically : lying outside the sphere to which moral judgments apply". I might also compare the behavior or attitude of most people as regards science to "nonliterate": "having no written language". This is to say that the great preponderance of the human race knows almost exactly nothing about any kind of science — not physics, not biology, not climatology to be sure. All they "know" is what they are told, and they have no knowledge of their own against which to check or judge what they are told.
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Most people also do not dare to challenge "experts", but permit themselves to be bullied into silence as regards, or even complicity in, blatant lies issued by "scientific experts". The assumption is that "experts" know better than ordinary human beings, mere mortals as against the immortal greats of science (some of whom, we are to believe, are living now, among(st) us).
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Few people understand that what we call "science" is not really science so much as a self-interested group of people who conspire among themselves to present a unified front against the 'barbarians' — that is, you and me. Very few people adequately appreciate that you don't get a college degree in any scientific discipline, much less an advanced degree, unless you parrot what you have been told. If the vogue today is "man-made global warming" and you do not instantly spout back to the people who pose and grade examinations, what they have told you about "man-made global warming", you are NOT going to graduate, NOT going to get a degree, and NOT going to be believed about anything you say as regards the area of "science" in which you were denied a degree. So, toe the line or be crushed — not by a preponderance of the evidence but by a preponderance of the yes-(wo)men who accept that they have to "go along to get along".
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If this were the early part of the 15th Century, everyone in "science" would be required to say that the Sun revolves around the Earth, and anyone who dared say the opposite would be driven out of "science", and even persecuted by Church and State. Around the same time, all the best people knew that the Earth was flat!
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"Lies, damned lies, and statistics". American humorist Mark Twain offered this summary of the kinds of fraud by which we are often taken in. The ability of liars to cow people into submission by producing statistics has to do with another A- of my invention, amathematics, the inability of most people to do more than add, subtract, and multiply. Many people cannot even divide!
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When presented with a grand mathematical average of planetary temperatures, naive people lend credence to this arbitrary and largely meaningless statistic. They do not ask "Which points on the globe are you sampling?", nor "Were the very same points reported decades or centuries ago?" Nor, "Are these points representative of the planet overall, or oddballs, bearing little resemblance to the bulk of the planet's surface?"
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If you sample 6 places, two in the Arctic, two in the Antarctic, and two in the temperate zone, the average of those temperatures, taken widely across the globe (as everyone must concede), will be MUCH colder than the planet overall.
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Similarly, if you take the temperature, on July 15th, of (1) Death Valley, (2) the hottest part of the Sahara Desert, (3) Manaus, in the Amazon rainforest, (4) San Juan, Puerto Rico, (5) New York City, and (6) Phoenix, Arizona, you will get an average that is very hot, and not remotely representative of the planet's temperature overall.
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Even relatively naive people could spot the bias in either of those sets of temperature readings. What they will NOT spot, however, is a much wider list of temperature readings that end up being nonetheless completely unrepresentative of reality.
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Take the issue of comparability of locations from century to century. 71% of planet Earth is covered in water, mostly in oceans far from any shore. We did NOT have temperature readings for almost any PART of the ocean until weather satellites sent in reports, starting no sooner than 1960, a mere blink of the eye in planetary terms. So the readings we have from satellites, even if accurate — and one should bring a tiny bit of skepticism to the assertion that a satellite 530 miles (polar orbit) or over 22,000 miles (geosynchronous orbit) from what it is observing, can record temperature by remote-sensing equipment — may not be comparable to readings taken centuries ago, because there WERE NO READINGS centuries ago, and thermometers centuries ago were not as accurate as those today.
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In like fashion, there were NO temperature readings in a large portion of the LAND surface of the Earth — for instance, NONE on Antarctica. There were few or no readings in most of the Third World — not in the middle of the African or South American rainforest, not in the Atacama or Namibian desert. The bulk of Africa and Asia had scant if any temperature readings.
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The real issue in global temperature is NOT carbon[-dioxide] output, but carbon[-dioxide] UPTAKE. What has happened on this benited planet is that some areas, defoliated, deforested, and biologically ravaged by Third World savages, no longer take up the amounts of carbon dioxide they used to. The output of carbon dioxide in the First World and "developing" countries — which mostly means not-developing, but remaining perpetually backward, tho some areas, such as (Communist) China, are advancing — may have risen somewhat over the past two centuries, but if the world's forests, farmlands, and even scrublands had remained intact, the extra carbon dioxide would merely have served as plant food, and produced bumper crops of lush vegetation!
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In short, there are two parts to the balance of carbon dioxide, output and uptake. This has been obscured by media references not to carbon dioxide nor even CO2 but to "carbon". Until very recently, if not even now, "carbon" has meant "carbon black" or "soot", solid particulate matter that falls upon surfaces. Media and political propagandists have substituted "carbon" deliberately, and maliciously, to suggest that carbon dioxide is DIRTY, ugly, and disgusting, rather than the indispensable source of the molecular carbon that is part of every single cell of every living being on Earth, and thus pure and beautiful.
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Ordinary people do not think to ask how the "carbon" in every cell of every living creature on Earth got there. If they did, they might realize that the only way we get carbon in usable form is thru carbon DIOXIDE in the atmosphere. This plentiful chemical element does not need to be mined or processed by chemists, nor distributed by ship, rail, or truck. It is everywhere around us in the air we breathe. THAT is how we get the "carbon" of which we are all composed.
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Every cell of every living creature on Earth gets its carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide. That also means that biological processes take up a great deal of carbon [dioxide], which in turn means that to the extent that life flourishes, a lot of carbon [dioxide] is used up by life. Life in turn generally flourishes in warmer rather than colder temperatures. To the extent that planetary temperatures rise, then, more carbon [dioxide] will be taken up by living creatures and sequestered in their flesh and shells.
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Biological processes use up carbon [dioxide], and not just in living cells. Carbon [dioxide] goes into the formation of the exoskeletons of microscopic sea creatures and the nonliving shells of clams, mussels, snails, and everything else that has a shell, including insects, spiders, and lobsters. Moreover, the cell walls of all plants are composed of carbon compounds, so every bacterium, leaf, acorn, and piece of wood or bark of every plant of every size, is made up in large part of carbon.
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There is massive sequestration of molecular carbon in calcium carbonate, in the forms of limestone and chalk deposits. The "white cliffs of Dover", which rise some 350 feet above the nearby sea in the English Channel, are formed from calcium carbonate, a type of chalk, which is in turn a type of limestone, which is in turn a form in which carbon is sequestered for eons. Essentially NONE of the carbon sequestered in soft chalk or hard limestone is ever again released into the atmosphere, for billions of years.
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It is, in short, appallingly naive of the general public to take seriously the idiotic and alarmist nonsense that "science" is now bellowing about "man-made global warming". Carbon is not a universal, insidious poison that will snuff out all life on Earth but, quite the contrary, the very quintessence of life.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:21 AM