Numbskull Is Too Kind a Word
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Discussing the recent wailing and gnashing of teeth about the ice melting in Greenland, George Reisman comments in part as follows:
These are the same people who have predicted "doom in a decade" for decades, who gratuitously mention "climate change" any time something is attributable even to normal weather, and are oddly focused on depriving only Western economies of the fuel they need:To put these numbers in proper perspective, recall that a quarter of an inch is 250 one-thousandths of an inch. So what the fake media were trying to frighten us with is a rise in the sea level of little more than a tenth of a quarter of an inch (i.e., .027/.250).
"Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent 'Thank you' to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find." -- Ayn Rand (Image by Devin McGloin, via Unsplash, license.)
...
So, get ready for 250 billion tons of melting ice (wow, that's large) to explain the Atlantic Ocean wiping out New York City and New Jersey. It never occurs to these numbskulls to check just how much water is actually involved and what difference it actually makes.
To the extent that mankind has an influence on climate change, the United States is a minor player. The United States has been reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, but these reductions are overwhelmed by the increases coming from China, India and some others.And much of the emission reductions come thanks to natural gas obtained from fracking -- which, of course, the greens oppose, along with (zero-emission) nuclear power.
Even if I were worried about the effects of carbon dioxide emissions on the climate (I am not.) and we had viable alternatives to fossil fuels (Aside from nuclear energy, we do not.) and these alternatives could replace fossil fuels tomorrow (They can't.) -- I would question everything these people say and wonder about their actual motives.
-- CAV
2 comments:
I remember two lectures in college. One was in an Environmental Studies class, where we were told (among other things) that a sea level rise of 11 cm/year would be catastrophic, resulting in the end of human civilization if not the end of the current ecosystem. In the second we were told that during OIS 11 (an interglacial period used to calibrate climate models) sea levels rose by approximately 11 cm/year. There is no mass extinction associated with OIS 11; there's not really anything of not, biologically speaking, if I recall correctly. No one could explain why that rate of sea level rise had no effect on the biosphere in the past, but would cause a mass extinction in the present.
This reminds me of when I first learned about the water cycle -- at a time when there were commercials airing to the effect that we were "using up" all our fresh water.
I didn't immediately see the contradiction: I was a kid. But I remembered this years later, when I understood that rainwater was fresh water no matter the source of the water vapor. This raised another question in my mind -- regarding why there would be such factually deficient commercials -- I would have for years after that.
What these people are doing -- basically snow-jobbing kids before they've had much of a chance to learn that not everything an adult (or a book or a television show) says is true -- is reprehensible.
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