I've mentioned before that I'm going to get married. I believe I've also mentioned that my fiancee has two little girls, ages 9 and 11. These are amazing little girls in every way. I am serious when I say that too... it's not puffery. They are both far beyond anything I ever expected from kids. Anyways, I had a fascinating conversation with the 11 year old yesterday (she wants to be a scientist). With no prompting from me at all, she told me how she thinks the whole global warming argument is bullship and how she can't believe that scientists can't figure this out when she, an eleven year old, can. It seems that she realizes that (1) the underlying concept of there being a state of zero change in nature is nonsense, plus (2) the effects of man's activities are so small that we can't possibly be the cause of global warming. She also realizes that a 2 degree increase isn't going to hurt anything. Fascinating! She's right, and the fact she can see through the 100% propaganda being pushed on her by most of her teachers is astounding. This all does my heart good.
32 comments:
Congratulations Andrew on your upcoming marriage!
i didn't know.
Very sharp and wise for 11 yrs. old! She puts a lot of adults to shame! I'm sure both girls will be very successful at whatever they choose to do. :)
Thanks Ben! I'm really excited! And yeah, she's really sharp. She's cute too though because at the same time she'll tall me how she's can prove that Wonderland exists. Of course, who knows? Maybe it does?
Holy crap.
BTW, for those who missed it, the Sarah Palin Tea Party suffered an incredible loss last night. After pouring every resource they had into Mississippi, one of the strongest fringe places in the country, they still lost in the Senate primary. And today, their candidate is lashing and whining like a spoiled child.
If the fringe can't win a gimme primary in Mississippi, then they are toothless. Somebody go tell K.
Kit, I was very impressed. She saw right through the PC BS and she did it using common sense... the things they told her just didn't add up. :D
Andrew,
She is wise beyond her years.
That or kids just have more common sense than adults.
"Why a four year old child could understand this. Run out and get me a four year old child, I can't make head or tail out of it." —Groucho Marx
On a side note, the Supreme Court issued a fairly broad ruling barring cell phone searches except in cases involving a missing child or impending terror attack and even then they would have to prove it to a court after the fact.
LINK
Kit, She is a smart girl. She's much smarter than I would have guessed for an 11 year old. :)
I think the Supremes are starting to pull back from the "war footing" regarding terrorism and are starting to yank away the unfettered powers the government has been using.
Andrew - Of course she's smart...she's a girl! Now she needs to start proving her hypothesis, so she needs a lab with a microscope and climate monitoring equipment like a satellite in your backyard. Tell her I said you should get her these things.
Kit - Nice Duck Soup reference!
Andrew -
I guess I'm a global warming agnostic... and even though Al Gore isn't exactly a great spokesperson for the cause (or, indeed, any cause), you can't tell me that every scientist who thinks its happening is a shyster or has something going on on the side.
As for me, yes I think the globe is warming, BUT whether we're responsible (and if so, to what extent)... I don't know. I'm not ready to turn back the clock on western civilization... but even if it's part of the natural evolution of things, shouldn't we try and deal with it somehow?
I'm impressed simply b/c the climate alarmists put all of their energy into media campaigns rather than into--oh I don't know--actual climate research!? I swear, I see more articles reporting on the latest round of consensus surveys than articles about research findings. The big exception is computer climate models, and tell me that isn't a racket. Gimme $50,000 and I'll write you a program that says the world is about to end.
I also think the alarmists know that their predictions are shaky, which is why they are always tweaking and elaborating them. The current line is that even the slightest warming could set off a domino effect of warming. Thus, if atmospheric carbon pushes temperatures up by a single degree, it will cause other things* to happen which will then push temperatures up another degree, which in turn will cause other things* to happen pushing temperatures up even further. (* These "things" vary depending on the specific theory.)
These elaborations strike me being devised to make the unthinking feel thoughtful. They are practically conspiracy theories in their detailed conditionality. And they blatantly overlook whatever contradicts their predetermined outcomes.
Bev, LOL! Somehow I doubt that's all it takes. :)
She's definitely going to get all kinds of science stuff from me. I've already bought her a couple science books that she reads religiously.
tryanmax, Their science is crap and they know it. So they are pushing the herd instinct... "trust us, we are your leaders... this is bad... everyone knows... people who ask questions are traitors... follow us... don't use your brain!!"
As an aside, if their science wasn't crap, they (1) wouldn't be faking it, (2) wouldn't be afraid to fight off dissenters, and (3) wouldn't be pushing nonsequitor solutions.
Scott,
yes I think the globe is warming, BUT whether we're responsible... I don't know. ... but even if it's part of the natural evolution of things, shouldn't we try and deal with it somehow?
Allow me use an analogy to answer your question... Your house has leaks which let the air inside and outside are swap places, resulting in warmer summers and cooler winters inside by 1 degree each season. We can fix that by encasing your house in $5 million worth of environmentally damaging plastic. So I ask you, shouldn't we try and deal with it? Or are some solutions simply too stupid to try? Or some problems too minor to address?
You need to realize that the earth's climate changes in stunning ways all the time. In just the last 50,000 years, half of North America was under a mile of ice, the Sarah was a rain forest until the earth shifted its tilt, volcanoes have produced global nuclear winters and decades of acid rain,millions of species have come and gone, etc.
So what exactly are we supposed to try to stop? And how do we do that? The best we can do is to work to protect ourselves from inevitable changes... but that's the very thing environmentalists don't want because they don't want us "changing anything." They want a "pristine" Earth frozen in place, but that's never been the Earth... it changes every second of every day. Should we really be trying to achieve an unnatural and impossible to attain state of stasis just because that's what some whacko's want? Or do you do a real analysis and ask if something is worth fixing?
It is a mark of hysteria to say "we need to do something!" without first answering "why."
You can't tell me that every scientist who thinks its happening is a shyster or has something going on on the side.
This is an interesting statement that needs to be addressed in several ways. First, if it had been marketeers or lawyers or politicians instead of "scientists," then I don't think you would have had a problem seeing them all as hopelessly corrupt and self-serving. And let me assure you that scientists are no better than lawyers or marketeers.
Secondly, you make an incorrect assumption that opponents are claiming bad faith on the part of all GW scientists. Just as not everyone at Enron was aware of the fraud, most GW scientists are simply relying on numbers that are being fraudulently generated by a handful of corrupt few politicize scientists.
Moreover, a HUGE number of the GW scientists ARE politicized hacks who have sought out the field precisely because its low threshold of scientific rigor lets them get away with saying what they want rather than being limited to the science. These people would never make it in a field that actually demands provable results. In fact, when you look at the UN reports and you see they are written by gynecologists and allergists rather than people who actually study climate, that should set off huge warning bells.
Third, even if they are all angelic, that doesn't change the fact that they are wrong, that their solutions are political rather than cause-effect based, and that they are acting like Nazis to stifle debate. All of that warrants a total halt and a need for independent verification... which verification has routinely gone against them.
Scientists with integrity would welcome independent scrutiny and testing of their theories.
Those without integrity or honesty try to demonize scientists that disagree with them rather than debate them with facts.
Exactly Ben! In fact, real scientists crave the validation of having others prove or fail to disprove their theories. The GW guys don't. They don't want anyone even questioning them.
Good points, Andrew.
The scientists that attempt to stifle any debate about their latest apocalypse now theories always avoid talking about all the contradictions in their own data, as well as the already proven cooking of the books to "prove" their theories are real rather than (at best) grossly exxagerated.
There's a reason that unscrupulous scientists have changed the name of the end of the world from global warming to climate change.
Now they would have us believe that carbon dioxide causes both warming AND cooling, as well as every negative thing they can imagine.
How the earth survived all these years is a mystery.
>>How the earth survived all these years is a mystery. >>
God ... or for the Time Bandits fans, the Supreme Being.
For me it is not a matter of "climate change" or "global warming" or whatever. As has been pointed out, the Earth has been changing climate for about 40 bagillion years. As I recall it used to be very, very hot when we were made of molten lava and magma. Personally I think that some of our "global warming" is caused by earthquakes/volcanic activity. The other is solar activity. Sometimes it's active (hotter) and sometimes its less active (cooler).
I think that it is really arrogant to assume that humans are so powerful that they can destroy Nature. I am a firm believer that the Nature will destroy us when Nature feels the need. [See dinosaurs]
That as monstly this has always and will always be about the next new energy baron/trillionaire. The person/persons who can come up with a viable, inexpensive, clean burning, renewable source of energy will be the king of the world. Al Gore wants to be that person.
And the best way to help with that process is the demonize the present energy sources. Ohhh, oil and coal are evil and bad because they cause the Earth to warm and will kill us all. Here use our [fill in the blank better more expensive energy source] to save the planet.
Your soon to be stepdaughter should use her scientific energy to come up with that new source. You could retire to the Moon! Girls Rule!!!
Bev,
Well said. Thanks to Obama's war on coal my energy bill has nearly doubled in the last few years. Yay! Mission accomplished. The left once again hurt the poor and middle class.
I believe that mankind is capable of massively changing the environment. There's nothing in the world we can't kill or destroy if we set out minds to it.
Of course, whether or not we are destroying the planet just by doing what we're doing is another question altogether. The evidence for that isn't conclusive. The world is such a complex place that even short term predictions are tricky (be it earthquakes or next week's weather).
The concrete stuff I've seen (Guatemala has no sort of emissions controls and the air was sometimes so foul you could sometimes taste the particulate matter when you breathed) struck me as a compelling argument for conservation.
Of course, the problem is a lack of cheap alternatives. In Guatemala City the buses literally would darken the streets 50 feet behind them, but they were the only system of transportation the poor could afford. Pollution sucks but its immoral to make the lives of the poor worse in order to make a city or a planet cleaner.
I agree with Anthony - I'll buy that we're not having a catastrophic impact, but I don't buy that we have none whatsoever.
the Sarah was a rain forest
Nice Freudian slip. ;-)
And re: Bev's comment: "The person/persons who can come up with a viable, inexpensive, clean burning, renewable source of energy will be the king of the world."
One side will say "But the government will never let it happen!" while the other side will say, "But the energy companies will never let it happen!"
Continuing this conversation, I just stumbled on an article that throws a lot of what scientists thought they knew about glaciers into question. The conventional wisdom about glaciers is that they are piled like a layer cake from eons of snowfall packing together. That is, after all, how things appear from above. From below, however, is a completely different story, where melting and refreezing throw those layers into disarray, forcing older layers on top of newer layers and generally disrupting the shape of the glacier. This, in turn, affects the movement of the glacier and generally has huge implications for glaciers' role in the earth's climate. In other words, we don't know nearly as much as we think we do.
Ben, That's exactly right -- real scientists can't wait to have others examine their work. Not these guys.
Scott and Anthony, Yes, we can affect nature. I don't think anyone rational thinks we can't. But the issue is at what point does it matter. Liberal enviros see any change whatsoever as a permanent desecration and destruction of nature that needs to be stopped at any cost. That's moronic, however. You need to understand the world in terms of cost and benefits and compare that to the natural state. The liberal enviros are wrong on each aspect of that.
Bev, If you can't win in the free market, then get the government to change the rules.
tryamax, If that's true, then none of the pollution and temperature sample they have taken are reliable because the layers are mixed. Interesting.
That was my first thought, though the article didn't address it. It mainly focused on "Huh! Glaciers sure are differ'nt than we thot." I'm sure the enviros will have some hand-wave for the veracity of the data if it ever comes up. More to the point, however, is that this introduces a whole new set of variable that the "expert models" have not been taking into account. And the variables themselves have yet to be added up.
I'm not surprised they wouldn't think through the meaning. That's how liberalism always works... never discuss the implications.
If this is right, then it destroys the pollution models, because those are all based on core samples from icebergs.
Andrew, CONGRATULATIONS! Obviously I've not been here often enough. :)
Sorry for my absence. I've missed the blog! Too much LIFE happening these last couple of years.
Here's to catching up. :)
Thanks X! I hope LIFE has been good?
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