Original art by Mark Valentine
Dear Activist,
I don’t have much interest in political movements and science blended together.
Politics and the desire for public money corrupts science. It’s not much different now than when The Pope declared the earth to be flat and anyone who disagreed must be punished.
When I was in college, “all the scientists agreed” that we were headed for an ice age. It didn’t happen.
Last week, it was revealed that the temperature readings had been changed by researchers to show more global warming. That should be no surprise. There is more grant money from public funds for a dire threat.
The models are always fatally flawed.
We don’t understand how the earth works.
We don’t understand how the sun works.
We don’t understand how our solar system works.
We don’t understand how the universe works.
We can’t even explain gravity.
I have seen no climate change model that includes the sun’s activity or volcanic activity.
And those are the two biggest factors by far.
The current Global Warming/Climate Change debate is the latest morphing of an extremely old argument. The root of pollution is people. If you follow that path, the only real solution is to get rid of people. The next most acceptable solution is to limit human population. Then someone will decide who gets to breed. If either of these solutions become a political solution, we are finished.
On a more shallow track, we are only talking about carbon in the atmosphere.
Human contributions to the daily exchange of carbon between the earth and the atmosphere is about 6%. Meaning that 94% occurs apart from human existence. This is solvable in this decade.
It has to be a market based solution.
Currently “Green” is for the rich, a suit you wear for public approval.
It’s expensive and spends more resources than it saves. Germany leads the way. Working class Germans require public assistance to pay for electricity. I feel that is wrong. It would be like saying, “In our country, everyone must wear fur coats.”
Technology always saves us.
We would have world famine except for the research that developed new rice with higher yields per acre. I drive a truck. It gets 18 miles a gallon. My car in high school only got 8 miles per gallon.
We have technology now that will cut carbon output. LED is huge.
If we can get businesses to switch in the next two years, we’ll save a huge amount of electricity without any sacrifice.
Miley Cirus
So here’s my offer. I will finance all of that up to $1million per project. http://smallerfootprintfunding.com
This is not a joke or an idle boast.
In agriculture, farmers used to have to leave fields fallow after growing corn.
They discovered that soybeans put back in the soil what corn took out.
Now they can alternate crops and feed more people.
There are agricultural solutions to carbon in the air. Some plants “eat” more carbon than others.
Make them market based and we’ll cut that 6% down to 3% in a few short years.
The other reason “Green” must be market based is because we can’t control China or anybody else.
We cannot chain ourselves while our competitors run free.
It would be like setting up a non-peeing section in a public pool. It won’t work.
If the solutions are market based (showing a profit), China and others will switch to that plan in 48 hours.
I don’t need to talk about it.
Having coffee with friends is just more talk. Walking around with signs is a waste of paper and the tree you cut down to make it. I don’t want to have a following. I don’t want any public money diverted from essential programs. I definitely don’t want anyone’s tax or utility bills to go up. People need that money for their families. Yes, even the rich people have better things to do with their money.
And no matter what we do, there is a model that predicts the earth will be uninhabitable in 200-300 years.
I wouldn’t waste a vote on it.
Always Your Friend,
Mark Valentine
Brilliant!!!
Very nice.
You think it’s brilliant only because it told you what you want to hear.
Excellent piece!
Very nice. Some other predictions from the 70’s; no oil in the new millennium, world wide famines, crop production had plateaued, rock and roll would never die.
Now we have more proven oil reserves than in 1975, crop yields have more than doubled, obesity is a bigger problem than starvation in the US, and I can’t name a rock singer under 30.
Humans live in the Arctic, the equator, in rain forests, and in deserts. We will adapt.
As Chuck very accurately wrote below on a posting by “Rich Steele” on this same topic, unless you are a scientist, you are not qualified to offer anything more than a summation of what you have read and choose to believe to support your own personal views. Thanks Mark, for a summation of yours.
Current science may not have all the answers you are looking for but that does not mean you give up on it. Theories can change in science when technology allows for a better understanding, that’s the great part about it. Science is not set in stone like religion.
“When I was in college, “all the scientists agreed” that we were headed for an ice age. It didn’t happen.”
This is a tired denier talking point this is simply not true.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm
As for the rest of your anti-science article, you should be thankful that other people do understand things like quantum mechanics, without which you wouldn’t have this blog to spew your anti-science rhetoric.