Sometimes, I really love me some Camus (obviously, considering the name and theme of this blog).
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." - Albert Camus
Political activism and even what I call 'anti-activist activism' is, unfortunately, completely fruitless and hopeless. Voting is worse, of course, but in most recent elections the majority of the voting population literally did 'vote for nobody'. Somebody got elected, anyways, and it changed nothing. In our alleged, so-called 'democracy', if, a) you can even call it that, and b) it being one of the worst forms of government available to a civilized population -- Obama was elected within a handful of points from Romney, and approximately 24% of the 'eligible voting population' (about 19% of genpop) 'decided' on who would be able to impose his will on the rest of us.
However, as long as we realize that 'not voting' won't change anything, neither, and that we need to engage in other activities outside of the system to enact gradual and slow change, or better yet, to enact meaningful change in your own life in spite of the system (which is what is most important), then I think 'not voting' is good.
However, the moment you believe or convince yourself that 'not voting', or voting third party, or voting for Mickey Mouse, or voting for a Republican or Democrat of any kind, et al, in and of itself can or will actually change anything in any meaningful way -- then you've, unfortunately, entered into the realm of self-delusion.
It is said that 'if you don't vote, then you have no right to complain'. Whoever says this has it backwards -- it's only because I don't vote, that I have a right to complain. With that being said, it is what it is, and mere complaining does nothing.
It's time to stop making excuses. We have to take control of our own lives. PS - I know this is direct contrast to an older post(s) I made in my more electoral, Ron Paul activist days. My views have changed on this, since then.
Ah, yes. The ole Anthropogenic Global Warming (hereon referred to as 'AGW') 'debate', if one could honestly call it that. I apologize in advance for sullying your computer screen with another such screed, but the AGW hype-train, fueled by fear and alarmism, just keeps on keepin' on, and there are some particularly glaring, nosebleed-inducing dents in said train for me to ignore much longer.
As for instructions on how to properly handle watermelons, well, I'll get to that part, later. Don't worry, it'll all be worth it.
CO2, the Innocent Whipping Boy
First, let's look at the real meat of the numbers, here. AGW and CO2 alarmists constantly refer to the current CO2 level in the atmosphere as being at a 'potentially catastrophic' 400 ppm (parts per million). However, a lot of people touting this number either ignorantly or dishonestly don't seem too interested in communicating what this really means. They just regurgitate how it's increased from about 270 ppm since 1850 to 400 ppm, today, correlated with the rise of industrialization. That's true, but the issue is this -- 400 ppm of the atmosphere is only 0.04% of the atmosphere. 400 ppm minus the 270 ppm means an increase of 130 ppm since 1850. That's an increase of only 0.013% in the atmosphere in 164 years of increasing industrialization. 0.013% is not a significant ratio of increase relative to the whole of the atmosphere, and certainly not a significant ratio relative to other times in the history of the earth. No one can deny this, as it's based on their very own oft-touted numbers. No one. This is just the simple math.
Of course, I can see it, already. Dishonest alarmists will then want to talk about how an increase of 270 ppm to 400 ppm "is an increase of over 48%", and while, yes, mathematically that's also true -- this interpretation of the numbers is not at all helpful. The statement 'an increase of over 48%' conveys far less information than the method provided earlier, and conclusions based on less information versus more are far less valuable, particularly when you're trying to draw conclusions from them. With the previous method, you're given far more context -- you're provided information about the piece as it relates to the whole. With the 'Dishonest Alarmist Method', it's just numbers in a vacuum -- almost meaningless. Of course, unless you're engaging in unadulterated propaganda as opposed to the actual science -- then such an interpretation of the numbers is exactly what you'd want. Take note that these are the kinds of games that are very often played with statistics for a whole range of issues. With statistical interpretation, it's easy to tell lies by using the facts -- and those seeking to validate their preconceived notions will jump all over it and propagate it until they're blue in the face.
Further, it's important to emphasize that this CO2 increase of 130 ppm is, again, correlated with the rise of industrialization since 1850. It's of course difficult -- virtually absurd, even -- to claim that none of this increase is due to human CO2 contributions, but it is equally absurd to claim that none of this increase is due to some combination of natural factors, as well. The conclusion we can draw, however, is that we cannot lay 100% of the 130 ppm increase of CO2 at the feet of human activity, as we know that CO2 levels have risen long before the existence of humanity, and they will rise, at times, long after we're gone.
As for the fact of the increase, it is more than likely that the earth's ecosystem will adapt and that life, including human life, will continue to survive, if not flourish, as life always has and does amidst these kinds of CO2 levels. This extra CO2 means an abundance of plant (including algae) food, leading to more plant-life, which leads to an eventual balance where the even greater amount of plants 'eat' the excess CO2, with the natural 'breathing' of the earth stabilizing. This has panned out exactly as expected, according to NASA, with the recently rising CO2 levels leading to what they refer to as a 'greening' of the earth:
From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.
An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States.
...
Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect, said co-author Ranga Myneni, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University. “The second most important driver is nitrogen, at 9 percent. So we see what an outsized role CO2 plays in this process.”
Further, and this point is particularly important with respect to the natural 'breathing' of the earth,
The extent of the greening over the past 35 years “has the ability to fundamentally change the cycling of water and carbon in the climate system,” said lead author Zaichun Zhu, a researcher from Peking University, China, who did the first half of this study with Myneni as a visiting scholar at Boston University.
Greener areas show a 'leaf area' gain aka 'greening', whereas redder indicates loss.
To further capitalize on this point, much higher CO2 concentration levels of 2200 ppm preceded the rise of the Devonian Period about 400 million years ago, and vast forests covered large portions of the earth. Trees began competing with eachother over the 550% higher CO2 concentrations, to the point of eventually dying on top of eachother until they were 100 meters or more in depth. Want to know where all of our coal deposits we've been finding have come from? You guessed it -- those vast forests of dead trees consumed all of that 'catastrophic' CO2 that we're burning today. And even with a CO2 concentration of 2200 ppm, temperatures were only 6 degrees celsius higher than they are today.
In the end, it is all very silly to say that an increased CO2 level of 0.013% is 'catastrophic' -- especially considering our ecosystemic adaptability and the history of CO2 levels and the life that flourished under it.
Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
Yes, temperatures have risen. Yes, CO2 has risen. No one denies this. However, linking temperature increase to CO2 increase solely because of the amount humanity is adding in to it since industrialization is a pure post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. There are many more factors at play with respect to temperatures and climate, and only acknowledging temperature changes for the last 150 years since industrialization, even just in relation to the past couple hundred thousand years of human existence (let alone hundreds of millions of years of climate history), is a pretty piss-poor sample size. Whether we're looking at the climate over the past year, past 150 years, past 20,000 years, past 400,000 years, or past 400 million years, not only does the climate change, but it's always changing, across virtually all timescales. There are cycles, within cycles, within cycles, within cycles. Even a cursory glance at temperature data derived from ice cores (below), shows how silly and nonsensical the whole idea of AGW is, as one can clearly see that the vast majority of human history has seen climate to be multiple degrees warmer than it is, today. To the extent there's been any climate change, we've actually been cooling for the past 1,000 years or so.
Ice cores clearly show that the vast majority of human history has been warmer than it is, today. To the extent there's been any climate change, we've been cooling for the past 1,000 years.
In addition to this, evidence shows that temperature fluctuation for Earth is very cyclical, switching between very warm periods and very cool periods every 100,000 years or so. We're actually currently in an interglacial period called the Holocene, and these interglacial periods are very tightly correlated with insolation (incoming solar radiation), leading to this being a major factor in earth's climate cycle. Clearly such a tight correlation over hundreds of thousands of years is far from coincidence, so either the earth is having a significant affect on the cyclical climate of the sun, or the sun is having a significant affect on the cyclical climate of the earth. Needless to say, it shouldn't be difficult to realize that one of these two possibilities is prima facie absurd.
Data clearly shows extremely tight correlation between earth's climate (temps), CO2 concentration, and insolation (incoming solar radiation)
Further -- and this is very important to note -- CO2 increases come after the temperature increases (on average about 800 years after), not before -- further putting into question the claim that 'CO2 increases are what cause higher temperatures'. They may contribute, but it doesn't seem that they're the cause. This doesn't necessarily prove that CO2 doesn't cause temperatures to rise, or that they aren't a factor in causing them to rise, otherwise we'd be engaging in the same correlation fallacy AGW proponents do, but it does show that this data is not valid evidence to their argument.
Speaking of planetary ecosystems, climates, temperature, greenhouse gases and life, let's bring our attention, for a moment, to Venus. Fear mongering alarmists, especially in the pop-science celebrities sphere, love to talk about and use Venus comparisons a lot. Man, they love to use them. But Venus has no vegetation. It doesn't have vast oceans of H20 and other complex ecosystems with fauna and flora and dirt that cyclically absorb and breathe out CO2, as we noted earlier. On Venus, it just gets trapped under an atmospheric blanket, under the brutal power of the sun and doesn't go anywhere. The Earth is not even remotely comparable to Venus, and there's no good reason to believe we will become Venus.
AGW is Political Religion, Not Science
So around and around we go, with AGW alarmists and other useful idiots claiming they are 'doing science', running around exclaiming how much they supposedly 'fucking love science', but they clearly haven't a clue what science actually is and what it means to 'do science'. 'Doing science' involves utilizing the scientific method, which is testing to try to disprove a hypothesis (not trying to prove it, as many of these organizations and individuals are actually trying to do) by utilizing control groups vs experimental groups in controlled environments. This point is important, here -- controlled environments. I'd hardly call the earth's climate a 'controlled environment' and I'd hardly call using a sample size of a mere 150 years in the tens of thousands of years of relatively recent human existence, amidst the millions of years of earth's climate, a proper sample size to compare this against.
This brings us to another point of interest in this debate -- climate 'models'. These 'models' are procedurally generated speculations produced by computer programs and designed by flawed individuals with extremely limited information. They incorporate relatively few factors (there are vast numbers of factors in earth's climate and ecosystem, many of which we don't even know) into these algorithms while trying to produce results akin to historic trends up to the current climate reality 'and beyond'. Of course, as the real-world climate changes, the algorithms governing the models (which regularly produce future predictions inconsistent with reality) are 'adjusted' to reflect new and updated data in order to shoehorn them into fitting both the actual climate along with predicting trends that uphold the AGW narrative. Climate models are not particularly rigorous, they don't utilize the scientific method, and the process surrounding them is eerily similar to how religion is rationalized, ad-hoc, based on preconceived notions and dogma. Yet, instead of being called out as such, these ad-hoc climate 'models' and their future trend predictions are regularly cited by the usual suspects to fuel the fire of alarmism and fearmongering. This is all completely backwards and not how actual science and the scientific method works.
Then there are the pet projects and special interests involved. The IPCC is a political authority that, while it doesn't engage in direct funding itself, has many subsidiaries that do, and if your outfit doesn't provide evidence that justifies its own existence and support the special interests involved, your funding gets cut. The existence of the IPCC in the first place absolutely relies on AGW dogma -- without it, they would disappear. As such, this naturally creates distorted incentives that amount more to supporting political favor than to supporting actual science that constantly challenges itself to discover truth as opposed to re-affirming certain political narratives.
One such narrative we still, unfortunately, hear propagated to this day, from the 44th President of the United States on down to any rando reddit commenter, is the notion of the scientific consensus re-affirming AGW. The '97% of scientists agree' claim is a debunked myth, but it circulates, regardless.
Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.
One frequently cited source for the consensus is a 2004 opinion essay published in Science magazine by Naomi Oreskes, a science historian now at Harvard. She claimed to have examined abstracts of 928 articles published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and found that 75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years while none directly dissented.
Ms. Oreskes's definition of consensus covered "man-made" but left out "dangerous"—and scores of articles by prominent scientists such as Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Sherwood Idso and Patrick Michaels, who question the consensus, were excluded. The methodology is also flawed. A study published earlier this year in Nature noted that abstracts of academic papers often contain claims that aren't substantiated in the papers.
Another widely cited source for the consensus view is a 2009 article in "Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union" by Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, a student at the University of Illinois, and her master's thesis adviser Peter Doran. It reported the results of a two-question online survey of selected scientists. Mr. Doran and Ms. Zimmerman claimed "97 percent of climate scientists agree" that global temperatures have risen and that humans are a significant contributing factor.
The survey's questions don't reveal much of interest. Most scientists who are skeptical of catastrophic global warming nevertheless would answer "yes" to both questions. The survey was silent on whether the human impact is large enough to constitute a problem. Nor did it include solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists or astronomers, who are the scientists most likely to be aware of natural causes of climate change.
The "97 percent" figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of expertise and said they published more than half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change. Seventy-nine scientists—of the 3,146 who responded to the survey—does not a consensus make.
In 2010, William R. Love Anderegg, then a student at Stanford University, used Google Scholar to identify the views of the most prolific writers on climate change. His findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Mr. Love Anderegg found that 97% to 98% of the 200 most prolific writers on climate change believe "anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for 'most' of the 'unequivocal' warming." There was no mention of how dangerous this climate change might be; and, of course, 200 researchers out of the thousands who have contributed to the climate science debate is not evidence of consensus.
In 2013, John Cook, an Australia-based blogger, and some of his friends reviewed abstracts of peer-reviewed papers published from 1991 to 2011. Mr. Cook reported that 97% of those who stated a position explicitly or implicitly suggest that human activity is responsible for some warming. His findings were published in Environmental Research Letters.
Mr. Cook's work was quickly debunked. In Science and Education in August 2013, for example, David R. Legates (a professor of geography at the University of Delaware and former director of its Center for Climatic Research) and three coauthors reviewed the same papers as did Mr. Cook and found "only 41 papers—0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent—had been found to endorse" the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming. Elsewhere, climate scientists including Craig Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nir J. Shaviv and Nils-Axel Morner, whose research questions the alleged consensus, protested that Mr. Cook ignored or misrepresented their work.
Rigorous international surveys conducted by German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch—most recently published in Environmental Science & Policy in 2010—have found that most climate scientists disagree with the consensus on key issues such as the reliability of climate data and computer models. They do not believe that climate processes such as cloud formation and precipitation are sufficiently understood to predict future climate change.
Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged consensus. Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is dangerous.
Finally, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—which claims to speak for more than 2,500 scientists—is probably the most frequently cited source for the consensus. Its latest report claims that "human interference with the climate system is occurring, and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems." Yet relatively few have either written on or reviewed research having to do with the key question: How much of the temperature increase and other climate changes observed in the 20th century was caused by man-made greenhouse-gas emissions? The IPCC lists only 41 authors and editors of the relevant chapter of the Fifth Assessment Report addressing "anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing."
Of the various petitions on global warming circulated for signatures by scientists, the one by the Petition Project, a group of physicists and physical chemists based in La Jolla, Calif., has by far the most signatures—more than 31,000 (more than 9,000 with a Ph.D.). It was most recently published in 2009, and most signers were added or reaffirmed since 2007. The petition states that "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of . . . carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."
The fearmongering and alarmism continues in the face of all of the conflicting scientific evidence. Global climate change is happening, yes -- it's been cyclically happening for millions of years, and there is far too much evidence that suggests, contrary to AGW dogma, that humans have virtually to absolutely nothing to do with it. Ultimately, Anthropogenic Global Warming is an excuse towards an ideological agenda -- to regulate, tax and redistribute as much as possible, and to curtail capitalism and individual liberty, in favor of centralization and collectivism.
A Gallagherian Conclusion
For this reason, I've long referred to AGW activists and environmentalists as 'watermelons' -- 'green' on the outside, but ultimately deeply 'red' on the inside. These are utilitarian ideologues, and utilitarians are well-known for their affinity towards what's known as The Noble Lie, if that's what it takes to advance their narrative and political agenda. The ends justify the means, and eviscerating the truth and individual liberty is a small price to pay towards achieving what is, in their perception, the aim of some 'greater good'.
To be clear, I am not implicating all AGW scientists -- though there are certainly some distorted incentives and politics taking place, that much is clear. The political and ideological activism I am concerned about poisoning this issue are in the mainstream media, bureaucrats and representatives within the State, special interests, influencers on social media, and amongst the rank-and-file. It's in this domain where they are spinning or even outright fabricating claims, some of which pro-AGW authorities don't even claim, themselves, to push an ideological agenda and send it viral.
"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself." -- Joseph Goebbels
The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success." -- Adolf Hitler
Anthropogenic Global Warming is, simply put, just another of the latest in a long line of compounding Noble Lies employed in the service of an ideology which cannot stand on its merits, alone, and it should be publicly recognized as such. So let's finally peel the green skin off of this watermelon, for good, expose the mushy, rotten, red flesh that's beneath, and smash it to bits once and for all.
And with that, I leave you with your moment of zen...
This post was originally published under my old pseudonym, 'Sentient Void', at the Ron Paul Forums Blog, on 10/15/2015. It has been edited and updated with more sources and other information and for 'A Sisyphean Revolt'.
I've noticed recently that while there's rare and sporadic talk of libertarian celebrities, there's not really a comprehensive list of them.
Well - we're gonna do it. Right now. We're gonna make the best, most exhaustive & comprehensive list of notable libertarians we can possibly come up with.
I really think it's important for us to show more of the masses libertarians that they know and love - that it isn't as fringe as they think and that there some very prominent, reasonable, smart, funny people are libertarian. This will make them more open to the ideas of liberty.
They vary in degree of libertarianism (some are ancaps, some are minarchists, constitutionalists, etc). These should be people that almost everyone knows, or groups almost everyone knows who the people are associated with.
Confirmed libertarians:
Philip Labonte (singer of the band 'All That Remains')
This post was originally published under my old pseudonym, 'Sentient Void', at the Ron Paul Forums Blog, on 07-26-2011. It has been edited and updated with new names for 'A Sisyphean Revolt'.
