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It Is A Cult, After All
Can’t believe I couldn’t find a trending post on the climate change craze. I’ll have to do this myself.
We all casually observe the organized CAGW1 scam. C’mon, all of us, right? It starts at elite (and corrupt, if I may repeat myself) levels of the academy. We know the predilection of governments for conclusions that require their involvement, and we understand the funding needs of the intermediate tier of researchers and journals. This much is normal corruption.
But the craze isn’t limited to people who can do sums and know how to run a computer model. The spectrum of adherents runs through commentators who talked to a scientist once, through TedX and mass media, to entertainers and other celebrities-by-virtue-of-celebrity, and includes our co-workers who think hurricanes are increasing. When a Big Lie becomes that successful, it’s a big problem.
I’ve long humorously called the whole edifice a cult (well, I thought it was funny), based on the eager will and commitment of the groundlings to believe the writ from on high. All the elements were there – an unprovable dogma, belief insulated from proof or question, a clear hierarchy of membership, I could go on. Especially about the corruption and where the money goes.
But now here’s one more proof that CAGW is an ersatz religion. What do the words “climate scientist” mean to you? Regardless whether one retains the smallest measure of responsible discrimination or one respects the climate research establishment, I think to most those words imply a person who uses the tools of mathematics and physics to understand, or at least propagandize, the climate.
At The Lid, a story by Jeff Dunetz related a recent use of those words by a garden-variety halfwit celebrity.2 The twit was honking on and on, how she was inspired by St. Greta the Unpleasant to do more and more for the only one issue that mattered and … ok, I will not subject you to that. If you want it, see below.3
When her straight girl fed her the line, the halfwit neatly backfilled that she’d always been on the good side saying “I’ve always been a climate scientist,” just in conversational flow, no special emphasis, but I heard the mission bell.
She didn’t mean she wore a white coat and counted tree rings under a positron microscope. She meant she was a believer, speaking as if she’d borrowed that construction from “Christian Scientist.” I was blown away with dismay.
I’ve never heard that particular perverted phrase before, “climate scientist” to mean “one who believes the delivered doctrine of climate science.” I’ve suspected that simpletons I’ve met thought of themselves as good and wise because of their adherence, but I’d have never suspected this. I might shake my head over scientism, the general tendency to admire and submit to a “scientific” authority. But this is more particular – they actually call themselves cultists Scientists now!
So what she really said was “I’ve always been a Climate Scientist.”
[Aside: I can’t stand those poor misused words, “scientific” and “scientist.” If I could strike two words from public discourse, so that people would have to say what they really mean, it would be those two.]
Dunetz’ article referenced and linked to this ABC News article. By the time I got there ABC News did not say exactly that the halfwit said “climate scientist.” I guess their article once did use those words but someone on their side who wasn’t as stupid as the rest fixed it to hide the decline. At any event, the halfwit herself says them in the video, which I’ve thoughtfully linked below.3
What do Climate Scientists wear when they canvass neighborhoods? I need to alert the neighborhood watch.
(1) Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. Four lies for the price of one.
(2) It was Jane Fonda. I don’t want to get into her sick history, pro or con. Try to keep her out of the comments. I know, video and all. But she only matters as an exemplar of halfwit celebrity.
(3) You can watch Lady Jane of Hanoi’s video here: https://twitter.com/i/status/1182747671993315328, for now at least. Sorry, couldn’t help it and I slipped. My post anyway. [Edit: it’s at 1:49. She says “I’ve been a Climate Scientist for decades and decades.”]
Published in Culture
The propaganda coup was very impressive indeed. But how hard is it for the KGB to subvert the already correct academia?
But twice as macho.
The are genuine eco problems in the world, definitely caused by human action. They may be not as bad as they are portrayed; they may be worse. I’m thinking of things like topsoil erosion, depletion of fish in the ocean, destruction of amazing biodiversity of places like the Amazon for farming just to supply the world with beef, the destruction of whole farming cultures in the third world so entire regions can be planted with one crop, so we can have an endless supply of avocadoes, and now I just finished a book about the alarming depletion of sand in the world – the special kind of sand that makes good concrete, not Saudi sand-dunes sand.
All of these things might be overblown scares, or they might be very real concerns – we might be using up things because they’re currently plentiful, while not considering how long some took to develop. And with more and more of the third world being lifted into the second world, the demand for all of them is increasing.
But they are all worth consideration. The problem is, the solution to these kind of things, if they are a problem, would require an actual change in behavior, the activist would be required to actually do something, change something about his life, possibly even go without something from now on. (Something other than plastic bags at the grocery store.)
Global Warming gives the Lefties safe virtue-signaling material, good smugness-generating practices which don’t cost them anything. Belief makes you feel so so good, and it’s free!
This also sounds like alarmist nonsense because in most parts of the country (I don’t know about the world, most importantly China) natural sand is not used in concrete unless it is found and mined there locally. It is costly to import aggregate, that’s why stone/sand types vary depending on the location. Instead, manufactured sand, a.k.a crushed stone, is used for the fine aggregate component of concrete. There is no specific type of sand you must use in concrete either. Sand, along with cement, mostly just fills the voids between the large aggregate in the mix. There are a few instances however where natural sand is required in specs (usually in bridges and roads) and it is sometimes blended with manufactured sand in order to make it more pump-able.
Ok, probably more than anyone wanted to know. hahaha
Absolutely, and they tend to occur where socialists are in charge. See San Francisco, LA, Detroit, Chernobyl, Venezuela … But, they’re not a planetary threat. “Sustainability” isn’t actually a thing. First rule of business in a capitalistic, free society is “don’t kill the customer.”
I live (and garden) in a place (Colorado Springs) where micro-climates are the real deal. This past summer I was on a committee selecting gardens for next year’s garden tour in the valley downtown. Just a thousand feet below and a couple miles from where I live, they’re growing hydrangeas! Hydrangeas!! Now, they’re not Cape Cod-robust hydrangeas, but they’re nice specimens. The chances of me succeeding with hydrangeas in my neighborhood are zilch, nada, zip. And when you’re not in a centrally planned society, you get to try things and adapt. Adaptation is our friend.
All the CAGW solutions involve the opposite — placing faith and power at the UN, for example, to know the source of the problem (or that there is a problem), what we need to do and how we need to do it, and then actually enforcing a centrally planned climate. It’s rubbish. These masters of the universe will have us all living like East Germany.
Besides silicon being the second most abundant element on the planet after oxygen.
Speaking of… what will we do with all that excess oxygen when we stop converting some of it into CO2!! Will we have oxygen as a pollutant? Will we have to sequester it underground like we do CO2 in abandon salt mines?? Oh, the horror!!
The AGW hysteria has removed what credibility from the advocates that they formerly had. Years ago, I was a member of the Sierra Club. One of John Muir’s motives in founding the club was to stop the building of the O’Shaughnessy Dam, which damed the Hetch Hetchy canyon. That dam and reservoir supply San Francisco’s drinking water. The irony is exquisite.
I quit the Sierra Club when David Brower lost interest in the club’s activities and focused 100% on lobbying.
The Suez Canal was built using concrete mixed with the volcanic ash from the island of Santorini. There was about 100 feet of that ash covering the island from the eruption of the volcano of Thera about 1300 BC. There has also been speculation about Roman concrete that has lasted thousands of years. The Suez use has lasted well in the canal.
The Pantheon in Rome was also built from Mt. Vesuvius ash.
No, this is exactly what I wanted to know, and was hoping you’d comment.
The book I read is called “The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How it Transformed Civilization”, by Vince Beiser.
It was quite interesting, but I didn’t fact-check anything. (Thought I would run it by you first.)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077CQL1XN/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Heck yes, does sound like an interesting book to me too. I will check it out! Just not sure they are accurate in their references to sand in concrete. Apparently there are other places that use concrete other than the USA however and I’m not familiar with their practices. :)
Roman concrete used a volcanic ash and lime mixture to bind the aggregates together instead of Portland cement found in modern concrete. Today we also use fly ash (a byproduct of coal fire power plants) as an additional pozzolan that can replace some of the cement and give us additional strength, workability and durability in modern mixes.
Thanks, I learned a word.