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Last updated on August 8th, 2017 at 05:20 pm
The New York Times reports a collapsed consensus:
Twenty years ago most scientists believed that deforestation was an inexorable result of industrialization and that the earth would soon be virtually denuded of trees.
To which the Waterbury Republican-American replies:
OK, no big deal, all those doomsaying scientists were wrong and the big trees are making a comeback. Yet the same people who are ready to dismiss the passionate and presumably well-researched beliefs of experts just 20 years ago view it as sacrilege when skeptics try to rebut today’s global-warming alarmists. May we stipulate it’s possible for scientists—even “most scientists”—to be wrong?
- From some of the hate mail I received last week when I gave An Inconvenient Truth a bad review:
“I expect nothing less than a written apology in the Metro for those in environmental movement, whose work you have reduced to farce.”
“What you did is dangerous. The truth of what we are facing is quite frightening to most people. It is comforting for people hear words like yours. People can hear an uncomfortable truth nine times and let it go for the one time they hear a more pleasant lie. Healthy, educated, inquisitive doubt is an intelligent virtue, doubting in the face of overwhelming evidence and consensus is just stupid. Next time you shoot your mouth off about something so important please just take 5 minutes to contact someone with a University degree to make sure your facts are facts; and not just garbage backtalk created by big companies who don’t want to change the way they do business, who use rubes like you to spread ‘A Convenient Lie’.”
“Climate Change/Global Warming is no longer under debate. I learnt this in a first year Geography class at Carleton University. Where did you get your information about the state of out planet? Seems like you just put your fingers on the keyboard and vomited the first reaction you had without any pause for reflection. A reaction like yours is far too prevalent and far too ignorant to ignore any longer. Your article was irresponsible on so many levels. You used the opportunity to review Al Gore’s ecological footprint not his film. It’s easy but not effective to point to Al Gore’s use of airplanes as hypocritical to discredit his message.”
And, of course, the trusty ad hominem attack, from a geography professor at Carleton, oddly enough:
“The shame of it all is that every time even one half witted ornery snipe cries hysteria it does confuse the public about an issue around which there is no confusion except how lost we are trying to find solutions. there is no simple way to dramatically alter the very infrastructure of our economy and civilization, no matter how desperate we are. It is complicated and it is going to take generations. Al Gore’s work contributes to the future and is a necessary step in changing the way we think of reality. Yours is a waste of time and paper and is evidence of a tremendous will to ignorance. Did it take a whole bottle of wine for you to weigh the issues, fact check, compare the data and come up with your pithy remarks?”
Posted by rick mcginnis on 2006 11 26 at 11:46 AM • permalink
“Are people in northern Thailand moving off of marginal farmland and going to Bangkok so the land can revert to forest?” he [Peter Holmgren, chief of forest resources development at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome]asked. “It’s a scenario, but I’m not sure we really know that.”
Ummmmmm……Peter, you are in the process of documenting reforestation. So it’s more than a “scenario”, it’s a possible outcome, given that you’ve seen it happen in other places. And one that can be influenced with suitable policy and laws……if we can get over the doom mongering from the environmentalists. This is proof that the human species is not a blight upon the planet.
But hey, it’s understandable that he might want to be cautious, scientists being wrong on this one in a major way and all.
In fairness, I imagine that he has a valid concern about the reliability of the data.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 11 26 at 11:48 AM • permalink
…she replied that “corporate forces” refused to develop the power of commercial sail craft.
I guess the enviro-harpie (heh! I’m so stealing that) never heard of the Age Of Sail.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 11 26 at 12:00 PM • permalink
When I asked her why she didn’t take a sail boat home, she replied that “corporate forces” refused to develop the power of commercial sail craft.
Perfect lefty reasoning – “Those evil greedy corporations won’t build them, and me and my ideological fellow travellers are too lazy and stupid to form our own corporation to do it ourselves.”
Children. Whiny little children.
- #1, I’ve found the quickest way to shut up bores on a plane is to haul out pictures of the grandkids and commence to detail their glories. Failing that, you can always sneeze in the bore’s lap, and then confide that you just spent several weeks on a Chinese duck farm.
#2, Rick McGinnis, keep up the good work!
- #2 rick mcginnis
Anytime someone uses the phrase “Al Gore’s work contributes to the future” without a hint of sarcasm, I think it’s a safe bet that he’s a crank. Or at the very least, hopelessly deluded.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 11 26 at 12:40 PM • permalink
- The left wing wackos want a totalitarian socialist state, that they fancy will take care of all their needs, from cradle to grave (the silly twats)…and that will also make bad people stop driving SUVs (enviro-loons will still be able to fly around the world on jumbo jets, of course).
They see manmade global warming as their last chance (now that everyone, who isn’t braindead, can see that commie-ism hasn’t worked out too well) to impose such a state.
They’re true beliver, religious fanatics, and anyone who doubts their global warming scenario is a heretic.
That’s pretty much explains what’s going on here.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 11 26 at 12:47 PM • permalink
May we stipulate it’s possible for scientists—even “most scientists”—to be wrong?
No. No, we may not. Especially if those scientists agree with our dearly held belief in glowball worming.
And #2, rick mcginnis. You shouldn’t deliberately add misspellings, poor punctuation, lack of proper capitalization, and atrocious sentence structure into the writings of intelligent, well educated people. It makes them appear less erudite than they (think they) are!
- “Thank God for that! It was bad enough listening to this enviro-harpie for 15 hours. Three months’ exposure to the same piffle would have been a foretaste of Hell.”
Three months exposure. Hmm… interesting. Think about the posibbilities. During that time you would have had plenty of time to convince her otherwise. Hmm… I can think of other interesting possibilities, too. Three months is a looong time.
Posted by ElectronPower on 2006 11 26 at 01:08 PM • permalink
“…scientists believed…”
It is a religion! Science damn! Silly me… all this time I thought the responsibility of a scientist was to know!
Posted by nofixedabode on 2006 11 26 at 01:25 PM • permalink
- 6. Failing that, you can always sneeze in the bore’s lap, and then confide that you just spent several weeks on a Chinese duck farm.
Now that is hilarious! I’ll have to remember that one for future use.
Rick’s overwrought correspondent writes, “Healthy, educated, inquisitive doubt is an intelligent virtue, doubting in the face of overwhelming evidence and consensus is just stupid.” The planted axiom, of course, is that “we” will determine when the evidence is overwhelming. It reminds me of the intro to the old Outer Limits sci-fi television program: “Do not attempt to adjust your set. We control the vertical. We control the horizontal.” I suppose the next big threat will be an invasion of alien ants from the planet Zanti.
- Actually, Phranger, you could have told her that ‘corporate interests’ did attempt to revive the age of sail. They built a sailboat with steel sails (no kiddin’) and it left Hawaii for Guam with a cargo of lumber.
It got about 500 miles before it sank.
Amusing that the Waterbury, Connecticut, paper replied. Three hundred years ago, the Connecticut River Valley was the breadbasket of America and the Caribbean and was plowed land from end to end.
Today, it is a vast forest—again.
You might suppose that a New York Times reporter would have noticed that, but maybe they don’t wander as far as central Connecticut.
Posted by Harry Eagar on 2006 11 26 at 02:22 PM • permalink
- Twenty years ago most scientists believed that deforestation was an inexorable result of industrialization and that the earth would soon be virtually denuded of trees.
Fortunately, they saved the forests in the giant space domes. Thanks to Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
Posted by Brian O’Connell on 2006 11 26 at 03:38 PM • permalink
Fortunately, they saved the forests in the giant space domes. Thanks to Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
I got some bad news… Huey, Dewey, and Louie fell off the ship.
And the forests? You don’t want to know.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 11 26 at 04:10 PM • permalink
- “The concerned young American, returning from a study session in Melbourne, filled my ear with nonsense about the coming climate inferno.”
Can I bring up witches again?? And Phranger, YOU are the witch.. and this ol’ planet is a village…Also. Carleton college. Its first/second and third years are taken up with “up grading”, ie, teaching the kiddies how to read and write, enuf to get a ‘major’ in Aboriginal Studies and Jography. Counting is optional, of course.
When I asked her why she didn’t take a sail boat home, she replied that “corporate forces” refused to develop the power of commercial sail craft.
A German company is developing sails and wind-favouring navigation to reduce freighter fuel consumption, apparently by up to 1/3. Of course, it wouldn’t get the enviro-harpie to her destination any quicker than the current slow boat, but she’d never admit speed might enter into the equation anyway. It’s ALWAYS a conspiracy, and a conspiracy is a good way for the self-righteous eco-loons to explain away their hypocrisy.
Posted by Crispytoast on 2006 11 26 at 04:58 PM • permalink
Perfect lefty reasoning – “Those evil greedy corporations won’t build them, and me and my ideological fellow travellers are too lazy and stupid to form our own corporation to do it ourselves.”
I’ve heard the same argument from lefties who drive SUVs. “Why don’t the big corporations build an SUV that gets 60 mpg?”
Children. Whiny little children.
But why take the risk that they may be wrong? Why not, in the absence of stronger evidence to the contrary, act as if there is at least something behind the scientific consensus re global warming?
Because it would cause economic and material suffering for no good reason. Because some scientists are already proposing lunacy like putting pollutants in the upper atmosphere, just thirty years after they said that such pollution was going to cause an Ice Age. Because global warming, if true, would probably be beneficial given the historic record. Because anthropogenic CO2 is about 5% or less of total CO2, and therefore irrelevant in both its existence and its removal. Because doing “something”, when you have no clear idea of whether there is a problem or what the nature of the problem is, is the essence of stupidity, at best futile and at worst, dangerous.
Good enough?
- The two I keep in my back pocket, re: scientists always being right, are –
1. Chipanzees. Every book on the subject, when I was a kid, was adamant that chimpanzees were peaceful, playful vegetarians. Established scientific FACT: no debate. In my lifetime, simply due to better opportunities to observe them in the wild, it has been discovered that chimps are, when necessary, efficient and ruthless carnivorous pack-hunters of smaller apes.2. Stomach ulcers. Again, in my youth, it was an established fact, beyond any debate, that stomach ulcers were caused by excess acid, due to stress. In my hoary middle age, it has in fact been established that they have a bacterial origin. Two guys won the Nobel for working this out – one of them actually tested his theory by giving himself an ulcer and then curing it with antibiotics.
But why take the risk that they may be wrong? Why not, in the absence of stronger evidence to the contrary, act as if there is at least something behind the scientific consensus re global warming?
At night the garden gnomes in my neighborhood come to life and sneak around, creating all sorts of mischief. This morning they left half of my newspaper out of the box and it got rained on! But before dawn they all return to their usual positions. So tonight I’m going to beat them to pieces with a baseball bat. You know, before they come alive again.
I could wait for stronger evidence to the contrary, but why take the risk I may be wrong?
2. Stomach ulcers. Again, in my youth, it was an established fact, beyond any debate, that stomach ulcers were caused by excess acid, due to stress. In my hoary middle age, it has in fact been established that they have a bacterial origin.
There’s some forms of heart disease that have turned out to be bacterial, too.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 11 26 at 06:36 PM • permalink
- If the “scientists” had had the grace to admit that they were completely, totally wrong when they went on and on about the coming Ice Age back in the 70’s I’d be more inclined to cut them some slack now. As it is, they’ve proven themsleves to be liars and knaves. I cannot imagine why they’re surprised that so many of us don’t believe them now. “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, anyone?
- #2 Rick’s geography professor correspondent:
Climate Change/Global Warming is no longer under debate. I learnt this in a first year Geography class at Carleton University.
So in 2006, he claims that something he learned in a single, first year, Geography class was then and is now an incontrovertible fact.
How long does it take after your first-year studies to become a geography professor at Carleton?
And the left wonder why we use the word ‘academic’ pejoratively.
- #24 salvia –
But why take the risk that they may be wrong? Why not, in the absence of stronger evidence to the contrary, act as if there is at least something behind the scientific consensus re global warming?
Because it would damage the economies of the US and the West to the tune of trillions of dollars. And create unemployment and great economic hardship. Without creating any practical benefit.
All this because it might be right?
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 26 at 08:46 PM • permalink
The left wing wackos want a totalitarian socialist state, that they fancy will take care of all their needs, from cradle to grave (the silly twats)…and that will also make bad people stop driving SUVs (enviro-loons will still be able to fly around the world on jumbo jets, of course).
Dave Surls—Not quite. They believe they should be in charge of “The left wing wackos want a totalitarian socialist state, that they fancy will take care of all their needs…”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 11 26 at 09:23 PM • permalink
- According to Reuters, at the moment as much as 20 football fields worth of consensus is being lost every single day – and that’s just in Brazil.
I for one am not going to stand by and allow consensus to collapse – a situation that would threaten the viability of many thousands of conferences about our impending doom that we could attend and the countless glossy magazine articles on the subject we could read on our way to attend them.
And it’s not just about us.
Think of the conferences our children might also be able to attend – and our children’s children, and our children’s children’s children.
Only when the last consensus has collapsed, only when the last conference has been called off, only when the last grant to an environmental scientist has been withdrawn, only then will you fools realise that the buffet has been closed.
Sorry, I am too upset to continue…
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 11 26 at 09:38 PM • permalink
- #37 We won? Yeerhaw!Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 11 26 at 10:13 PM • permalink
- Speaking of academic nonces, Malcolm Mackerras is in today’s Australian gloating about his prediction for the Victorian election and making some predictions for 2010 and 2011.
This is the guy who told us that John Kerry would defeat Bush in a landslide. What is it about academics that make them forget their mistakes and continue to make guesses?
- #24, #25, #35—another reason is that we know that they’ve lied through their fucking teeth in at least two blatant cases, and are unwilling to give them the benefit of the doubt.
The first thing is the whole CO2 bit. The greenhouse effect—trapping heat, causing the Earth to be warm—is caused by water vapor, full stop. Of the five percent (5% max) due to other gases, about three-quarters—72%, or 3.6% of the whole—is caused by CO2. Another twenty percent (1% of the whole) comes from nitrogen oxides, despite the fact that NOx is only one-fiftieth of the abundance of CO2. And of the CO2, less than 5% is of anthropogenic origin. So if you transported the entire human race and all its works to the depths of intergalactic space, it would change the CO2 abundance by .05 x .036 = .0018 or less than two-tenths of one percent—which is less than the (admitted) errors in their data. What they are proposing—demanding—is that billions be spent, millions of people be unemployed and dislocated, in order to eliminate some tiny fraction of that two-tenths of a percent.
Second—well, a thousand years ago the Anasazi civilization of southwestern North America was flourishing; wine-grape cultivation was common in Thuringia, and as far North in England as Norfolk; Angkor Wat was being built; and Leif Ericcson was selling farmland in Greenland and people were buying it and moving there.Clearly it was warmer then than now, and contrary to the Chicken Littles it appears that it was wetter, too, and generally better for living all ‘round—something historians, anthropologists, and archaelogists have known for centuries. The Greenies’ response? Cook the data to eliminate the “anomaly”—the so-called “Mann hockey-stick”, a canonical example of the observation that, while figures don’t lie, liars are often adept at figures.
Given those two things, I personally tend to take anything they say with a pound or so of salt, a grain being insufficient, and am content to wait and see. A favorable outcome of “climate change” is just as possible as an unfavorable one, and in view of the dishonesty of the doomsayers I consider it more probable.
Regards,
Ric
- Makes one wonder if the Fermi Paradox is explained because people like the global warming cultists get control of a planet’s entire civilization and their race dies out with a whimper within a thousand years or so.Posted by Patrick Chester on 2006 11 26 at 11:01 PM • permalink
- In googling around for info, a proposal presents itself. Carbon neutrality is virtually useless. What we need to be is greenhouse neutral.
Mammalian urine, including human, includes urea, a compound of nitrogen. Some of it decomposes into nitrogen compounds, which as noted above are extremely potent greenhouse gases.
A human being averages about 1.5 liters of urine per day, and in that and afflatus (farts, damn you) releasing two to five grams of NOx into the atmosphere. It would appear that those compounds are about fifty to a hundred times as potent as greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide is. A day’s production of urine is thus roughly equivalent to half a kilogramme of carbon.
It follows that, if one dumps an environmentalist into the Marianas Trench, sequestering the carbons of his body just about equals the carbon content of the manufacturing procedures required to produce an automobile, and elimination of his urine from the chemical balance of the world cancels the carbon produced by operating the car for up to two hours a day. Deep-six two of them, and one remains greenhouse neutral after buying an SUV and running it whenever one cares to.
Become greenhouse neutral! Ditch a Green for Gaia!
Regards,
Ric
- Nic, I’d add that we know with absolute certainty that any amount of CO2 due to human activities cannot produce anything like the warming predicted. Therefore they rely on ‘positive feedbacks’ that the slight warming caused by CO2 will trigger.
The gaping hole in this argument is that if these feedbacks exist, they should have been triggered by previous warmer periods and the planet should already be 5C degrees (or whatever) warmer than it actually is.
Their solution is to erase the medieval warm period from the record.
- #24 saliva – er, salvia.
OK. several commentators here have kicked the stuffing out of your logic and I can hardly add to their eloquence, but if you’re still reading this thread (bets, anyone? We’re paying 7 to 1 against) then let me just say that you – yes, you! – with your very own brain, can look through both sides of the argument instead of falling back on the herd mentality of “well, most people think this way, ergo…” There is plenty of stuff out there, by well-respected experts in their field, such as Emeritus Professor Philip Stott, and other highly intelligent scientists, be they mathematicians, physicists or even statisticians, who have compelling facts to support their rebuttal, all verifiable and based on established, sound science (because despite all this nonsense, science is still far more wondrous and robust than it would appear).
In broad terms, there are fundamental questions pertaining to:
1. The physics of CO2 (can it achieve the temperature rises predicted?)2. The complex feedback mechanisms involved across the globe (we do not know much about them).
3. The validity of computer models because of exactly such a problem (GIGO) and their inability to mimic past climate conditions.
4. The paucity of real data within the limits of measurement error (0.6 degrees Celsius +/- 0.4 degrees does not maketh for climate catastrophe).
5. The variability of the historical record.
6. The effects of such highly disputable temperatures on our environment and economy (there are some good arguments against the Stern report – read them) vs the impact of measures such as Kyoto.
7. The politicisation of climate change, from universities seeking public grants to the MSM and, of course, mainstream politics. This includes the rampant fear-mongering going on in an effort to gain more control over the common people, and the latest manifestation of the guilt/self-sacrifice principle.
- I am a qualified Geography teacher with a degree in Geography and all that I studied tells me that Gore is preaching rubbish. The lefties were not in charge of the science department. There were all these boring lecturers who were only interested in facts. Gore would have not made it past first year and nor would the one year Yank chick.I no longer teach. I went over to the dark side and I am in marketing today, a field that does allow one to sail close to the truth but also enables one to identify bullshit
- Hmmmm.
Thank God for that! It was bad enough listening to this enviro-harpie for 15 hours. Three months’ exposure to the same piffle would have been a foretaste of Hell.
In my experience the fastest way to get a female enviro-harpie to shut up for the duration of a flight is to suggest initiating her into the “mile high” club in the airplane’s lavatory while I wear my Karl Rove mask.
The icy silence is to be preferred I assure you.
Posted by memomachine on 2006 11 27 at 01:23 AM • permalink
- Ah geeze, ed, how’d you keep from laughing?Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 11 27 at 02:49 AM • permalink
- #21 JayC
I’ve heard the same argument from lefties who drive SUVs. “Why don’t the big corporations build an SUV that gets 60 mpg?”
Children. Whiny little children.
Perfect answer. Have your children carry you.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 27 at 03:15 AM • permalink
- #26 cuckoo. Your point about chimps reminds me of how it used to be said that humans are the only animal that rapes. It’s now known that rape is quite common among the other animals. Also, the bonobo chimps have an array of sexual practices, including homosexuality and what is effectively prostitution.Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 27 at 03:21 AM • permalink
- Today in North Dakota some towns are registering coldest temps in 100 years. Did Al Gore visit?Posted by Bearded Mullah on 2006 11 27 at 03:28 AM • permalink
- Climate Change/Global Warming is no longer under debate. I learnt this in a first year Geography class at Carleton University.
How is this not an original Iowa-Hawk?
My own climate-studies prof (a capable and decent man, however enviro-lefty that he may have been) back in the mid-eighties, told our class that the depleting ozone layer was the biggest threat to all of our existence, and spoke narry a word of “Global-Warming”.
So stop with your VO5 People!
- More consensus loss!!!
From the BBC no less.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1766064.stm
“New research has found that parts of the ice sheet that covers West Antarctica may be getting thicker, not thinner, as scientists have feared.”
And
“Dr Ian Joughin, of the American space agency’s (Nasa) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Slawed Tulaczyk, of the University of California at Santa Cruz, say they have found “strong evidence” that the ice sheet in the Ross Sea area is growing, by 26.8 gigatons per year.”
And the truest bit in the whole Gerbil Worming debate
“The research summarises a picture that’s been emerging for the last 10 years. West Antarctica, it’s clear, is not behaving in a unitary way. It’s harder than ever to predict how this area of Antarctica is going to evolve.”
Thats science speak for “not enough data to calculate SFA”
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 11 27 at 04:13 AM • permalink
- O/T Breaking news on 7,
Alleged terrorist John Amundsen has been caught trying to dig his way out of his cell in the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre.
No link, except this about his “absurd” jail regime
- #61 MadMike1
Don’t sleep with Jo, you will catch the clap.
If you’d sleep with Jo Bjelke-Peterson, the clap would be the last of your worries.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 27 at 04:58 AM • permalink
- #56 Indeed, Muz. The Bonobo is now the pinup animal for the woolly-minded Margaret Mead brigade who always think there is a primitive tribe or primate or aquatic mammal out there somewhere who’s getting it all right while we evil ‘civilized’ humans are getting it all wrong. The discovery that young male dolphins will pack rape females from other pods is taking a while to filter through to the wind-chime and leadlight-glass set.
In my experience the fastest way to get a female enviro-harpie to shut up for the duration of a flight is to suggest initiating her into the “mile high” club in the airplane’s lavatory while I wear my Karl Rove mask.
I don’t know if that would work nowadays. I believe that the offended female would start shrieking “sexual harrassment!” and you would be lucky to get thrown off the plane—in midair with just a parachute and a change of underwear. Better just to smile politely and tell her you’re a Republican (or whatever is the Australian equivalent of the Darth Vader party).
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 27 at 06:50 AM • permalink
- #8 Dave Surls
“The left wing … want a totalitarian socialist state, that … will take care of all their needs, from cradle to grave”Please will someone give them their state, where they’ll find the space between cradle and grave is “nasty, brutish and short” – exactly what they deserve.
Posted by rampisadmukerjee on 2006 11 27 at 06:56 AM • permalink
- Hmmm.
#69: Yes. But evidently that process takes around 3,000 – 5,000 years so there’s no hurry.
Posted by memomachine on 2006 11 27 at 09:05 AM • permalink
- Hmmmm.
#53 Ah geeze, ed, how’d you keep from laughing?
I don’t. I fully enjoy the situation. 🙂
Posted by memomachine on 2006 11 27 at 09:07 AM • permalink
- Hmmmm.
I believe that the offended female would start shrieking “sexual harrassment!”
*shrug* so far it’s worked perfectly the few times I’ve had to employ it.
Perhaps I’ll just wear a GOP button or something.
Posted by memomachine on 2006 11 27 at 09:14 AM • permalink
- #69 – “Aren’t we about due for the switcheroo thingy that our magnetic poles do?”
Indeed, we are. I propose a complex and expensive system of magnetism credits!
Posted by rick mcginnis on 2006 11 27 at 09:32 AM • permalink
- My Bio Prof, one of the first “environmentalists” ever, widely respected and honored, winner of multiple awards and grants, confidently assured us that we were in for a reoccurrence of the ice-age. Established fact. Consensus. No doubting it. It was coming within our lifetimes. This was 1974. I’m still waiting.
There must be away to fund scientific research without it becoming a competition to see who can come up with the most hysteric doomsday theory. One wonders how these people can file their apps with a straight face.
Posted by nofixedabode on 2006 11 27 at 11:09 AM • permalink
- #26;
“Two guys won the Nobel for working this out [cause of pyloric ulcers] – one of them actually tested his theory by giving himself an ulcer and then curing it with antibiotics.”
Even better, Helicobacter pylori, which caused the ulcers, turned out to be susceptible to treatment with bismuth compounds. Pepto-bismol actually was useful there.
- texasred, those guys predicting an ice age soon back in the ‘70s probably were not wrong.
Just a trifle premature as they used to say about the leftists who went off to fight the fascists in Spain.
grimmy, at the risk of getting Andrea in a swivet, I have to remind you that it was not scientists who proposed that straw+water+dark makes mice. That was the priests. It was the scientists that proved how that doesn’t work.
Posted by Harry Eagar on 2006 11 27 at 03:45 PM • permalink
- Hmmmm.
Couple years later, saw a newspaper article about how the Semai actually are as murderous and nasty as any of us. Had a good larf.
When I was a kid I read pretty much anything I could get my hands on. One book extolled the virtues of the Native American and how absolutely non-violent he was. About how all conflicts between tribes would be resolved by gmaes involving the counting of “coup” and the victors would be those that tallied up the most “coup”. And that it was the white man that corrupted this Eden and brought death and murder to the New World.
Frankly even at age 12 this sounded like so much BS. Then I did some digging and found out that yes indeed it was complete BS.
Personally I think most primitive societies that are very peaceful are that way because everyone is armed to the teeth and always prepared to stack heads at the slightest provocation.
But as for the strange liberal concept of the noble savage, no idea why they’ve bought so wholeheartedly into it. Frankly if it were really that great then more people would give up hot showers, microwave ovens, 24-hour drivethroughs and anti-biotics.
Posted by memomachine on 2006 11 27 at 04:14 PM • permalink
- Sarah is already half-baked, so she had better be done by the finish!!!!Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 11 27 at 05:32 PM • permalink
One book extolled the virtues of the Native American and how absolutely non-violent he was. About how all conflicts between tribes would be resolved by gmaes involving the counting of “coup” and the victors would be those that tallied up the most “coup”.
We read a monograph in a grad-school history class that said Native American warfare was pretty non-violent because only one or two people in a village were killed annually.
Next class, I came in with some math showing that this worked out to about the same death rate as the United States in WWII – being very generous about the difference in trauma care and the like. And that was every year, year after year. Most of my classmates weren’t pleased, but being unable to argue with my numbers, fell back on making excuses (“They weren’t fighting wars of conquest and genocide” and the like. Because, you know, motivation is everything.)
We read a monograph in a grad-school history class that said Native American warfare was pretty non-violent because only one or two people in a village were killed annually.
Next class, I came in with some math showing that this worked out to about the same death rate as the United States in WWII – being very generous about the difference in trauma care and the like. And that was every year, year after year.
Lawrence Keeley’s “War Before Civilization” goes through a similar exercise. Based on the numbers, the single most violent society on record was a band of Inuit that had a single murder over the course of a century.
Generally speaking, though, you’re correct—the numbers were small, but the rate was quite high. There are some stunning charts in that book comparing death rates among some stone age societies to modern societies during major wars. The comparison comes out pretty much as yours did—your chances of dying a violent death were much, much higher in the stone age society.
As for “they weren’t fighting wars of conquest and genocide” lie—only a believer in the noble savage myth could say something like that. A single archaeological site disproves their claim—the Crow Creek Massacre site, where an entire village was killed. Well, all but the young females.
(The same site, BTW, contains scalping victims. Considering some of the anti-westerners claim the British introduced scalping, this is quite a feat, since the site dates to around 1350.)
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 11 27 at 09:05 PM • permalink
As for “they weren’t fighting wars of conquest and genocide” lie—only a believer in the noble savage myth could say something like that.
About 20 years ago, the Seneca Indian tribe in Western New York filed suit to claim ownership of Grand Island, NY. Their claim was based on some treaty they signed with George Washington or something.
And how long had these dispossessed Native Peoples been stewards of said isle before the Burner of Villages swindled them out of it? About 125 years – after they slaughtered the Neutral Indians who lived on it.
- #78, Harry E.:
grimmy, at the risk of getting Andrea in a swivet, I have to remind you that it was not scientists who proposed that straw+water+dark makes mice. That was the priests. It was the scientists that proved how that doesn’t work.
Actually, it was sciencist that did that experiment and “proved” the cause – effect of mouse creation. I had a set of books “History of Science” that had a chapter or few on some of the more bizarro stuff science has proven as it grew up out of the dark.
The priests were the ones that kept on about that other bullshit that that Greek dude made so popular, those crystal spheres thingies.
The point being, no matter the when or the where, people will believe something is true until they believe something else is truer. It’s all part of the process.
Piltdown man, anyone?
Piltdown man, anyone?
*sigh*
And who showed it was a hoax? The village idiot?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 11 27 at 10:20 PM • permalink
- #80 “Unfortunately, the connection between bacteria and ulcers was not known when my father had almost two-thirds of his stomach removed back in the early ‘60’s due to chronic ulcers from which he had suffered for years.” – Paco
But I’m sure that there was a consensus that he needed two thirds of his stomach removed so that made everything okay. It would have been boorish to argue the point when there was a consensus.
(I can just imagine the internal dialogue of the new crowd of consensus-mongers, “You can’t argue when there’s a consensus – especially if we freeze your funding or pass a law against it.” And from what I’ve heard coming from them, I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened.)
- #91, and interestingly the researchers who went against the consensus were vilified, ridiculed and denied funding. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 11 28 at 02:59 AM • permalink
- From the National Health Museum:
‘From the time of the ancient Romans, through the Middle Ages, and until the late nineteenth century, it was generally accepted that some life forms arose spontaneously from non-living matter. . . . For example, a seventeenth century recipe for the spontaneous production of mice required placing sweaty underwear and husks of wheat in an open-mouthed jar, then waiting for about 21 days . . . . Although such a concept may seem laughable today, it is consistent with the other widely held cultural and religious beliefs of the time.
‘The first serious attack on the idea of spontaneous generation was made in 1668 by Francesco Redi, an Italian physician and poet. . . . one of the first examples of an experiment in the modern sense, in which controls are used. In spite of his well-executed experiment, the belief in spontaneous generation remained strong . . .
The debate over spontaneous generation continued for centuries. In 1745, John Needham, an English clergyman, proposed what he considered the definitive experiment. Everyone knew that boiling killed microorganisms, so he proposed to test whether or not microorganisms appeared spontaneously after boiling. He boiled chicken broth, put it into a flask, sealed it, and waited – sure enough, microorganisms grew. Needham claimed victory for spontaneous generation. . . .An Italian priest, Lazzaro Spallanzani, was not convinced, and he suggested that perhaps the microorganisms had entered the broth from the air after the broth was boiled, but before it was sealed.
. . .’As we see, there were some priests on the side of science, there were not scientists on the side of spontaneous generation, only priests.
Posted by Harry Eagar on 2006 11 28 at 05:00 AM • permalink
- Yeah, you’re right Harry. In all the medieval and renaissance period there was one and only one event where that issue came up and was tested.
It was long ago and I dont have the books anymore but I do remember reading of an experiment, conducted by what was considered a scientist of that time (a man with sufficient personal wealth to not have to be gainfully employed and at least mildly inquisitive). He placed a bowl of water and handful of straw into a closed cupboard and “produced” mice.
I, alas, dont have the details registered to memory nor a link to verification on the web, therefore it obviously never happened. After all, everything that can be known has been posted on the net.
- Hey, Grimmey, if you ever catch sight of an old BBC documentary called “The Ascent of Man,” then grab it. Contains a lot of stuff along the lines of which you’ve been posting, and much much more.
And O/T, but that just reminded me: anyone here read those Sword of Truth books by Terry Goodkind? The prose is nothing to wax lyrical about, but at around book 6 in the series it starts reading like Ayn Rand doing Robert Jordan.
- Science didn’t become self-conscious until around 1600, so whatever weird stuff they did in the medieval period doesn’t count.
If you wanted to take a ‘pagan’ book out of the library at the monastery at St. Gall, you had to scratch your ear with your finger ‘like a dog,’ because only someone as low as a dog would be interested in the non-divine books.
Real scientific, those guys.
Posted by Harry Eagar on 2006 11 28 at 11:20 PM • permalink
- Anyhoo, I wasnt trying to poke at scientists, science or any form of either.
Mostly, what I was trying to get at, is that folk do believe alot of stuff that later on can look pretty weird as new stuff is figured out.
And, that’s a universal thing. We all believe stuff today that a 100 years from now will look to be beyond dumbass.
and Harry, that “medieval” probably got popped into the post because I’ve been playin alot of Medieval 2: Total War last few days and kinda got chivalric armies on the rampage on my mind lol…sorry about that.
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Thank God for that! It was bad enough listening to this enviro-harpie for 15 hours. Three months’ exposure to the same piffle would have been a foretaste of Hell.