Straight Dope on Medicine: Climate Change

Climate Change?

What is it? Is it real?

First, we were headed for an ice age in the 1970s, then it morphed into global warming, and now we have the nebulous and non-descript climate change.

Climate change, by itself, says absolutely nothing. The only thing a reader could gather is that it will be different in the future than it is now. It could be hotter. It could be colder. It could be wetter. It could be drier.

Maybe the planet will split in two.

And we all should be scared.

It’s as if they are saying the climate is in CRISIS!!!! What crisis? We don’t know, but it’s the end of the world, and we will fill in the details later. In the meantime, we’ll keep everyone locked up and locked down for their own good.

Say hello to the 15 minute city.

We just won’t participate.

We’re in charge!

For my part, I want to see the evidence.[i]

Whenever someone wants you to be scared, alarm bells should ring.

There is a chance that their real game is to control you, and that the crisis is either made-up or exaggerated.

What Is Manipulation?

Manipulation is a form of emotional abuse that aims to exploit, control, or otherwise influence others to one’s advantage.1 Manipulation targets and controls how someone feels, thinks, and behaves in order for the manipulator to get what they want.[ii]

There is an extensive list of ways in which people seek to play others like marionettes.

· Gaslighting. ...

· Triangulation. ...

· Projection. ...

· Controlling Your Life. ...

· Name-Calling. ...

· Generalizations. ...

· Moving the Goalposts. ...

· Love Bombing.

It’s best to recognize these and head them off at the pass.

We went through a mini-ice age from 1300 to 1800 in North America.

Mountain glaciers expanded at several locations, including the European Alps, New Zealand, Alaska, and the southern Andes, and mean annual temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere declined by 0.6 °C (1.1 °F) relative to the average temperature between 1000 and 2000 CE. The term Little Ice Age was introduced to the scientific literature by Dutch-born American geologist F.E. Matthes in 1939.[iii]

Continuing on…

The argument is that humanity is the bad guy. You and I are causing Climate Change by our behaviors.

Should we hang our heads in shame?

The concept is that our atmosphere acts as a greenhouse. Light comes in from the sun and warms our planet, but cannot escape as well as it could in the past because of our pollutants.

It’s trapped.

Atmospheres make a difference. The Earth and moon are roughly the same distance from the sun. Based on that metric, we should be equally heated.

We aren’t.

The moon fluctuates wildly, whereas the Earth is impressively stable.

The argument is that we are changing our atmosphere, and consequently our temperature is going to change. The pundits are saying the temperature is rising.

Carbon Dioxide is the culprit.

15 Billion metric tons of fossil fuel was burned last year.

How about the future?

Earth has compensatory systems. M.I.T. is challenging the alarmist narrative in that warming is a one-way street.

M.I.T. has more scientific credibility than CNN or MSDNC. They are rigorous in scientific exploration.

Now, a study by MIT researchers in Science Advances confirms that the planet harbors a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to pull the climate back from the brink, keeping global temperatures within a steady, habitable range.

Just how does it accomplish this? A likely mechanism is “silicate weathering” — a geological process by which the slow and steady weathering of silicate rocks involves chemical reactions that ultimately draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into ocean sediments, trapping the gas in rocks.[iv]

“On the one hand, it’s good because we know that today’s global warming will eventually be canceled out through this stabilizing feedback,” says Constantin Arnscheidt, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “But on the other hand, it will take hundreds of thousands of years to happen, so not fast enough to solve our present-day issues.”

This should come as a surprise to exactly no one. The Montreal Protocol, which eliminated CFC use in aerosols. Unlike “climate change,” a specific agent was identified.

As of this writing, the levels of CFCs in the upper atmosphere have been reduced to 50% of 1980 levels.

Climate Tech

We are not without means or brains. Often, we are capable of addressing and fixing our problems. Carbon capture is something we can do. Can we do enough? That is what we need to find out.

Biochar and Enhanced Weathering are new on the scene.

Modeling Errors

Not everything is consistent with the prevailing climate models, meaning they have an increased chance of being incorrect. One of the glaring inconsistencies involves El Nino and La Nina. There has been Pacific cooling instead of warming recently, and the models all get it wrong.

Sydney, Australia is experiencing a deluge because of this. They have received over 7 feet of water as of October, which is easily a record.

La Nina together with the Indian Ocean Dipole and the Southern Annular Mode are at the heart of the problem. This is the third La Nina year in a row, which has never happened before this century.

La Nina and El Nino are part of El Nino Southern Oscillation system regulating air flow and barometric pressure in the Pacific. El Nino is supposed to become the predominant modeling algorithms which predict global warming.

All of this has been having a domino effect, with the Jet Stream riding further north than normal, and Europe, as a result, has been “colder than normal.”

Mt. Sinai Climate Change 10 Commandments

Any good religion must have its Commandments. They must!

May they stay smashed, and good riddance.

Dissenting Voice

Ian Plimer, Australian Geologist, says that Climate Change is rubbish.

He specializes in the science of fluids and water interacting with rocks. Plimer says that the planet is constantly being changed. These are due to geological forces. Geologists have been tracking the climate fluctuations for 250 years.

Further, he says that the contention that human forces are changing the climate are demonstrably wrong, and that we are a pittance in the equation. Ian says that what we are experiencing today is nothing unusual.

Unlike the modelers, the geologist use evidence. Science is married to evidence.

Much of the change in climate cycles can be attributed to the activity of the sun and the positioning of the moon.

Plimer says there is a crisis. "There is a crisis of honesty. There is a crisis of common sense."

Conclusion

Is the planet on an inexorable path to global warming? Don’t be so sure.

There is much money to be had in preventing or addressing a climate crisis, as well as control of citizens worldwide.

References:

[i] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/QgrcJHrnzwpntHJpnJLkDlhdZjrnSKTHcfQ?projector=1

[ii] American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Manipulation. Retrieved from https://dictionary.apa.org/manipulation\

[iii] https://www.britannica.com/science/Little-Ice-Age

[iv] https://news.mit.edu/2022/earth-stabilizing-temperature-1116