Category Archives: Science (not-so-real)

The Great Global Black Out

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Did you do it? Did you join The Great Global Black Out to celebrate global warming today?

The World Wildlife Federation targeted Earth Hour 2009 on more than one billion people in 1,000 cities worldwide to send a “powerful global message” to the world leaders who will attend the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagenin December. Global landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, the Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House, and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all went dark in this monument to bad science.

I hope, in turning off your lights, you remembered the lights on the VCR and the microwave oven and most assuredly the light in the refrigerator. Opening the fridge for beer would definitely break the spell. After all, the Far Green (that would be the folks who dreamed up the Great Global Black Out) also want us to believe I can burn 167 KW-Hrs per month with the little LEDs and incandescent lights I have running in North Puffin.

We are safe, though. I turned all of my lights on to avoid the Pico Ice Age caused by the sudden cessation of heat-emitting filaments.

It is worth noting that the imagery for Earth Hour includes a person holding an open flame to bring light unto the darkness.

For more facts about “Global Warming” visit the Petition Project where more than 31,000 American scientists have stated unequivocally that no convincing scientific evidence ties human activity to the disruption of the Earth’s climate. Those scientists include the past president of the National Academy of Sciences.

Hoofbeats

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The End is nigh. The hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen have sounded. I am about to agree with Gary Trudeau. A couple-three years ago, his Doonesbury™ strip introduced Dr. Nathan Null, the Situational Science Adviser™. Here’s an excerpt from that strip:

Young Republican College Kid: “Drat! These pesky scientific facts won’t line up behind my beliefs!”
Situational Science Adviser: “Then Challenge them, Stewie!”
—–
SSA: “Situational Science is about respecting both sides of a scientific argument, not just the one supported by the facts!”
—–
SSA: “That’s why I always teach the controversy like the Evolution Controversy or the Global Warming controversy …
—–
YRCC: “You’re right, Situational Scienceman–I’ll never trust science again! “It’s just too controversial!”
SSA: “Stewie gets it now, folks! Do you?”

Trudeau likes to pound the Bush administration (ya think) but there is a similar effort going on the Far Green camps to use science to forestall and obfuscate rather than simply to report.

Once upon a time I thought this wasn’t a wholesale attempt to discredit science, merely a concerted effort to ramp up tiny observations into generalized Truths to serve their agenda. After all, we are told the Far Right agenda tries to use common folk as cannon or environmental fodder so, situationally, the Far Green agenda must try to shut down one business segment after another.

That worries me, but not as much as what I now see as the wholesale drive to gain power over every facet of your life and mine. How? By discrediting science whenever it appears in public. It has been going on for years.

Big Tobacco tried mightily to discredit Dr. Koop as a poopyhead.

Natural Life Magazine tried mightily to discredit childhood vaccinations.

The Far Right tried mightily to discredit Evolution for 80 years.

Trudeau’s Situational Science Adviser pushed the pesticides controversy, the coal slurry controversy, the Everglades controversy, the acid rain controversy, the mercury controversy, and more.

I know very little about mercury other than its toxicity and ubiquity. And its distance from the Sun. I did read that if you lose a single mercury filling in a ten-acre pond, the EPA would have to ban all fishing, swimming, bathing, and boating in that pond. Makes you wonder why we still have “silver” fillings–or why Al Gore pushes mercury-laden fluorescent light bulbs–innt.

Now, of course, everything from the unnaturally high snowfall in the winter of 2007-08 to the unnatural temperature rise of the Atlantic Ocean is caused by Global Warming, and all a result of Carbon Dioxide.

Heh.

Anybody want to guess the agenda here?

It’s almost the same as mine.

I want you to read this, decide I am brilliant, and do what I tell you is right.

The Far Green wants you decide they are brilliant and do what they tell you is right. But they want more. The Far Green wants to force you and you and you to do what they tell you is right And they are developing the tools to enforce their whims.

One of my correspondents related a story from the historical times after the Tet Offensive when gasoline cost 40 cents per gallon. His friend, a Quaker, had received Conscientious Objector status and was assigned to a group called “Environment!” After working there several months, he said “These guys don’t care a bit about the environment. This is all about power… We, the great and stupid unwashed, needed to be doing what the folks at “Environment!” said we should be doing.”

That was more than 35 years ago.

I think the group Environment! has joined the Extinct Species list but other Far Green groups are growing stronger.

Today their tools include taxes, criminal penalties, and news attacks on science.

Our Quaker friend said then that “if the environmental movement could define Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant, they would have total control.”

OK, everybody inhale … and hold.

Next up will be the ban on that other dangerous chemical, Dihydrogen Monoxide.

Your Carbon Footprint
NASA and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the earth has entered a natural cooling phase that will last decades.
OTOH, Al and Tipper Gore’s Tennessee home uses about the same amount of electricity as a dozen or more average American homes or at least 156 Swahili villages. The Gore’s Nashville residence is just four times the size of those average American homes and the Gore’s consumption has jumped yet another 10% since their “energy-efficient” home renovations. Do as I say, not as I do, eh Al?

Bad for Baby?

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No. Bad for Us.

Are common baby lotions bad for babies?

A small study conducted by the University of Washington and the Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute showed that exposure to phthalates caused reproductive problems in mice.

Lotions made for babies (and grownups) include phthalates to add the fragrance or color that separates a Johnson and Johnson shampoo from a Proctor & Gamble product.

I looked on the back of a baby shampoo bottle and found cocamidopropyl betaine, sorbitan laurate, sodium trideceth sulfate, and even the dreaded polyquaternium. Say, what? The latter would be a quater that marries several iums.

“If it’s difficult to say and it’s not commonly known, it’s probably something we should wonder about,” Dr. Lori Racha of University Pediatrics told the local Channel 3 News.

Dr. Racha says it is too early to know if those products actually harm human babies but she wants us to switch anyway. “If it smells really sweet, it’s probably not something we should be using on our babies,” she said on the news.

Hello?

This is a medical doctor–a pediatrician–who wants us to make a crucial decision based on what she doesn’t know.

I can apply that technique in all facets of my life, can’t I?

The National Institutes of Health’s DailyMed reports that nadolol is a “nonselective beta-adrenergic receptor blocking agent.” It is chemically identified as “1-(tert-butylamino)-3-[(5,6,7,8-tetrahydro-cis-6,7-dihydroxy-1-naphthyl)oxy]-2-propanol.” It even contains microcrystalline cellulose.

Anybody here have any idea what all of that means? Any at all?

Yeah, yeah, I know somebody can answer yes, but Corgard® or nadolol, its generic equivalent, has been prescribed to thousands of people who have absolutely no clue about its chemical makeup, let alone any of the scientific names it has. In those patients it successfully treats their high blood pressure or prevents the chest pain called angina. A beta blocker, nadolol slows the heart rate and relaxes the blood vessels so the heart does not work as hard as it might.

I wonder. Should people with hypertension not take nadolol or its pharmacological stable mates because they cannot pronounce the ingredients?

consumersearch.com reports that experts choose the Graco SnugRide as the best infant car seat. One of the reasons is what Graco calls its “EPS Energy Absorbing Foam Liner.” EPS is the abbreviation for Expanded Polystyrene. Polystyrene is made from an aromatic monomer styrene.

Maybe that’s scary, too. Dr. Racha thinks that chemicals that smell good are bad for our babies. We’d better ban the Graco SnugRide. But, wait. Aroma therapy is all the rage. It’s supposed to be good for us. Or maybe that’s not what the aroma in aromatic means. Who knows?

What is going on here? Does Dr. Racha honestly believe that just because she thinks something might sound bad for us it really really is? When a second grader imagines that a dog ate his homework, he honestly believes that is true. One of the tests of growing up is that we stop blaming the dog.

The problem here is not whether babies should be exposed to phthalates or polystyrene.

The problem here is whether we should be exposed to fear mongering backed up by imaginary science.