Friday, June 19th 2009, 11:12 AM EDT
The basic purpose of science is to ask and attempt to answer questions. Seldom is the answer obvious or simple. The Earth’s climate is the final visible result of a large number of complex nuclear, chemical, geological and astronomical forces. It is beyond the scope of an editorial or short sound bite to describe these forces and their interactions to a scientifically illiterate public.
Science is not the only subject where there is limited public knowledge. There seems to be little understanding of human history. Throughout history, the discovery of fire has been recognized as the greatest factor in the development of civilized society. To generations connected to the earth’s real physical struggles, the benefit of fire is unquestioned. To those who have ‘evolved’ free of lives most basic demands, it is important that we remind ourselves of the necessity of combustion.
The greatest initial benefit for mankind from fire was light in the dark and warmth in the cold. This was soon followed by the cooking of food, which reduced disease transmission, improved digestibility and refined tastes. That was soon followed by fired clay pottery and sanitation of water thru boiling.
Sometimes limestone rock surrounded the fire pit, and when heated, produced cement. This led to mortar, stucco, concrete and better bricks. Fire allowed us to refine and mold metals, and to clear vast areas of existing vegetation so that humans could cultivate crops. Fire gave us the first method controlling epidemics by burning infected bodies, possessions, even villages. Fire was also man’s first weapon of mass destruction.
When harnessed to steam engines, fire freed us from the drudgery of muscle work and the uncertainty and inefficiency of sail. Fire lifted the first balloons, which gave mankind the gift of flight. When liquid fuels were developed for internal combustion engines, there was an unimaginable increase in the individual’s production capability. This ‘force multiplier’ has had a tremendous impact on everyone’s life.
Think of the countless lifetimes it would take in walking or horse riding to duplicate the travels of the average person in a modern society. Think of the countless hours of drudgery in your life if every blade of grass and board of wood was cut by hand. And yet, that has always been mankind’s duty, until the twentieth century. Then there was a weird coincidence of events.
First, tractors freed millions from the horse drawn plow to live in a post-agrarian society. As industrialization efficiency improved most physical labor could be replaced with managerial and bureauctic employment. Large portions of the population were for the first time in history freed from most daily contact with the harsh conditions previously required to exist on this planet. They were now empowered to manage and dictate the behavior of those still bound by nature.
Then in the last century two other forces developed to reinforce this absurd and detached evolution in life style. Progressivism developed at the beginning of the twentieth century to employee this newly freed population in the utopian dream that mankind’s energies could now be planned and controlled by expanding government bureaucracy.
Failure of these plans, in many places and at many times, in the last century have not deterred the still fervent belief that the perfect autocracy is soon to be achieved. Those freed from the dictates of nature were now the masters and overseers of those still bound by the forces of nature. The mid century Nihilist philosophy of ‘values are baseless and nothing is knowable’ would stem from these same detached minds.
Educators embraced both movements and indoctrinated the rapidly expanding population of detached minds. These great minds were now free from having to make any sense and from needing the correct answer. The ultimate expression of this detached and completely unrealistic movement is the current pseudo-science of the climate debate and the villianization of combustion.
Funny that it only takes a few generations of luxury brought by combustion to renounce the benefit of combustion. Carbon dioxide is a benign molecule that is essential to life molecule. The one word that describes each of us the moment when we quit producing carbon dioxide is DEAD. And now these great, detached minds are telling us that to solve a non-existent problem we must be taxed and completely controlled on our use of combustion.
No level of control by these freed minds will provide the expected outcome so the rules will be ever changing and ever increasing. The only way a bureaucrat can get a raise is to create new opportunities within the bureaucracy. Buildings full of government cubicles are not going to solve our problems. It is time to realize that this cancer has mastastized and get prompt treatment.
Global warming, which was modified to global climate change to accommodate the current cooling cycle, is the worst ‘science’ since the world was flat. Prolonged exposure to CO2 levels fifty times higher than normal have no measurable side effects and yet the EPA has just declared that CO2 is a toxic substance.
Believing that the world was flat didn’t change the planets shape. Believing that carbon dioxide is a toxin does not make it a toxin. Believing that a change of several parts per million of a simple, naturally occurring, and three-atom molecule is going to impact the climate is delusional. The forces that will be the only beneficiary of carbon control are now controlling the only information allowed in the debate of these new laws, taxes and regulations.
The fix is in because the loyal opposition is a little too loyal to the same puppet masters. As we all know, fire can be our friend or foe. But it is not something that government can or should have complete control over. We are being offered a great restriction in our freedom in exchange for the creation of a new government revenue stream. We must resist these forces tampering with the cornerstone of civilization. We must demand genuine climate change debate.
I refuse to follow the Neo-Maoist leadership and their lemming like propaganda network. Typical of ‘New Think’ is the ‘New Speak’ term for those of us counterrevolutionaries who oppose the AGW indoctrination. We are labeled ‘deniers’ when in fact we are ‘deniees’….those who are denied a right to express our informed opinions in this declared settled debate. Central planning can dictate, but they have no answers.
Society would not exist without science or combustion. And yet, science has proven easy to corrupt and combustion easy to demonize. It is time for those of us with some level of residual cognitive ability to rebel against this oppressive mind control system. I chose to follow in the footsteps of Patrick Henry. I will man the barricades against the AGW fraud until my last CO2 ladened breath.
Joseph A Olson, PE
June 20, 2009