To address these and other questions, governments around the world fund whole armies of academic researchers. Grants fly fast and furiously, and colleges and universities shift the emphasis of earlier research efforts to instead study everything about cheese. Chemistry departments, for example, make great inroads in developing theories on how iron-rich basalt—what everyone hitherto believed the moon was primarily made of—could actually metamorphose into cheese, which chemically is based on the casein phospho-protein. Astro-physicists weigh in as well, explaining how the process might have been accelerated by cosmic wave bombardment. Biologists are enlisted to describe what cheese actually is, and what changes might be likely to occur on the moon, now that we know it is made of cheese.
As the grant money rolls, and obscure academics find themselves getting published quickly, with only the bare minimum of peer review, it is not just the hard-science departments who join the fray. At major universities, historians begin advancing theories of how important events in our past were actually—unbeknownst at the time but now somewhat obvious in retrospect—affected by the dairy-content of our nearest celestial neighbor. Sociologists discuss how cheese on the moon will cause deep and long-lasting changes to the evolution of social structures on Earth. Psychologists focus on the full-moon phenomenon and its impact on the human mind, finding now much more exotic explanations of the causal relationship. Philosophers expand on the work of others, by noting the epistemological and tautological implications of a cheese-based moon. Engineers go into almost a frenzy of mathematical calculations, seeking to determine the best way of mining the cheese, and bringing it down to Earth for human consumption. Economists delve into what this will mean for the dairy market, the strength of the U.S. dollar, and the likely impact on monetary policy.
Meanwhile over at the United Nations, debate rages on who has the right to claim this cheese. Under-developed nations insist that it be used primarily to help their struggling economies. Advanced nations say that cheese mining must be open to whomever can extract the resource, as otherwise the cheese will never be recovered. France weighs in, noting that their country is widely-credited with the invention of cheese, and thus knows more about the subject than anyone else. They suggest that the moon be considered a Department of France, similar to Martinique, as they would obviously be the best custodian of this resource.
In response, the United Nations creates a new committee within UNESCO, named the Intergovernmental Panel on Cheese Considerations and the Moon (IPCCM). In a gesture described by Obama administration officials as “the least we can do to make up for America’s past insensitivity,” the White House announces that it will provide the funding for IPCCM, using TARP funds previously authorized by Congress. Asked to explain how Troubled Asset Relief Program funds could legitimately be used for this purpose, the President’s press secretary notes: “Cheese on the moon is clearly an Asset. Yet it’s Troubling in many ways. It will be a Relief to have the UN committee well funded. So we see no conflict in using TARP money for this purpose.”
Over at the Pentagon, various defense contractors receive bloated commissions to analyze the military opportunities and threats that the new lunar reality affords. The CIA is hard at work, but its studies are secret and little is known of their direction.
Arguably, the biggest impact occurs in the media, where the cheese-based moon becomes cover-story material for everything from the mass-media venues of Time and Newsweek, to rarified academic publications, to pop-culture tabloids. Examples of cover-story headlines:
Time: “Be Worried. Be Very Worried.”
The Economist: “A Cheese-Based Currency: Is The World Ready For It?”
Biochemistry Today: “From Basalt to Phoso-Protein — Understanding The Chemistry”
Cosmo: “Cheese, Sex, and the Moon: What He Really Wants You To Do In Bed”
USA Today: “86% Of Us Now Have An Improved Opinion Of The Moon”
Rolling Stone: “Was Timothy Leary Right All Along? New Insights Into the Moon Discoveries”
Conde Nast Traveler: “Lunar Tourism: Now There’s A Reason…”
And so forth.
Then, one day, shockingly, NASA issues a very sobering press release to the effect that, sorry, but the whole thing was a mistake. Apparently a faulty lens on the Hubbell telescope, combined with a transcribing error in the Hubbell data conversion center, produced the mistake. “It was our bad,” says NASA Administrator James Smithsen. “We try not to make these kinds of mistakes, but—sometimes it happens.” The press release goes on to say that in fact the moon consists primarily of iron-rich basalt after all, as had originally been believed.
A full twenty four-hour news cycle elapses following this press release, in which—surprisingly—there is total silence on the subject. And then—everything picks up again unchanged. The UN committee continues its efforts. Scientists at universities move forward with their research. Grants to defense contractors continue to be made. The media lights up again with a new round of stories about cheese and the moon, but this time with a new angle. Now the dialogue is tinged with a fierce undercurrent of anger. References are made to the “Cheese Deniers.” Paul Krugman writes an article suggesting that those who believe the moon is not made of cheese are committing treason against both the moon and the Earth. Academics who suggest maybe the moon is not made of cheese see their grants pulled, and their writings suppressed. Many who had been on tenure-track find themselves derailed and essentially blacklisted.
Hollywood comes out with two blockbusters almost simultaneously, both based around the theme of evil businessmen spreading lies about the moon not being made of cheese, so as to line their own pockets. Both movies star Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon.
Time magazine produces a cover story: “The Denial Industry—Who’s Controlling It?”
Newsweek follows up with: “The Cheese Deniers—Profiles In Greed.”
Politicians, academics, and the media, all screech that “the debate is over” and the “science is settled.”
The NASA administrator who originally brought the mistake to light is fired. “We simply can’t have heads of major U.S. agencies who are so out of step with mainstream world opinion,” notes President Obama. “Smithsen has tendered his resignation. I have accepted it. There’s no more that needs to be said on this topic.” The newly appointed Administrator convenes a press conference in which there are only two talking points: “From this point forward, NASA will be based on sound science, not political beliefs,” and “Cheese-deniers are no longer welcome in the Agency.”
* * *
If the above spoof seems humorous, it’s because of course the world would never respond in this way. When it was first announced that the moon was made of cheese, there would have been an outcry from the scientific establishment. NASA would have been a laughingstock, and the original mistake would have been quickly discovered and corrected. Perhaps a few heads would roll, and beyond that the story would soon peter out among the light-night comedy circuit. Right?
Wrong. The moon/cheese story follows—almost precisely—the evolution of the Global Warming story, both in its original development, in the reaction of the world community, in the response to the discovery that none of it was true, and up to and including the frenzy of anger against “the deniers.”
Where The Global Warming Story Came From Originally.
The notion that anthropogenic (human-caused) CO2 was causing the Earth to heat up was birthed in the discovery scientists made in Antarctic ice cores in the 1980’s. What they discovered was that for hundreds of thousands of years, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and Earth’s heating and cooling went up and down in lock-step. The conclusion: Apparently, carbon dioxide somehow affected Earth’s temperatures in fundamental and dominant ways.
Scientists were perplexed at how CO2—a trace gas in the atmosphere—could have this kind of controlling power over Earth’s temperatures. And so they went to work to figure it out. It wasn’t easy. It required exotic theory on top of exotic theory, but they finally sort of came to understand it. Here’s the explanation in plain English. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, meaning it’s one of the gases that accumulate in the atmosphere and can trap infrared energy from the sun’s rays after they strike the Earth and reflect back into space. As CO2 builds up, it traps more of the reflecting heat energy. Of course the obvious problem with this theory is that CO2 is such a trivial gas in the atmosphere, and also such a trivial gas in terms of its overall greenhouse effect: 97% of the greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor, for example. So in response to the question of how changes in concentration of a gas that accounts for only a tiny share of the greenhouse effect could nonetheless be exerting such profound influences on climate, the scientists decided there must be a powerful “feedback loop.” As CO2 increased, it caused the Earth to warm. As the Earth warmed, this caused more warning, through complicated atmospheric processes. And this caused more warming. Etc. Assume a powerful enough feedback loop, and even trivial concentrations of CO2 can be seen to be powerful enough to control Earth’s temperatures. Well, it wasn’t a very persuasive theory, but it must be something like that, right? Obviously CO2 was controlling Earth’s temperatures somehow—the ice cores proved it.
The Implications of the Global Warming Theory
What gave special impetus to the theory was that it wasn’t merely something of interest to the arcane world of atmospheric scientists. There was an important political element: If CO2 caused warming, then we were in trouble, because human industrialization was pumping increasing amounts of CO2 into the air through the burning of fossil fuels. And—uh oh—sure enough, the Earth was currently warming up. Catastrophe! Humans are destroying the planet. If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels, and thus stop emitting carbon dioxide, the ice caps will melt, the sea levels will rise, and an eco-catastrophe of biblical proportions will be released! The flood gates of government money were opened, and grant after grant was issued for purposes of studying this phenomenon, analyzing the implications, determining how quickly the apocalypse was going to be upon us, and how much each of us would have to reduce our carbon footprint to forestall Armageddon. Al Gore made a movie: An Inconvient Truth. Time magazine produced a cover story: Be Worried. Be Very Worried. And the Global Warming juggernaut left the station, hissing, puffing, and gathering steam.
What Happened To The Theory
Uh oh. Seems a little mistake happened that wasn’t discovered until the late nineties. Scientists became more sophisticated in their ability to analyze the ice cores, and out of this more accurate measuring they learned that CO2 and Earth’s temperatures did not exactly move in lock step. More accurately, Earth’s temperatures changed first (up or down) and—approximately 800 years later—CO2 levels changed (up or down, respectively). OK, so—obviously—CO2 was not causing temperatures to change, it was the other way around. The changing temperatures were somehow causing CO2 concentrations to fluctuate. Back to the drawing board.
What would cause CO2 concentrations to be affected by temperatures? Well, this time no complex, exotic theories were needed. No Rube Goldbergian feedback loops were required. It was quite obvious how global temperatures would affect CO2 concentrations. It was simple chemistry. The greatest concentration of free carbon dioxide is in the seawater of the world’s oceans. Everyone knew that. And it was also known that as water becomes warmer, its ability to hold carbon dioxide decreases. This is why a can of Coke will go flat faster, on a hot day, then on a cold day. On a hot day, the Coke releases its carbon dioxide (bubbles) more quickly. Suddenly everything made sense. As the Earth warms, the oceans were “outgassing” their carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As the Earth cooled, the oceans were absorbing that carbon dioxide back into the water. Mystery solved. Case closed.
Corroborative evidence surfaced over the next several year period, specifically:
1) The greenhouse gas theory (as even noted in the IPCC-4 report), requires that the troposphere be heating up faster than other areas of the atmosphere. A specific “greenhouse gas signature” will exist in the troposphere, if greenhouse gas warming is occurring. While this element of the theory was well known and accepted, it was not until about 2005 that space satellites could measure the troposphere accurately enough. Result: Greenhouse gas signature conspicuously missing. This—on its own—was enough to destroy the entire global warming theory. (Of course, it didn’t matter, because the 800-year lag in the ice core data had already destroyed the global warming theory: by reversing the only evidence that had ever supported the theory in the first place.)
2) Physicists noted that the ability of CO2 to hold back infrared reflecting sunlight was limited to specific wavelengths, and beyond those wavelengths, CO2 rapidly lost any heat-retaining ability. It was demonstrated that almost all the heat CO2 could even theoretically hold back, it already was holding back. Implication: Increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere will have little if any effect from here on out. This—on its own—was enough to destroy the entire global warming theory. (Of course, it didn’t matter, because the 800-year lag in the ice core data had already destroyed the global warming theory.)
3) Studies have now shown that the required “positive feedback loop,” so critical to global warming theory, not only does not exist, but that to the extent there is a feedback at all, it is apparently negative. (Which is obvious when you think about it, as otherwise the Earth would have positive-feedback-looped itself into a smoldering cinder many times over the last 6 billion years, when temperatures have been much warmer than they are today.) This new understanding of the lack of positive feedback loop—on its own—was enough to destroy the entire global warming theory. (Of course, it didn’t matter, because the 800-year lag in the ice core data had already destroyed the global warming theory.)
4) Finally, and perhaps most compellingly, from 1998 onwards—a trend now in its 11th year—the Earth’s temperatures have trended downwards. Thus while CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were increasing rapidly, the Earth was cooling. While correlation does not prove causation, lack of correlation generally does prove lack of causation. Or at least it indicates that whatever effect CO2 has if any, it is trivial compared to other, more dominant forces. In fact, if one plots Earth’s temperatures over the last 120 years (back to when ground based measurements first began), versus CO2 in the atmosphere, one sees no obvious correlation at all. Most of the increased CO2 has occurred since 1940. Most of the warming during this entire period occurred before 1940. While temperatures moved upwards with CO2 from about 1975 to 1998, temperatures moved downwards, while CO2 moved upwards from about 1940 to 1975, and also from 1998 to the present. Result: no correlation whatsoever between CO2 and temperature. In fact, if you measures the number of years during which there was a positive correlation vs. a negative correlation since 1940, you would conclude that—if there’s any connection at all which doesn’t seem likely—CO2 causes the Earth to cool, not to warm. (Of course, these trends didn’t matter, because the 800-year lag in the ice core data had already destroyed the global warming theory.)
Today, there is no evidence whatsoever that CO2 causes the Earth to warm—or at least in any kind of measurable way. The original evidence that made scientists think otherwise has now been reversed. A plethora of new evidence clearly invalidates the hypothesis. And if all that weren’t enough (and it’s more than enough) the Earth has been cooling for the last ten years—in blatant contradiction to all global warming theory, and all global warming theory models. 100% of the evidence now refutes the theory. Zero percent supports it. The theory is dead.
The Global Warming Juggernaut Zombie Refuses To Die
As with the case with Swiss cheese and the moon, a great enough percentage of the Earth’s scientists, academicians, politicians, corporate rent-seekers, environmentalists, and media alarmists now are so highly vested in the global warming theory that they can’t let it die, even though it has. They can’t let it not be true, even though it’s been disproven. And the combined power of this group is considerable. One has to reach into the psychological theories of cognitive dissonance to find explanations for why events are now unfolding as they are. Cognitive dissonance holds that as a strongly held belief system is increasingly challenged by facts, the ones holding this belief will react in very defined ways. They will become increasingly shrill in their denouncing of those holding contrary beliefs. (“Deniers are committing treason against the Planet!”—Paul Krugman) They will increasingly seek to declare that the question is over and there is no competing evidence. They will increasingly become willfully blind to the collapse of what they believe in. These are precisely the symptoms that the warming alarmists are exhibiting, as the Earth continues to cool, and the mountain of observational evidence grows higher each month.
Yet on some level, even those caught in the collective madness of cognitive dissonance aren’t stupid. Why else is Congress trying to cram through its cap and trade scheme as quickly as possible? Because, down deep, they know that the evidence has turned against them, and the whole rationale for cap-and-trade no longer passes scientific muster. They know there is a limit to how long the public can be kept in a state of ignorance on the subject—a limit to how long the water-carriers in the media can maintain the false global-warming belief system through increasingly-shrill headlines and cover stories.
Today, the anti-carbon crusaders know full well that carbon dioxide is not heating the Earth. At least those who are paying attention to the scientific evidence know this. But it’s no longer about Earth’s temperatures. Perhaps it never was.
Today, it is about these things:
For the politicians, it’s about finding ways to tax the energy sector, and increase government revenue, along with the power and favor-granting that such taxing and spending bestows on those who control it.
For academicians, it’s about finding ways to keep the grant money flowing, the research papers getting published, and the career opportunities unfolding.
For environmentalists, it’s about stopping and reversing the spread of a technology-based civilization, on the premise that technology damages the environment. (This latter is especially odd, considering the evidence. Exhibit A is Haiti, a country with one of the lowest carbon footprints per capita on Earth, and with one of the lowest-tech civilizations. Haiti has more or less destroyed itself environmentally. Increasingly, the same could be said of India and China. Western nations such as the United States and in Europe, by contrast, have relatively clean air, clean water, and a flourishing environment, including vast areas set aside for wilderness and primitive areas. True environmentalists understand that technology, technological progress, and improved standards of living result in a cleaner environment, not the reverse. Energy-intensive societies are wealthier, and can afford to protect the purity of their air and water, and do so.)
For the media, it’s about keeping a good scare story alive, and not having their credibility destroyed with evidence that all their earlier global warming scare stories were bogus.
And for corporations who’ve jumped aboard the global warming gravy train, it’s about return on investment from the bets they’ve placed on cap-and-trade schemes and the PR value of their “greener-than-thy-competitor” pandering and posturing.
Everyone stands to benefit from the anti-carbon witch-hunt except (1) the average citizen, who will be starved for energy and fleeced financially, and (2) Mother Earth herself, whose plant kingdom is, ironically, short on carbon dioxide—the elixir of plant life—and which is currently at low levels by standards of geologic history. Considerable evidence suggests that the Earth has actually been getting greener lately, precisely because of the increased CO2 in the atmosphere. If humans now try to cut back CO2, it would be like the plant kingdom rising up and trying to shut down our supply of oxygen.
Conclusion
Our thought experiment about scientists mistakenly thinking the moon was made of Swiss cheese—and all that followed—can now be viewed as precisely what has happened with the global warming phenomenon. On the one hand, it strains belief that such misinformation could be propagated so widely and so deliberately and by so many—especially in today’s world of transparency and supposedly-enlightened institutions. On the other hand, perhaps it is only today’s perfect storm of media sensationalists, venal politicians, opportunistic corporations, willfully-blind academics, and environmental radicals which could have joined forces to make such a thing possible. We are now witnessing the clash of titans: the “unstoppable force” of the global warming juggernaut zombie that refuses to die, versus the “immovable object” of an Internet age in which truth cannot be suppressed indefinitely.
The truth will win. The juggernaut zombie will eventually be brought down by an enraged citizenry, wielding votes like angry pitchforks at a subsequent election. What is not so clear is how long it will take, and what damage will have occurred in the meantime to society, to our economy, to the environment, and to the credibility of our most sacred institutions.
As with any mental disorder, cognitive dissonance is dangerous.
-Jacques Voorhees
The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. –Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloane Professor of Atmospheric Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Note: All statements made are based on information broadly available, but conveniently accessed and collated in one place, along with a vast array of scientific references, available for download at www.nipccreport.org. The NIPCC report’s lead editor is Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science, University of Virginia. The forward was written by Frederick Seitz, past president, National Academy of Sciences.
Posts
