House of Eratosthenes

KC is seeing all sorts of colors in the environmental movement…because they’re there to be seen. No hardcore tighty-rightie she, she has come to the reasoned conclusion that this is bollocks. Just a bunch of attention whores trying to get attention.

My conclusion is equally unflattering to the movement, but a little bit more…left-brain…which is not to say scientificikul or anything.

But it does ask some questions nobody has ever been able to answer to my satisfcation. Maybe I’m just messing around where I don’t have any business messing around.

DJIA, in the moment in which I am typing this, is 10967.65. If you do not believe me you can look it up. If you’re reading this, you have an Internet connection. If for some reason you don’t have an Internet connection you can ask the guy sitting next to you on the train or the subway.

More people are worried about global warming than about the DJIA, so this next one should be easy…

I want to know the Earth’s mean temperature. Right now. Actually, not now…I want a reading that was accurate sometime in the last thirty days. Heck, the last six months. And I don’t want it in hundredths of a degree. A full degree will be perfectly adequate. This is only reasonable, right? This is the statistic that drives the panic. If it fluctuates by 0.05, there’s a blizzard of peer-reviewed papers flung around by the White Coat crowd saying we’re all gonna die.

But you can’t get that number for me. And if you do, it doesn’t mean anything.

I know, I know…how dare I say such a thing. I didn’t even go to college. These are our best & brightest slinging around the global warming hooey, who am I to argue with them?

It just doesn’t take very much, that’s how. I can count to three. I can comprehend three dimensions. Earth is a three-dimensional object, and anyone who says otherwise is just wrong. It exists in three dimensions, and its surface is two dimensions. “Mean Earth Temperature” is a statistic taken from the two dimensions. And, actually, most of the scare-articles I’ve read about this, when they go into the details about why they’re stirring up a scare, you find out they’re usually measuring the average temperature among land masses.

A thousand cc’s of water, weigh a kilogram. That’s a lot compared to dirt & sand.

That kilogram of water gives off a Calorie, capital-C — a “kilo-calorie” — when it is cooled by one degree Celcius. It absorbs that much again when it is warmed by one degree Celcius. That’s called “heat density,” and that’s quite a bit of it. Again, a whole lot compared to dirt & sand.

But even if you take that into account, you’re still not arriving at an objectively-measured, reproducible summary of anything called “Earth Mean Temperature” until you measure it across three dimensions, not just two. Which means you have to go to the Earth’s core. That’ll ratchet your bottom-line value by something in the magnitude of thousands of degrees.

The planet is in possession of two distinctly different environments, one on the surface and one under it. The one that is superheated to magnitudes altogether inconceivable within the other, is much larger, much denser, much more fluid. They come into contact with each other at unmeasured, random points on the spectrum of time. As rare a happenstance as it may be for the more fluid, pressurized and superheated matter from down below to come in contact with our tepid environment up here…within the workings of this big round rock, it is a relatively mundane event and not always subject to measuring or monitoring. In my book, that means for all practical purposes such a breach is random.

You don’t need letters after you name to figure out what that means. Or how logically devastating this is to the notion that, if the temperature of the more tepid environment varies by so much as a tenth of a degree, it portends something.

It is the natural hazard that an argument must expect to encounter, when it is based on two-dimensional measurements of a three-dimensional thing. This hazard is insurmountable. The only way you can get around it is to take the Earth, throw it in a huge blender, crank it up to puree, and stick a thermometer in the resulting mush. That would be an accurate measurement of “mean temperature,” provided entropy has been reached.

Obviously, we aren’t doing that. We look at land masses, take readings and average them out. Just think on how much that ignores. It’s staggering.

Global warming, man-made climate change, climate deconstruction, global climate alteration, anthropogenic whatever. You don’t need to doubt the models, to doubt it. Doubt the statistic. Doubt its integrity. This thing we’re supposed to associate with the very word “science,” is based on the notion that a much larger thing can be measured by the average of a randomly-selected, much smaller sample…and under ordinary conditions the resulting number should remain absolutely, positively static with no measurable variance whatsoever.

Where else do we believe in such a thing?

It’s bullshit, there’s just no other way to put it. If it says the world is in jeopardy, and in the next hundred years the world really does end, it’s a case of a stopped clock being right at a certain time of the day.

it’s a case of a stopped clock being right at a certain time of the day.

Trouble with that cliche, is that you never know *when* the stopped clock is right unless you have a watch to compare it with, in which case the clock is still useless. When it is right, it’s by mere happenstance, and it certainly doesn’t change the fact that it’s still busted. It’s probably more accurate to say “periodically even a blind squirrel finds a nut.” Even that one has its problems.

Do you miss the days when “science” (a method of answering theoretical questions) was what drove “technology” (a method of solving practical problems)…instead of simply yet another device for pushing politics on people just wanting to live their lives, and obtaining taxpayer money?

MMGW, Darwin’s Evolution, they’re two tentacles of the same beast. Join the cult, or be ostracized and have your career ruined.
- cylarz | 10/08/2010 @ 12:21
MMGW, Darwin’s Evolution, they’re two tentacles of the same beast. Join the cult, or be ostracized and have your career ruined.

Each of those two is made up of a “broad” assertion and a “narrow” one. In each case, the narrower assertion is much more durable because it doesn’t say as much. In MMGW it is simply that Earth’s surface temperature varies across time, and that carbon gases are legitimate suspects in the line-up of potential causes because they have an insulatory effect, which is something that is tested easily. With Darwin, it is the equally testable assertion that genomes morph over time to adapt to the surrounding environment.

The trouble is, if you attack either one of those too eagerly, you probably should have your career ruined. And yet, in both cases, the layman is being encouraged to confuse the narrow assertion with the broader one: We’re causing the planet’s destruction, within a generation or two, with industrial activity we can stop or reverse if we try — and evolution can explain every little property of every little species, discovered or otherwise, ultimately doing away with any & all reason to believe in an intervening deity.

In both cases, as you transcend to the broader assertion, you have to abandon what science really is.
- mkfreeberg | 10/08/2010 @ 13:25
Wait…wait…you mean there’s an astonishing amount of heat “sequestered” in
the middle of the planet, kept in the “plastic-ish” chewy center that facilitates
all SORTS of ever changing nifty phenomena supporting the BIG engine?

Well allllllrighty then. Let’s just start sucking out the heat (be sure to call it “bio” or “geo” something or other) to address the “problem” of the planets lining up
in 2012, and then we won’t have to worry about how close, or far, from the
freakin’ nuclear campfire our coastal vacation homesteads, and other “easy” livin’ cities, are to accessible ice machines.

Post-treatment plant, behavior/reproductive modification pharmaceuticals infused water doesn’t seem to be as important, nor does the water-shipped-in-plastic- bottles “issue”. I understand that GE has BIG plans for home/municipal “electric” car charger outlets. Can I heat my home/water with the “wasted” heat/energy from THAT process?
- CaptDMO | 10/08/2010 @ 17:53

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Celestial BlenderFriday, October 8th, 2010

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Friday, October 8th, 2010