Double Bills

Blog Maintenance

I looked at my calendar a few weeks ago and realised that August was packed, and that I would have almost no time to write, and for various reasons would have no internet access for most of the month. With that in mind, I decided to do two double bill posts. On the 4th of August there will be a double bill of Stupid Beliefs, and on the 18th, there will be a double bill of Random Reviews.

Normal service resumes in September.

Random Reviews- The Punisher Kills The Marvel Universe

Random Reviews

The Punisher Kills The Marvel Universe

I hate this comic. I hate it so much I can't think of a witty little opening paragraph.

If I could, I'd gather every existing copy and the entire creative team in a building and bring it down on top of them.

Stuff From My Life- Candy vegetables

Stuff From My Life

Another strange dream. this one is divided up into sections. First I was on a high ropes course in my home town, but it lead into my bedroom. The course literally ended at my bed (which for some reason had a trampoline next to it). Anyway, I finished the course, and suddenly the Simpsons into was playing in my head- I don't mean I turned on a TV in the dream or anything, the dream just skipped to part two. The Simpsons intro was slightly different all the way, for instance, Ralph Wiggum and Lisa were in a little car, and Bart was waving around a giant Flump (a popular form of marshmallow here in the UK). When the episode began, a group of Springfield children were eating a taxi that was painted with pictures of fruit. Suddenly the whole thing transitioned again and I was standing outside the library in my home town, so I went to my parent's house, and discovered that my mother had developed a mutant strain of vegetables that taste like candy. Then I woke up.

Stupid Beliefs- Real Vampires

Stupid things That Stupid People Believe

Real Vampires

They walk among us. Creatures of the night. Feasting on our blood. They look like us, but they are not us. They are, a bunch of deluded goth idiots.

Random Reviews- Superman: Speeding Bullets

Random Reviews

Superman: Speeding Bullets

There are plenty of Elseworlds that examine how things could have turned out if someone else found Supermans' rocket- he could have become a Communist dictator, a medieval knight, or even a pawn of Darkseid. This is just one of them.

Stupid Beliefs- Climate Change

Stupid Things That Stupid People Believe

Climate Change Sceptics

Background

Global warming- everyone's heard about it, a lot of people are worried about it. Global warming is a result of the Greenhouse Effect: high-frequency solar radiation from the sun passes through the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere without being absorbed due to their short wavelengths, this solar radiation is absorbed by the Earth and re-emitted as low-frequency infra-red radiation, this radiation is absorbed by the greenhouse gases (Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Water vapour are the main ones) and re-emitted in all directions- some into space, and some back to Earth, thereby raising global temperatures. 

The Greenhouse Effect is a natural process, without it Earth would be a frozen wasteland unable to support life. However, the greenhouse gases produced by modern agriculture, industry, power generation, etc. pumps more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, raising the temperature. This increase in global temperatures disrupts weather patterns, and causes glacial ice to melt- raising sea levels and altering tides. It does not simply mean everywhere on Earth gets warmer by a uniform and constant amount, for instance, when the ice on Greenland melts, the cold water rushing into the sea will halt the Atlantic currents that warm Western Europe, meaning it will freeze over. According to The Inconvenient Truth anyway.

I condemn you to the Ice!

There is a scientific consensus that global warming is a fact, but there are still people who refuse to believe it. In the last post I called these people "denialists", but that was my mistake, they prefer the term "Sceptics", partially because "Sceptic" sounds like they're applying critical thinking to the issue, and partially because "Denialist" has... certain... connotations. We all know who I'm talking about.

There are actual scientists who are climate change sceptics, the consensus is about 97% of scientists worldwide, but there are still people who argue against it. In some ways that's actually a good thing, scientific progress relies on people who question the conventional wisdom and challenge what is accepted as fact through their own observations. Ever heard of phlogiston? Of course you haven't, because Lavoisier disproved it after centuries of phlogiston theory being a cornerstone of chemistry. However, in this case, with the survival of the human species at risk, maybe we should play it safe and assume, unless new evidence becomes available, that we are responsible, and that it is a problem.

What Are Their Arguments?

Climate change sceptics are a nebulous group, in fact, most groups that will be in this segment are like that, except the cults and I'm not opening that particular Pandora's Box for a good long while I can tell you. However, here are a few of the most common arguments I've been able to find on the internet.

Global warming isn't real

Yes it is. There’s really nothing I can add here, global temperatures and CO2 levels have been rocketing up since the mid-to-late 1800’s, which was shortly after the Industrial Revolution was complete and the West moved to the mechanised civilisation it is today. There’s really nothing I can add except, look at the charts

Weird, they look so alike you'd almost think they were connected or something

It's a natural process

This is technically true actually. An Ice Age isn’t simply a period where the world is covered in a lot of ice, Ice Ages are divided up into periods known as “glacials” and “interglacials”, where glaciers grow and retreat respectively, due to shifts in Earth’s orbit. We’re in the middle of an Ice Age right now, specifically an interglacial. During interglacial periods global temperatures rise and ice sheets retreat, and tests done on ice cores have proven that atmospheric CO2 does indeed rise prior during an interglacial period. However, tests on ice cores and recent measurements show that atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures are at their highest levels in history, and rising at a much faster rate than any of the previous interglacial periods, indicating that the current global warming is at least partially man-made. A good indication is the rapid decline of glaciers in the last 150 years- that may seem like a long to a human, but in geological terms it’s barely enough time to blink.

The measurements are flawed

There have been a lot of accusations, and some pretty serious evidence, that certain scientists have been twisting data to fit pre-determined conclusions, creating simulations that show dire consequences of global warming that bear little relation to reality, or have been exaggerating the effects of global warming. I haven’t seen the original data and I probably wouldn’t have the training to analyse it anyway so I can’t make an independent judgement. All I can say is, if that’s true, then it’s bad science but it’s also just isolated incidents, which don’t invalidate the scientific consensus of global warming- one flawed study does not disprove anything.

More studies are needed 

Funny story, people have been noticing rising global temperatures since 1896, Svante Arrhenius- a Nobel Prize winning Swedish chemist who discovered the formula that shows the relationship between the rate of a chemical reaction and temperature, also came up with the theory of the greenhouse effect, and was the first scientists to suggest that CO2 emissions may lead to global warming. Admittedly he thought it would be a good thing, since he was afraid that civilisation would fall if Earth entered another glacial period, but he still noticed it. Another scientist called G.S. Callendar also noticed it in 1938, but he vastly under-estimated its effects (2°C in 200 years) and also thought it would be good. Since then scientists have been becoming gradually more aware of global warming and its dangers- things really started kicking off in the late seventies. I should think we’ve done enough research to be reasonably sure by this point. (http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timeline.htm)

It's cold outside

Okay, to be fair, none of the actual scientists among climate change sceptics use this argument- it’s mostly consigned to idiots in the comments box of news websites, but it needs to be addressed. In the UK we’ve gotten used to the phrase “coldest since records began” over the last few years, which Daily Mail-reading morons have used as evidence that global warming is fake, between spouting racial slurs and denying that they are in fact racists. I said this in the introduction and I’ll say it again- global warming doesn’t just make things hotter- it raises global temperatures and thereby messes up weather patterns- of course Britain is freezing up every year, Europe is doomed to an icy grave.

PS. For the benefit of all Daily Mail readers- the EU referendum won’t save you, climate change laughs at your puny human politics.

Leftist Conspiracy!!!

Wow, I really didn’t know there were people who thought this. I’m a cynic but not this much of a cynic. Again, no actual scientists say this, just far-right crazy people and a member of the Australian Senate. Basically the idea is that global warming is an elaborate hoax concocted by “The Left”, that vast monolithic international organisation that wants to turn your children into gay stoners and bring about the End Times to serve the interests of the Zionist banking collective via witchcraft learned from JK Rowling. I’ve found explanations such as disguising the fact that increasingly erratic weather patterns are God’s punishment against homosexuality, a ploy to create green taxes and rob Regular Joes of their hard-earned money to pay for their social programs to give free homes to lazy scroungers, and to de-industrialise the world into their vegetarian atheist communist hippy dystopia.

I get that global warming is scary. I get that people don't want to believe it's real, or that it's not as bad as we think, or at the very least that it's not our fault. But if we hide our heads in the sand and refuse to face reality and deal with the problem then we, as a civilisation, if not a species, are doomed.

Conclusion

Do I even have to say it? Global warming exists, it's real and it's the greatest threat to human life and civilisation right now- North Korea be damned. Even if, for a moment, we assume that I and 97% of the global scientific community is wrong (it's happened before), we shouldn't ignore the evidence in front of us; even if global warming isn't causing it, the glaciers are melting, the seas are rising and the weather is fucked up. Even if this is a natural process it's still bad- natural processes lead to some of the biggest extinctions in history (natural processes and us, obviously), so we should probably get ready for the consequences. And if greenhouse gas emissions are responsible, maybe we should try to reduce them, just to be safe, and to reduce our reliance on dwindling fossil fuels.

Anyway, this was a heavy topic and not too fun to write about, so next time we'll move on to something more lighthearted- people who think they're vampires.