Education

I like surfing other peoples blogrolls, I find some pretty good stuff sometimes. Today, for example. I was pilfering through El Capitan's 'roll, when I ran across this guy, which led me to this guy, Geig. I really like the title of the article.

Go read the whole thing, I'll wait.

There are days when I'm convinced that I'm a hopeless retard who will never understand the complexities of life. People who can make a string of words sound so beautiful, make me see what they see, like Eric and Lisa, or make even the mundane hilarious like Ellison, or make me laugh out loud like Big Dick and my wonderful Hubs, well, they confound me. I love the way they write, and I know I'll never be that good.

But I do have my own arrogance. Secretly,(or maybe not so secretly now) I think I'm smarter than about 70% of the people I know. Isn't that terrible? Not better, just smarter. Well, maybe a teensy bit better than everyone else. Because I have SCIENCE. I understand it, and I can explain it to you. I heard somewhere that doctors have to have some arrogance to do what they do. To believe in themselves and their abilities. I think science teachers need a little arrogance, too.

I hear people tell me they are just not good at science. I call bullshit. You are good at what you want to be good at. Here's one of my goals: to rid the world of science misconceptions.

Take Global warming. I repeat what Geig has said- we don't know. Insufficient data. Not only that, but that article says we only have data for 200 years. I say not even that. How accurate do you think the equipment was 200 years ago? Remember, the GW alarmists tell us that a temperature rise of 2 degrees or so is enough to set of a series of catastrophic events. 2 degrees? Okay, what's the margin of error? Could there be errors in their data? Probably.

But we have geologic data for much more than that. Natural cycles of variation due to Earth's proximity to our Sun can explain our temperature flux.

Are there problems caused by us? Sure. Does combustion add to those problems? I don't know. When we run out of oil, it'll be a moot point anyway.
There are many other things we need to worry about- fresh, drinkable water. Sewage treatment. Educating the world's women. Running out of food. Human right violations. Teen pregnancy. STD's. Cancer. Heart disease. Smoking.
Only 17% of smokers develop lung cancer. But the number one killer of men and women is heart disease. Smokers do not get enough oxygen to their heart. This causes heart disease. Smokers who run cough up big loogies, so they don't run. This causes the heart to get weaker.

Americans are doing just about everything they can do to decrease their "carbon footprint".The EPA has stopped most industries from polluting the land or water. So many regulations have been made in fact, that many industries just move to other countries, like China, with no environmental laws. Remember that River in China that Benzene killed?

Benzene in a river in the US? Not on our worst day.

Carbon dioxide is a green house gas. It makes up .03% of our atmosphere. Read that again. .03%. Water vapor is a much bigger force in trapping heat, but you don't hear anyone complaining about the rain, do you?
And another thing, if you're at a website with an agenda, political or monetary or otherwise, you should think twice about accepting what they say. It's like going to bible.com to learn about evolution. Or burka.com for women's right issues.

Our planet is a complex system. The ENSO affects weather globally, go here for a record. Scientists are finding more and more about the role of the ocean and our world.

There was a point in all this, somewhere.

Please educate yourself about science. Don't take things at face value. Just because some talking head says it's so doesn't make it so.