Things that Make You Laugh: Off to Antarctica to Freeze in the Warmth

Ah, politics. Politically correct politics, in particular. Is nothing safe from their grasp? Guess not. 

We all know how politics, especially the politically correct kind that denies reality in the name of some cultish belief, can ruin an economy, and a society. They incite violence and start wars all over the world. They also ruin science. Science defined as the "observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena." If anybody is supposed to pursue The Truth it is the scientist, or so we have all been taught to believe. Not true, not true.

The readers of this little blog don't need me to come up with examples of science bending to politics either because of persecution, e.g., Galileo, or playing to the dictator, e.g., Lysenko. History is full of other morsels of scientific "unscientificness," e.g., the various "epidemics" that are supposed to have wiped us all out by now. The greatest ongoing one, however, must remain the global warming/change hoax.

I have written so much about this hoax, both on this blog and on an earlier one of some years ago, that I bore myself writing about it. Suffice it to say that a real scientific theory summarizes a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing. In other words, different experimenters can do the same test, and get the same results. If I remember my two years of chemistry, biology and physics at UCLA, a theory remains valid only as long as there is no evidence to dispute it, or better said, disprove it. Above all else a scientific theory must be falsifiable. The various models of climate change have paraded around for years as theory; the popular press, and the politicians have accepted the "theory" and begun to pump money into the "study" of climate change or global warming or whatever it is called at any particular time. Some scientists, not being fools, have seen there is money in "studying" alleged climate change. Well, not really in studying it but in rigging data to conform with the politically convenient and expected results, to wit, that the earth is warming, that it is doing so because of human activity, and "something" must be done--e.g., taxation, regulation--to "combat" it.

The fact that the "theory" has failed to predict anything or to explain past climate events is irrelevant to its promoters. The failure, however, has become so blatant, leading to growing public skepticism, that the "theory" has been gradually modified from "predicting" warming to just predicting "change." Any change, therefore, which takes place in the weather or the climate--and the proponents use those words interchangeably when convenient--has been "predicted!" Wow! These "accurate predictions," however, invariably are ex post facto. The warming "theory," for example, initially predicted more and stronger hurricanes these past few years because of warming; it turns out, of course, that we have had fewer and weaker ones. As noted, the warming "theorists" changed the theory to one predicting "change," and reply, "See, that's change! We predicted it!" And on and on. They, of course, cannot tell us what the temperature of the earth should be, or why the earth has been both warmer and colder than now, or why there "has been a seventeen year pause" in warming despite the increase in CO2. In other words, not only can it not predict, it cannot explain. The "warmists" are now reduced merely to saying there will be "change," an unfalsifiable prediction since there is and always has been "change." No matter what happens, there is "change." You can think of dozens more holes in the thing, I won't bore you (or me) with it all, again.

Sorry for the tangent. Where was I? Oh, yes, in Antarctica. I am sure that by now all of you have read about a "research" vessel trapped in the ice in Antarctica and how various rescue efforts have run afoul of "bad weather" and ice. At least two ice breakers have had to give up efforts to rescue the trapped ship because of the thick ice. The media, of course, is downplaying the real nature of the trip by the "research" vessel, the Russian flagged MV Akademik Shokalskiy. Aboard this ship is an expedition led by well-known Australian global warmist "scientist," Chris Turney. Who is he? Just so happens he has a website where he lays out his views on climate change. He also happens to be a founder of Carbonscape, a company which helps "fix" carbon, and bills itself as "carbon negative" and all sorts of other greenie mumbo-jumbo (read it for yourselves). So he, like Al Gore, has a vested interest, a vested financial interest in promoting the global warming hoax. Do you expect balanced scientific research from Professor Turney? Hmmm . . ..

Anyhow, he got funding from the UK's BBC and Australia's ABC to charter a ship and head for the Antarctic where he would report on the declining sea ice. Just as the warmists make assumptions, I think we can make some, too. He intended to provide all sorts of moving testimony of how manmade global warming is ruining Antarctica--conveniently skipping over that it is summer in Antarctica. He would have given us some touching film of a baby penguin drifting off to sea on a melting chunk of ice, crying for his parents as the poor chick broils in the merciless heat caused by my Chevy Tahoe.  He, however, found something else. He found what even the Washington Post  had to acknowledge, to wit, that Antarctic sea ice has reached a record level.

Now the warmists are busy trying to explain it all away, and you can read in the cited Post piece various convoluted explanations of why warming means more ice because there is less ice and the winds are doing things they should not be doing and, and, and . . . Give it up guys, and realize that we "deniers" are right and that we are going to gloat over Turney's predicament.

Progressives, if they weren't so destructive they'd be funny . . .