Guest post by Dr. Patrick Michaels
Three items appeared last week that make me wonder if The Onion is surreptitiously acquiring science journals and trade publications. Here’s what one, “ScienceNordic” says it does on its home page:
Our team of experienced science reporters and editors follow the regional scientific communities closely, and report constantly and relentlessly on the latest and greatest discoveries.
NEWS FLASH #1: According to ScienceNordic, global obesity is caused by eating too much. Eating too much is caused by increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Surely one of the “latest and greatest discoveries” of our time! To wit: a Danish researcher, Lars-Georg Hersoug and his colleagues at the University of Copenhagen put six—count em’—six volunteers into rooms either with ambient carbon dioxide or elevated concentrations. After seven hours, they could eat whatever they wanted. Those who breathed higher CO2 ate six percent more. Call ScienceNordic!!
Yeah. This is what masquerades as environmental science these days. Allowing for an equal number of controls means that only three individuals were in each group. There is simply no way that these results have any statistical validity, but, hey, we’re talking about carbon dioxide, the death gas. Forget suing McDonald’s for obesity, Exxon-Mobil has a lot more dough!
Furthering my hypotheses about The Onion, you have to wonder if it has bought Geophysical Research Letters from the American Geophysical Union.
NEWS FLASH #2: Models that don’t work provide “useful estimates” for engineers.
Huh? But, indeed, a recent edition of GRL contains a paper by Francina Dominguez of the University of Arizona (with three co-authors) on changes in winter precipitation for the western U.S. predicted by regional climate models. They compared the observed average and historical 50-year record daily rainfall to values simulated by eight climate models. Gaze and weep:
Area-averaged mean (left) and 50-year maximum expected daily rainfall (right) for four western regions plus the entire area (“all”). The black marks are the models and the red dots are reality. This is what climate model failure looks like.
Damn the data! Full speed ahead!! Despite the fact that the models don’t work, they go on to generate estimates of the differences in daily and extreme precipitation projected for the middle of this century compared to the recent past. This is not “useful” information. It is bad information.
NEWS FLASH #3: A great idea: “1984” in 2084.
People were horrified that the socialist dystopia in George Orwell’s 1984 employed sophisticated “science” for behavioral modification and social integration. S. Matthew Liao of New York University and two colleagues think such things in fact should be considered because global warming is so horrible.
They write in the journal Ethics, Policy and Environment, “our central aim here is to show that human engineering deserves consideration alongside other solutions in the debate about how to solve the problem of climate change”, they then propose some examples that they think are feasible, including
•a pill or a patch that would induce nausea when people eat meat
•embryo selection or hormonal modification to make people smaller
•drugs to enhance empathy and altruism, because “higher empathy levels correlate with stronger environmental behaviors”
•a fixed allocation of greenhouse gas emissions per family to limit the number of children
In an interview in The Atlantic, Liao vociferously asserted that he does not think that these changes should be mandated, rather he says they should be “modifications borne of individual choices”. In his paper he is a bit more specific:
As we envisage it, human engineering would be a voluntary activity – possibly supported by incentives such as tax breaks or sponsored health care – rather than a coerced, mandatory activity. [second italics added]
Excuse me, but charging people higher taxes for not taking a pill that makes them sick, for not aborting embryos that may become tall children, for not taking drugs to care about global warming, and for not limiting progeny is nothing but coercive.
Astoundingly, Mr. Liao argues that the nausea pill enhances liberty because people who want a steak will make decisions based upon that desire, rather than “truly deciding” to be coerced by a state-incentivized drug. In Mr. Liao’s world, like George Orwell’s, freedom is slavery.
Count me out on this one. Hopefully, The Onion or whoever will stop publishing papers providing “useful estimates” for engineers based on models that do not work. And while we are at it, we could actually take a little responsibility for our weight, instead of blaming Exxon-Mobil.
Patrick Michaels is the former state climatologist for the State of Virginia, and is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute.
We are watching you ……………………….
Wierd science! Anyone who has ever served on submarines should be easily identified. /sarc
Onion will often make you cry….now we know that Geophysical Research Letters and Chairman Liao can also bring a tear to your eye….we can only hope that the ‘transparency’ of this stupidity….is finally becoming ‘visible’ to humanity…..
many thanks to PM & AW !
Voluntary? OK you be the short tree hugging vegetarian with no kids and I’ll choose just to be…normal!
Uhmmm….you ARE aware The Onion is a joke, right?
What? You do know the Onion is comedy, and they are making fun of global warmers here, right?
•drugs to enhance empathy and altruism, because “higher empathy levels correlate with stronger environmental behaviors”
Hmmm, when I read this, I thought of the movie “Serenity” which is a really good yarn. Interestingly enough the government in the movie thought that people needed more sympathy and altruism as well. It didn’t turn out to well for the people though. Of course I’m sure the U.N. can do better…
This makes me want to weep.
Liao missed a trick. If humans were genetically engineered to be cold-blooded rather than warm-blooded, we would not need heating or aircon, and would need less food to keep our temperatures constant.
I for one welcome our new reptilian descendants….
Luckily we are many, and they are few…
This is too strange to be real. Which is exactly how I felt when I first saw the Joy Behar show. Alas….?
Good grief…… These people are truly dangerous. But the most worrying part is that these people and their bizarre thinking is but a symptom of a broken and dysfunctional system where excellence is condemned and conformity is rewarded…. In the nineties, just in my limited slice of the world, I watched people pouring into the “environmental sciences”… almost all of them were environmental activists…. They weren’t going into higher learning to do science, they were going in to form a cadre of environmental fighters armed with the legal and social advantage of possessing a “degree”…. But not only that, they have over the last couple of decades so distorted the language, let alone the science, that when sceptical scientists form a group and use the word “Environmental in their title, they are subject to an inquisition by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Media Watch program for somehow being “misleading”… Apparently only a certain “class” of people are allowed to use the word “environmental” in their name.
I think it was George Orwell who said…. “Control the language, control the thought.”
Time we stopped giving our hard earned taxes to these people….. They are destroying our society and freedom and we are paying them to do it.
The rising CO2 concentration nicely correlates with the rising global life expectancy trend — therefore the more CO2 the longer we live: QED.
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/images2/Maddison_life_exp.gif
The high quality of WUWT posts lately makes me think it is becoming the Onion of global warming sites.
That liao is a real pill. I’m guessing he has a lot at steak. A smaller man… wait. I’m guessing it had something to do with his environment, but I can’t empathise with it.
Links to the papers would help people understand that this post is referring to real publications and not to parodies published in the Onion, even though the Onion might refuse to publish them or report on them because they are too ridiculous to even be considered parody. It might also be fun to ask the Onion to comment on this post.
@ Killsmith and tigerwoodsleg : Work on your reading comprehension guys.
It is pretty clear that the writer knows exactly what the Onion does. Furthermore the cited articles were not in the Onion indeed the author told us exactly where they were published. The authors point is that although the articles were published published in supposedly serious places they looked like they belonged in the Onion.
I see the potential for a bit of fun here. While Liao is breeding smaller and smaller humanoids, I think I’ll breed larger and larger Maine Coon cats. Anyone like to open a book?
So, Patrick, what you trying to say is that those papers were not from Onion, but were, in fact, peer-reviewed papers, published in science journals?
Ouch.
@ Phil & Ian H : I was happier thinking they might be from the onion, but deep down, I knew that “you can’t make this stuff up”
We really need a good World War…..
If these were not in the Onion, they should have been. That much is true. Isn’t it also true that if the “science” was done so poorly as to be a parody of science it also does not deserve a post on this site?
In other news, Broncos search for a team that does not need a quarterback: http://www.theonion.com/articles/broncos-calling-teams-to-see-if-they-need-anyone-w,27673/
What is worse? A parody of good science or someone who purports to be a good scientist wasting time analyzing same?
Chairman Liao can take his cultural revolution and insert it in the fundementally correct place where he can examine the experience with objective concentration while being asked: “Do you feel this new research project has impacted you coercively in any way? Do you feel your analysis is not properly appreciated?
I’m glad to report that if Chairman Liao feels the questions too penatrating, we can always push forward and perform an emergency autopsy to discover if the cause of discomfort was hot air produced by global warming or deadly greenhouse gas methane buildup. Maybe we can conclude he just lost his fracking perspective by not considering alternate forms of extraction for natural gas.
“•a pill or a patch that would induce nausea when people eat meat”
What kind of methane emissions can we expect when the whole world is eating beans and alfalfa sprouts? How about a pill or patch to supress nausea when we’re eating our Soylent Green or reading tosh like this.
“•embryo selection or hormonal modification to make people smaller”
So we can divide the world into Morlocks and Eloi.
•drugs to enhance empathy and altruism, because “higher empathy levels correlate with stronger environmental behaviors”
You mean like Soma (Brave New World) or like in the Stepford Wives or a host of other science nightmares. Of course, the elite, won’t take this stuff. They have to keep their heads clear to decide who lives and who dies in this utopia.
•a fixed allocation of greenhouse gas emissions per family to limit the number of children
Carbontraception?
Surely, this must be a spoof? Please tell me it is.
***********************
Robert M wrote: “Hmmm, when I read this, I thought of the movie “Serenity”
Glad to see another Browncoat. That movie and accompanying TV series Firefly has a lot of intelligent comment to make about belief and authority. They are my favourites. I think a lot of the fans don’t get most of the metaphors though.
Hint: Jaynestown/Jonestown; mudders milk/Kool Aid
blind faith/utter conviction leads to atrocity
pax = peace
Quorum wrote: “We really need a good World War…”
Oxymoron
Surely, if you eat more you expel more CO2? Cause and effect – not the other way around.
Browncoats unite!
Take me out to the black
Tell ’em I ain’t comin’ back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can’t take the sky from me
The 3rd line, with luck, would give a few ecoloons apoplexy….. 🙂
“Climate science” is an interdisciplinary field. That means physicists contribute to in certain domains, political “scientists”, sociologists, economists, and just about everyone else under the sun, in others. Some aspects of the field are really hard, hence uncertain. Other parts are frequently just basically silly.
tigerwoodsleg wrote: “What is worse? A parody of good science or someone who purports to be a good scientist wasting time analyzing same?”
The author does not believe them to be parodies. Unless we have information to the contrary, we should probably take him at his word.
The junk science itself is not worthy of study. The fact that more and more of this tosh is appearing in supposedly reputable journals, is worth examining. Especially when so much of it is climate “science” or climate “social science”. That should concern us all.
Drugs to enhance empathy and altruism, because “higher empathy levels correlate with stronger environmental behaviors”
Well I’m the quintessential em-path and I think man-made global warming/climate change is a complete load of BS.
So there goes that theory!
This “peer-reviewed” junk must be what Julia Gillard, Australia’s vain, mad, warmist PM & her precious advisors are reading.
With the high concentrations of CO2 in many submarines, those guys and girls must eat like horses! It shouldn’t be any too difficult to check out the eating habits of submariners versus those of (say) destroyer crews. On reflection, many probably wouldn’t be able to make it out of the conning tower after a lengthy deployment. Without difficulty, such an approach could drum up a count of a lot more than just six subjects.
Geoff Alder.
The truly staggering & mind blowing thing for me is that these people, genuinely believe the crap they come out with, they don’t care nor even see that people are going to die in large numbers as a result of their “belief system”! It goes against everything I was brought up with as a Christian & have been trained as a Chartered Structural Engineer. Truly staggering. And we thought Hitler & Stalin were bad people, when in practice they were mere rank ametuers in comparison!
Perhaps they should allocate an age limit of say 30 in their dystopian society with certain elements of that society assigned to “terminate” you once you reach that delicate age. You could call them, I don’t know, Terminators say, or even something benign, like Sandmen for example. But then you would just get people who would run away & hide from these Sandmen, called these could be called “Runners” I guess, when they turn 30? I dare say even some of these Sandmen might decide to “Run” when they reach 30! I am amazing, I have a great idea for turning this into a book or even a film!!!!! I am rich at last!!!! Whoorah! Sarc off. 😉
This is the Onion.
@tigerwoodsleg:
They should have been in “The Onion.” Unfortunately they are in peer reviewed journals making them grist for the IPCC mill. Remember, it doesn’t matter if the study is complete hokum, if it is in a refereed journal, it is gospel.
Combine this with the past efforts of “The Team” to keep valid studies out of the refereed journals and it makes this all the more egregious.
You really should start reading the articles! You are beginning to sound like one of those paid trolls that are sent out to camp on sites and make disparaging comments without fully reading the articles. I hope you are just having a bad couple of days instead.
@ Rex Alan “Drugs to enhance empathy and altruism, because “higher empathy levels correlate with stronger environmental behaviors”
Not to belabor the obvious, but regardless of how the authors feel on the subject, if such drugging is ever adopted it will be because the Powers-that-be support “Drugs to enhance empathy and altruism, because “higher empathy levels correlate with human domestication and cattle-like behavior.”
Hmmm… remind me to check out whether fluoride is a neurotoxin even in low doses.
@ Cui Bobo “Brownshirts unite!”
SHINY!
As with all onions, one must peel back the layers.
We have always been at war with carbon dioxide.
Umm, if it’s being reported in The Onion, it’s because they think the source is ludicrous, and that it’s time people started laughing at it.
Maybe they increased the CO2 so much the volunteers thought it was their last meal.
What is NOT a joke is that some entity (probably taxpayers) is paying these clowns to produce this garbage…
Again, PLEASE remember to vote this November to defund CAGW climate “science”…
Looks like the TEAM has a new per review journal to publish friendly and to block opposing research and the IPCC a new source of gray literature for the IPCC Fifth Assessment
I went to college to study Science, but when I learned that Science was about discovering Truth, I switched to Journalism … with a minor in political science.
Obesity does lead to an increase in omissions. However, since CO2 is odorless and colorless, they should specify that the emissions are something I’ll euphemistically call “swamp gas.”
As for overeating causing obesity, my quack doctor says the same thing. I asked for peer-reviewed studies, but he couldn’t provide any. Do I smell a research grant opportunity?
Let these crackpot keep talking! You know the old saying, “give them enough rope…”. ;->
elftone says:
March 21, 2012 at 5:13 am
Umm, if it’s being reported in The Onion, it’s because they think the source is ludicrous, and that it’s time people started laughing at it.
————-
FYI
The Onion writes all their own “news” and does not link to anything.
Mark
In the final analysis ALL decisions are voluntary comrades. For example, some thug like Saddam or Obama is holding your wife, children and parents hostage and ask that you voluntarily sign a confession, (eg “I ate meat.” or “I do not believe in CAGW junk science.”, etc.)
It’s not like you don’t have a choice…
LOL!, this reveals an economic fact: Too much currency!, first world countries must devaluate its currencies to correspond with their actual production of goods; of course that will bring some poverty,OK, but also a lot of reality and sanity.
MarkS says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:29 am
FYI
The Onion writes all their own “news” and does not link to anything.
Mark
Yup, cheers for that info, but already knew it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have used the word “reported” that early in the morning, but as it’s a fake (and humorous) newspaper, I would have thought the connotation was obvious.
It is the old pitch that humans are the problem and that we have to be forced to change to something they dream about through models, in spite of our human nature to improve our way of life through the use of affordable and reliable energy.
The first image that came to mind was Jimmy Carter in front of a fireplace wearing a sweater telling us our best days are behind us. And they are only if we make it so.
The problem with the environmental catastrophe they are attempting to avoid is that it is a fraud and like all frauds it is based on false information designed for something bad for the target. It seems the more they lose their grip on the fraud the nuttier they get.
The science will not let us down on energy but science based on fraud supported by the political elite can certainly bring us down.
The Onion has been all over climate change for sometime. Enjoy:
OT, I’ve got a letter in today’s WSJ: http://on.wsj.com/GDa6iL
Pay attention, people – “sciencenordic” is a web site that has published one of these stories:
http://sciencenordic.com/
http://sciencenordic.com/new-theory-co2-makes-you-fat
GRL article on winter precip:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2011GL050762.shtml
Liao’s (short) brain child:
http://www.smatthewliao.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/HEandClimateChange.htm
I for one welcome our new tiny, cat-eyed, eco-green overlords.
I have to say I thought I made it quite obvious that I was referring to REAL publications. I would be risking all kinds of legal problems if I said GRL published something that it did not!
A note on the development of the piece: It originally just reported on the three studies. When I sent a draft to my somewhat young girl friend her immediate response was, “you got these from The Onion, right”?
killsmith says:
Uhmmm….you ARE aware The Onion is a joke, right?
tigerwoodsleg says:
What? You do know the Onion is comedy, and they are making fun of global warmers here, right?
You guys might want to look again. The articles referenced were NOT from The Onion. They were actually published in “legitimate” publications, and were all referenced in earlier posts on WUWT.
Lol good one, but did you know that with rising CO2 plants will grow faster and bigger therefore more food, so with more food we eat more, and more food means we get fat, getting fat means you will die younger. So CO2 will make you fat and make you die soon!! Ah do not you love the logic?
michaelspj says:
March 21, 2012 at 7:52 am
I have to say I thought I made it quite obvious that I was referring to REAL publications. I would be risking all kinds of legal problems if I said GRL published something that it did not!
Well, b*gger! That’ll teach me to read things properly, I hope :D. My apologies, Dr. Michaels.
In my defence, it was early, and The Onion is my favourite satirical rag (as Viz is not readily available here).
Does he really think someone will take a pill to make them sick at the sight of meat rather than just not eat the meat in the first place?
But what really got me is that he thinks a parent will choose to make his or her child a midget just to get a tax break.
If that is truly what these people believe, then that says a lot about the sort of people they are. A conservative could never have come up with such a plan, because it would never have entered into his or her head that anyone would want to trade off the wellbeing of a child for some tax dollars. But I guess these “right on” liberals do think like that. It sends chills up my spine.
A pre-print of the paper by Laio et al. is available at:
http://www.smatthewliao.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/HEandClimateChange.pdf
The “aversion” therapy advocated for meat eaters appears to be similar to the treatment of little Alex in “A Clockwork Orange”. It seems that the current crop of academics have to advocate dystopias that top both science fiction and Paul R. Ehrlich’s predictions (that have never been right as far as I know).
@ Mike M “In the final analysis ALL decisions are voluntary comrades. For example, some thug like Saddam or Obama is holding your wife, children and parents hostage and ask that you voluntarily sign a confession, (eg “I ate meat.” or “I do not believe in CAGW junk science.”, etc.)
It’s not like you don’t have a choice…”
Hey Mike, I understand your point, but no, you are misusing the word “voluntary.” Simply being a choice does not make something voluntary.
If I say, “Act (or choose) a certain way, and I will make your life better,” then your choice is voluntary.
If I say “Act (or choose) a certain way or I will make your life worse,” then your choice is NOT voluntary, it is coerced.
That is a simple but very important distinction. Free markets are voluntary. Legislation and regulation are coercive. Love is voluntary. Rape is coercive.
Not the same…
To paraphrase Will Rogers, “I never lack for humorous material to read while CAGW alarmists and climate scientists are publishing articles and research like this”. Really, you can’t make this stuff up.
Jay Davis
I will note that news flash #2 is not a problem. Those are useful models for engineers, even if they are “not accurate” in scientific terms. The key is the concept of conservatism. Look at the figures: all the models estimate HIGH. When using an environment model for engineering design (EMED), you want the loads you are designing for to be higher than what nature will actually provide the in-service design; then the widget can handle the real-world conditions… EMEDs are not solely driven by accuracy; they have a second driver in public safety. An EMED is as accurate as possible, to minimize the costs of construction; however, the EMED must always estimate as high or higher than the peak in-service load, to ensure public safety.
“All I know is what I read in The Onion”
Temporary–
Are you saying that inaccurate models are fine if they artificially inflate risk? Why not just take, say, today’s 50 year flood and double it, and design accordingly? I don’t see how a model that doesn’t work has any utility whatsoever, sorry.
•drugs to enhance empathy and altruism, because “higher empathy levels correlate with stronger environmental behaviors”
So would this mean the end of socialism since all the bad things attributed to free enterprise and capitalism would be gone leaving individuals to concentrate on building and doing things that are only good and with no need for government intervention.
michaelspj –
Yep, inaccurate models can be useful.
For example, whats the 50 year daily peak rainfall at a mine-site in Colorado, the ore body was only identified 3 years ago, and construction started 6 months ago. The nearest long-term weather records are at Colorado Springs, 70 odd kilometers to the West… and possibly much more influenced by being in the foothills of the Rockies, as opposed to the site which is open prairie.
Sure, a reliable local historical record would be better. It’s not perfect data, but it’s something to work with. That’s why conservative is preferred to accurate for this kind of engineering model.
Coolologists have discovered global cooling may have dangerous effects on agriculture on earth.The science of coolology has found past cooling caused widespread economic disruption.
Temporary–
False problem that has been solved with real data. Are you familiar with the PRISM precipitation data?
Alan the Brit @ 3:49am –
Someone already made that movie in 1968. It was called “Wild in the Streets” and the closing theme song was “Shapes of Things to Come”. Makes you wonder though where people like Liao
get their ideas.
Jay Davis
@ jayhd
I was not aware of that I’ll wikipedia it, as of course I was thinking of Logan’s Run. But that also sounds interesting, & thanks for the tip!
I guess they could do a data trawl through Dr Who, Star trek, etc for some more scary scenarios to whip up the fear! 😉
I think the Onion has been reading too much WUWT again….
michaelspj says:
March 21, 2012 at 7:52 am
> I have to say I thought I made it quite obvious that I was referring to REAL publications.
I thought it was clear, though I’ll grant that an uncaffeinated mind might note some of the text and the Onion label and assume they went together.
URLs for the reports would have helped. (Thanks to dp for his list.)
temporary says:
March 21, 2012 at 9:36 am
This could make for an interesting trial if the dam breaks and floods a town downstream:
Atty: How did you estimate the safety margin?
Temp: We found a bunch of models that all estimated rainfalls higher than had been observed before.
Atty: Did these models include a safety margin that matched industry practice?
Temp: The models had no saftey margin, they were simply wrong.
Atty: Did you compare data from geographically similar regions that had a longer record?
Temp: No
Atty: Why not?
Temp: The model data came in on our daily newsfeed from The Onion, that seemed to be wrong in the right direction so it was useful.
Do me a favor – build your dams downstream from me, please.
It would be nice if it were all from ONN. But what with AR5 and the Rio bong fest coming up, it is pedal to the metal time for one worlders everywhere. It’s time for a re-run at what they spectacularly failed to achieve in 2009.
One option is to find out who your country is sending and have them justify their support for Agenda 21++ on national TV. They got away with it last time because few were aware of what they had done. Now we have a live universal feed.
michaelspj
I wasn’t presenting a real problem, just an example that might make sense to people in the US (I am in Canada myself). I assume you are talking about this PRISM, http://www.prism.oregonstate.edu/, which I was not familiar with. PRISM – Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model – is in fact a model, just like the ones being criticized above. I don’t know if it was one of the ones in the graphs. It certainly doesn’t appear to extend beyond the borders of the contiguous United States.
Ric Werme
Your not getting it. You stick in a safety factor as well. The safety factor is for when the construction subcontractor’s temporary labor proves innumerate/greedy and decides they can get away with an extra 10% aggregate in the concrete mix, allowing them a savings on Portland cement powder…and a much weaker concrete.
But your initial value for the worst case, it may as well be conservative itself. Sure, we could use a scientifically “better” model that predicted the worst-case rainfall +/- 10% (ie it predicts between 90 and 110% of the actual worst case rainfall in the future). But those times when it predicted on the low side would get real dicey. It’s more conservative to use an engineering model that gives you say between 110% and 130% of the actual worst case rainfall in the future. At that point, you get much more comfortable feeling, when the locals start talking about how they have never seen so much rain in all their days, and it’s still 13% below the case you designed for, and added a safety factor after-wards.
But don’t worry. If your in the continental US, your quite safe from me; I’ve never practiced there. If you ‘re a representative sample of the local NIMBY whiners, I’m quite sure I don’t want to…
@Vince Causey
“If that is truly what these people believe, then that says a lot about the sort of people they are.”
They don’t believe that anyone will do these things voluntarily. They may pretend to believe it, but what they really believe is that in the future there will be a global government with enough power to mandate their scheme.
•a fixed allocation of greenhouse gas emissions per family to limit the number of children
So children are a greenhouse gas now.
Liao would also need a huge government program to make sure you’re taking your meat pills. Sounds wonderful.
This Liao chief sounds like that nutter is that recent Batman film who puts a scary sack over his head and sprays his weaponised hallucinogen in people’s faces – only, I’d imagine his sack is even scarier, and his version is a double-barrelled anti-meat-eating abortion spray.
Let’s just hope he ends up in the asylum too, replete with his own ‘I-love-me jacket’ and a three-foot length of rubber hosepipe.
}:o(
It seems that darned few readers bothered to actually visit ScienceNordic to check out the article mentioned [not exactly a scientific approach, n’est-ce pas?]. If they had they would have learned that the researcher also tries to blame beer bellies on higher CO2, but of course he admits he’ll need additional funding to pin that down exactly.
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Now we know why kids get fat: they spend too much time in classrooms, where CO2 levels routinely rise to 2,500 to 4,000 PPM. No wonder those Cheetos go down the hatch like greased pigs, which is exactly what they are! But it has nothing to do with that, oh no, it’s the miasma.
Perhaps the Danish research is on to something.
Obesitiy is related to CO2.
Just not from the air.
It’s that thirsty-two ouncer from 7-11 filled with CO2…..
and sugar.
I read Human Engineering and Climate Change in its entirety (while drinking Victory Gin). I still believe (because my mind will allow no other possibility) that it is a hoax designed to draw in the gullible and stupid. I await his “confession” in the next edition of Lingua Franca.
http://www.skepdic.com/sokal.html
P.S. Do you not tire of THEM calling US fascists?
New Zealand,
March 22, 2012:
Marmite Woes Wrack Nation; Shortage Traced to Global Warming
New Zealand is facing its severest shortage of the popular breakfast spread Marmite in its history, and with no relief in sight, and civil strife surging, rumors out of the Capital are that President John Key is mulling a declaration of martial law.
“We’ve been saying this would happen for years,” said climate researcher Thadeus Bleuchner, at the Center for Advanced Climate Demagoguery. “The signs have all been pointing to it. CO2 levels at 388 ppm…389…then…” He swallowed, his voice trailing off. “That should have been a clue for policymakers. But no. It takes a catastrophe to make them act. Well, that’s what we have now,” he said, his left eye twitching uncontrollably. “First the greenhouse gasses built up over the inner continent, then came the thermal inversions, temperatures rose, glaciers melted… the thermohaline circulation shut down.”
Asked to elaborate about the PDO, Bleuchner replied, “It doesn’t matter!”
The precise link between the climate problems and the Marmite dearth are unclear. What is known is that supplies of the treackly, black brewer’s yeast-derivative began to slump last year. Then, without any preliminary warning, reserve stocks of Marmite plumetted this winter as shoppers began to buy up the last available lots. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said grocery story clerk Willow Standon, of the Fred’s Club Wholesale Foods chain. “They’re leaving here with Marmite by the case. They must be hoarding it. It’s scary, really.”
“There’s no accounting for it,” says Tony MacKenzie, a New Zealand Crop and Agricultural Scientist. “Wet weather affected some of the yeast crop last year, but mostly I’d say this is just overreaction…” He scratched his head nervously, then added suddenly, “No. I won’t downplay it. This is fear. Stark, unreasoning fear.” Dabbing at his forehead and lips with a damp handkerchief, the Agency’s spokesman broke off suddenly. “I need to get home to my wife and children,” he said, terminating the interview.
Government workers have been reported leaving their jobs to be with their loved ones, and all non-essential services are standby-alert. Word from the capital is that Australia has offered emergency supplies of their country’s popular spread, Vegemite.” And Prime Minister Key has endorsed the plan,
But the Prime Minister’s sound bite is being rebuffed by New Zealand consumer.
“We want Marmite,” said one woman with a bandana covering her face. “We need Marmite. Have you seen those four stars on the New Zealand flag? Well, three of them stand for Marmite. And the last one…” She adjusted her bandolier, before turning to smash through a supermarket window… “stands… for… Mar…mite!”
With no help forthcoming from Australia, airplanes have been grounded.
“We’ve all seen them… the signs! They’re everywhere!” Bleuchner said. “Rising sea levels. Declining test scores in the public schools. Oh, God, the cattle!” he sobbed. “And now… no more Marmite. Well, we’ve done it to ourselves! You understand? We did it to ourselves!!”
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See Forbes for more:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/20/the-great-new-zealand-marmite-famine-marmageddon/
Golden times!
Impossible. I’m sure he’s a vegetarian. Otherwise, his staff would burn him at the stake! (Because they have a big stake in his Green output. He should actually see an internist about that …)