Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
So we were sitting around the fire at the fish camp on the Colombia a few days ago, and a man said “Did you hear about the scientific study into meat preservatives?” We admitted our ignorance, and he started in. The story was like this:
“A few years ago there was a study done by some University, I can’t remember which one, but it was a major one. What they did was to examine the corpses of people who had died in Siberia, and those that had died in Washington State. Now of course the people in Siberia weren’t eating meat preservatives during their lives, and the Washington people were eating them. And when they dug up the graves and looked at the bodies, guess what they found?”
Urban Legend: The Killer In The Back Seat SOURCE
Well, by this time my Urban Legend Detector was going off so loudly that I was afraid the story teller would hear it ringing, so I just sat back to watch the denouement …
“The bodies of the Siberian people had decayed just like you’d expect … but the bodies of the people from the US were nearly perfectly intact, because of meat preservatives that they’d been eating!”
Now, as you might imagine, nothing about this story of meat preservatives is true. The preservatives are broken down in the digestive system and do nothing to preserve the human body … but not one person even questioned the story. This set me to pondering about what it is that makes for a good urban legend. Here are my conclusions.
• First, you must have some kind of lurking danger—premature death, a rat in the Kentucky Fried Chicken, a spider in a bee-hive hairdo, a killer in the back seat. It can’t be some trivial danger, either. It needs to be the loss of a kidney to organ thieves or something that big, not a hangnail.
• Next, the danger has to be avoidable by means of your own personal action. Don’t eat at KFC, don’t ingest meat preservatives, don’t wear a bee-hive hairdo for too long, look in the back seat before getting in.
• Next, there is often a strong undertone of performing a moral action. For some urban legends the moral action is the recommended avoidance action itself, like avoiding processed foods. But for all urban legends, there is an inherent and more basic moral good—the spreading of the story so that nobody else gets harmed. I mean, what could be more virtuous that seeing that your friends don’t get into trouble?
• Next, the story has to be amenable to change. Sooner or later, most urban legends wear out their impact, or people have heard it all before, or the “facts” become visibly untrue. The legends that survive do so because they shed their skins and morph into something more frightening, more dangerous, more demanding of immediate action.
• Next, it helps to have a villain—KFC, the meat-packing industry, just about any corporation, billionaires, any of those will beef up the story.
• Next, it needs impeccable but unverifiable credentials—I heard it on CNN, it was a study by a major university, three professors in Israel did research, that kind of pedigree.
• Next, details. Few people will believe a random legend that some woman somewhere stuck her hand in a pile of blankets and got snake-bit … but if the legend says “A woman in Arizona was shopping at the Phoenix Costco, and she was bitten by a brown snake that is only native to Australia” it has much more chance of being believed.
• Finally, the legend needs to be told with conviction. It won’t work if it is prefaced by “There’s some doubt about this, but …”
======================
So … as some have already guessed, let me compare the current climate scare to an urban legend. We have:
• Lurking Huge Danger—heat death of the planet, increased floods, increased droughts, you name it. Note how alarmists routinely exaggerate the danger, claiming a few degrees of warming is “more dangerous than terrorism” and “the biggest danger the world faces” and the like.
• Avoidable—the claim is that if we all act nobly and eschew the evil carbon, the danger can be averted.
• Moral Action—not only is cutting down on personal or national CO2 emission seen today as the ultimate statement of the high moral ground, simply spreading the message has taken on the aspects of a religious duty.
• Amenable to Change—how many times have the alarmists been shown to be wrong, only to come back with some new threat, some new danger to keep the legend alive.
• Villains—the entire fossil fuel industry, Exxon, and “deniers” are all painted as villains in this morality tale.
• Unverifiable but Prestigious Credentials—we have two stalwarts, the “97% consensus”, and “the IPCC says”. The latter one has found its way into scientific papers, where people routinely cite something totally unverifiable like “IPCC Fifth Annual Assessment Report, Susan Solomon, Editor” as a way to lay a false claim to authority.
• Bogus Details—my favorite was the claim that 37% of the species on earth would be killed by one degree of warming. See how much more believable this is than saying “if the earth warms lots of things will go extinct”?
• Conviction—man, if there is anything that most of the alarmists have an abundance of, it is the totally unshakeable conviction that not only are they right, they are so right and they are so moral that breaking the law is perfectly acceptable if it furthers their cause. And of course, they know that the legend will not work if they surround it with the usual scientific caveats, so it is told as certain impending doom.
======================
Now, although it may not seem so, I do have a purpose in this story. My thought is that if we can understand why the urban legend of impending Thermageddon is so popular and so hard to kill, we will understand how to fight it. So let me look at each of the components to see where the weaknesses are and how we might utilize them.
• Lurking Huge Danger—I think the best way to fight this is laughter and absurdity. For example, I have compared the possible predicted change in temperature from Obama’s climate plan to the temperature difference between your head and your feet. Ridicule is a potent weapon.
• Avoidable—we need to hammer on a couple of things. First, there is no evidence that IF the danger exists it is avoidable. Second, there is no evidence that their preferred method will avoid it. Finally, even if it could work in theory, it would be horrendously expensive.
• Moral Action—as I have pointed out repeatedly, increasing energy costs are the most regressive tax on the planet, and they hit the poor harder than anyone. This is a crucial point, because all of their flights of fancy are sustained by the illusion that they have the moral high ground … but shafting the poor as they are doing hardly meets that definition.
• Amenable to Change—we need to hold their feet to the fire regarding their BS, because they will disown it at a moment’s notice. Michael Mann’s phrase is that they’ve “moved on” … don’t let them do so without protest.
• Villains—we need to point out, over and over, that those that make life harder for the poor are the real villains in this morality tale.
• Unverifiable but Prestigious Credentials—call out bogus citations, demand names.
• Bogus Details—again, ridicule is likely our greatest weapon in this arena. The biggest opportunity for this are the endless predictions of climate refugees, sea level rises, ice-free Arctic summers, and the like. Ask to see the corpses.
• Conviction—nothing we can do about that. Peter Gleick would likely maintain his convictions even if he were actually convicted for mail fraud as he richly deserves …
======================
In closing, let me note that if my analysis is correct, this story of impending thermal doom CANNOT BE FOUGHT WITH SCIENCE. Why? Because it is an urban legend, not a scientific claim. As such it needs to be fought on its own ground, by attacking what actually keeps it alive … and that has very little to do with science.
My best regards to everyone, it’s a lovely afternoon, I’m going out to ride bike by Lake Tahoe.
w.
PLEASE: If you disagree with me or anyone, quote the exact words you disagree with, so we can all understand the exact nature of your objections.
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Reminds me of the time I was out fishing on the Columbia, near Celilo Falls with an old Indian guide and…
Urban legends have many characteristics of the tactics used by liars. They exploit base emotions-fear, guilt, lust, sloth and greed. They use emotional blackmail. They use bluff-once you have fallen for one lie in the narrative, everything else that follows will be further lies to support the previous lies. The morality tale can then be directed toward their ideology. The ideology itself is totally flawed, not that this ever stopped leftists/ alarmists.
As I he said many times, it is simply Sales 101.
I have a friend who once told me “don’t tell lies, its hard enough remembering the truth”. At least with truth you don’t have to remember a whole web of untruth to support the original lie.
“If you tell the truth, it becomes part of your past
If you tell a lie, it becomes part of your future.”
Clear air gives clear thoughts!
Perhaps the best attack is an urban legend or two that counter the claims of the AGW legend. We need and urban legend contest, and some will just naturally spread. I am sure the left do this all the time – float a thousand silly ideas expecting one or two to gain traction.
I’ve long held that leftists/liberals/progressives/big-D-democrats will say — and ardently defend — any stupid thing that pops into their heads.
Not only leftists, but just about anyone defending a holly cow of some kind.
In Croatia we had a whole succession of presidents/prime ministers with nails visibly protruding from their heads, and boy! occasionally idiotic lines came from their mouths. Only a few hours later you’d receive a long interpretation of that presidential garbage framed in the most evangelical way, as if their stupidity is somehow genius.
So no surprise here.
Holly cows are especially useful at Christmas time for use in nativity scenes. That said, I think you meant ‘holy’. English is such a fun language…
+1
Hlaford September 3, 2016 at 2:53 am
+1
I need to remark that about twenty years ago I occupied at need what we called the “hell desk.” I worked for a small company and the owner decided to diversify the business – jumping into the ISP business. He didn’t diversify his staff simultaneously so essentially untrained staff were “hell”ping newcomers to the internet. Some were also absolutely new to computers. One call I took was of an event that I later found listed as an “urban legend” or “myth.” In this case most of Willis’ criteria don’t fit the event. The situation was a person helpless in the face of unfamiliar gadgets, and completely baffled baffled.
What Willis describes is more closely allied to the myth of the “Golden Age:” which runs something like “humanity used to live in a natural/holy/self-reliant balance with nature/the neighbors/God/etc.” Something humanity did, sinned/gained new knowledge/invented civilization/industrialized/argued a moral concern for one’s fellow humans/etc. lead to a “fall” from that ideal prior state. All of these “Golden Age” myths postulate a prior time of “perfection,” whether the “perfection” was cooler weather or more remote neighbors, less traffic, more leisure, or a congregation that could sing hymns in tune. The cure offered is always further human interference in ones neighbors affairs, the planet’s affairs or, etc. People by and large are uncomfortable with change, yet change is inescapable. Whether we watch developers destroying a landscape we once loved or a changes in the weather, or emerging social tolerances for behaviors that we were taught were wrong. Most want to believe in a steady state in a past that was “better” than the present. They often express the hope that by correcting the errors made by their neighbors, that the Golden Age can be restored. This applies equally to the Catholic Church, ISIS, the Green movement, liberals (in the modern rather than the classical sense), the Tea Party, etc. The belief that we know how things have changed and how they can be put right gives people a sense of control.
I mock them for their silly fears of something that isn’t visible. Ask them to look down the street to see the yards,trees and the like, and look at the skies too,does it appear to be suffering?
The world goes on laughing at stupid leftists who moan over every little thing.
Well I made an executive decision on Urban Legends myself.
My 97 yrold MIL asked me to get some anchovies and Cilantro at the store for something she is whipping up for dinner (it’s ready now).
So the Safeway store had some very expensive Cilantro in their ORGANICS section, and the store was emblazoned with organics posters all over the place.
I couldn’t find any real food Cilantro and didn’t want to pay $5 for the bug infested crud.
So I asked the clerk if they had a real food section or just the one with all the carbon loaded foods.
She said sure, we have ordinary Cilantro, and she showed me where it was, and it was green whereas the carbon loaded stuff was yellow. And I got a big fresh green bunch for $1.50 instead of $5 for a small bunch of the jaundiced kind.
Makes me mad that they are pushing all this organic BS down our throats.
G
Don’t get mad, just laugh at the fools that buy the stuff.
+++george e smith
My family only jokes about buying me the expensive organic oats with the worthless wind turbines on the package.
“The equivalent of taking 500 cars off of the road.”
How shall I put this. I don’t think the destruction of other people’s personal transportation as an attractive selling point for breakfast cereal, or a pleasant thought first thing in the morning.
Zeke
The GW industry has been trying to sell what they claim are the best and most expensive oats of all. But really they are the cheapest oats, the ones already processed by the horse.
“Organic” is an anagram of “rig-a-con.”
+1
“Makes me mad that they are pushing all this organic BS down our throats.”
It’s just American enterprise at work.
If there’s a buyer…there will be a supplier.
hey, no one’s pushing it down your throat. No one is forcing you buy kosher either. Just don’t buy it.
http://m.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/palmoel-alternative-oele-koennen-umweltprobleme-verschaerfen-a-1110104.html
WWF says palmoil is a scam, only 37% CO2 reduction; so whe shouldn’t eat burgers or buy ready meals in the supermarket – priority is palmoil for diesel tanks.
It’s not only pushing down the throat; it’s plain silly and too offensive bossing.
Since 20 years thei’re pushing burning forests for natural oil plantations, in exchange we should feed on grass.
I didn’t by it. But I did have to ask a store clerk where they had hidden the real stuff.
The store IS pushing what they make more profit on.
A different “green” supermarket that my wife shops at also pushes “organic ” produce, but they also have a department that can supply you with every chemical poison from A to Z that you can add to your expensive organic produce .
The “farmers” Market I just came from this morning doesn’t even allow vendors who don’t have organic produce to even set up shop there.
G
My “go-to” remark for the organic section of the supermarket is “It’s all organic” 😉 http://www.dictionary.com/browse/organic?s=t
There is a guy a few miles down the road from me offering ‘organic tree bark’. I keep meaning to ask if he has any non-organic…..
One of my favorite conversations when I encounter someone extoling organic foods exposes an urban legend of sorts. It starts like this:
Me : How many chemicals are allowed on your organic food?
Organicist : What?
Me :How many chemicals are allowed on your organic food?
Organicist : None, of course.
Me : Nope.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogsscientificamericancomscience-sushi20110718mythbusting-101-organic-farming-conventional-agriculture/
Very interesting, thanks for putting it up here!
Wow! Cilantro is about 39 cents in Austin. ‘Cept for the organic kind, I guess. Don’t know for sure, I never buy it.
I have to say that back in the ’50s California’s milk, eggs, beef and lamb were better tasting and raised locally. “Corn fed” beef was priced as a luxury “import” from Kansas. It’s real draw was the consistent blandness. With range beef the meat varies depending on pasturage. Modern supermarket lamb is pathetic. And eggs? Bleh.
We moved from the city to a small ranch just before junior high, and started raising our own eggs and beef. Technically both were “organic” and “free range” since the cattle were treated in any way unless they actually got sick, and the chickens wandered the house yard eating everything from grain to mice (no joke). We had two dozen chickens laying where ever they felt like; every day was Easter, and to this day I despise angel food cake (had to use up those eggs somehow and you can only fry so many for breakfast). And don’t forget Guy Clark’s “Home Grown Tomatoes.” This year our tomatoes are excellent and since we have used any pesticides, they’re even organic.
My feeling is that sometimes they’re wrong and sometimes they’re right. Don’t discount how they’re right because you don’t like how they’re wrong.
Took me a while to understand what you were talking of. Then I realised that cilantro is in fact coriander. I get that for free. I grow it every year. bought a couple of live plants about 7 years ago which were very inexpensive, no more than a couple of dollars. I harvest the leaves all summer, ( which I have very little use for, it’s not as big in cooking in the UK, although I use some) and the seeds in the autumn. Most seeds are dried and ground for cooking but many are replanted.
It’s simple to grow, in fact it looks after itself and grows like wildfire even in the cold north west of England. (55 degrees north) and is even more simple in pots on a sunny patio.
I recommend you give it a go. I’d still be laughing now if a clerk wanted to charge me those sort of prices for leaves that grow like weeds.
I have the feeling the are large differences between Siberian and American mortuary
practices and coffin technologies.
Use of embalming for a start. But more importantly, how do you know that the American bodies were perfectly preserved? Have you dug any up to check? No, it is yet another unverifiable “fact”, which all urban legends rely on as a premise.
Eating meat preservatives That is why I look so young.
I’m relying on alcohol. It’s about as expensive as meat but it’s more enjoyable. It also has a sedative or mellowing effect. That gets handier the longer I live.
Actually, the incidence of stomach cancer fell substantially as the use of antioxidant preservatives grew after WWII. Less spoiled food being eaten? Cancer protective properties of the preservatives? Oh, no, that’s impossible. Chemicals are always bad! Right?
Correlations is not causation. CO2 rose after WWII as well, maybe that cures stomach cancer.
It is possible (and looking more likely) that stomach cancer is caused by Heliobacter pylori, so the fall may have been because of the introduction of antibiotics.
Helicobacter pylori, endemic to Old World areas where fields are fertilized with human waste.
At least no one has to worry about zombies in Siberia…
Correct. Mainly because in Siberia EVERYBODY looks like a zombie.
The kids who engaged in premarital fooling around in the teen slasher movie were remiss in not checking under the bed for data.
Oh,very good. That’s where I always look for my data …
w.
Willis , how was the wedding? and congrats to your kids!
Reminds me of the time I was reading more news reports of impending death of all coral reefs from global warmening and coral bleaching, in particular the Great Barrier Reef and then I fair choked on the cornflakes-
http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/huge-underwater-life-form-found-hiding-behind-great-barrier-reef/ar-AAioZGs?li=AAabC8j&ocid=spartandhp
Although I read somewhere the science is settled “It’s too early to say, but the need for answers is pressing.” with this new threat to cornflakes.
I’m pretty sure I saw a headline somewhere that read, “Tiny patch of living brain tissue found behind dead mass of skull jelly in climate scientist and safely removed. “
I’m sure that vacuum bubble would have imploded as soon as it was exposed to air.
Monkton of Brenchley would be the most likely candidate to have some urbane legends for us, in a manner of speaking.
Quite so.
With little space for cemeteries you have to dig up bodies after some time:
https://www.google.at/search?q=skull+museum+hallstatt&oq=hallstatt+scull&aqs=chrome.3.69i57j0l3.34109j0j4&client=ms-android-samsung&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
Who digs up dead bodies? Do they embalm the dead in Siberia?
cred · u · lous …
ADJECTIVE
having or showing too great a readiness to believe things.
synonyms: gullible · naive · too trusting · easily taken in ·
These people in the interests of research.
http://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2008-05-13-voa39/340230.html
@rovingbroker: Come, come, now! Why use two or three words when onewill do,………Green!
Thanks Willis, this gives me an opportunity to mention that we have found a natural bush fruit that can replace meta-bi-sulphites as a preservative for seafood and meat. The response is better than the chemical as a preservative, so now we are starting the process of commercialization.
The aim is to keep the industry in the hands of the local indigenous populations across the north of Australia, for their economic improvement. https://pindanpost.com/2016/07/25/the-best-new-discovery-to-aid-indigenous-communities/
Is that some rare plant that can only be found in the deep and mysterious valleys of the Himalayas such as chia, kale or some other trendy name? If not, I’m not interested.. 🙂
Not rare, but difficult to access, except for the locals, who have always used it for it’s high Vitamin C content.
That would be a life saver for those like me who get migraines from those awful poisions.
This product is likely a game changer, but in common use across indigenous communities in Northern Australia for it’s high vitaminC.
You’ve set me to wondering – what’s the local aboriginal term for vitamin C, or is the term an aboriginal one we have adopted?
RU4EL??
Hi Tom,
saw the abc bit recently
I bought seed n tried to grow them in lower mid nth SA a few yrs ago
sprouted and did ok over warmer months
but the coldest winter we had had killed them all;-(
I dont have a problem with preserving in sulphur smoke ie dried fruits n jerky as alt to the sodium meta bi that stinks n tastes bad.
of course some green inclined will say sulphur/or the smoke is an issue of huge danger i bet 😉
I personally would KILL to get my hands on neem trees
maybe you can look to selling bare rooted seedlings to spots they arent going to run wild?
You can come to Broome and kill all the Neem trees here, which have become a severe weed. The Gubinge fruit will preserve meat, keep it looking fresh and reduce bad odours, without changing the taste.
Great article Willis.
I reckon the big problem with the current push-back strategies against CAGW is that we’re always on the back foot. Reacting rather than establishing a new paradigm about earth’s climate system.
So rather than the climate system being cast as a “victim” of man’s evil ways (as all the kids are now being taught in school and university), what if the climate system was instead portrayed as a “super hero” that could withstand anything that puny mankind could throw at it.
As in – our climate system has proven many many times throughout history that it can deal with magnitudes of change the likes of which puny mankind can only fantasize about – ice ages, asteroids, earthquakes, etc.
Our 4% contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere – pffft, says the climate – I’d swallow that up before breakfast, and burp it out before lunchtime.
So maybe we climate realists have to start speaking, as it were, as if we were spokespeople for the climate – strong, defiant, is-that-all-you’ve-got?
Let’s double-down on the ‘denial’, but from the climate’s point of view, not ours.
Yup. Its political, not scientific, so needs equivalent memes.
Yep, I read on this site a while ago that arguing science against CAGW is like bringing a knife to a gun fight.
Sadly, I think that’s pretty true. It is NOT as scientific debate. That is why all the leading lights, like Mickey Mann and our Gav won’t get into a debate they know they will lose.
I
I like the idea of that approach! Even more, man should be portrayed as the saviour of life … as Patrick Moore stated at the end of his excellent presentation “‘Should We Celebrate Carbon Dioxide?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Z5FdwWw_c
“It does boggle the mind in the face of our knowledge that the level of CO2 has been steadily falling that human CO2 emissions are not universally acclaimed as a miracle of salvation. From direct observation we already know that the extreme predictions of CO2’s impact on global temperature are highly unlikely given that about one-third of all our CO2 emissions have been discharged during the past 18 years and there has been no statistically significant warming. And even if there were some additional warming that would surely be preferable to the extermination of all or most species on the planet.
You heard it here. “Human emissions of carbon dioxide have saved life on Earth from inevitable starvation and extinction due to lack of CO2”. To use the analogy of the Atomic Clock, if the Earth were 24 hours old we were at 38 seconds to midnight when we reversed the trend towards the End Times. If that isn’t good news I don’t know what is. You don’t get to stave off Armageddon every day.
I issue a challenge to anyone to provide a compelling argument that counters my analysis of the historical record and the prediction of CO2 starvation based on the 150 million year trend. Ad hominem arguments about “deniers” need not apply. I submit that much of society has been collectively misled into believing that global CO2 and temperature are too high when the opposite is true for both. Does anyone deny that below 150 ppm CO2 that plants will die? Does anyone deny that the Earth has been in a 50 million-year cooling period and that this Pleistocene Ice Age is one of the coldest periods in the history of the planet?”
I’ve said for some time here that we need a bumper sticker:
CO2 IS GOOD FOR PLANTS
CO2 IS GOOD FOR THE EARTH
CO2 IS GOOD FOR YOU!
/Mr Lynn
WHat you call Moral Action, I call Smug Conviction. Some of the young people believe this stuff and the crusade shines out of their eyes. What will they do when it falls over? Or will it just shift shape?
Bring back Logic as compulsory education and a brief course in Latin, so they know the roots of words. Both courses act as bulldust detectors.
Sadly, they will just change what’s written on their crusader placards. When communism fell apart in Eastern Europe, they desperately needed a new anti-western cause. AGW fitted the bill very nicely and slotted right in, in a very timely manner. A comedy of errors … hopefully dispelled before it morphs into a tragedy.
Soon they’ll be too busy freezing their asses off trying to stay warm by the glow from their dimming laptops to care . . . maybe the last thing they Google can be “Maunder Minimum!”
Two important points here. What Willis says about the moral aspects of the story gives the speaker authority. Their view is that climate change makes all these actions essential and, even if catastrophic man-made warming is not true, the actions are good anyway. Cutting back on consumption, reduced growth, less productivity – these are all good things. In fact, as Willis says, these actions lead to poor people all over the world being poorer, higher death tolls, etc. Jack’s other point needs more thought than I have seen anywhere. What happens when it all falls over? This is such a big deal for many people. The popular belief is that all respectable scientists and 100 per cent of reputable institutions say that it is 100 per cent true. Will people ever believe scientists again on anything? How do we prepare them for this in 10 or 20 years time?
The other common characteristic of internet nonsense is that someone somewhere is making a dollar out of it.
snopes.com is always a good place to check the daily feed of bs but surprisingly, the site hasn’t caught up with the preservatives one. I must have posted scores of snopes replies to friends being sucked in by scams.
Snopes has devolved into a clearinghouse for left wing talking points and outright lies, and is now in the business of defending Democrats, rather than fact checking.
Snopes credibility has all but been destroyed. It was “found out” manufacturing truth on some controversy a while back and now you can’t give their results away.
I checked http://urbanlegendsonline.com/ and did not find anything about snopes.com.
/doh!
Who snopes Snopes?
Let’s see, meat preservatives . . . What would they be? Mmmm, I think I will gum down some formaldehyde. Yeah, that would be tasty.
It’s been discovered in a new study by some enormously prestigious university somewhere that the reason people die is from the ingestion of large amounts of formaldehyde (methylene glycol, formalin), as exhumed bodies contain large amounts of this chemical.
Further study is required into this important field to preserve the lives of everybody outside Siberia. Can I have some money now please?
Exactly! (:
You know, I don’t get to talk about burial practices very often. They won’t let me talk about that at the dinner table, or with guests. But this is WUWT, so… WTHeck!
Formaldehyde treatment of the deceased prevents the body fluids from contaminating the water supply. After all, a lot of people die because they were sick. The Zarathustrians considered it a great sin to bury the dead. They used the “tower of silence” to place the departed under the sky, in the elements. It is no coincidence that during the Plague, the Zarathustrians did not suffer as high a death rate as the Europeans. For the Zarathustrians it is also considered very wicked to put human waste in a field or in the water. You can see that these were practices in place long before the discovery of deadly microorganisms.
And speaking of microorganisms that can kill you. Nitrates and nitrites are a very effective, inexpensive and safe way to keep poultry and red meats from turning brown. This simple technique prevents tremendous waste of meat in our country, along with freezing and refrigeration. I know I do not like to risk preparing meat that has turned color.
We keep hearing “Don’t eat red meat”.
But whoever says this is evidently color blind.
What they meant to say was “Don’t eat green meat”!
Rather than “don’t eat red meat”, what they are trying to say is actually “don’t eat meat”. Ie go vegan, or just die of malnutrition.
When nitrites are exposed to high heat, in the presence of amino acids, they can turn into carcinogenic compounds called nitrosamines.
The nitrates and nitrites are the most effective anti-‘bacterium Clostridium botulinum’ agents known.
The whole nitrites plus high heat equals carcinogenic compounds fear fest is postulated but all trials attempting to prove a human carcinogenic connection to nitrate/nitrite use have failed. Utterly.
Over a decade ago, government promised to develop better, more effective and safer anti-‘bacterium Clostridium botulinum’ agent.
After years of attempting and failing, the government went quiet about nitrates/nitrites. There are still claims and noises about avoiding nitrates/nitrites, but without any actual reasons. Most are still based on ancient history claims and internet legends.
Salt, including chloride and nitrates, have been used to preserve meats for millennia. It may be a possibility that mankind has evolved to thrive on salted meats, but that is a guess, just as likely as CAGW alarmism. No proof!
Nitrates in charcuterie make for wonderful foods!
The simplest way to avoid botulism is not to exclude all oxygen. It is an anaerobic culture.
That is why all tinned and bottled foods much have air at the top an never be filled right up. Also don’t put things like garlic cloves in oil. That effectively excludes the air and produces an environment for botulism culture.
Chicken and steroids. No wonder I’m such a buff hunk … 😉
not
Buff Orpington?
Only if he lays colored eggs.
My favourite scene in ‘Good Morning Vietnam’
“Formaldehyde. We put in just a touch of formaldehyde for flavour. Some people get sick, yeah. So if you have to be rushed to a hospital, then when you return…
– I give you a free salad.
– Well, that seems fair. It really does.”
Yes, one of my favorite lines!
One of the indications of Sainthood which is recognized by the Catholic church is that the body of the would-be Saint will not decompose…these folks are referred to as the “Incorruptible”.
So I would not be so quick to dismiss this particular story…obviously people from the great United States are a collection of Saints.
I am assuming they did not examine the dead bodies of any of the poor-hating warmista fear mongers…i am quite certain their corpses rot into a putrid mass of fetid wretchitude in zero time flat.
I would think that “a putrid mass of fetid wretchitude” has already been achieved by most of them already. That’s progress by progressives.
The Catholic church is a great place for urban legends. An incorruptible body is not required for a sainthood, but it is helpful. Consider it a like of an affirmative action.
I understand that the hands of one such ‘perfectly preserved Saint’ began to turn color as soon as they washed them. Oops.
Is Vladimir Lenin a Saint?!
And regarding that villain part there is nothing more powerful thanthese four letters: Koch. And if you add Bros. you get a double strength effect!
My favorite urban legend was the classic “choking Doberman” story. The only problems were the actual behavior of dogs (I’ve never seen one choke on something too big to swallow) and the behavior of emergency or medical personnel, apart from the minor little fact it was always a friend of a friend who was reporting it.
I do think mass movements are more dangerous than urban legends, despite the obvious fact the proponents of mass movements use near urban legend storytelling. It is really rare for anyone to actually change their behavior on the basis of a pure urban legend.
Well, since I want to keep both of my kidneys, I never get passed-out drunk in small towns in foreign countries anymore…so there is that.
Probably wise for a number of reasons that I won’t go into here.
To be perfectly honest, I quit drinking altogether almost 15 years ago, shortly after 911.
But I ESPECIALLY quit drinking to the point of unconsciousness in small town roadhouses of foreign countries.
Not that I had ever done that to begin with…that is besides the point.
I spent 23 years in the navy.
I reckon I’ve passed out pretty much all over the world.
Everybody knows that you have to eat preservatives if you wan to be preserved.
And drink them as well.
It is a proven effect…just look at Keith Richards.
Live pickling, we could call it.
Menicholas — Ah, that’s just a bourbon legend. — Eugene WR Gallun
And you thought I was funny Eugene? That’s great…baaaad pun, but great. 🙂
Please, no:
Keith
Everybody knows that you have to eat preservatives if you want to be preserved.
An edit function would be really nice.
I saw a picture of some food on a platter the other day. There were probably a dozen or more types of rolls and muffins and other processed foods and an open tub of margarine on the platter. They all looked like they had been produced in recent weeks. The caption on the picture said the food products in the picture were 19 years old!
I saw another picture of a McDonalds meal of french fries, and hamburger with pickles and onions and mustard sitting under a clear glass cover, and it looked like it had just been made, and the caption said the meal was over two years old when the picture was taken.
Something is going on. 🙂
It’s quite simple. Try it yourself. For best results, put the Happy Meal in the freezer in 2014 and take it out in 2016. Don’t let your conscience bother you in the pursuit of a beautiful Urban food legend. Freezing is considered a kind of food preservative.
Home made bread gets mold on it at room temp in 3 or maybe 4 days. The preservatives give bread a shelf life of a couple of weeks.
Next up, AMEEERICANS ARE WASTING FOOD
Heh. If there is a problem in the world, it’s the Americans that are at fault. Dang evil Americans. 🙂
So much of this global warming debate is the human propensity to fall for urban legends. We just fall for it 50%, 80% of the time.
But you know what. People do NOT like being corrected about the urban legend that they are spreading. They hate you for it. Again, it is just what human nature is about. People do not like being corrected.
And that is why the urban legend of global warming is so hard to fight. First, people naturally fall for it. And seondly, you do not get to correct these people without costing yourself rapport with friends, family, colleagues etc.
There needs to be a simple message that succeptible people automatically understand and doesn’t expend rapport with people.
For me, it was one day when a close friend said “yeah right. 13,000 years ago, there was a mile of ice above us.” A simple statement like this completly turned my focus around and cost my friend zero in the rapport department. I was back into “science is based on proof” mode after that and it carried over into other areas. Fact is fact. Urban legends rarely are fact. But I still rarely correct someone when they are spreading the urban legend desease.
Mark Twain: It’s easier to fool someone, than to convince them they have been fooled.
Also urban legend, never traced back to Clemens.
Never Jorge?
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/584507-it-s-easier-to-fool-people-than-to-convince-them-that
Amenable to Change –
Manmade greenhouse warming -> Anthropogenic global warming -> Climate change -> Carbon pollution -> Emissions
Hint: I find the C7 acronym best sums up the REAL description:
Cash for Capitalist Caucasian Caused Catastrophic Climate Change
Villains –
Gillard (ex-PM of Australia) – The carbon “price” (read as “tax”) will only be levelled at 500 big dirtiest polluters (villains) not at citizens. Fails to say that they are the source of all our electricity and that they have no choice but to pass the increased costs on to consumers (citizens).
C7! Totally!
/sarc on
Didn’t you hear China ratified the Paris agreement?
/sarc off
(in my language, ratified and will ratify may look exacly the same. The title also didn’t quite explain the deal: China will not stop increasing emissions based on this agreement.)
The official line I keep reading is that China has agreed to “the proposal to review and ratify the Paris Agreement”. In my language, that could mean anything between nothing and whatever they want.
Willis, you and your ex fiancé plainly have some time for reflection during your daughter’s wedding weekend. Carry on.
My only daughter chose a place near San Diego because of her future husband’s family. I thought it exorbitant at the time, since was paying mucho. Now blessed with two lovely grandkids, and fond memories of my father’s last major trip anywhere despite his then frailties. My last time at a bar with him.
Roll with life. Beats fighting it.
And yes, fighting climate change is like fighting an imaginary closet monster. Apt analogy.
Highest regards.
ristvan, thanks for the kind words. Although we have disagreed on scientific matters more than once, you have always been supportive, and it is both noted and appreciated.
w.
I agree with this article wholeheartedly. I have long realised that “global warming” was unscientific at it’s heart. But your article puts it in it’s place so clearly.