just finished: Deadwood-Season 3 
now watching: The Wire-Season 1 
currently listening to: Smashing Pumpkins-Siamese Dream 
I can’t let this one go. Amidst dealing with a half a foot of snow on March 28th, the rest of the world is trying to save us from global warming by trying not to use any energy for an hour. ok sorry, i forgot we’ve shifted to “climate change” because this winter wiped out a decades worth of “warming“. but i’m not even here to discuss whether man can affect the weather of a planet that has supposedly existed for billions of years.
I’m here to discuss how silly it is when people try to show concern for something by doing things that are just a show in order to just feel better about themselves for a moment WHILE FIXING NOTHING. One example i posted about here. Another I remember was when i was in college some college kids in the dorms staged a “live in a cardboard box” night so they could see what its like to be homeless. HEY BETTER IDEA…How about finding a homeless dude and giving him a meal or something? What does staying in a box do for anyone? just like what does shutting lights off for an hour do? NOTHING!!!!!
listen, i understand whats going on, i really do. as i’ve outlined below in prior posts about humanism, life on earth is meaningless so people must find something to latch onto and usually its doing things like “earth hour” that give some sort of temporary self-satisfaction. you don’t actually have to help anything or fix a problem, you just have to show you cared through an otherwise pointless demonstration.
ugh. i think someday i’m going to end up in jail and it’ll likely be from arguing with some sort of energy policeman who stopped by because my thermostat wasn’t set properly. seriously…type energy police into a search engine and see what comes up. its freaking scary.
who reads this? by Andy J. Biery 
I agree with you that the effects of turning the lights off for like 1 hour on the world are highly suspect. Especially since most people probably left their multiple TVs, computers, refrigerators, etc. etc. etc. on during that time. However I’d say, and it’s also of arguable effectiveness I suppose, the point was to bring attention to the fact that we use way more energy resources on a daily basis than we probably need to. You seemed to have completely missed this possibility in your post. What I don’t really understand is the amount of anger and hate you seem to have for people who don’t like the idea of wasting resources.
Also, I “can’t let this one go” but if you want to claim that the earth isn’t billions of years old, or that climate change isn’t affected by humans and one winter “wiped out decades worth of warming” (which by the way sounds ridiculous at face value with even a small amount of common sense) don’t pretend to use science to defend your position. Just come out and say that you base your opinions on the bible and your faith or other unscientific sources. Science has come to the best conclusion it can using the vast amounts of evidence it has. If you disagree than you have either made up your mind regardless of the science or you don’t believe in science period. In either case don’t attempt to use it to defend your position, please, because you will only look foolish.
If you haven’t already made up your mind and really want to try to understand what’s behind the conclusions of thousands of scientists that are actually currently studying the phenomenon of “climate change”:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462
http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=RC_Wiki
If you’ve made up your mind that it’s a global science conspiracy headed by Al Gore and the UN then don’t waste your time reading that, cause nothing will change your mind, and science has no place on this blog as you have made abundantly clear.
Sorry but I get as angry at people who know nothing about science but think they know better than science as you do about people who try with good intentions to do something positive for everyone.
Comment by Patrick — Tuesday, March 31, 2009 @ 3:58 pm
the point of the post was to argue against these “awareness” things people love to do…it fixes nothing. thats it. it was over the top emotionally, i’ll admit.
but i’ll respond anyway cause i can’t seem to fall asleep tnight.
first off, i said A DECADES worth, not decades. coldest winter since 2001. just about a decade anyway. we rolled back the clock 8+ years on “warming”.
my feelings about “science” today is that its completely infiltrated with agendas, preconceived notions, exaggerations, people who interpret results whatever way is needed to keep the govt funding going, ect. not to mention that real science can never be a consensus. so i question any and all of it, esp those that want to affect my life with all of their alarmist claims and new regulations.
from what i’ve read
http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Confusion-Pandering-Politicians-Misguided/dp/1594032106/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238580151&sr=8-1 our understanding of weather and models we’ve built in order to extrapolate out the effects of increased carbon are at best guesses because, quite frankly, weather has far far far too many variables to properly model and probably never will be modelable.
so then, my general stance here is whether the earth is warming and co2 levels are rising, i don’t think its proper to link all those together with man and the weather. its a reckless conclusion at best…one that is amounting to wasting vast resources and limiting freedoms.
p.s. speaking of ALGORE…
Comment by Andy — Wednesday, April 1, 2009 @ 5:13 am
Yah I was definitely over the top (and fairly well buzzed from several beers, hey it was my bday after all) there too, apologies.
But the NOAA thing doesn’t “roll back” anything. Completely independent of global warming or whatever that’s just not how the math works. Obviously within a trend there can be variability up and down on smaller scales that have no effect and will tell you nothing about the larger overall trend.
If you can find me a single book by someone preaching intelligent design with a PhD in evolutionary theory and NOT meteorology (which has little to do with climatology btw and absolutely nothing to do with evolutionary theory) then I will be more than happy to read the book. In fact I would be very interested in reading the book. Until then I won’t waste my time.
Comment by Patrick — Wednesday, April 1, 2009 @ 3:42 pm
its no more different than saying a trend within a single century means anything in the grand spectrum of billions of years
Not sure if you are referring to Roy Spencer and the book i posted or not. I didn’t say anything about ID or evolutionary theory (nor does his book talk about any of that). I’m talking specifically about climate change. Do they even have degrees in climatology? meteorology seems more than adequate? pulling hairs. hell, Darwin’s educational background was in divinity.
Comment by Andy — Wednesday, April 1, 2009 @ 5:40 pm
speechless. the last few sentences deserve some kind of award. The first is a runner-up.
Comment by Patrick — Friday, April 3, 2009 @ 1:55 pm
incidentally, scientists should be devoting time to understanding what exactly it is about your blog that turns me into a raging dickhead. Sorry.
Comment by Patrick — Friday, April 3, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
award for amazingness!
i just write as stuff comes into my head. just my way of clearing it all out when something is there.
in the past 6 months or so i’m really into the all differences in ways of thinking about everything (politics, science, philosophy) depending on whether one believes in the God of the Bible or not. that seems to be the real root of almost all of these type of discussions. Ideally I’ll just figure out where someone stands on their faith and leave it at that. arguing much further just gets me into trouble with people.
Comment by Andy — Friday, April 3, 2009 @ 3:11 pm
was thinking about and re-reading your comment (#3) and how i must have mis-interpreted what you said if you thought what i wrote (comment #4) was so off.
i thought you were knocking Roy Spencer because he had a meteorology degree instead of climatology degree and i did a basic search on climatology degrees and didn’t see much. i thought meteorology was just fine to comment on climatology and write a book about it.
i then wrote the thing about darwin as a comparison that one can have a degree in almost anything and still be an expert in something else. i then thought later how ridiculous my response must have been in relation to what you wrote cause it was almost proving your point in that you wanted someone with an evolutionary theory degree to have written about ID. mostly i was just ignoring your request though cause I wasn’t talking about evolution at all and the darwin comment was mostly a joke.
only thing that sucks about blogs and comments…can’t always figure out exactly what point someone is getting at and when they are joking or being sarcastic or whatever.
anywho, just wanted to clean that up.
Comment by Andy — Monday, April 6, 2009 @ 1:59 am