My Earth Day Conundrum
"I've seen a heap of trouble in my time, and most of it's never come to pass." - attributed in various forms to Mark Twain.
Those who believe with Samuel Johnson that, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel,” have yet to encounter environmentalism.
The first Earth Day was April 22, 1970. I was 26 years-old, three years out of college and recently having returned from a stint in the Peace Corps in Ecuador.
Even though I was sympathetic to the cause, I did not participate in Earth Day celebrations, nor do I remember anything about that first Earth Day. Although I was a semi-radical in college, I was not a demonstrator or overtly an activist (too introverted, for one thing). My belief was that as a college student one should be able to state one’s position in writing or by speaking. I did participate in so-called teach-ins/bull sessions where issues were discussed—not always politely. Dissenters were not allowed, of course. Left-wing cancellation is not a new thing. The left would never survive if they had to tolerate opposing opinion or deal openly with inconvenient facts. Demonstrations were for semi-literate, ideological narcissists, who were unable to articulate their position. A brick through the college bursar’s office window spoke volumes but required little brain power.
What we call environmentalists today were called ecologists then. I felt it necessary to flaunt my college biology knowledge by pointing out that ecology was a misnomer. Ecology is the branch of biology concerned with the various relations of animals and plants to one another and to their surrounding environment. I would have considered myself a conservationist, which is the principle of protecting nature with which we as elementary school students in the 50s were imbued.
Natural resources were a treasure that should be used, but used wisely and efficiently. Industry was a good thing as long as pollution was controlled. Carbon dioxide was not considered a pollutant. It was a colorless, odorless gas that we exhaled and was necessary for plants to photosynthesize. This was a given that even hard-core ecologists tacitly accepted. The concept of CO2 as climate villain was yet to be invented.
So, you can call me Al, you can call me TERF, you can even call me late for dinner, but please don’t call me an environmentalist. Call me a humanist. That will do nicely.
To summarize my views on CO2 and climate change after listening for more than 35 years to the alarmist propaganda and not seeing any evidence of the dire predictions coming to pass:
CO2 is not a pollutant nor is it the control knob of the planet thermostat.
Warm periods precede increases in CO2 levels with a lag time of several hundred years (shaken Coke bottle example).
We are currently in a CO2 drought.
CO2 delusion is driving unnecessarily costly and unnecessary mitigation efforts (renewables; decarbonization; total electrification).
Corruption in so-called climate science has led to corruption in science in general (think Covid, gender, genetics, psychology). I no longer trust the science. Before you trust, verify. Most scientific studies are junk and hardly anyone reads them.
Peer review has become crony review.
Science education has regressed to pre-Enlightenment methods—like Thomas Aquinas and the Schoolmen starting from a premise (God exists) and seeking evidence to prove the premise. Students are indoctrinated with the dogma that catastrophic climate change is a given and taught to find evidence proving the premise. They are not taught the principles of Enlightenment scientific thinking or investigation.
On the subject of students and science literacy, I came upon a Chicago Tribune article lauding a group of Chicago Public School students who were given a Friday afternoon off to protest the slow pace of taking action against climate deniers.
From the Tribune story (emphasis mine):
Teenage activists held a rally Friday afternoon demanding urgent action from government officials to slow climate change, calling it a “public health emergency that affects every breath we take and every sip we drink.”
Dozens gathered in Pritzker Park in the Loop before marching nearly a half-mile to Chase Tower, urging Chase Bank and other financial institutions to divest from the fossil fuel industry.
Last year was the warmest on record globally, and the 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred in the past decade, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Illinois climatologists have also said that warmer temperatures in winter are “strongly tied” to climate change, with less snowfall in Chicago.
Young demonstrators carried signs that read “Don’t be a climate fool” and “End climate change” while chanting, “The tides are rising, so are we.” Protesters also sang a parody of the song “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons, saying, “We’re waking up to melting poles, making hot what once was cold.”
Aside from the overwrought language of the students’ sloganeering and the questionable accuracy of the article’s assertions about the dire state of the climate, there is a huge irony here that is not apparent unless you have followed news of the crisis in the Chicago Public Schools system. The irony is that CPS student test scores in reading and math are at abysmally low levels.
That fact is largely ignored by the Tribune and other Chicago legacy news outlets. An independent journal Wirepoints, however, covers Chicago school news extensively. It is an essential source for accurate information on what is really going on in the city and not just in education.
In a story headlined Illinois education officials keep trying to hide their failures behind excuse of “higher test standards,” Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner write in Wirepoints:
Talk of “higher standards” is a distraction from the cold hard fact parents need to know: Only about one-third of Illinois students are proficient in reading and math.
And it’s not just the state’s own test, the Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR), that shows this. The 50-state nationwide test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card, shows the same results.
For proof, look at the graphic below. Pre-covid state (IAR) results in reading and math for both 4th- and 8th-grade students were largely in sync with national (NAEP) test data. Wirepoints analyzed 2019 data to avoid the testing and learning issues associated with the pandemic.
In more sane times, youth would be given a basic education that emphasized reading, math and science competency (Three Rs). Once a sufficient level of mastery was reached, then—and only then—would a student begin to learn about complex systems like the earth’s climate.
Earth Day is just one of the many distractions that move audience eyes away from the magician’s sleight of hand and toward the shiny object. I hate Days and Months, but if we must have them, I would suggest a Reading Day, Math Day and Science Day. First things first.
Let’s get back to living the life of the Enlightenment, rather than blindly meandering through the modern equivalent of the Dark Ages.
P.S. Earth Day confession: yes, I am a (proud) climate denier.
Thank you for the erudite writings. These moments in history reveal newer types human frailty amplified by social media and misinformation, coupled with a lack of problem solving skills.
Hahaha. Sell it.