The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Climate Scientist Explains …’

Posted on | August 6, 2020 | 2 Comments

When I was in school, back in Ye Olde Ancient Tymes, we were taught that skepticism was necessary to science. That is to say, our teachers emphasized the distance between theory and proof, teaching an experimental approach to the scientific method — trial and error, etc.

During the past several decades, however, the emphasis on skepticism and logical processes of research has apparently been abandoned, largely because education bureaucrats were determined to eradicate Christianity from the classroom. Bible believers kept raising doubts about the scientific basis of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, and so it was that indoctrinating students to accept evolution as proven fact — no skepticism permitted — became a core goal of curriculum and pedagogy. Having purged from the classroom any criticism of Darwinian theory, these education bureaucrats thereby paved the way for the promulgation of other official dogmas, including “climate change,” i.e., anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Not long after skepticism of AGW was declared heretical — “The science is settled!” — a new official dogma was introduced to the curriculum; now anyone who dissents from Third Wave Gender Theory is denounced as a transphobic bigot who is anti-science.

You can ask Colin Wright about this. He is an accredited evolutionary biologist, who has been mocking Christian creationists since he was a teenager. After he got his Ph.D., however, Dr. Wright became increasingly irritated by dogmatic Gender Theory proponents. As a result of his criticism, Dr. Wright became persona non grata in academia, and has been smeared as a “racist,” to boot. The science is settled!

God moves in mysterious ways, and has a profound sense of irony, too.

So this morning, I received an email promoting the work of another scientist, Dr. Peter Langdon Ward (Dartmouth College, BA 1965, and Columbia University, MA, 1967, PhD 1970), who spent many years working for the U.S. Geological Survey, and who could be called a dissenter from the AWG “consensus”:

In a 2009 paper, Ward suggested that “large volumes of SO2 [sulfur dioxide] erupted frequently appear to overdrive the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere resulting in very rapid warming.” In addition, he noted that sulfur dioxide is a strong absorber of visible light. He proposed that the rapid increase in global warming during the 20th century was caused by these mechanisms as a result of the rapid increase in sulfur dioxide emitted by the burning fossil fuels. Since 2009 Ward has been arguing that Climate Change is caused by ozone depletion and not human-derived CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions, a hypothesis that is not supported by referred literature.

Dr. Langdon’s speciality is volcanos and earthquakes, and his theory (at least as I understand it, as a mere amateur) is that the impact of volcanic eruptions on the atmosphere has been underestimated by those fixated on carbon dioxide emissions. You see that Dr. Langdon’s scientific expertise, however, has had no impact on the “consensus,” because anyone who criticizes the official dogma is ostracized as a heretic.

Anyway, the email I got this morning:

ONCE UPON A TIME ALL HUMANS
HAD DARK SKIN
Climate Scientist Explains Global
Variables to Evolving Skin Color
Since the mid-18th century, skin color has been the single most important physical trait used to define human groups, including variously named varieties, races, subspecies, and species.
Humans are a colorful species, yet all modern humans share a common ancestor who lived around 200,000 years ago in Africa. Once upon a time, all humans had dark skin. Variations in human skin color we know today are adaptive traits that correlate closely with geography and the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
“For thousands of years, human skin was the sole interface between our bodies and the environment,” says Dr. Peter L. Ward, 27-year veteran of the U. S. Geological Survey.
Human skin evolved to absorb just enough ultraviolet-B radiation long before clothes were available. The dosage of ultraviolet-B radiation reaching human skin is greatest in the tropics, least around the poles, and varies with climate change.
Around 1.2 million years ago, in response to climate change killing trees, hominins moved out of tropical rain forests into sunny savannas where they lost body hair, evolved more efficient perspiration, and evolved short, curly, Afro-textured hair to protect the thermosensitive brain from bright sunshine. The loss of body hair led to heritable increases in melanin, a pigment that blackens the skin and darkens the eyes of people living in intense sunlight in equatorial regions.
Our species, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa and were originally dark skinned. As humans migrated out of equatorial Africa to higher latitudes, where sunshine is less intense, they evolved over hundreds of generations lower levels of melanin, leading to lighter skin and lighter eye color so that they could absorb adequate ultraviolet-B radiation to have healthy levels of vitamin D. Humans evolved straighter hair that provided increased warmth. Eskimos in the Arctic kept dark skin perhaps because of nearly 24-hour sunlight half the year and because they absorb large amounts of vitamin D from their diet primarily of fish, seals and other animals.
“Thus, the existence, health, and even skin color of humans living on Earth is determined by having just the right Goldilocks balance between how much solar ultraviolet-B radiation is absorbed by the ozone layer versus how much reaches Earth’s surface.” says Dr. Ward.

Very interesting, as a theory.

My early education in scientific skepticism requires me to point out that, however much evidence there is for humans originating “1.2 million years ago” in “tropical rain forests,” this is nevertheless a speculative theory, rather than a fact proven by science. My own belief — and it is merely a belief, which I cannot prove — is that human life began approximately 10,000 years ago. Thus, the racial differences among mankind are of rather recent origin and, as best as I can determine from the Bible, originated with Noah’s sons Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Of course, it is impossible to prove my belief, but my observation of human differences (one of my five grandchildren is playing with his toys about 10 feet from my desk as I write this) suggests that if, like Noah, you had three sons married to three daughters-in-law, there might be tremendous variation in the appearances of your grandchildren. If these three families of your descendants went their separate ways — Noah’s sons repopulated the entire earth — it strikes me that within a few hundred years there might be remarkable differences between your remote descendants. Whatever the evidence may be for Dr. Ward’s assertion that “all modern humans share a common ancestor who lived around 200,000 years ago in Africa,” I do not believe that such a lengthy amount of time was necessary for the “evolution” of racial differences.

Well, I suppose we must agree to disagree on this topic, but I must insist on pointing out the dangers inherent in the demand for a scientific “consensus” in areas of inquiry where our knowledge is imperfect. Totalitarian regimes in the 20th century sought to impose an “official” view of science, which led to Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union and to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. We should hope that old-fashioned skepticism and intellectual freedom can make a comeback.




 

Category: Culture, Education, Intellectuals, Religion, Science

Comments

2 Responses to “‘Climate Scientist Explains …’”

  1. 7 August 2020 - Dark Brightness
    August 6th, 2020 @ 3:44 pm

    […] Very interesting, as a theory. My early education in scientific skepticism requires me to point out that, however much evidence there is for humans originating “1.2 million years ago” in “tropical rain forests,” this is nevertheless a speculative theory, rather than a fact proven by science. My own belief — and it is merely a belief, which I cannot prove — is that human life began approximately 10,000 years ago. Thus, the racial differences among mankind are of rather recent origin and, as best as I can determine from the Bible, originated with Noah’s sons Shem, Ham and Japheth. […]

  2. FMJRA 2.0: Who’s Gonna Drown In Your Blue Sea? : The Other McCain
    August 8th, 2020 @ 9:26 pm

    […] Climate Scientist Explains … Dark Brightness EBL […]