Poop Science
This entry was posted on 6/14/2006 9:08 PM and is filed under Media.
My initial instinct was to wish that Al Gore, that scary lunatic, would take his faux science and shove it up his ass. You know, so he could read it.
I don't believe in pop science. I've been paying attention for far too long to take any of it seriously any more. Since I was in high school, I've been seeing, reading and hearing news about scientific breakthroughs that were going to change the way we live, only to see them join "the earth is flat" and "women can't be athletes because all that activity could cause a prolapsed uterus" in the ash heap of ridiculous ideas once believed to be true.
Just off the top of my head, here are a few of the "facts" that were hailed as real science one year only to be refuted, repudiated and reversed, sometimes as soon as a year or two later:
Oatbran cures cancer.
You can catch an STD from a toilet seat.
The rainforests are shrinking.
Salt kills.
Coffee kills.
Caffiene and aspirin are drugs, just like heroin. This was only conventional wisdom among school kids enrolled in DARE programs. My kids told me I was an addict. I told them to give me my coffee or I'd kill them. I guess they were right.
Chocolate is bad for you.
Wine is bad for you.
Cocain is non addictive.
100,000 Americans have diabetes and don't know it. Why doesn't someone tell them, you ask? Well, it seems nobody knows who they are. If nobody knows who they are, how does anyone know how many of them there are? Could be a million, could be seven. No one knows.
A million Americans have diabetes and don't know it.
We are entering a new ice age.
Swine Flu will decimate the population.
The coelecanth has been extinct for 149,000,000 years.
Silicon breast implants cause cancer.
Agent Orange caused cancer.
Asbestos causes cancer.
Marijuana is safer than cigarettes.
Second hand smoke kills.
Spanking is abuse.
Divorce doesn't affect children.
Daycare is just as good as parental care.
Kids don't need Dads.
Women and Men are inherently the same.
Acid rain will destroy the oceans.
Prince William Sound will never recover.
There's a SARS epidemic coming.
Peanut butter is meat. Okay, this one was only believed by my sister Katie, but her adamant, hysterical insistence on it's truth was very similar to Mr. Gore's position on global warming.
A lot of the things I've listed seemed sensible at the time. Who could've possibly known how quickly the ocean would cleanse itself after the disaster of the Exxon Valdeez? Others seem patently ridiculous, but back in the seventies we really believed that cocaine was safe. We also believed that disco was cool and Saturday Night Fever was a great movie. Just because everyone is saying the same thing, doesn't make it true.
When it comes to pop science, the more hysterically it's hyped in the media, the more bogus it usually is.
As far as "global warming" goes, convince me of three things.
1. That it's happening. And I'm talking catastrophic climate change, not the normal ebb and flow of planetary climate flux.
2. That we're causing it. Do you have any idea how big the world really is, and how little space even six billion of us take up? Considering how few of us even live in industrialized countries, supposing that our behavior is changing the planet's climate is like claiming that a guy peeing in the ocean is changing it's content.
3. That it's bad for us. If it's happening and if it's our fault, so what? Less need for heating fuel and a longer growing season are just as likely as the death and destruction scenario so fondly described by those who would use this issue as a political club to beat us with.
But I've changed my mind about Gore's Opus. Instead of going away, I think I'd really like it if he declared war on Nascar.
That'll get him votes.
