Patties, Pollutants, and Paxil – Part I

One of the many reasons I can’t stand the Insane Clown Posse is that I’m a Big-Into-Science kind of guy. I can say things like “allele variation over generations in a changing environment” without stumbling, I can explain exactly why the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is bullshit, and one time I choked a guy half-to-death for daring to utter words in my house which were deeply anti-science.

“Do you have any idea,” I whispered, staring into eyes full of white-terror, my hands squeezing his trachea, “just how badly I’ve always wanted to kill a man? And how goddamn tempting you’re making it right now?”

Let’s just say that I’m no tenderfoot when it comes to Thermodynamics.

I tell you all this, gentle reader, so that can you understand how hurt I was when I received this well-sourced comment earlier in the week:

…and it turns out that they’ve been actively trying to cover up legitimate science and silence qualified dissenters.

No.  There is (was) no conspiracy.
Climatologists can no more “cover up legitimate science” than biologists can “cover up legitimate science” from the creationists.
It’s physically impossible.
See here and here.

Even if the climate change hypothesis is true…

No.  Climate change is not a “hypothesis”.
Nor is it “just a theory”.
Real-time on-the-ground observations have already been made.  Painstaking time-lapse photography taken.
Measurements done of multiple different lines of evidence covering many decades involving all of the physical sciences.
All of them.
No exceptions.
(Geology, glaciology, atmospheric science, chemisty, physics, meteorology, vulcanology, oceanography, biology etc.)

Every single scientific community on the planet is on board with the science of climate change.
That consensus was carefully built up via the process of peer review.
No short cuts.  No hanky-panky.

The science has been done the boring old-fashioned way.
Treat claims to the contrary with the same suspicion as you would treat creationist claims trying to denigrate biology or anti-vaxxers taking pot shots at modern medicine.
Compare these two propoganda pieces.
Two peas in a rotten pod.
That’s not how science is done.

NASA.
Doesn’t get much better than NASA for good science.
Do they accept the science on global warming and climate change?
Oh yes.
NASA didn’t lie to you about the moon landings and they are not lying to you about climate change.
There is no global conspiracy of scientists.

Look at what the scientific community has to say.
Go directly to their websites and avoid the spin.
NOAA, USGS, The Royal Society, RMET, CSIRO, British Antarctic Survey, NAS, AAAS, AGU….they’re all good.  Go ahead and pick your own favourite one.  They will all tell you the same thing.

Climate change is real.
We’re responsible for it.
It’s bad.

Get your biology information from biologists.
Get your medical information from doctors.
Get your climatology infromation from…climatologists.

Please find out about how climate change deniers operate.
Look at the history.  It’s all well documented and verifiable.
Here and here.

There’s a lot of material in there; Katesby is no slouch when it comes to citation (I particularly recommend his link to the T.E.D. Talk).  But before I get to it, I’d like to discuss the Philosophy of Science.

Because while there’s no doubt that Science belongs on the list of Really Good Ideas, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been known to shit the bed on occasion.

For example, just take a look at the historical trends of obesity:

Share of U.S. Adult Population Obese, by Sex and Ethnicity. Notes: Data for individuals age 20–74 with a body mass index of 30 or more. The numbers are taken from table 70 of National Center for Health Statistics (2002). Cited in the NYTimes; Source.

This graph’s url is the most reputable of all those I stumbled across (and shows a curious emphasis on race), but a bit of googling will show you the same figures across the board; sometime around the mid-seventies people started getting fat.

From the talk on CBC radio you’d think that this was when the first McDonalds opened up, but you’d be dead wrong (Fact: McDonald’s burgers are nutritionally equivalent to the stuff you fry up at home, even if they do taste like ferret shit).  The culprit this time around was – take a guess now, all you folks playing at home – the big, bad, bungling, blowhard that turned us into a nation of blimps?

That’s right – the Government!

In 1977, George McGovern’s Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs issued a report titled Dietary Goals for the United States, which laid out the same Four Food Groups and dietary recommendations that you learned about in school.  You see, back in the sixties a nutritionist by the name of Mark Hegsted had become convinced that a correlation between blood cholestorol and heart attacks meant a causal relationship; from this it naturally followed that eggs were Bad For You.  This cupcake got involved with the government committees, and the rest is history.  Here’s a 2 minute video that’ll educate while keeping you entertained:

If there’s one criticism I have (of this 2 minute clip from an hour-and-a-half long documentary) is that it’s too simplistic.  It’s not just a matter of government funding – it’s become a matter of Orthodoxy.  We all know that fat and cholesterol is bad for you, we all know that high fibre diets (which cause regular bowel movements by tearing up the interior lining of the intestine and causing mucous secretion) are good for you – and we all know that salt and fatty food are Bad.  It’s unethical to do a proper nutritional study, anyway.  All we need now is one more study so that we can pass another law for the populace’s Own Good.

Nevermind the Paleos who base their diets on evolutionary biology and what little evidence there is – it’s much better to trust studies demonstrating the evils of egg consumption, studies which include the caveat: