It is often the case. One fact, one piece of information, one idea, one falsehood, can determine our whole politics and philosophy. Thinkers, beware.
It is a law that in all systems of thought there is one idea you must accept for that whole system to seem real to you, legitimate enough to you, so that you will finally defend it with your soul and your life—or, at the least, let it guide your life to the point where you will cut off relations with other people who don’t believe as you do—though in countless ways, including daily behavior, human emotions, and so forth, they are exactly like you.
In August, 2019, visiting rural Vermont for a family reunion, I noticed the first night was terribly cold, even though it had been extremely hot the previous day. One of my hosts casually observed that very dry air had moved into the area. Without moisture in the air, heat quickly escapes back into space, he said. I said I was familiar with this phenomenon. Sometimes science is how we actually experience things, and understand things, without the need for “expert” explanation. I recalled meteorologists saying the same thing. Overnight chill is always accompanied by cloudless, dry air. Water vapor, I also remembered, is the reason for the green house effect. This too, is a truism. On this particular day in Vermont, the difference in temperature between night and day was precisely the same as the average temperature difference between summer and winter. About a 40 F swing. It was in the 80s at the height of the day and dipped into the 40s at night.
I suffer like the rest of us when summers are not only hot, but humid, and this is the first thing people say—“it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity”—which causes us to be wretched and uncomfortable. But since few people are scientists, we complain bitterly when humidity is present—not understanding the more far reaching truth: the causal relationship between heat and humidity.
August 2019 was the hottest on record in Boston, and this was an accident of the weather—a strong dry front sat off the coast for a long time, and this allowed moist, southerly air to steadily flow into the region.
The experience of the cold, dry morning in Vermont made me ponder: isn’t there enough CO2 in the air to add to the green house effect and make it warmer, instead? Did it all come down to 1. Dry air and 2. The sun?
Yes.
I just couldn’t imagine a parking lot full of cars, with all their engines running, and with their CO2, warming up the air. It made no sense.
There really was no other way to see it. CO2 was not a factor. I grabbed a sweatshirt and I knew why, and I had no doubt CO2 could not counter the chill I felt. I know CO2 is a trace gas. I also know that it’s the culprit (this is what they mean when they say “green house emissions”) for all those dire warnings—beyond anything I could possibly experience as a truth for myself.
How many truths can we know for ourselves? Are there any? Most knowledge relies on things we cannot see or feel, concerning things too vast, too small, too complex, too historical, or too theoretical. We have to accept the authority of someone else. It might make a kind of sense to us, but we cannot see it directly. We cannot prove it to ourselves. Even things which make us feel personally happy or wretched (our diet, for instance) are doubted because we see others impacted differently by the same thing.
But this does not mean our senses and a truth must be divergent. Leonardo da Vinci, in arguing that painting (related to astronomy and geometry) was superior to poetry, said there were two ways to knowledge—evidence from our senses, and hearsay. He had a point. When enough data is present, the data provided by our senses is what ultimately affirms the truth.
The green house effect of water vapor—and the wide divergence of temperature on this day in Vermont: I could safely say beyond all doubt, I knew this from my experience to be true.
How many simple truths do we know with certainty from our own senses, and not from hearsay?
What about the simple “truth” of ‘two plus two equal equals four?’ What kind of “experience” is this?
Is it my eyes, or “a theory,” which determines four objects in front of me will be the “answer?”
How can math be real when it assumes “four things” is a “whole?” There is no way that four things can possibly be a “whole,” except when we stop counting at four, and randomly consider this our sum.
Am I “doing math,” or something very different:
I name (four) the “answer,” while presupposing a “problem”—asking theoretically how one part relates to another: the part called “four” and the part called “three.”
To “count” is to assume each step is the same; the one is the same as the two, and after we have traversed from one to two, each step is exactly half of the two steps taken together.
Counting discrete objects one, two, three, four, immediately infers the opposite—fractions—3/4 for instance—which is subtracting, not adding, and assumes four things is a “whole,” which of course it is not.
Exactitude never accompanies discrete objects—therefore “counting”—as something mathematically precise—is a lie, or true “in theory” only—and division, which relies on numbers, and posits the precise, such as 3/4, is also a lie, since it relies on the “exactitude” of counting equal things—when no equal thing exists in the entire universe. Every grain of sand is different.
One can see immediately that the system of parts is artificial, because the universe does not exist as discrete parts—it exists as flaming orbs which spin into coolness in three dimensional space. Counting exists only when humans interact: how many cookies do I get? How many runs did my team score? How many days have passed? This means nothing to nature. Unless we understand what “a day” is (orbiting bodies) “counting” the days is random—and not scientific, in how we understand the term, “day.” Counting is naming, not mathematics. This is making up an answer beforehand, where the beforehand is already the answer. Counting (or dividing up) cookies is not knowledge.
I noticed recently, as I was walking by the sea, that a seagull jumped one pier post as I approached, then one more, and then as I continued to approach, it flew up and away and resettled 30 posts away. The mathematics of the seagull looks like this: 1, 2, 30. This is math based on ratio, not mere counting. It is math connected to the real world—not math abstracted on a blackboard, involving only the “math game” of itself. If the seagull flew far away immediately, it would do too much unnecessary flying. If it hopped the posts 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, etc, it would be vulnerable to predators. So 1, 2, 30 makes sense—even though it makes no “mathematical sense.” Life should drive mathematics, not the other way around.
Understanding on one’s skin a scientific truth, as I did on that Vermont morning, is quite different from the “accurate” twists and turns of mere mathematics.
As I contemplate the natural world, I begin to realize that water vapor, sun, and accidents of weather (wind currents, etc) determine how warm the planet is.
But I only came to this realization because of the very public, and very vociferous, and never ending, barrage of rhetoric concerning “man made global warming/climate change due to green house gases pumped into the atmosphere.”
Methane (cow farts) is occasionally mentioned, but the main and overwhelming villain is CO2, considered a “green house gas”—but which is also a “trace gas,” and more exactly: 4 parts to every 10,000 parts in the atmosphere—significant because 4/10,000 indicates volume, the volume of a closed system: the earth’s atmosphere, and the addition of the sun’s energy to the earth’s atmosphere to keep us warm and prevent eternal winter that would quickly kill life on the planet—this atmosphere and our sun produces the temperature—differently and minutely measured in every part of the biosphere. There is no ideal temperature “of the planet.” No one knows what the ideal temperature of the planet is. There is no “four” which is the “whole” answer. Not only is there no temperature which the planet “ought” to be, the temperature of the planet quite naturally exists in hot and cold extremes, depending on day or night; summer or winter; dry or moist air. These extremes encompass swings of almost 200 F. So not only is there no ideal temperature, there is no one temperature, either. Adding in historic ice ages, and swings of temperature recently measured over the last 200 years, the evidence points to the fact that temperature shift is natural and common, depending on the sun’s relation to the earth—night is colder than day, with swings of 50 F very common, and winter is colder than summer, with swings of 50 F very common. The reason night is colder than day and winter is colder than summer is due to solar energy. 50 F swings are caused by the sun, not CO2. No scientist confuses this. The theory that 4 parts in 10,000 CO2 (also a benign gas and not poisonous in itself) can heat up the earth, by itself, on its own, to a mean temperature (which constantly swings by amounts of up to 200 F) somehow dangerous to life on the planet, beggars belief. It is a theory only. It cannot possibly be experienced. The temperature difference between the cool night and the warm summer day experienced in Vermont was 40 F. Water vapor varies, but can be as much as 400 parts per 10,000 in the earth’s atmosphere.
These temperature swings are real, but who is to say that the cool night or the hot day is “better?” To say which temperature is “better” is not only unscientific, but absurd. (And in terms of the “danger” of CO2, temperature is all we’re talking about, since CO2 is necessary for plant life).
Likewise, to say which temperature is “better” for the planet as a whole (there is no “one temperature” of the planet, because it swings 200 F from one part of the planet to the other) is also absurd.
The actual, measurable, scientific, warming of the planet—the essence of the “danger” we constantly hear about—is less than 1 degree F since 1975 and 1.4 since 1880. (And even to measure the entire mean temperature of the planet cannot be done with precision.) Not all of this less-than-1 degree F warming is due to CO2, or certainly cannot be absolutely proven to be from CO2, but even if it were, (whether 97% agree on this or not makes no difference) these numbers which indicate something real (heat) cannot possibly be alarming in themselves, qua number. CO2 cannot randomly jump to very high amounts—the increase is gradual—a 1 part in 10,000 increase in the last 100 years, a .2 part in 10,000 increase over the last 30 years. And so, given the increase in the planet’s mean temperature—and let’s say, though not proven, the entire increase is due to CO2—it is absolutely impossible to be alarmed, even if one tried very hard to be.
And remember—there are no hidden problems associated with CO2, a gas necessary to life on earth—we are only concerned with one measurable vector from CO2—temperature.
The effects of CO2 increase? The effects (storms, droughts, rising sea levels) which are entirely measurable? They are not exactly notable (though anecdotes are aplenty; the earth is very big). Ask for photographic evidence of rising sea levels. Then wait. Surely there are super deals on expensive beachfront property? Let me know. Hurricanes have not increased in number or strength over the past 20, 30, 50 years.
But if one does believe CO2 increase is in the foreground of climate, it will follow naturally that one is a left wing thinker—even an extreme left wing thinker.
One belief drives every belief.
The “dangerous” increase in temperature is due to the “greed” of large corporations which manufacture cars, airplanes, and burn oil for energy. This is a necessary component of all left wing thinking—rich, successful people are evil, and from this follows everything else—the valiant underdog status of the poor, the valiant underdog status of the planet, pitted against those involved in successful, greedy manufacturing.
The sweep of this belief is stunning, the emotions powerful, the evil obviously apparent, and it all hinges on the fact that a 1 part in 10,000 volume of a benign gas is solely responsible for the increase of the mean temperature of the planet by 1 degree F since 1900—and because of this, the world is ending. And the greed and the ignorance of successful (mostly) men is responsible.
Can I look Leonardo DiCaprio and all the other cool kids in the eyes and tell them I know that a vast (very vast) parking lot of cars running their engines could not possibly warm me, due to the CO2 in their emissions, when I’m feeling chilly on a dry, summer, Vermont morning?
What I felt on that Vermont morning was nothing but ignorant apostasy. Only a feeling. And I should laugh it off. And say nothing more. Shouldn’t I?