Springhole.net Blog

Many think that global warming is a fraud perpetuated by the gub’mint, the vegans, or just… anybody they don’t like, really, in order to squeeeeeeze more money out of us poor widdle wed-bwooded Amewicans. I beg to differ, because if global warming is a fraud, it’s the worst and most self-defeating fraud EVER.

Shortly after WWII, the US government decided it needed a plan to keep the country from falling into another Great Depression. The solution was to create a consumer culture, a world where new fashions were required every year, technology that went obsolete as soon as it was out of the box, and CD players that lasted only a few months before breaking and requiring a replacement.

Victor Lebrow explained the solution thus:

“Our enormously productive economy … demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption…. we need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”

This plan was designed to keep the money flowing, flowing, flowing forevermore.

I’ve heard people claim that global warming is all a scam to get more money. But you know, that just doesn’t make a lot of sense. In fact, global warming is a real wrench in the greasy, smoking engine of consumerism.

For one thing, if CO2 is responsible for global warming, then we should drive less. If we drive less, this means fewer shopping trips at Big Boxmart to buy the latest clothes.

For another, if CO2 is responsible for global warming, this means that we’ve got to stop trashing trees that convert CO2 back into oxygen. This means that we can’t keep plundering the Earth silly for raw materials to make new 6-month CD players.

Obviously, this doesn’t jive well with the government’s plan for an ever-accelerating rate of consumption!

“Duh,” skeptics say, “Big Oil WANTS us to believe in global warming so we have to pay more for gas!”

Nice try, but no cigar. Big Oil pays people to prove that global warming ISN’T happening, or at least prove that if it is, it totally isn’t our fault. We don’t know which is it, because they can’t make up their minds. They don’t care which it is, as long as their hands are whitewashed.

“Global warming was made up by vegans to make us stop eating meat,” some argue. Boy, I wish I could agree with you – I hate giving ammo to dogmatic vegans as much as any red-blooded red meat-eater. But the fact is, scientists have known for decades (LONG before vegetarianism was was cool) that gases like CO2 and methane trap heat, and that it doesn’t take a lot of it to heat the place up enough to cause some major problems. Just look at the temperatures of Venus compared to Mercury. (Mercury is closer to the sun, but Venus, with its all-CO2 atmosphere, is hotter. WAAAAAY hotter.)

The same goes for any argument that points out that people are taking monetary advantage of global warming. We now have cap-and-trade, and then there are all those “green” products. But the fact still remains that scientists have been warning us for DECADES, whereas businesses are JUST NOW getting on the bandwagon. If global warming was invented to sell things, you’d think they’d have started doing it a long time ago.

Is global warming an obstacle to the truth about low-carb getting out? Well, if I were a scientist who knew that adding more CO2 and methane to the atmosphere could screw our planet up royally in the next few decades, I’d feel a little squirmy about suggesting that people eat more meat. On the one hand, we’ve got people who can actually afford to eat meat in the US, but in the other hand we’ve got people in third-world countries who can barely afford to eat at all, and who will be severely affected by climate change. It won’t just be the changing weather that screws them over; it’ll be the wars that break out over resources.

IF they are ignoring studies on low-carb because of this, I won’t say whether they’re right or wrong to do so. I WILL say that it’s one tough call to make.

The REAL conspiracy is the one cooked up after WWII to keep you buying, buying, buying. If that means convincing you that everything is fine in the world and that global warming isn’t real (or if it is, it’s not your fault and there’s nothing you can do about it anyway), so be it.

Skeptics of homeopathy are gathering together to make a demonstration: their plan is to overdose on homeopathic pills to prove that sugar pills that might have a molecule of medicine in them don’t do diddly.

Comments from those upset by this demonstration are lulzy. Some claim that it shows their ignorance because swallowing more pills will have even less effect.

Really? Is that why homeopathic medicines have dire warnings to contact a doctor or poison control center in case of an overdose? Is that why they tell to to take more pills if the effect you’re getting isn’t strong enough? Going by the instructions and warning labels, I think the skeptics’ demonstration is pretty valid.

I don’t see why those who believe in homeopathy are so upset by this, anyway. If homeopathy actually does work, we’ll have a lot of ill skeptics on our hands and you’ll be vindicated. If not… well, then it’s time to swallow the bitter pill of truth and move on.

Read the article (and lulzy comments) for yourself here.

I recently encountered a viral video on YouTube that supposedly depicts a glowing cloud above Moscow. The woowoos have claimed it’s everything from a sinister government plot to an alien invasion.

*headdesk*

Okay, time to set things straight. Simply put, there is no glowing cloud. That “glowing” area you see is the sky shining through a circular opening in the clouds:

Unusual? Yes. A product of aliens or a secret government conspiracy? No.

YECs have a little game they play on YouTube: censor videos they don’t agree with by flagging the crap out of them. Then when that fails, file a false DMCA report so YouTube will pull the video.

The very awesome Don Exodus made a video refuting the Discovery Institute’s attack lemming, Casey Luskin. The Discotute first tried to silence Don by flagging his videos, then by filing a false DMCA report. Don didn’t take this sitting down.

Here’s the video that the Discotute attempted to censor.

You’d think that after the kerfuffle with geocentricism a few centuries ago, they’d have learned that this kind of crap doesn’t work.

A step-by-step refutation of PETA’s “Is Eating Meat Natural?” pages, placed on YouTube for your viewing convenience.

Humans ARE Omnivores – Part 1
Humans ARE Omnivores – Part 2

Have you ever heard the Young Earth Creationist claim that if we found a dinosaur living today, it would disproof the Earth’s 4 billion-ish year age? And then they go on to claim that said dinosaur has been found, linking to an article of questionable veracity?

Well, bad news, YECs: it doesn’t work that way. A living dinosaur would prove nothing except that the animal hadn’t gone extinct quite as early as we thought. Today we have many animals alive among us that were around during the time of the dinosaurs. Mosquitoes, ticks, sharks, coelacanths, tuataras, etc. etc.

I mean, when’s the last time you saw a scientist at the aquarium look at a shark and shriek, “OH NO! OLD EARTH THEORY IS FALSIFIED!!!”?

So in the unlikely event that we found a living dinosaur (actually, dinosaurs are all around us – we call them ‘birds’), it wouldn’t prove or disprove anything about the age of the Earth.