Fred Grimm The Miami Herald

June 24, 2010

Fred Grimm
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: “Pols Unfazed by Specter of a Submerged Coast” – Some comments on your “we are sooooo guilty” Jeremiad in today’s Miami Herald.

Mr. Grimm,

I think we can end the search for Ned Lud.

He has not been kidnapped by Somali pirates; he is alive and well and living in the aggressively air conditioned world HG of the Miami Herald.

Your phrase “thermally expanded sea” prompted me to use the soon to be totally unremembered “scientific method”. I filled a pot with water. I added salt to it. I boiled it. If that’s not “thermal expansion” I don’t know what is. The salted water went up in smoke, so to speak.

Empirical evidence, evidence as real as your boot, is lacking in these never ending “the sky is falling” scenarios.

40 years ago an academic huckster, the Bernie Madoff of PhDs., a snake oil salesman named Paul Ehrlich, told us that the only thing he wasn’t sure of was whether we would starve to death or freeze to death. He was certain one of them would happen before the end of the 20th century. Check the date on your newspaper. Also, check the meat and produce section at Publix. Get back to me.

In the 1970s we were told that we would run out of everything – except malaise – in about 10 years. There are but two things of which I am certain that are no longer on the radar screen: Disco and leisure suits.

The clear and present danger of Global Cooling morphed seamlessly into the clearer and more present danger of Global Warming. Look at the ozone layer, we were told. When it goes we’re gone. [I must confess that I added to the diminishing of the beleaguered and battered O.L. Every morning I would open the window in my bathroom and squirt some Right Guard deodorant out of it. I can probably trace my various skin cancers back to that. Hey! Who knew?]

In the summer of 1996, President Clinton warned us of the imminent dangers of Global Warming by using a tautology that is the foundation of the thought processes of modern American Liberalism.

He told us that we had Global Warming because it was hot in Washington in the summer. In case you missed that it was hot because of Global Warming which was caused by summer heat. Accompanying him was Donna Shalala, then the Secretary of No-No, who said we would all be dead from AIDS in 10 years.

Check the date on today’s paper and get back to me.

I am sure you know that the snow cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is receding. I am sure you don’t know that the snow cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro has been receding since 1888. Incidentally, 1888 was the first year it was measured. What we do know, what we can prove, is that absent Acid Rain, an overload of CO2, Global Cooling, and Global Warming the snows of Kilimanjaro have been melting. Go figure. It started before BP was born. Go figure.

The soul of Physics is that everything is measurable.

If the icebergs are melting where is the water going? If the seas are “thermally expanding” where is the water going? The Miami Herald HQ is right on Biscayne Bay. Go out the back door. Has the water come over the sea wall? Are docks and piers awash? Have any boats gone over any bridge rather than the old fashioned way of going under it? Are insurance companies adjusting their premiums to factor in rising water levels? If not, why not? Has the Coast Guard told Miami Airport to expect water from the Miami River to cover Terminal A?

It is an unfortunate inconvenient truth but at its root the claptrap pseudo-science that rules today is anti-intellectual and anti-rational. Do you remember that tomatoes were once thought to be poisonous? Wasn’t broccoli genetically engineered? 1000 years ago we had an upward spike in temperature in Europe. We would up with the Renaissance. Do you have a problem with Dante? Alas, but it appears that you are “halfway through your journey” and you don’t know that you are in “the dark wood of error”.

It is time, it is past time, to come out and “look up and see the stars”.





Kevin Smith


PS – I must acknowledge my Italian climatological rabbi, Tony Vivaldi. His treatise on the various equinoxes is still valid after all these years.