August 29, 2018 Mark Reynolds The Sun Sentinel

August 29, 2018

Mark Reynolds

The Sun Sentinel

RE: Have you tried the legendary and quite successful Canute model on dealing with sea levels? Some comments on your unscientific – At least you didn’t use the word consensus, a word that describes Quint, the Sharker in Jaws, dragging his fingernails across the blackboard - cup runneth over verbal diarrhea on Global Cooling which morphed into Global Warming which jumped the shark of Climate Destruction and landed, like the proverbial big old turd in the Sun Sentinel Op-Ed punch bowl today.

Mr. Reynolds,

Just when I thought I was out they – grifters, louts, charlatans, buffoons, and ohmadahns – pull me back in. Just when I was going to start a pool aimed at Progressive modern American Liberal wing-nut moon bats who believe, sincerely, that gravity is an option, subject to enlightened legislation, whether Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, who is, as of today, about 2 lengths ahead of the FBI, favors the traditional Cuban model of Socialism or the more aggressive “Speed the Plow”, “Force the Spring”, screw up a wet dream, eat the zoo animals, when do we get to the unicorn ranch and rainbow stew collective, Venezuelan model of Socialism. 

Before I get to your offensive to Logic statements, and why did we outlaw flogging, there is a point of personal privilege I must address. You use the word existential as if you know what it means. Like gravitas from the 2000 election, it is a word that means all things to all men. That means it has no meaning. One of my minors in college was Philosophy. The only existential threat I see is when loutish churls, people like you, having become expert in sticking their head up their ass and seeing it tattooed somewhere decide it is a sign from above that they have the universal “fill in any empty blank space” word. The only existential threat you face is that I will beat you senseless for violating a sacred dialectic.

Like I said, a brief digression.

You say that Hurricane Katrina “left 1836 people dead”. Small potatoes; chump change. The 1908 hurricane in Galveston killed either side of 10,000 Texans. The Florida hurricane of 1925 tore up 100 miles of railroad. The hurricane that landed on Long Island in 1938 created the Shinnecock inlet by cutting an island in half. Look them up.

What man-made actions caused them?

How about Krakatoa? How about Mt. Pinatubo? How about the Yellowstone Basin? Aren’t we past due there? Did fracking cause them?

Would I be on strong scientific grounds if I were to say that the last Ice Age was stopped by Global Warming? Let me answer that. Yes.

See if you can follow this tricky quasi-algorithm.

About 10 centuries ago there was an upward spike in temperature in Western Europe. It gets a bit tricky here so, if possible, pay close attention More land became more arable. More protein, both animal and vegetable became available to more people. 

More people became smarter. It may be an egregious example of conflating causation and correlation but along came the Renaissance. Unless you have a problem with Dante

and Petrarch you would be well advised to keep your doubts to yourself. 

About 5 centuries ago there was a downward spike in temperature in Western Europe. It was called the Medieval Little Ice Age. About 150 years later a man named Stradivarius noticed that the annual rings on some cedar trees were much tighter. About 1100 of the stringed instruments he crafted survived. $2,000,000 is the opening bid on any of them that come to the market. Did the Medicis or the Borgias cause that? You say that a “Yale study found that 77% of U.S. adults believe” …. something or the other. I have a Yale survey that says 100% of everybody alive today will die. Nobody is going to get out of here alive. Can I stretch the envelope to include “filled with sound and fury signifying nothing”?

You say that “Curbelo’s bill is a major crack in the dam holding back effective climate legislation”. That would be absurd on its face but you believe it, don’t you? Let’s legislate against hurricanes, earthquakes, cyclones, unplanned eclipses, both solar, lunar, and intergalactic. Let’s make rainy weekends illegal. Also, teenage bullying and obesity. How about making Solyndra solar panels mandatory on public housing. Talk about shovel-ready jobs!

“The terrifying vortex of fire that swept through Redding, California is the latest Pearl Harbor moment for climate change in a year filled with such moments” bespeaks a mind overcome with Homeric ignorance. Did the evil Trump cause Mrs. O’Leary’s cow to burn down Chicago? How about Rome? Is Nero off the hook? There is a Russian River in California. Did they cause the San Francisco earthquake? I beg you not to handle sharp instruments or to operate heavy equipment.

Whatever happened to Ptolemy? The consensus of scientists for fifteen friggin’ centuries said that the science was settled. Here was the earth and here was the sun and that was that. If you objected you were killed. Along came a Pole and an Eye-Tie and all those books became obsolete. Burn them, right?

“Triple-digit temperatures in California….” + “Hundreds of deaths around the world” + “Smoke from western wildfires is drifting east…” is still more empirical evidence that absent tautologies – circular reasoning for the uninitiated – modern American Liberals, and they are always easy to spot because using both hands and having someone read their GPS to them, they still couldn’t find their ass would never have to use their brains.

You look like you are old enough to know better. Silly me. I have a ball cap that says ‘PROUD GLOBAL WARMER”. Want one?

Is there anyone out there who will “calm the seas and cool the earth” or was that just Sophistry?

Kevin Smith

PS – You are opposed to single use plastic, like in straws and hospitals, right? But you are strongly in favor of nuclear power as the only possible replacement for fossil fuels, right? Or are  you just a closeted Luddite?