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PrintApril 25, 2011
Ice, Arrogant Ignorance, and Global Warmism
The latest global warming derangement? In order to stop "imperiling the planet," turn off your refrigerator's icemaker.
To appreciate the depth of madness to which warmists are now routinely sinking, let's identify the fallacies contained in a sentence lifted from a recent Time magazine post.
Climate modelers have long known that households are far bigger contributors to global warming than most laypeople realize.
There are at least three fallacies: that "modelers" deal in proven facts, that "households" cause any global warming at all, and that "most laypeople" generally swallow the second fallacy.
Here are the facts.
1. Modelers don't know, modelers model.
2. There is no proof that "households" contribute in any way to "global warming."
3. About half of "laypeople" now "realize" that global warmists are all wet.
Our subject sentence was written by Time's editor for science and technology, Jeffrey Kluger. (Click here to view the man's photo. I dare you.)
Mr. Kluger's article, "How the Ice in Your Drink is Imperiling the Planet," bears the signature of hyperbole characteristic of warmist pronouncements. Warmism is a religion. Kluger's language is devout language. According to our editor, the average refrigerator "sucks up" 8 percent of household electricity usage. Reductions in such "energy gluttony" must occur if we are to have any hope of "averting climate catastrophe." Parts of Mr. Kluger's post read like an impressionable student's class notes from Over-the-Top Language 101.
From statistics provided by Kluger, one can calculate that that the average icemaker accounts for no more than 1.6 percent and maybe a little as 0.96 percent of household electricity consumption. So when he claims that the ice-making process is "energetically expensive," Kluger teaches a valuable lesson. "Climate catastrophe" can be averted in baby steps-in fact, tiny, itsy-bitsy, ice-cube-sized steps.
Editor Kluger praises the National Institute of Standards and Technology for mounting an "appeal to reason" and "urging refrigerator manufacturers to look closely at the design of their icemakers[.]" Kluger notes that one of the Church of Global Warming's most active committees, the U.S. Department of Energy under bishop Steven Chu (see 1, 2, 3), is doing its part in the crusade against icemakers. Chu's DOE is going to increase manufacturers' costs by enacting higher "efficiency rating" requirements for refrigerators with icemakers. Brother Kluger gleefully observes that fridge makers will have to "scramble to improve their [efficiency] numbers" and consumers "will feel that fact in their wallet[.]"
Ah, what it must be like to skip through life with childlike innocence, and yet with arrogance sufficient to pass off that ignorance as enlightenment. How fulfilling must be the days of federal climate crusaders who hand down rules and regulations inspired by beliefs born of said childlike ignorance.
What must it be like to sit atop Mount Olympus, actually in a Time magazine office cubicle, and nod approvingly at costly federal edicts slapped on taxpayers by taxpayer-paid government employees who sit in taxpayer-funded cubicles of their own? Verily, what gratification must planet-saving, icemaker-loathing brethren know? And all based on the dubious belief that humans cause "global warming."
A writer, physicist, and former high tech executive, Chuck Rogér invites you to sign up to receive his "Clear Thinking" blog posts by email at http://www.chuckroger.com/. Contact Chuck at swampcactus@chuckroger.com.
