Allan Schnaiberg's 1980 nightmare : pollution-producing SkyGods vs impacted-upon earthlings

SkyGod Machine in earthling Garden

In the1970s, the Canadian-born sociologist of environmentalism, Allan Schnaiberg , was the first to detect the emerging split in popular Science that this blog (also Canadian-born) is devoted to exploring ; so a man well worth honouring.


But as I have written in an earlier post in SVE, I didn't stumble upon Schnaiberg's seminal concept until I chanced upon the work of Myanna Lahsen --- thanks to the wonders of Google search.

She casually mentioned the concept of earlier-dominant production science versus the contested rise of today's impact science, as if all her readers would know what it meant.

But I didn't --- or rather I did.

It sounds an awful lot like my concept of earlier (pre-war) SkyGod scientists versus later (post-war) earthling scientists.

I eventually traced the meme back to Schnaiberg and a time period almost 40 years ago.

Long past overdue, then,  for the concept to be a commonplace and a cliche in the vocabulary of every warmist earthling environmentalist green.

Basically it can be seen as a variant of my beloved contrast between the fundamental second law of thermodynamics (matter and energy gets less and less useful to humanity (aka more and more of it becomes useless  particulate pollution and heat pollution) and the derivative first law of thermodynamics.

The sciences of half-truthfulness...

The first law says (as a half truth) that matter and energy can't ever be destroyed but only changed into alternative forms.

A half truth because converting the concentrated energy in the gasoline that powers your Piper Cub into ever so slightly heating the entire Universe does not destroy that energy --- but it certainly ruins for all time its further usefulness for humanity.

 In fact, if that waste heat in the air helps heat up the entire atmosphere --- en route to the frozen reaches of the universe --- it is likely to ruin all of humanity as well.

Similarly, impact science is fundamental science while production science is but a half truth science derived from it.

Production science produces a machine which makes lots of widgets, very cheaply and profitably - apparently the end of story.

Impact science visits that once-successful widget machine cum factory in the town of Anywhereville Quebec and discovers that the factory is throwing off deadly pollution that is ever so slowly poisoning the employees at the widget factory. As a result, they are producing less widgets per hour.

It is this, not unfair competition from the Japanese, that is the real cause of the factory owner's declining profits.

Production science is about The Machine, Impact Science is about The Machine in the Garden, with both garden and machine complexly interacting with each other in unpredictable ways.

(Hat tip to Leo Marx for re-applying his famous meme!)

Deniers cum skeptics who deny change in geology, biology, climate and physics  still only see science in the simplistic terms and certitudes of production science.

Warmists accept that changes happens and happens unpredictably and are much less sanguine about our ability to correct our own mistakes in time to prevent real harm.

Climate deniers - I steadfastly affirm in the face of zillions of scientist-bloogers who argue to the contrary - do believe in Science.

But it is the older, out-dated, hubristic SkyGod science - not current earthling science .....

On Sunday ,climate skeptics worship Sir Charles Lyell : the "Deity of Denial"

DEITY of the DENIERS

Dr Pangloss is really more your average climate denying punter's cuppa, but he is a fictional character. Not that the denier cum skeptic doesn't love a lot of fiction, mind : he just calls it "science".

 No, better that the skeptics worship a real person like SIR Charles Lyell, almost a lord - sorta like Viscount Batty -  but only more dead.

Most older geologists now firmly deny that they ever believed in the Arbeit macht frei  of Lyell's  Uniformitarianism , they were all just "following orders" .

Victorian era is over for physics but not economics

However, news of their "warmist" apostasy hasn't yet reached the softer sciences, so Uniformitarianism is still the wind beneath the wings of orthodox economists and political scientists.

And denier skeptics are always much more motivated by economics and politics than by basic physical science issues.

That is because Uniformitarianism teaches that Man and Mind is all and Nature and the Physical is nothing : a mere passive, eternally-unchanging, back cloth.

The climate hasn't fundamentally changed, because it can't change, only oscillate within narrow, safe, bounds.

But whenever two or more people gather, they are planning a conspiracy and that IS a catastrophe.

Physical science can never truly animate a person who firmly believes that a major invasion by the Chinese is truly a catastrophe but a major Chinese earthquake can never be.

For your true climate deniers , the phrase "natural catastrophe" is always spelt : H u m a n  C o n s p i r a c y .

 It is always something done by humans to other humans ; never something done by Nature to humans......

Climate skeptics unmoved by apostasy of Muller and Koch : its all a JEWISH bankster conspiracy

Fate of DENIER apostates

With apologies to First Corinthians 13:4 , 21st century climate denial's optimism is "never battered and never bruised" : a fresh application of "conspiracy" antiseptic neatly covers every gapping would.


Stalwart climate skeptic,Richard Muller, massively funded by  "The Deities of Denial" (the Koch Bros),  now says climate change is real ?

Warmist apostates ?

No prob, man !

Galileo Movement head mouthpiece , former mining exec Malcolm Roberts, has it all neatly spun away, like the PR flack he is : it was all a trick , all done by Jewish mirrors.

Banking families, a tightly knit cabal of them control the climate change scam for fun and profit.

The same old whine , in new bottles....

Muller and Koch got turned, like spies did all the time, back in the good old days of Reds under every bed.

Reds are still here -still inside the radio, still behind  the plots of vaccination and fluoride in the water : but now they're also inside the watermelons at the bottom of the garden.

 Run, run for your lives : They're here ! They're here !

The Panglossian NAIVETY of the climate denier cum skeptic

NAIVE denier cum skeptics

The Early-Victorian era may have ended over 150 years ago, but living fossils of its optimism, exuberance and naivety still beat on, inside the hearts of today's climate denier cum "skeptic" .Think of  today's deniers as  perfect clones of Voltaire's Doctor Pangloss (albeit as updated by Sir Charles Lyell).


In the 1830s, Lyell chose to modify Pangloss's famously naive philosophy.

It now read - in the light of Lyell's own even more optimistic theory of Uniformitarianism : "We live in the most average, the most normal, the most typical and representative of ages : our charmingly tasteful present is a roadmap back into the mists of the past and forward into those sunlit uplands of our future."

In the Lyellian cum deniers' minds , Man is endlessly progressing : ever upward, ever forward.

But the Universe ? The Universe, by way of total contrast, with all its inanimate but varying objects and all its animate, varying, beings, is in their minds but a passive backdrop.

 A crudely painted canvas drop , with only one actor allowed on stage : Man.

Reality, to a denier, is literally, "all about me". Selfish self-centeredness deified into a scientific philosophy and political ideology.

Libertarianism is the political wing of Uniformitarianism 

Libertarianism is Uniformitarianism is Libertarianism : a perfect circle, round and around a static, mildly oscillating , Universe.

Oh yes, the Universe, and our Earth : to the Lyellian denier, they do not progress  forward and upwards or backwards and downwards - in fact, do not radically move any which way.

Instead they merely oscillate, over a very narrow range, back on forth over a normal, typical, average, representative, mean : the mean of  present day values.

Local, temporary volcano up, local, temporary earthquake down neatly balancing each other : the perfect proof of the First law of Thermodynamics.

That Law, crudely and incorrectly stated, holds that Matter and Energy can not be created or destroyed but merely (and usefully for Man) changed into different forms of themselves, back and forth ; forever and ever Amen.

The early Victorian optimists and their 21st century kinfolk  viewed this law - erroneously - as the fundamental law of the universe.

But don't blame them too much ; instead blame our High School science teachers from the 19th , 20th and 21st century  for teaching that to them.

The true fundamental law of the universe, the one from which the First law of Thermodynamics is derived , is the Second law of Thermodynamics.

(First and Second refers to the time of their formulations : the First was formulated and popularized before the Second was realized to be the truly important one.)

The Second (in simple english) states that , statistically, all energy and matter becomes less and less useful to humanity with each use and eventually all energy and matter and life will be frozen dead at a temperature very near Absolute Zero.

So, in fact, the Universe and Life does have a direction and is constantly changing and that direction is more or less steadily downhill, albeit very slowly.

So, some of the heat from every time we burn even a small lump of coal eventually escapes the world's atmosphere and winds up heating, ever so ineffectually, some distant corner of the frozen Universe.

Probe a climate change denier skeptic or climate change believer warmist and you will find the concept of a steadily changing universe is their dividing line : both are people of either the First or the Second law.....

Big Oil Astroturfer Eric Loughead says people who deny climate change are "stupid"

TarSand or BullShit ?

Extremely well known astroturfer Eric Loughead , co-founder of Calgary's "Friends of Big Oil Science", startled the Canadian Press agency's Jennifer Graham by calling people who DENY climate change "stupid" .

Loughead was responding to an online polling survey of 1550 Canadians that found that only 2% of those who responded denied that climate change is happening.

Eric Loughead a "warmist" ; say it ain't so !

Is denier - cum - skeptic Loughead actually going all "warmist" on us, like Angela Merkel ?

Well, not exactly : but do read it all and see if you detect a slight shifting in position among the "deny,deny,delay,delay" crowd.....

When WARMIST Merkel meets SKEPTIC Harper global temp goes up one degree !

Harper's only LIFESKILL

Half remembered high school science (of the outdated Victorian era variety) goes up against a recent PhD in 21st century level Quantum Science, when fellow conservatives Stephen Harper and Angela Merkel meet this week in Ottawa.

Despite being fellow conservatives, the two are better known for their differences than for their similarities.

Harper is the world's best known climate denying leader --- a man willing to slash and burn his way through Canada's scientific community to get his way.

Frankly, because Harper has never held a real job - never held a job that might involve technology, so he simply doesn't get this 'science thing'.

All his jobs have required him to display his considerable skills in ideology and rhetoric.

Just don't expect him to know how to change a tire, a diaper or boil an egg : don't expect him to knowingly engage real life.

Quantum scientist versus a guy who has never held a real job

Merkel knows enough science to know she - and humanity - actually knows very little with any great certainty.

She accepts that current climate science is our best current take on complex climate changes and she is always willing to throw in more money to let the climate scientists get better takes on reality.

As a result, she is number one in credibility among the world's scientists when she speaks up publicly in favour of the reality of climate change, as she does frequently.

Harper thinks we have had all the answers since the days of Newton, Dalton and Darwin and we should have shut off the research money tap on Jan 1 1900.

So when they try and talk in private, sparks fly and heat is given off but neither bends the other's mind.

Too bad that instead of cutting the ice loss over the Arctic, all these talks will do is raise tempers and temperatures and so MELT more arctic ice.....

grampa's SUNNY science vs today's GRIM realities

Grampa's science is still judged only one safe enough for kids

If you want to build the world's longest, straightest, airport runway all you need to succeed , on time and under budget, is still just GRAMPA's SCIENCE.

The science from back before the 1890s , the kind of science 21st century high school administrators still think is the only one safe enough to teach children.

Good old, solid, commonsensical, white protestant ANGLO SAXON science : the Holy Trinity of Newton, Dalton and Darwin.

Science when Science, by God ! , was like a religion, a faith.

A positive, outwardly-looking, optimist, can-do, religious fervour, type of science.

Science so intuitive and commonsensical you almost didn't need some fancy-assed professor to teach it , merely have a fellow from your own church, with a BSc and a great game of golf .

Someone who could confirm your childhood scientific insights for you.

None of that dour, new-fangled, complicated, so called "jew boy" science.

The science so tough that high school principals think it should only be used by adults : science rated PG-18.

That counter-intutitive science of relativity cum quantum physics, green chemistry and horizontal gene transfer oriented biology.

Yep, science like grampa's can still build great runways.

But - if you let it build your GPS for you --- by using good old newton's laws --- your airplane would crash and burn about 15 yards beyond the runway.

New science does many things much more accurately than the old science of 150 or more years back.

That is only natural : we don't much use horse and buggies to get people to emergency departments anymore : we use helicopters.

Today we face new - unparalleled - problems, a whole new reality and we must use the newest and the best science to help prevent the airliner Earth from crashing and burning 15 yards beyond the runway.

Grampa's science is simple enough for kids - yes , it truly is simple.

Libertarian bureaucrats in advocacy think tanks, the ones that are "skeptic"   big deniers of climate change, are along with high school principals, among the world's most strident believers in the comfortable old simple science from back before the 1890s and the "Great Schism in Science".

Bu, unfortunately, our problems today are complicated and like it or not, we need complicated science to help solve them.

Child-like problems (designing yet another routine runway) only require the sweet, gentle medicine intended for children.

But grown-up sized problems requires grown-up science, bitter-tasting as that might be .....