Ignorance masquerading as erudition
Published Fri, Feb 5 2010 8:08 PM
I’m a ditto-head, I’ll admit it. I listen to Rush Limbaugh on a fairly regular basis. He’s never on the radio when I’m not working though, so I never get to listen to him live. Instead I take advantage of my Rush 24/7 membership that my dad gave me as a birthday present a few years back. That way I can download the podcasts and listen whenever I have the time. Of course that means that I don’t have his “latest” opinion until the next day, or in some cases a couple of days later, but then I’ve never really needed Rush to tell me what my opinions were.
My opinions are based in a strong belief in individual liberty. I love the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I’ve also taken to reading some other documents by the founders, and some of the literature and philosophy that obviously informed their opinions too.
It has been a long time, but I graduated from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida quite some time ago with a degree in mathematics and science. I’ve forgotten most of the mathematics I learned – having almost never had the reason to actually use it, but my appetite for science has never gone away. Of the sciences, I preferred chemistry and physics to the rest, but I also studied geology and biology too. In junior high school I was fascinated by the possibility that someday scientists might possibly reproduce the conditions that created life – especially after reading about Henry Miller’s work synthesizing complex organic compounds from methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide and water.
I know that they still teach biology and basic chemistry in high school these days. My son had to take biology classes not too long ago, and last month I was helping one of my younger cousins with her chemistry homework. That’s why I was completely and utterly shocked to hear the inane babblings of someone that called in to the Rush Limbaugh show earlier this week. This person was a liberal and he’d swallowed the anthropogenic global warming story hook, line, and sinker.
Anyway, he came onto the show with a pleasant voice, and spoke with the air of someone that had a half-way decent education. He authoritatively told Rush that the atmosphere was a complex mixture of many constituents, nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, carbon dioxide, particulate matter, and other pollutants. Rush listened attentively. The caller then told Rush how when humans breath in they absorb some of these constituents in their lungs, particularly some of the oxygen, and capturing the particulate matter and pollutants in their lungs. Everything to this point was true and said in such a way that it sounded like the man knew what he was talking about.
But he couldn’t stop there. He made the bold assertion that the carbon dioxide that we exhale is the very same carbon dioxide that we inhaled, and that the act of breathing did nothing whatsoever to increase the carbon dioxide content of the air around us. Rush listened through it all attentively, told the caller that he “didn’t know that” and thanked him for his call. All in all, Rush was very gracious to the man and treated him far better than his idiocy deserved. Fortunately for “those of you in Rio Linda”, a physicist called the show a little while later to set the record straight.
The processes by which animals obtain energy from their food are fairly complex, but they are all based on a simple concept. The oxidation of organic chemicals eventually produces water, carbon dioxide, and energy. Along the way there are other byproducts as complex organic compounds are broken into less complex ones but that’s essentially what goes on. Take simple sugar for example – you know that compound that parents all believe leaves their children hopelessly wired a few hours before bedtime. Sugar is a simple carbohydrate. The only elements present in the glucose molecule are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. They are bound together chemically, and breaking those chemical bonds releases energy. When our bodies process it they add additional oxygen from the air that we breath into the mix. Some of the oxygen combines with the hydrogen to form water. The rest of the oxygen combines with the carbon to form – you guessed it carbon dioxide.
Our bodies don’t store carbon dioxide. Instead it diffuses out of our cells and into our bloodstream – eventually making its way to the lungs where it is released into the air that we exhale. The air that we inhale has a different composition than the air that we exhale. It contains more oxygen and less carbon dioxide. Ultimately the breathing of every animal on the planet – even single celled animals like amoeba and the like – increases the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I learned this in sixth grade oh so many years ago. My son learned it not so long ago himself. My cousin had already learned it.
Needless to say I was flabbergasted. I still find it almost unimaginable that an adult in this country doesn’t know this simple basic fact. That someone this ignorant could call a radio talk show and make assertions of this kind as though he actually understood the science almost amazed me. The thing is, with his well spoken manner and his bravado it’s a sure bet that his friends think him to be quite intelligent and well educated – and they probably fall for his opinions on matters of science.
It’s no wonder with all of the evidence of scientific, political, and legal fraud going on in the anthropogenic global warming “research” community that people still believe that these “scientists” know what they’re talking about and that they’re being honest about the topic. After all, if this caller is any indication their scientific education is sorely lacking – and they don’t even know it.
I wonder if the caller was from the E.P.A.?
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David responded with:
 | Sadly, reports like this do NOT surprise me. *sigh* The level of ignorance of simple facts of chemistry, biology and physics (let alone simple numeracy) is at appalling levels... and rising. In fact, one can almost measure the ignorance of most callers in to radio shows, public speakers (politicians and darned near everyone else) by the self-assured manner in which they dispense their stupidity. |
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