The New Sophists

[Geee]

National Review:


In classical Athens, public life became dominated by clever and smart-sounding sophists. These mellifluous “really wise guys” made money and gained influence by their rhetorical boasts of having “proved” the most amazing “thinkery” that belied common sense.

We are living in a new age of sophism — but without a modern Socrates to remind the public just how silly our highly credentialed and privileged new rhetoricians can be.

Take California, which is struggling with a near-record wet and snowy winter. Flooding spreads in the lowlands; snow piles up in the Sierras.

In February 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist, pontificated without evidence that California farms would dry up and blow away, because 90 percent of the annual Sierra snowpack would disappear. Yet long-term studies of the central Sierra snowpack show average snow levels unchanged over the last 90 years. Many California farms are drying up — but from government’s, not nature’s, irrigation cutoffs.

England is freezing and snowy. But that’s odd, since global-warming experts assured us that the end of English snow was on the horizon. Australia is now flooding — despite predictions that impending new droughts meant it could not sustain its present population. The New York Times just published an op-ed assuring the public that the current record cold and snow is proof of global warming. In theory, they could be, but one wonders: What, then, would record winter heat and drought prove?

In response to these unexpected symptoms of blizzards and deluges, climate physicians offer changing diagnoses. “Climate change” has superseded “global warming.” After these radically cold winters, the next replacement appears to be “climate chaos.” Yet if next December is neither too hot nor too cold, expect to hear about the doldrum dangers of “climate calm.”

[nickydog]

Yes!

[SrWoodchuck]

Take California, which is struggling with a near-record wet and snowy winter. Flooding spreads in the lowlands; snow piles up in the Sierras.In February 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist, pontificated without evidence that California farms would dry up and blow away, because 90 percent of the annual Sierra snowpack would disappear. Yet long-term studies of the central Sierra snowpack show average snow levels unchanged over the last 90 years. Many California farms are drying up — but from government’s, not nature’s, irrigation cutoffs.

Geee! Thanks for the post!

 

The film, Chinatown, illustrated the influence of government activity in relation to destruction of a natural environment. It involved local & city governments acting secretly & in collusion to buy up water rights in the Owens Valley, in the 1930's & 1940's. Water rights to almost all Sierra drainage were purchased, or "stolen," and some people were strong-armed & even beaten or killed to insure that the city of Los Angeles could have adequate water supplies through the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

 

A few years ago, I went up into the High Sierra's, for two weeks of fishing, at Twin Lakes [the Eastern side of Yosemite.] While staying at a small cottage on the upper lake, I was priviledged to meet the Mayor of Independence, California [formerly Fort Independence & the Inyo County Seat.] He was a man who knew quite a bit of California history, and was an education about politics & water law. The trip through Death Valley & up to the High Sierra's is one long valley of salt flat & dry lake beds; where farms were once a green paradise. The Owens river still provides sport [fly] fishing, but no divertion of any water is allowed for any irrigation whatsoever; under penalty of law.

 

That the Feds could, on an ecological whim, stop water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta & cause cities & counties dependent on irrigation to just dry up; is a horror. Things aren't going to get better for people trying to live there; as new Governor Moonbeam [Jerry "I promise to do better this time." Brown] just appointed an EcoNut, John Laird as Secretary of Natural Resources. A good time to be a delta smelt......a bad time to be a human living near them.

[Al_Simmons]

My kids were asking me this last Summer why the acres and acres of corn were drying up without any ears of corn on them.

 

Well, this is the answer - the bureaucrats cut off the water. You could see the normally full canals were nearly bone-dry by September.