Extraneous Exceptionally Exasperating Exactitudes

By Charles Pinwill

A title such as the above is a sure sign that the author is going to launch forth in unrelated, uncoordinated, and possibly incomprehensible prose. When one has a number of ingredients which cannot be baked into any recognisable dish, the thing is to boldly set them upon the table with some euphemism for leftovers, such as the above.

The first inanity with which I would like to take issue, is that the rule to drive on the right side of the road is the equal of driving on the left. With obedience, each is said to be the other’s equal. Alas, right and wrong even enter into the question of right or left.

It has long been observed that when people enter into a supermarket, they usually circulate in a clockwise direction. There is usually some essential on the extreme right of the entrance at the back, to ensure that shoppers go the full circuit. Temptation is thus in their path a little longer. Why do people circulate like this?

Because most are right-handed. In circulating clockwise their sword arm is facing any possible encounter, while their left is protected by the wall. Are people really more aware and conscious of things on their right side? Yes, and we know it. Why else would we describe unexpected surprises as “coming out of left field”?

In driving on the right side, the greatest threat comes on your least conscious, and least able side, the left. Of course, changing to the safest side would take a generation. In this time, as it was in Australia during World War II when the locals were regularly killed on the crest of hills by Americans on “the wrong side”, carnage would reign.

Thus, it is possibly best, if you can spare them, to sacrifice a few extra people each year, rather than take many more casualties in the short term to correct the historical mistake.

To show that I can be even more contentious than this, let’s talk climate. Professor Michel van Biezen is evangelistic about science. He has more than a hundred videos about physics on his YouTube channel. His video presentations on CO2 as a hot house gas, are seemingly from another era. He presents his material as though nothing is relevant in science other than whether it is true or not. He seems oblivious to the well laid theses of fear which everywhere compete for the grant monies of the intimidated.

He blithely points out that while the heat (infrared radiation) escaping from earth back into space has wavelengths from about 0.6 to 20 microns, CO2 is completely impotent except at two small apertures. It can only operate at all in the vicinity of radiation of wavelengths of 4.27 microns, and those between 14 and 16 microns. So as an absolute maximum, CO2 only has access to 18% of the infrared radiation escaping earth.

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Water vapour is the most effective hot house gas, however, and it also operates at these same wavelengths. For every CO2 molecule in the atmosphere, there are twenty molecules of water vapour, and they do most of the work of warming the atmosphere. So what is left after water vapour has grabbed its lot of heat escaping into space? 4 to 4.5% is all that is available for CO2 to intercept, and of this it has now already captured perhaps more than 90%.

It is all a great disappointment in creating consternation at a threatening climate. If you view his video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8nvdDXR8ZE more similar and associated ones will also be offered to you. He does not avoid secondary questions such as the rate of slowing the progress of heat escaping earth, either. The video link displaying this also disappoints https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAv-ZwjCwss  

Normally anyone divulging incongruous “exactitudes” such as the above, will offer suggestions as to their moral, social, physical, or other implications. This may be counterproductive. If society is to make sense of its situation, it will need the efforts of all people. All hands will be needed at the pumps, and all minds at puzzling the public quantum of ponderous allegations. The reader will need to do this for himself; discerning truth is the most important (and interesting) social function given to us. Everyone playing Sherlock Holmes at unearthing public deception in communications, comes to enjoy it as the greatest game offering.

All conforming to the views most commonly propounded, if it be on the basis that inquiry disturbs comfort, are committing intellectual suicide. So, what does it mean in its widest implications if CO2 is incapable of significant or threatening climate disturbance? Yes, the world is depending upon your answer, and it is all up to you, so it may be worth an effort.

It is probably true that asking any person to think about any more than three difficult things in the one day, is an act of considerable, if not outright cruelty. For this reason, though the world abounds in imponderables, I will only venture one further for today.

The question is “Do exceptions prove the rule?” Does, for instance, the fact that the Twin Towers and also Building Seven fell down in a manner never before observed except in cases of professional demolition, prove that they were not demolished, and therefore were exceptions? And if so, what rule were they proving?

The lower structures of these buildings had supported the full weight above them for decades and had not been affected by the ‘plane crashes. Then, seemingly in an instant, their resistance to gravity so diminished that each building fell at freefall acceleration. In one moment, all was supported, and in the next, no resistance to gravity at all was evident.

I know of course that this happened in America, and I have heard of something in which Americans apparently believe called “American Exceptionalism”. But can this possibly explain what happened on the eleventh day of the ninth month?

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