Fat People Are Killing The Polar Bears

First up, Climate Change Sceptics Criticise Polar Bear Science, a story about some bad scientists, funded by bad money, who have apparently published some bad science in what is presumably a bad science journal, for bad reasons.

As the poster child for the climate change generation polar bears have come to symbolise the need to tackle climate change. But their popularity has attracted the attention of global warming sceptics funded by the oil industry, who have started to attack polar bear science. Willie Soon's paper, which appears in the journal Ecological Complexity, questions 'whether polar bear populations really are declining and if sea ice, on which the animals hunt, will actually disappear as quickly as climate models predict.' But that's all New Scientist has to say about the science.

Soon, who receives funding for this and other work from Exxon-Mobil, has been attacking climate change science for several years. Three of the six other authors also have links to the oil industry. The social construction of science doesn't get much attention from the science press - or anyone else - these days. Science won the Science Wars. Scientific findings flourish or fail by the cold, objective, rational method of hypothesis testing, peer review and replication. And that's all there is to it. Except, of course, when the science in question is funded by the oil industry. Because oil money, or just the faintest whiff of it, trumps the scientific method every time.

Ultimately, carping on about Exxon-funded scientists only serves to undermine the worth of all that hypothesis testing, peer review and replication. Because if dirty money overrides them, what else does? Is it any wonder that science doesn't get the respect the scientific establishment thinks it deserves? Science is having its own Science Wars all by itself - with not a sociologist to be seen.

Even more absurd is Say No to Global Guzzling - How the Obesity Epidemic is Aggravating Global Warming by Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who appears to be offering an epidemiological perspective on global warming.

We tend to think of obesity only as a public-health problem, but many of its causes overlap with those of global warming. Car dependence and labour-saving devices have cut the energy people expend as they go about their lives, at the same time increasing the amount of fossil fuel they burn. It's no coincidence that obesity is most prevalent in the US, where per capita carbon emissions exceed those of any other major nation, and it is becoming clear that obese people are having a direct impact on the climate.

Roberts speciously reasons that obese people, who (allegedly) consume 40% more calories than non obese people, (allegedly) use their cars more because they are too fat to move properly, and (allegedly) eat the kind of things which are more CO2 intensive, contribute disproportionately to global warming than their thin counterparts.

Roberts's argument is not scientific, but a narrow, shallow, and hollow critique of capitalist society:

The social stigma attached to obesity is one of the few forces slowing the epidemic - even though obesity is not a personal failing but a problem of society. We live in an environment that serves primarily the financial interests of the corporations that sell food, cars, and petroleum. This serving of 'financial interest' traps people in vicious cycles of low-self esteem and comfort eating, diminished mobility/health and car use - all to the detriment of the environment.

And as the number of obese people increases, a kind of positive feedback kicks in. Obese people in the US are already throwing their political weight around. Roberts then asks us to panic about the possibility of the political voice of fat Americans being used to demand, elevators, escalators, and other forms of labour-saving mechanisation, which in turn worsens the cycle of increasing fuel use, carbon emissions, and the world's waistlines.

When all that the best clinical minds can offer is the political idea that people's desire for food and labour-saving devices (ie, higher standards of living) are expressions of a kind of false consciousness, small wonder that people complain about 'health fascism'. Roberts has such contempt for the public that he assumes to know their political and material interests better than they do, and pretends that it is 'capitalism wot makes 'em do it'... that people are too fat headed to know what to eat.

It must be lean times at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, because this poverty-stricken argument is so bloated, it needs four bandwagons to wheel it onto the pages of the New Scientist: obesity, global warming, anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. All that's missing is a photo of a polar bear perched on a dwindling ice floe.

With all the hysteria about global warming maybe this is an idea that will come soon:

What, you may ask, is the connection between the lingerie industry, the porn industry and global warming? Well, it is hard to ignore the impact that fashion has had on what the perception of what is desirable and what isn’t. Think about it, do you think your great grandmother shaved her legs when styles were for dresses to cover your legs? Of course not. Now with all the talk of social responsibility we need to look to making sacrifices to save Mother Earth.

So what is the problem you ask? Simple, in the last decade or so the lingerie industry has evolved from something that was a little naughty to something that is now mainstream. Undershort-style underwear has been replaced by the all-too-popular thong and to top it off dresses are a bit more revealing of the body.

To add to the problem the internet has made porn an almost mainstream phenomena in which body hair is almost a taboo. Whether it is men viewing hairless (below the neck) or women the idea of hairless the hairless body is becoming the norm.

Now how is this trend of all-body shaving contributing to the problem of global warming? Simple, most women spend a great deal of time in the shower removing hair. Think of all the demands on energy output (as well as water consumption) this causes! If a woman shaves even once a week that is maybe 10 additional minutes with the hot water going. Multiply that times 51 weeks a year and you have 8 and a half hours per year of the how water going for every female under 45 who does this (and in a country the size of the USA that’s a lot of water).

So what is the solution? Industries now promoting the hairless look should voluntarily switch to featuring only models who do not shave at all — and if they don’t our liberal politicians need to figure out some sort of “bare tax” to solve the problem. Over time maybe people’s perceptions of beauty will change and the “natural” look will be in vogue.

On the other hand, long hair on the head is as much a problem. Even men probably spend as much time washing their head hair as they do the rest of the body. So women should be encouraged to cut their hair very short (scissors can be used so you don’t have to worry about increased energy needs). With short hair time in the shower will further be curtailed — and Mother Earth will thank you.

So full body hair coupled with short head hair could drastically reduce energy needs and water consumption. The great thing is that many women in Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco are probably already on the cutting edge of this vital trend and they don’t even know it — and how they are helping the environment.

Sacrifice is needed now! I even heard that Eskimos are drowning because the ice is getting thinner. I have no idea if it is true but when global warming hysteria is concerned that is really not important, is it?

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