Quick! What do Indonesian islanders, Pandora’s πίθος, a Coke bottle, solar irradiance, aerosols, an 1816 eruption, guns, and a government plan to geoengineer the atmosphere have in common?
Expelling Evil (and/or Evildoers)
According to Sir James Frazer (610, 611), on Ceram (Seran, Serang) in Indonesia, islanders expelled evil by building a boat they carried to the water, gave it a sail, and pushed it seaward. The object carried off evils, such as physical ailments like measles. The islanders of Timor Laut (Tanimbar Islands) performed a similar ritual to rid themselves of evil. In Genesis, God expels the evildoers, Adam and Eve. I suppose that in America’s inner cities, expelling a murderous gang is an appropriate parallel. You want to eliminate evil? Cast it out. At least, perform a ritual of casting out some symbol of evil, an effigy like those put in the boat by Timor Laut islanders, for example, or a Coke bottle.
Coke bottle? Yes. The Gods Must Be Crazy is a 1980 comedy about a San from the Kalahari who tries to return a Coke bottle to the gods because it embodies evil. At the beginning of the film, a bush pilot tosses an empty bottle from his plane as he flies over the San encampment. At first, the bush people believe the bottle to be a gift from the gods because it fell from the sky and has properties with which they are unfamiliar: It is hard enough to be useful in pounding tubers; it is miraculously transparent; and it is capable of carrying water. But the bottle, like Pandora’s πίθος (or pithos, ’jar’), then appears to incite evil in the form of greed, envy, and eventually violence as one child strikes another on the head with it during a dispute over ownership. The bushman, believing the bottle to embody evil, then sets off to return it to the gods, initiating a very entertaining set of episodes involving a microbiologist, a teacher, a playboy, and group of rebels.
Modern Pithos
The Industrial Age was accompanied by the proliferation of many objects that ostensibly carry evil: Guns, for example. Every time there is a shooting, people, mostly on the Left side of the political aisle, call for more restrictive bans on guns and even on ridding society of the evil “things.” It’s an easy argument to make: No guns, no shootings. But as we all know, the malicious will find a way to perpetrate malice. Evil lies in people, not in objects like guns or Coke bottles. We could put all the guns on a boat and sink it in the Mariana Trench only to discover that knives kill, and even pencil points can be objects of evil.
The Sun God
In yet another effort to quash global warming, the climate alarmists in the US government seem to have fostered a study on reducing sunlight by sending it back to Helios or Apollo.* They want to return the sunlight because it carries an evil they call global warming. The study suggests ways to block incoming solar radiation to cool Earth. What could go wrong? Really! What could go wrong?
After all, aren’t we sophisticated, scientific and modern humans. Haven’t we altered the courses of rivers, tamed and domesticated animals, cured diseases, and turned ordinary mineral matter into useful objects no primitive could have imagined? We’re not living in a simple San society. We exert control over Nature. And having exerted control on Earth, what better extension of our hubris than control over the Sun.
The Ultimate Bush Pilots’ Gifts
One of the proposals for casting off excess and evil solar energy is to inject aerosols into the stratosphere. Not an impossible task, injecting small particles or gases is merely a matter of flying high. In fact, modern jets already contribute aerosols to high altitude air. The report, entitled Congressionally-Mandated Report on Solar Radiation Modification enumerates ways to geoengineer the planet’s atmosphere through solar radiation modification (SRM). What could go wrong?
The Solar Constant
Hold a flashlight perpendicular to a table. That round spot of light can be measured as an amount of irradiance given in kilowatts per square meter or in kilojoules per square meter (or fractions thereof). So also the Sun’s irradiance as measured at the top of the atmosphere.
During a Solar Minimum, the irradiance is 1361 kW/m^2 or 81.65 kJm^2. At Solar Maximum, it’s a tiny bit more. To get more numerically astute to impress people at parties, you can throw in that those numbers are equivalent to 1.951 calories per square centimeter per minute or 1.951 Langleys per minute.
1816 and the Reason the Gods of Government Are Harbingers of Evil
From April 5 through April 12, 1815, Mount Tambora erupted explosively. The volcano sent volcanic ash and sulfide aerosols into the stratosphere, effectively reducing the Sun’s irradiance. As a result, 1816 became The Year without a Summer. Global temperatures decreased by more than a half degree Celsius (almost one degree F). And not since the end of the Little Ice Age had summer temperatures been so low. By coincidence, large eruptions had also occurred in 1812 (Awu), 1813 (Suwanosejima), and 1814 (Mayon). Big eruptions in consecutive years effectively blocked sunlight In 1816. The timing couldn’t have been worse for people who liked to eat because the Sun was at a Solar Minimum. Reduced sunshine and frosts decimated crops in the Northern Hemisphere. The Year without a Summer became a year of famine and disease.
What could wrong when government officials give the gift of reduced temperatures? Can anyone say “volcanic eruption coupled with Solar minimum”?
And This Is What Geoengineering Can Do
What could possibly go wrong with the government pumping sunshine-blocking aerosols into the stratosphere?
The climate frenzy has reached a point of no return. Wait till little Greta Thunberg shivers and starves in a volcanic year enhanced by artificially injected aerosols. Will increased deaths by starvation be significant enough for her to campaign for more warmth and life-giving sunshine?
Some in the American government plan to throw the Coke bottle out of the plane. It will land in some village of innocents who depend on subsistence hunting and gathering. And they will seek a way to return the gift to the gods because of the evil it engenders. But as the people living in 1816 discovered, the Coke bottle won’t just land on an isolated tribe of primitives. It will land on the encampments of everyone in the Northern Hemisphere. If you were slightly inconvenienced by the supply chain interruptions and empty store shelves during the pandemic, you will be far more inconvenienced during a coming repeat of The Year without a Summer.
The gods must be crazy, and by that I mean that the government officials who believe they can solve perceived and real problems never foresee the consequences of their actions. Their solutions create new problems because they cannot anticipate the occurrence of natural phenomena that make Earth a complex of processes and materials.
*https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/07/02/white-house-examining-plans-that-deflect-suns-rays-to-cool-earth/
Expelling Evil (and/or Evildoers)
According to Sir James Frazer (610, 611), on Ceram (Seran, Serang) in Indonesia, islanders expelled evil by building a boat they carried to the water, gave it a sail, and pushed it seaward. The object carried off evils, such as physical ailments like measles. The islanders of Timor Laut (Tanimbar Islands) performed a similar ritual to rid themselves of evil. In Genesis, God expels the evildoers, Adam and Eve. I suppose that in America’s inner cities, expelling a murderous gang is an appropriate parallel. You want to eliminate evil? Cast it out. At least, perform a ritual of casting out some symbol of evil, an effigy like those put in the boat by Timor Laut islanders, for example, or a Coke bottle.
Coke bottle? Yes. The Gods Must Be Crazy is a 1980 comedy about a San from the Kalahari who tries to return a Coke bottle to the gods because it embodies evil. At the beginning of the film, a bush pilot tosses an empty bottle from his plane as he flies over the San encampment. At first, the bush people believe the bottle to be a gift from the gods because it fell from the sky and has properties with which they are unfamiliar: It is hard enough to be useful in pounding tubers; it is miraculously transparent; and it is capable of carrying water. But the bottle, like Pandora’s πίθος (or pithos, ’jar’), then appears to incite evil in the form of greed, envy, and eventually violence as one child strikes another on the head with it during a dispute over ownership. The bushman, believing the bottle to embody evil, then sets off to return it to the gods, initiating a very entertaining set of episodes involving a microbiologist, a teacher, a playboy, and group of rebels.
Modern Pithos
The Industrial Age was accompanied by the proliferation of many objects that ostensibly carry evil: Guns, for example. Every time there is a shooting, people, mostly on the Left side of the political aisle, call for more restrictive bans on guns and even on ridding society of the evil “things.” It’s an easy argument to make: No guns, no shootings. But as we all know, the malicious will find a way to perpetrate malice. Evil lies in people, not in objects like guns or Coke bottles. We could put all the guns on a boat and sink it in the Mariana Trench only to discover that knives kill, and even pencil points can be objects of evil.
The Sun God
In yet another effort to quash global warming, the climate alarmists in the US government seem to have fostered a study on reducing sunlight by sending it back to Helios or Apollo.* They want to return the sunlight because it carries an evil they call global warming. The study suggests ways to block incoming solar radiation to cool Earth. What could go wrong? Really! What could go wrong?
After all, aren’t we sophisticated, scientific and modern humans. Haven’t we altered the courses of rivers, tamed and domesticated animals, cured diseases, and turned ordinary mineral matter into useful objects no primitive could have imagined? We’re not living in a simple San society. We exert control over Nature. And having exerted control on Earth, what better extension of our hubris than control over the Sun.
The Ultimate Bush Pilots’ Gifts
One of the proposals for casting off excess and evil solar energy is to inject aerosols into the stratosphere. Not an impossible task, injecting small particles or gases is merely a matter of flying high. In fact, modern jets already contribute aerosols to high altitude air. The report, entitled Congressionally-Mandated Report on Solar Radiation Modification enumerates ways to geoengineer the planet’s atmosphere through solar radiation modification (SRM). What could go wrong?
The Solar Constant
Hold a flashlight perpendicular to a table. That round spot of light can be measured as an amount of irradiance given in kilowatts per square meter or in kilojoules per square meter (or fractions thereof). So also the Sun’s irradiance as measured at the top of the atmosphere.
During a Solar Minimum, the irradiance is 1361 kW/m^2 or 81.65 kJm^2. At Solar Maximum, it’s a tiny bit more. To get more numerically astute to impress people at parties, you can throw in that those numbers are equivalent to 1.951 calories per square centimeter per minute or 1.951 Langleys per minute.
1816 and the Reason the Gods of Government Are Harbingers of Evil
From April 5 through April 12, 1815, Mount Tambora erupted explosively. The volcano sent volcanic ash and sulfide aerosols into the stratosphere, effectively reducing the Sun’s irradiance. As a result, 1816 became The Year without a Summer. Global temperatures decreased by more than a half degree Celsius (almost one degree F). And not since the end of the Little Ice Age had summer temperatures been so low. By coincidence, large eruptions had also occurred in 1812 (Awu), 1813 (Suwanosejima), and 1814 (Mayon). Big eruptions in consecutive years effectively blocked sunlight In 1816. The timing couldn’t have been worse for people who liked to eat because the Sun was at a Solar Minimum. Reduced sunshine and frosts decimated crops in the Northern Hemisphere. The Year without a Summer became a year of famine and disease.
What could wrong when government officials give the gift of reduced temperatures? Can anyone say “volcanic eruption coupled with Solar minimum”?
And This Is What Geoengineering Can Do
What could possibly go wrong with the government pumping sunshine-blocking aerosols into the stratosphere?
The climate frenzy has reached a point of no return. Wait till little Greta Thunberg shivers and starves in a volcanic year enhanced by artificially injected aerosols. Will increased deaths by starvation be significant enough for her to campaign for more warmth and life-giving sunshine?
Some in the American government plan to throw the Coke bottle out of the plane. It will land in some village of innocents who depend on subsistence hunting and gathering. And they will seek a way to return the gift to the gods because of the evil it engenders. But as the people living in 1816 discovered, the Coke bottle won’t just land on an isolated tribe of primitives. It will land on the encampments of everyone in the Northern Hemisphere. If you were slightly inconvenienced by the supply chain interruptions and empty store shelves during the pandemic, you will be far more inconvenienced during a coming repeat of The Year without a Summer.
The gods must be crazy, and by that I mean that the government officials who believe they can solve perceived and real problems never foresee the consequences of their actions. Their solutions create new problems because they cannot anticipate the occurrence of natural phenomena that make Earth a complex of processes and materials.
*https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/07/02/white-house-examining-plans-that-deflect-suns-rays-to-cool-earth/
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