I couldn't resist. FAILBlog has the original entry, a screenshot from a forum by someone who has a plan to stop sea level rise, an outcome of global warming. Here is what the text says:
"I was watching inconvenient truth the other day and theres the bit where it shows the sea level rising really high and flooding most of the world. Well i live near the sea, and don't want to drown, so i got to thinking. Maybe if we lower the sea level a bit, when the water level rises then it won't rise high enough to flood.Anyway, heres the plan. Everyone who can should take a bucket of sea water and pour it down the sink. If lots of people put the effort in, we could lower the sea level substantially and create a better world for our children to live"
ROTFLMAO, but seriously this is a scientist, education and media fail. If this person is to represent an average person who gets his information from TV and the internet with no scientific background, then we may as well be doomed.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Science Blogs is celebrating the beginning of the new school year with a series of 101-style posts, introducing the basics of a concept. I've got a couple of basics posts I'd like to do, but this one seemed particularly apt to me. I'm a homeschooler, but it isn't only homeschoolers that struggle…
One of the most important and threatening risks of climate change is sea-level rise (SLR). The mechanisms are well understood, and the direction of changes in sea-level is highly certain – it is rising and the rate of rise will accelerate. There remain plenty of uncertainties (i.e., a range of…
Some of you may know that a publisher contacted me last year about turning a piece of short fiction I'd written from an adult perspective into a young adult novel. There are several reasons I wanted to do this - the first is that in many ways, the young adult fiction market is much more vital than…
The release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels is, conceiveably, the most important environmental issue in the world today.
— "Costs and benefits of carbon dioxide," Nature, May 3, 1979
Actually, the scientific understanding of the dangers posed by rising CO2…
That's sarcastic. Must be. Poe's Law definitely applies here.
assume it is sarcasm. then it is not being effective. it is making fun of the seriousness of the issue, and wasting people's time. this is not a genuine contribution, and so should be faulted on that.
if it not sarcasm, then it should be criticized, as should the failures that led to it.
I don't know quite what to say.....
It can't be true, your average human being isn't that stupid.
Did you just delete the 'Farewell, Sciborg' entry from the feeds and the frontpage? It's still available at http://scienceblogs.com/deepseanews/2008/08/farewell_sciborg.php
Pepijn, - Some people are that stupid, and what really worries me is that they are allowed to vote.
pepijn, I think peter may have had a premature... um... posting. ;)
Or Craig is having, umm, separation anxiety.
Unfortunately, some people ARE that stupid! That's why Poe's Law holds. The risk of sarcasm and parody is that there will *always* be someone around who just doesn't get it.
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." -- Henry Mencken