Memories of the 28th Century

Last week there were some stories on google news about a man who was planning to shoot himself off in a steam powered rocket to take photos that would prove that the Earth is a disc. One of those articles mentioned youtube videos and other material. I foolishly wasted more than an hour with videos and articles that demonstrated that education isn't as good as it should be. The main video told how the U.S.A. and the USSR had done many high altitude nuclear tests in attempts to smash through the firmament.

One of the oddest thing the videos included was a misquote of Richard Byrd. Byrd once commented about the unexplored area beyond the South Pole when one came from Little America base in West Antarctica. He mentioned a region larger than the U.S. that he had not explored. Some people have completely misinterpreted Byrd’s comment for their own purposes (the first link is to one such), but they don’t misinterpret and over interpret any more than the people who panicked over the "hole in the Ozone layer" or the Anthropogenic Climate Change supporters.

For many things here may be evidence that is difficult to acquire or to interpret properly, and people who want to make something of that issue that is evidence that they can work on. They are not interested in evidence that is clear and unambiguous. For example, trying to measure the circumference of the Earth by observing a ship going out to sea and disappearing behind the curve bit by bit is impossible, but Foucault's Pendulum is clear and unambiguous evidence of the rotation and period of the Earth (see second link). Anyone who has looked into the story of the hole in the ozone layer quickly becomes amazed that the story ever came up, but it sold newspapers and magazines, and that probably was the original intent. There is no evidence that there was a hole, so I can't tell how that was misinterpreted, but there is an expectable decrease in the concentration of ozone over the South Pole during the local winter. Ozone is formed by UV rays hitting oxygen molecules and causing some to dissociate and the loose atoms to join O2 to make O3, ozone. When there is no UV radiation, as is the case during winter, no additional O3 is formed, but existing ozone breaks down from collisions with other molecules. The ozone concentration drops by as much as 70% from high to low during the course of a year (see link).

We all know that the Earth went through the Little Ice Age from about 1350 to about 1850, when temperatures were significantly lower than typical, and since 1850 the Earth has been trending back toward temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period, when it was so warm that grains, especially barley, could ripen in Greenland. Grains haven't ripened there since about 1250 CE.

The evidence about climate cycles is readily available. If you are interested, then just look around, or you could search my blog.

I mentioned these specific issues: flat Earth, ozone hole, and climate change because they illustrate a single characteristic of many people; they believe what they want to believe, and some people seem to believe whatever they hear first, and evidence is useless in changing their minds.

If you ever want some weird entertainment, then try the youtube videos about the Flat Earth. I didn't write this in the hope of educating a Flat Earther. No, the purpose of this is to point out how ignorant and difficult to teach such people are. It seems that people hang on to ideas hat were disproved a long time ago, as if they were religious beliefs.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnU-kxFQMfI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum
https://www.classzone.com/books/eart...1708page04.cfm

http://www.rense.com/politics6/mythmnmade.htm
Record of O3 concentration at South Pole and concentrations at other latitudes.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/envi...o3cltable.html

The news that got me interested in the Flat Earth idea.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.95930eeb69e0