Contrabang #8 Be Humble, Peons

This Is Why Mars Is Red And Dead While Earth Is Blue And Alive (link)

Imagine the early days of our Solar System, going back billions of years. The Sun was cooler and less luminous, but there were (at least) two planets — Earth and Mars — with liquid water covering large portions of their surfaces.

It is a theory - not a proven fact - that Mars was once covered in liquid water. The theory was made because Mars contains landforms that in many ways appear similar to water erosion on Earth.

Neither world was completely frozen over owing to the substantial presence of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide.

As always, one hypothesis is the platform on which further hypotheses are stacked. Because erosion patterns on Mars are assumed to be caused by water, there must have been an atmosphere to keep the planet within the fairly narrow temperature range required for liquid water to pool. So now the erosion patterns require not only ancient oceans, but ancient clouds of greenhouse gasses.

Over the past few billion years, both planets have undergone dramatic changes. Yet, for some reason, while Earth became oxygen-rich, remained temperate, and saw life explode on its surface, Mars simply died. Its oceans disappeared; it lost its atmosphere; and no life signs have yet been found there. There must be a reason why Mars died while Earth survived.

There must be a reason why the available evidence would seem to contradict their stack of theories.

It took decades, but science has finally figured it out.

He then goes on for a few paragraphs to describe the process of earth's atmospheric CO2 being precipitated into rocks like limestone (which incidentally is why plants are now in carbon starvation, and why I advocate for more CO2 emissions, not less). Scientists suspected that CO2 was leached out of the Martian atmosphere by a similar process.

Since Mars once had a similarly CO2-rich atmosphere to early Earth, it was assumed that limestone and other carbonate rocks would be found on its surface. But there was none found by the Viking landers, nor by Soujourner, Spirit, or Opportunity.

The evidence returned by Martian landers does not support the Martian liquid water hypothesis. But that's okay. In modern science, you don't have to drop a pet theory just because it was contradicted by evidence. You just need to find a route around the evidence that gets headed back towards your pre-determined destination.

As discovered by the Opportunity rover, hematite spheres and spherules have been found on Mars. While there may be mechanisms to form them that don’t necessarily involve liquid water, there are no known mechanisms, even in theory, that can form them fused together (as found) in the absence of liquid. [Attached to an image in the article.]

There actually is a theoretical mechanism proposed by the electric universe people, and they even have some results showing similar fused spheres being produced by electrical discharges in a lab. If there is any evidence of the fused hematite spheres being produced in labs using water, I am unaware of it.

Instead of “down,” perhaps the atmosphere went “up” and into the depths of space. Perhaps Mars, much like Earth, once had a magnetic field to protect it from the solar wind. But at just half the diameter of Earth and with a lower-density, smaller core, perhaps Mars cooled enough so that its active magnetic dynamo went quiet. And perhaps this was a turning point: without its protective magnetic shield, there was nothing to protect that atmosphere from the onslaught of particles from the Sun.

 Perhaps.

The goal of MAVEN was to measure the rate at which the atmosphere was being stripped by the solar wind from Mars today, and to infer the rate throughout the red planet’s history. The solar wind is powerful, but molecules like carbon dioxide have a high molecular weight, meaning it’s difficult to get them up to escape velocity. Could the loss of a magnetic field coupled with the solar wind provide a viable mechanism to transform Mars from an atmosphere-rich world with liquid water at its surface to the Mars we know today?

What MAVEN saw was that Mars loses, on average, about 100 grams (¼ pound) of atmosphere to space every second.

Thanks to NASA’s MAVEN mission, we’ve confirmed that this story is, in fact, the way it happened. Some four billion years ago, the core of Mars became inactive, its magnetic field disappeared, and the solar wind stripped the atmosphere away.

This is not just ridiculous, but outright wrong even in the mainstream. The Maven project only measures outflows of hydrogen ions, individual protons which can get snagged into the electrically charged solar wind. It says nothing about carbon dioxide. And yet, Ethan has taken the measured stripping of hydrogen - which no one doubted - as proof for a whole serious of scientific guesses: oceans and flowing surface water, a thick CO2 atmosphere, and a periodic outage of the Martian magnetosphere. The MAVEN results are not even evidence in support of those theories, let alone proof. Yet, look at the confidence of his wording. "Confirmed...in fact...the way it happened." The only thing confirmed is that Ethan can't be trusted to make a sober analysis of evidence.

If he was smart, he'd drop the CO2 theory and stick with water vapor as the Martian greenhouse gas. Then, it is at least plausible that the water's hydrogen atoms escaped, and the leftover oxygen found something else to oxidize (like the sulphur compounds he mentioned). For some reason, they just can't let go of CO2 as greenhouse gas. It's almost like they've been conditioned or something.

What Was It Like When The First Humans Arose On Earth? (link)

In this one, Ethan jumps into the theory of evolution. His subtitle could about be the motto for modern science.

The cosmic story of us wasn’t inevitable, but the culmination of many chance events.

The modern scientist worships at the altar of randomness, and can't be trusted to perform impartial science because of his religious superstitions.

What follows is the standard recital of primate evolution. I only include it in this week's Contrabang to share his final paragraph [emphasis added].

It took 13.8 billion years of cosmic history for the first human beings to arise, and we did so relatively recently: just 300,000 years ago. 99.998% of the time that passed since the Big Bang had no human beings at all; our entire species has only existed for the most recent 0.002% of the Universe. Yet, in that short time, we’ve managed to figure out the entire cosmic story that led to our existence.

The hubris is unimaginable. We've figured out everything!

Fortunately, the story won’t end with us, as it’s still being written.

This sentence underscores that, not only is Ethan bad at scientific analysis, but he is actually a terrible writer. The story that let to our existence won't end with us?  It's still being written? So the future controls the story of the past? Who is writing the story about our existence? Ethan, who routinely fails to maintain proper verb tense consistency, also ends his articles in metaphors so bad they almost hurt to think about. Fortunately, the bulk of his audience must not be thinking much anyway.

The major takeaway from this is that, in whatever field he happens to write on, Ethan always parrots the mainstream consensus narrative, and does little else. He believes whatever he is supposed to believe. He is a good little cheerleader for the establishment viewpoint. Just look at his profile picture...he even dresses up in costume for it!

Your Glorified Ignorance Wasn’t Cool Then, And Your Scientific Illiteracy Isn’t Cool Now (link)

In this one, Ethan shares the story of his childhood.

All across the country, you can see how the seeds of it develop from a very young age. When children raise their hands in class because they know the answer, their classmates hurl the familiar insults of “nerd,” “geek,” “dork,” or “know-it-all” at them. The highest-achieving students — the gifted kids, the ones who get straight As, or the ones placed into advanced classes — are often ostracized, bullied, beat up, or worse.

Ethan, if you're reading this, I know we have our differences of opinion, but I offer my sincere condolences that your were beaten up and ostracized in school for being a know-it-all dork.

This article really is a grab bag of lunacy. In it, he manages to:

• Share yet another image of Barrack Obama
• Advocate for the HPV vaccine, which some estimate kills more than it saves
• Advocate for adding fluoride - of which there is no safe level - to the water supply.
• Push the global warming agenda

Every time we insist we already know everything, we lose an opportunity to learn and improve.

This is outrageous coming from the guy who just said, in the previous article, that we "managed to figure out the entire cosmic story." This is becoming a case study in not just bad science, but of psychological projection.

When we trust our own non-expertise over the genuine expertise of bona fide experts, terrible things happen.

Holy appeal to authority, Batman. Does that sentence read like it would be out of place in some communist propaganda? Listen to what you're told, do not think for yourself, or "terrible things" will happen! Not only is it authoritarian and hyperbolic, but it is factually incorrect. What skeptics like me are doing is not to "trust our own non-expertise" over that of experts, but to demonstrate how they are making illogical conclusions of their own evidence, ignoring or circumventing contradictory evidence, and routinely failing to make accurate predictions. His implication is that it doesn't matter what our arguments are, because those arguments are not properly accredited. Trust only the academy!

The next time you find yourself on the opposite side of an issue from the consensus of experts in a particular field, remember to be humble. 

The opposite is also true. If you find yourself on the same side of an issue as the consensus of experts, such as when you habitually side with the consensus of experts - because you are either incapable of independent thought or perhaps just afraid of being called wrong - there is no need for humility. It is okay to say things like "we've figured everything out." Because, hey man, you're the establishment guy. You know what's cool.