An educationally useful hoax?

Michel L., a ¡No Pasaràn! reader, sent us the follow note and a link to a foolish busybody activity which is both scientifically misguided, and quite thankfully ineffective. It seems to come from the old joke about what sort of earthquake you’d get if everyone in China jumed off of a chair at the same time. Speaking to this idiotic “Jump Day” after school activity, Michel writes:

«Apparently, liberals have found a way not only to reduce global warming, but also to extend daytime (how this is a good thing I don't know), create a more homogenous climate on Earth and still help the poor people of the third world.

Now, I'm just a humble electronics engineer and my knowledge in such matters is very limited. But, do these people even know the disaster it would be if the Earth were to change its orbit just slightly? We're talking tsunamis and typhoons everywhere.

Plus, 600,000 people jumping at the same time could hardly create enough energy to match a mild earth quake.»

Sounds more like a conspiracy started by podiatrists and orthopedic surgeons. Never mind the anger about blaming man for natural changes in the jet-stream - these folks want to unionize the air molucules and SHUT IT DOWN!

They don’t like cars, fireplaces, or industry thinking that it’s too much of a risk, but they want to alter the earth’s orbit? Oddly enough, they speak to the childish mentality of activists – everything that they don’t understand in the world is wrong – it MUST change, regardless of what it changes into or however disasterous that might be.
Don’t you think that this needs some serious scientist to look at the matter, and say, a global referendum, including animal? The problem with this anti-intellectual view that they have is that science is only used as a convenient excuse when a movement can get a scientific group to say what they want it to, but not when they don’t. It also always seems to be based on some whim which passes for a solution to something people are feeling.

What will it be a year later? Jumping the earth back into its’ original orbit?

Another fallacy is that it doesn’t understand the scale of man’s effect on nature, which if you have a hatefully inflated notion of yourself and the human race is wildly inflated.

Do these same people think that they’re living harmoniously with the nature that they pretend to care about if they try to change earth’s orbit? The reason we are not as barren and lifeless as our neighboring planets IS that orbit. Does they think that this make us a rogue planet not worthy of Mars’ goodwill? Do we need to destroy ourselves to be fair and stop making some other rock orbiting the sun less envious?

The mind boggles! Like the sandal and army bag wearing fakers you knew in high-school that were pained with worries about the earth, but struggled with algebra, these folks don't deserve to be ignored, they need to have their argument undercut to inspire some rationalism.

Tfeh!

But if NOT, what we have here is a wonderful setup - the groundwork for breakthrough moments for the sort of Greenie that goes along with the latest trendy complaint. Like the precience of the great Sokol suckering of '96, when the nuts rooting for the uses of a "scientific" effort for their political goals realize that they need sound science behind science, minds will change themselves.