William Teach Porter Good: Moron

Science education in the US has failed miserably to produce a scientifically literate citizenry. Case in point: William Teach Porter Good, who burps out his ignorant meanderings at a blog called Pirate’s Cove. Discussing the predicted increase in sea levels worldwide due to the melting of the ice caps, he bellows:

OK, all you Climahysterics try a little experiment. Take a glass. Fill it with water about 1/2 way or so. Take an ice cube, drop it in. Mark the water level. Now, let it melt. When done, where is the mark? The same level? Holy cow!!!!

Good. Freaking. God. Is it actually possible (barring a lobotomy) for a human being to be this jaw-droppingly ignorant?

Now, Billykins Porter is right about the ice cube and the glass. When the ice cube melts, the water level in the glass does not rise appreciably. Why? Because the ice had displaced an equivalent volume of liquid water. Of course, this requires that the ice be in the water in the first place.

Billykins Porter is trying to tell us that, because ice floating in a glass does not raise the water level in the glass when it melts, there cannot possibly be any resultant increase in worldwide sea levels were the ice caps in Greenland and the Antarctic to melt. This means, of course, that Billykins Porter actually believes that the ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica are floating in the ocean.

Poor cretinous Billykins Porter apparently missed the news in geography class: Greenland and Antarctica are actually land masses. This, of course, means that the ice resting on those land masses is not displacing water in the oceans, and that any runoff from melting ice must increase the total volume of the oceans — thus increasing mean sea level.

This is what the civilized world is up against in dealing with the issues raised by global climate change — flat-out, blatant ignorance. The words of Friedrich Schiller could not be truer than they are today: “Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain”.