Every now and then the world is trying to tell you something, and events conspire in a flash of synchronicity to reveal a truth so deep and powerful that ordinary genius alone would have been insufficient to figure it out. Such was the case recently, when I was leafing through Garry Wills’ New York Review of Books article on Harvey Mansfield’s studly paean to all that is virtuous and masculine, entitled simply Manliness. (Now, it’s true that the sight of Professor Mansfield giving a high-five to Stephen Colbert demonstrated pretty clearly that, on the electrical-appliances scale of manliness, Harvey is less of a drill press or band saw and more of a cappucino maker or perhaps a motorized salad spinner. But that doesn’t affect the persuasive grandeur of his argument.) At the same time, I was mulling over the implications of An Inconvenient Truth, the global-warming scare-movie from noted beta-male Al Gore. Mr. Tree-Hugger himself would prance about in front of his fancy charts and graphs that looked like this:
And then, girly-man that he is, he would act all scared that the world was going to melt or some such nonsense. Crazy alarmist.
In a flash of insight, it hit me: this must be feminism’s fault, somehow. Those pushy women have tipped the balance of the universal order, and thrown Nature’s intricate equilibrium out of whack. Fortunately, I was handed just the tool I needed to prove this obviously-correct hypothesis by Brad DeLong, in the form of Gapminder World from Google. Check it out, peeps: here is a graph of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, as a function of the ratio of girls to boys attending school in different countries.
You can see it right there, science doesn’t lie. The correlation is clear as the Los Angeles haze — countries that educate women are dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Now, unless you’re crazy enough to think that it’s the CO2 that is causing all those girls to go get themselves an education, I think the implication is obvious: feminism is destroying the planet. We can now add this to Professor Mansfield’s insight that gender equality leads to less exciting sex lives, as one more level-headed condemnation of these tiresome females and their outdated Enlightenment aspirations.
Comments
35 responses to “Feminism: Destroying the Planet”
Sean,
you sound just like Jesus General. Of course he is an 11 on the manly scale of absolute gender8-)
or maybe it is all of those Internet users
(try carbon dioxide emissions as a function of Internet users..!)
Gee with statistics like these you should write a best selling book called maybe “freakonomics” or something like that.
😉
Mansfield is manly in ways that feminists like Sean will never be capable to comprehend. The only things that I agree with in this text is that feminism is destroying the planet and that Al Gore is a crazy tree-hugger and alarmist. On my blog, I offer a much more detailed analysis of many different correlations that shows, among other things, that income and emission of CO2 is virtually the same quantity, and that the percentage of women in the labor force is uncorrelated with the GNP per capita. Sean will never tell you these things. CO2. They call it polution. I call it life, and I call them intellectual pollution, while they call their own armageddon stories intellectual life. 😉
Sean, don’t you think baiting two hooks is a bit of a waste? 🙂
Yeah, but it’s not like bait is in short supply.
[…] Now, unless you’re crazy enough to think that it’s the CO2 that is causing all those girls to go get themselves an education, I think the implication is obvious: feminism is destroying the planet. Feminism: Destroying the Planet | Cosmic Variance […]
You liberals are denying the real cause — an alarming decrease in the number of pirates.
Completely agreed! I for one definitely feel warmer whenever feminists are around
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One of my first lessons in statistics and correlation vs. cause, was in grade school when my father proved to me that bananas cause lung cancer.
Right on! Too bad Larry Summers was too much of a gentleman to say this. Re: correlation/causality – apparently there was a correlation between the number of storks and the birthrate in Sweden in the fifties (?). This is now easily explained: more female education –> more CO2 –> warmer weather –> fewer storks AND more female education –> lower birth rate. Voila.
That’s hilarious.
John, bananas contain radioactive potassium, so maybe they do cause lung cancer.
Well, the problem is obvious. Both women-in-school and CO2 are correlated with year number.
Therefore, our best bet for solving global warming is to reset our calendar back to year zero.
(Of course, this will mean feminism disappears too. Dang.)
—DrNathaniel
Good thing the aliens will come soon and colonize the planet. I’ve heard there is no feminism being practiced among the aliens. Note, these are the same aliens whose shipped crashed at Roswell in 1947.
I agree with Sourav, the real cause of global warming is obviously pirates. You liberals refuse to acknowledge this because of the fear of the truth.
Ramen, brother.
Martin G. says: “John, bananas contain radioactive potassium, so maybe they do cause lung cancer.”
Only if you inhale them.
[…] Sean Carroll proves that the planet is being destroyed by feminism. Including handy graphs. […]
Note to self: SEAN KNOWS TOO MUCH. Must have him terminated. Nothing can be allowed to interfere with the Feminist Final Solution! Bwahahahahaha!!!
…ahem…
How about CO2 emissions versus razor blades?
Moore’s Law for Razor Blades
[…] Does feminism causes global warming? This will be my new favorite example of how correlation does not equal causation. […]
It also appears you live longer if your country emits more CO2. Can we conclude that CO2 is good for you or lack of CO2 will shorten your lifespan?
Dear Sean, I’ve never laughed so hard at something so depressing. I wonder if LM will check your data sources.
The countries that produce high amounts of CO2 also show higher per capita spending on perfume. Therefore perfume causes global warming.
[…] Cosmic Variance […]
Sorry, I fail to see anything surprising or amusing in any of this. Rich countries produce more CO2 and send more girls to school. So what?