Banning DHMO
Why Science Is So Important
By Daniel Muniz

Below is an excerpt from the Coalition To Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide:

It is pretty scary stuff except that dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) is the overly scientific name of water. The accepted name is really hydrogen oxide because the prefixes of “di” and “mono” are not necessary (for instance, H2O2 is hydrogen peroxide and it doesn’t go by dihydrogen dioxide) although the “monoxide” part sounds scary and it does raise fear to the uninitiated.

But the point of the dihydrogen monoxide activists is to vividly illustrate the ignorance of science and to demonstrate the overall gullibility of the general public when it comes to environmentalism. In Penn and Teller’s wildly successful Bull**** series, they pulled their own stunt with DHMO.

They sent an activist to a large environmental rally where featured speakers decried the deplorable state of our planet. This activist asked people at random who were at the rally to sign a petition to ban DHMO. And all she did was rattle off a few of the bullets listed above and people gleefully signed her petition. But what startled Penn and Teller was that nobody bothered to ask what this “lethal chemical” really was. All it took was to say that DHMO was bad for the environment and just about everybody signed it including the organizer of the rally.

It wasn’t the ignorance that was appalling but rather the gullibility. Just because somebody says something is bad for the environment, people assume that it has to be true and that are even willing to outlaw it. Of course Penn and Teller aren’t the only ones who pulled the DHMO prank. The city of Aliso Viejo in California was ridiculed to no end when they were duped into seriously considering banning dihydrogen monoxide.

Environmentalists are often puzzled or simply outraged that there are actually people who are skeptical of their claims. Our polluted planet is on the brink of destruction (less than 10 years by the estimation of Al Gore), yet too many people are either unconcerned or even unconvinced that the human race is facing imminent extinction.

However, the reason for the skepticism is because far too many bogus scientific terms and hollow theories are casually tossed around and accepted without any substantiation and then treated as if they are gospel. And more to the point, what it really boils down to is that much of the environmental movement consists of people who love the environment but hate science. And that in itself represents the gravest danger to science and to the scientific method.

As Penn and Teller demonstrated, the environmentalists who were at that pro-environment rally accepted all of the “purported” dangers of dihydrogen monoxide without question. These environmentalists are people who are supposedly concerned about the environment, yet they lack any scientific curiosity or inquisitiveness about what the facts really are. In essence, they will believe anything.

It is this kind of gullibility that is very disturbing because it doesn’t take much to fool environmentalists because their interest rests solely in the environment instead of being rooted in science.

Toss around words like “organic” or “recycling” and environmentalists get all misty-eyed even though they actually have very limited scientific understanding of what such terms really mean and the science behind it. They just know that it has to be good for the environment and everything else has to be bad.

It is time for more people to take an active interest in the science of the environmental movement instead of just being limited to catchy slogans and sound bites.

If not, some day there will be a ban or a rationing of an essential like water or food (corn-based ethanol is a good example) and the public will be too ignorant to understand how our government restricted a basic necessity.

Any opinions or views expressed herein belong solely to the author and does not represent any employer, organization, political party, governmental agency, or any other entity and do not necessarily reflect the views of the site owner or its participants.