A report on his disastrous “debate” on Meet The Press.
Category Archives: Science And Society
John Kerry And Climate Change
Why he’s flat wrong:
While none of these inconsistencies refutes the fundamental concern about greenhouse-gas-enhanced climate change, it is disturbing that “consensus science” will not acknowledge that such discrepancies are major problems. From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s beginning, that largely self-selected panel of scientists has embraced the notion that consensus on climate change is the necessary path to taking action and reducing man-made carbon emissions around the world. The consensus community uses this to push the view that “the science is settled” and hold up skeptics to ridicule, as John Kerry did on Sunday.
We are reminded of the dangers of consensus science in the past. For example, in the 18th century, more British sailors died of scurvy than died in battle. In this disease, brought on by a lack of vitamin C, the body loses its ability to manufacture collagen, and gums and other tissues bleed and disintegrate. These deaths were especially tragic because many sea captains and some ships’ doctors knew, based on observations early in the century, that fresh vegetables and citrus cured scurvy.
Nonetheless, the British Admiralty’s onshore Sick and Health Board of scientists and physicians (somewhat akin to the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) dismissed this evidence for more than 50 years because it did not fit their consensus theory that putrefaction (or internal decay) caused scurvy, which they felt could be cured by fresh air, exercise and laxatives.
“Consensus” science that ignores reality can have tragic consequences if cures are ignored or promising research is abandoned. The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives, but the way it imperils economic growth and warps government policy making has made the future considerably bleaker. The recent Obama administration announcement that it would not provide aid for fossil-fuel energy in developing countries, thereby consigning millions of people to energy poverty, is all too reminiscent of the Sick and Health Board denying fresh fruit to dying British sailors.
Idiots. Murderous idiots in the name of an ideology.
The American Physical Society
Is it rethinking its climate-change statement?
It certainly should. As some who resigned in protest said, its previous one was scientifically irresponsible and driven by politics.
Snowboarding Women
…and unisex slopes:
The true feminist will blithely have it both ways, indifferent to the contradiction: The unisex course is sexist because it injures women and trying to protect women from injury is sexist. Likewise, feminists toggle at will between the position that there should be gender quotas for women in political positions, say, because females bring a special sensibility to political problems, and the position that men and women are identical in every way and thus that any disparities in outcomes — whether in advanced math and physics attainment or in the predilection for public debate — must be the result of sexism. As injuries build up for female combat soldiers, expect to see the same confused thinking. The Army will be blamed for not doing enough to protect females while also being pressured to pretend that females are the absolute equal of men and thus need no protection.
Leftists never have problems with that sort of cognitive dissonance.
Fuel Efficiency Standards For Trucks
Thoughts on the policy stupidity of it. As noted, truckers already have plenty of incentives to get their trucks as fuel-efficient as possible. This also applies to CAFE (which in turn is equally stupid to the new light-bulb rules).
[Update a while later]
The single-entry bookkeeping of the Left. This is particularly the case with carbon mitigation, which the warm mongers always ignore, or fantasize that it will be less than the cost of changes in the climate.
Is Astrology Scientific?
So a lot of people have been discussing this paper, that shows that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to think that it is, but I question its results because the methodology seems flawed. They should have first asked the question: “Do you understnd the difference between astronomy and astrology?” Because there’s a possibility that some of the respondents were simply confused, and thinking the latter was the former. Which is a form of ignorance, but nowhere near as bad as knowing what astrology is and thinking it scientific.
Mann Suit Update
Some extensive thoughts from Steve McIntyre.
The Modern Diet
Eleven charts that show what’s wrong with it.
It’s particularly interesting that the “obesity epidemic” started about the time the pseudo-scientists started recommending cutting back on dietary fat.
Intelligence
Have they found a genetic basis for it?
It was always kind of loopy to imagine there isn’t one. That’s the sort of thing that only a leftist could believe.
Nutrition Science And Climate Science
How they’re alike:
Nutrition science and climate science share some common challenges: complex system(s) and many confounding factors. Severe tests for nutrition science can in principle be done, but they are very expensive and take decades. Severe tests for climate science require better observational evidence, particularly in the past.
When there’s no evidence to falsify what is merely a supposition,we are left with ”magical theories that explains absolutely everything – including diametrically contradictory phenomena, lack of logic and absence of evidence.”
There’s a lot of junk science associated with both.