Judith Curry disagrees with Kerry Emanuel on now to evaluate climate risk.
Category Archives: Science And Society
Procrastination
This looks like an interesting article, if I ever get around to reading it.
Is anticrastination doing something immediately?
Climate Change
We shouldn’t worry, we should just accept that this will happen and we should adapt to it and regard it as a business opportunity.
Its arrogant to assume that climate will remain static.
The whole language of climate change is designed to confuse the public and policy makers
Bob Carter says the IPCC has accomplished the inversion of the null hypothesis, where the onus is now on disproving dangerous anthropogenic climate change
We should focus on protecting people from natural hazards, and not worrying about what is causing them
It makes sense to encourage alternative energy and see what happens.
Bob Carter closed with this: no scientist can tell you whether it will be warmer or cooler in 2020, so we should prepare for both.
Yes. We don’t know much more than we do know.
And as she notes, the people speaking sensibly are independent or retired, not those receiving government funding.
A Clash Of Sticks
“…were [Mann] to prevail in the upcoming Mann vs Steyn trial of the century at the DC Superior Court, it would be the biggest setback for the First Amendment in the half-century since New York Times vs Sullivan.”
A brief history of the case to date, from Mark Steyn.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court of Virginia upheld the university, Mann, and secrecy.
[Update a while later]
“Don’t start deleting those emails just yet, Mikey“:
One thing the order does is give the green light to the University of Virginia to crank up the incinerator for the biggest destruction of research material in a critical area of public policy – not to mention what my old colleague at the Telegraph in London, Christopher Booker, called the other day “the worst scientific scandal of our generation”. Before they grab the matches and gasoline, however, please note that my lawyers have requested a lot of the same material for Mann’s defamation suit against me. I’ll have more to say about this later today.
We’ll see.
Brain Dead, Or Just Resting?
Unsurprisingly, we don’t know as much about vegetative states as many think they do. Unfortunately, as with cryonics, a lot of the medical profession take the easy way out, ethically speaking.
High-School Science Teacher
Suspended for teaching science:
One of the most important lessons kids learn in public schools is that school administrators are usually autocratic imbeciles.
Yes, but they shouldn’t have to be so maleducated in other ways to learn that.
There’s a petition drive to reinstate him.
More On The One-Way Discovery
Mark writes about the judge’s latest order:
…some climate alarmist was in a bit of hurry with his rewriting and those “seven other organizations” became “seven organizations”. But, whether seven or nine, they have all “proved Mann innocent”. In fact, there has only been one investigation of Michael E Mann – the one that was the subject of my original “defamatory” post; the joke investigation by Penn State set up by a now disgraced college president currently facing 30 years in the slammer for obstruction of justice. That’s the only investigation. Yet somewhere along the way Mann grasped that, as with his non-existent Nobel Prize, if he simply declared himself “investigated” and “exonerated” by multiple bodies on both sides of the Atlantic, most of the people in his Climate Bubble would never bother checking.
No comment.
What Is A Scientist?
I have some thoughts over at PJMedia.
Mann Suit Update
The judge has stayed discovery for everyone, including Mann against Steyn, because he doesn’t think there should be two separate discovery processes despite the fact that Mark has severed his legal relationship with the other defendants. The stay is in place until the appeals court makes a ruling either dismissing or allowing the trial(s) to move forward.
What a mess.
Why Do We Eat?
It’s generally not because we’re hungry.
I can generally go all day without eating, and often do. There’s a lot of evidence that fasting has some of the benefits of caloric restriction, in terms of life extension.
I’d note, though, that the article seems to subscribe to the caloric theory of weight gain and loss. It doesn’t say what “high-density” foods are, energetically speaking, but not all are created equal. Eating fat doesn’t make you fat.