Category Archives: Science And Society

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Global Warming

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When it’s a good thing:

Given that climate change is a mixture of curses and blessings, any policy addressing it is going to involve trade-offs. Slowing it down, for example, would hurt some, help others. It’s not clear why a cold, Arctic-reliant country like Russia whose economy is linked to the oil and gas trade would find a benefit in cooperating with efforts to stop climate change. It also appears that human activities like farming are better able to adjust to temperature variations than some pessimists would have us believe. Crops like soya, corn and wheat can be bred (or genetically modified) to grow in warmer and dryer conditions at a modest cost.

Greens, many impelled by emotional overreactions or a deep inner belief that unfettered capitalism is a terrible thing, have tried to simplify the discussion about the earth’s changing climate into a morality play. They’ve overstated the evidence that favors worst-case scenarios, argued for top down, bureaucratic solutions that don’t work, and when critics object to these policies they lash out at their critics as ‘science deniers.’

Because they have other agendas, and because for them, it’s a religion. You can pay for a hell of a lot of mitigation with all of the wealth that’s being opened up in the Arctic, but it doesn’t give them the requisite amount of control.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Real Inconvenient Truth

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Over at The Economist, long one of the publications beating the drum for radical cuts in our carbon output, Will Wilkinson notes the cooling of the “consensus.”

Mr Cohn does his best to affirm that the urgent necessity of acting to retard warming has not abated, as does Brad Plumer of the Washington Post, as does this newspaper. But there’s no way around the fact that this reprieve for the planet is bad news for proponents of policies, such as carbon taxes and emissions treaties, meant to slow warming by moderating the release of greenhouse gases. The reality is that the already meagre prospects of these policies, in America at least, will be devastated if temperatures do fall outside the lower bound of the projections that environmentalists have used to create a panicked sense of emergency. Whether or not dramatic climate-policy interventions remain advisable, they will become harder, if not impossible, to sell to the public, which will feel, not unreasonably, that the scientific and media establishment has cried wolf.

Dramatic warming may exact a terrible price in terms of human welfare, especially in poorer countries. But cutting emissions enough to put a real dent in warming may also put a real dent in economic growth. This could also exact a terrible humanitarian price, especially in poorer countries. Given the so-far unfathomed complexity of global climate and the tenuousness of our grasp on the full set of relevant physical mechanisms, I have favoured waiting a decade or two in order to test and improve the empirical reliability of our climate models, while also allowing the economies of the less-developed parts of the world to grow unhindered, improving their position to adapt to whatever heavy weather may come their way. I have been told repeatedly that “we cannot afford to wait”. More distressingly, my brand of sceptical empiricism has been often met with a bludgeoning dogmatism about the authority of scientific consensus.

My emphasis. Those who have been hysterically advocating carbon reduction on the basis of computer models that are, bluntly, crap (I’m looking at you, Saint Al), completely ignore the very real economic consequences of their nostrums, particularly for the poorest for whom economic growth is essential. But the president continues to jack up our energy prices by fiat.

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Social Commentary

James Gandolfini’s Heart

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Was he really a walking time bomb?

Maybe. He certainly sounded like a good candidate, given his weight, though we don’t really know what his other stats were, probably for privacy reasons. I think that the doctor quoted is just speculating, and his credibility went down with me when I read this:

A holiday heart attack is a surprisingly common phenomenon, said Dr. Crandall, chief of the cardiac transplant program at the world-renowned Palm Beach Cardiovascular Clinic.

“Heart attacks often manifest on holidays when you’re not eating the normal meals,” he said. “You eat excessively, indulging in high fatty foods, and this causes the blood to thicken. The result is a blood clot, which can rupture, resulting in the blockage of blood flow to the heart, causing heart attack and sudden death.”

Do “high fatty foods” really “cause the blood to thicken”? Is there any actual empirical evidence for this? Or is it just nutritionally ignorant lipophobia?

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, War Commentary

Er Ist Kein Bewohner Von Berlin

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Or should I just say, “Er ist kein Berliner”?

An uncomplimentary British review of The One’s latest blather in Germany:

In stark contrast to that of his presidential predecessors, Barack Obama’s message on Wednesday was pure mush, another clichéd “citizens of the world” polemic with little substance. This was a speech big on platitudes and hopeless idealism, while containing much that was counter-productive for the world’s superpower. Ultimately it was little more than a laundry list of Obama’s favourite liberal pet causes, including cutting nuclear weapons, warning about climate change, putting an end to all wars, shutting Guantanamo, ending global poverty, and backing the European Project. It was a combination of staggering naiveté, the appeasement of America’s enemies and strategic adversaries, and the championing of more big government solutions.

In other words, business (or lack of business) as usual.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The “Ensemble” Of Climate Models

Is completely, statistically, meaningless:

Saying that we need to wait for a certain interval in order to conclude that “the models are wrong” is dangerous and incorrect for two reasons. First — and this is a point that is stunningly ignored — there are a lot of different models out there, all supposedly built on top of physics, and yet no two of them give anywhere near the same results!

This is reflected in the graphs Monckton publishes above, where the AR5 trend line is the average over all of these models and in spite of the number of contributors the variance of the models is huge. It is also clearly evident if one publishes a “spaghetti graph” of the individual model projections (as Roy Spencer recently did in another thread) — it looks like the frayed end of a rope, not like a coherent spread around some physics supported result.

This is not science. In many ways, it is the antithesis of it.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Mannsuit

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The hearing for dismissal ended a while ago in DC. Now we’re just waiting for a ruling from the judge.

[Update a while later]

Note: it could be weeks before we get a ruling. The law says that it should be prompt, but that’s what it said about the hearing as well, and it’s been months since we filed (today’s hearing was originally scheduled for mid-April). But as long as there is no ruling, the case doesn’t move forward.

Culinary, Health, Science And Society

High Blood Pressure

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So I’m looking at the reviews of this book over at Amazon, and while it gets lots of praise, there’s a very big omission — no one says that it actually worked for them. If it does, I’ll pick up a copy, but that’s my primary criteriaon — does it work? Not what her credentials are.

In my case, I don’t eat bananas because I think they’re too starchy. There are other ways of getting potassium (one thing I’ve done is to not only cut way back on salt, but to only use sea salt, which also provides other salts than just sodium chloride).

[Update a while later]

Also, I’m not sure there’s any evidence that exercise helps.