Category Archives: Science And Society

Praise Be To Jobs

I am completely unsurprised by this:

In a recently screened BBC documentary called ‘Secrets of the Superbrands’, UK neuroscientists found that the brains of Apple fans are stimulated by images of Apple products in the same areas as those triggered by religious imagery in a person of faith. According to the scientists, this suggests that the big tech brands have harnessed, or exploit, the brain areas that have evolved to process religion.

At least they’re not Scientologists. Well, OK, maybe some of them are.

From Climate Alarmist

…to skeptic:

At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

Follow the real money.

Don’t Know Much About Science

One of the many reasons that John Huntsman should not be the Republican nominee:

Huntsman says he opposes cap-and-trade proposals because “this isn’t the moment,” but he buys the climate change argument because “90% of the scientists” say it’s happening.

Leave aside that the climate is always changing, I have no idea where he comes up with that number, or why he thinks that science is a democracy. And cap and tax is OK in general, just not now?

Sheesh.

CO2 Mitigation

Thoughts on the cost ineffectiveness:

As we say on the shopping channels, “But wait. There’s more.” How much would it cost, I wondered, to forestall 1 Celsius degree of warming, if all measures to make “global warming” go away were as hilariously cost-ineffective as the Sandwell Sparrow-Slicer?

We economists call this the “mitigation cost-effectiveness.” You get the mitigation cost-effectiveness by dividing the total warming forestalled by the total lifetime cost of the project. And the answer? Well, it’s a very affordable $13 quadrillion per Celsius degree of warming forestalled.

And remember, this is an underestimate, because our methodology will have tended to overstate the warming forestalled — and that’s before we politicians ask any questions about whether IPeCaC’s estimates of climate sensitivity are wanton, flagrant exaggerations. (Cries of “No!” “Shame!” “Resign!” “What did I do with my expenses claim form?”)

Suppose it was just as cost-ineffective to make “global warming” from other causes go away as it is to make “global warming” from CO2 go away. In that event, assuming — as the World Bank does — that global annual GDP is $60 trillion, what percentage of this century’s global output of all that we make and do and sell would be gobbled up in climate mitigation? The answer is an entirely reasonable 736%, or, to put it another way, 736 years’ global GDP.

But won’t someone think of the children?

Nobel-Prize Winning Novels

Will they change public attitudes on global warming?

I predict no. I suspect that most people who read that kind of thing are have already drunk the koolaid. This is lunacy, really:

“A Visit from the Goon Squad,” which tells the story of people connected by the music business, bounces back and forth over time. When it flashes forward two decades, it shows a world that has been altered by climate change. Trees bloom in January. A February day hits 89 degrees.

No one is predicting those kinds of changes that fast. All this does is destroy their credibility.

Though it would be nice to get people reading this book again. Or even for the first time.