Category Archives: Science And Society

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

A New Science Movement

9 Comments

Did Climaquiddick set one off? If so, it’s not just a new, but a real (as opposed to politically ideologically driven) science, returning it to free inquiry.:

Remember these names: Steven Mosher, Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Jeff “Id” Condon, Lucia Liljegren, and Anthony Watts. These, and their community of blog commenters, are the global warming contrarians that formed the peer-to-peer review network and helped bring chaos to Copenhagen – critically wounding the prospects of cap-and-trade legislation in the process. One may have even played the instrumental role of first placing the leaked files on the Internet.

This group can be thought of as the first cousins to Andrew Breitbart’s collective of BIG websites – obsessively curious, grassroots investigators that provide vision to the establishment’s blind eye. Peer-to-peer review is the scientific version of the undernews.

Call it Big Science.

[Update a few minutes later]

I liked this comment, which puts it all in perspective for those who remain willfully blind to the implications of the data dump:

Imagine for a moment that a high school student submitted a project for competition in which he offered up the hypothesis that tree rings gave a historical blueprint of climate change.

Competition Judge: “Ok, Johnny, this is a very interesting theory. May I see your data?”

Johnny McFibber: “I lost it.”

Competition Judge: “Hmmm. That will make it nearly impossible to win, Johnny. Can you duplicate it or give us a detailed description of what it showed”

Johnny M “Actually, I hid the parts that didn’t comport with my theory., in fact, showed the exact opposite of my theory,..and I emailed all my friends to do the same”

Competition Judge” “Johnny, that’s not the way we conduct ourselves in the sciences, you must be confused with your humanities classes. Over here, we strictly scrutinize the facts.

Johnny M: There’s a reporter here I would like to introduce you to…he wants to ask some questions about your first marriage.

Competition Judge: Great work on this project, Johnny. The science is settled. You win.

Moral? Research softly and carry a big hockey stick.

Fortunately, the hockey stick is broken, probably for good.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Climaquiddick

38 Comments

“You should be steamed.” Some thoughts from the former head of the Hurricane Center:

What do the skeptics believe? First, they concur with the believers that the Earth has been warming since the end of a Little Ice Age around 1850. The cause of this warming is the question. Believers think the warming is man-made, while the skeptics believe the warming is natural and contributions from man are minimal and certainly not potentially catastrophic à la Al Gore.

Second, skeptics argue that CO2 is not a pollutant but vital for plant life. Numerous field experiments have confirmed that higher levels of CO2 are positive for agricultural productivity. Furthermore, carbon dioxide is a very minor greenhouse gas. More than 90 percent of the warming from greenhouse gases is caused by water vapor. If you are going to change the temperature of the globe, it must involve water vapor.

Third, and most important, skeptics believe that climate models are grossly overpredicting future warming from rising concentrations of carbon dioxide. We are being told that numerical models that cannot make accurate 5- to 10-day forecasts can be simplified and run forward for 100 years with results so reliable you can impose an economic disaster on the U.S. and the world.

I always find the religious language amusing. The “believers” seem to take it on faith, because the high priests of Science have ordained, it, while the “skeptics” act like actual scientists.

[Monday evening update]

A call for Climaquiddick whistleblowers. I hope they get a lot. I think that the bastions have been captured.

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Some New Year’s Resolutions

23 Comments

…from Frank J.:

While continuing to trust science, let’s make sure the scientists we’re getting it from aren’t douche nozzles.

I like science — we all like science — but if we’re going to throw a huge wrench into our economy, let’s make sure it’s not on the advice of scientists who treat data like a used-car salesman treats an old Chevy.

Next time we pick a leader, let’s make sure he has more qualifications than a bunch of empty slogans of the sort you’d use to sell carbonated beverages.

Yeah, we won’t get a chance in the next year, but let’s try and do that at least once this next decade. It’s hard, but we can do it. Yes we can.

If we have another economic crisis, let’s not hand a blank checkbook to a bunch of Democrats.

Politicians love spending money — Democrats especially. If we had a problem of having way too much money and needed to get rid of it quickly, you’d be a fool to elect anyone other than Democrats. But if the problem is that we’re running out of money, it may be a bad idea to put Democrats in charge, because their solution to having too little money will inevitably be to spend more money.

He has more.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Punishing Us For Our Sins, Continued

105 Comments

Some readers may recall a sophomoric comment from an “Ethan” at this post. He persists, but I doubt if anyone is following it any more other than him. So I thought I’d start a newer thread to continue the discussion, and hopefully educate him. He last wrote:

“Mass economic dislocation, poverty, disease and death,” though, are all consequences of climate change. Sea level rise will send billions of people scrambling for higher ground, competing with the existing population for dwindling resources. The deserts will spread, and indeed are already spreading, destroying millions of acres of arable land in the southwestern United States and northern Africa.

Now, I am not suggesting solutions to this problem. Massive government intervention leaves a bad taste in my mouth, too. But it makes me sick to think that there is still so much doubt about climate change and its consequences among the general population, when the science is solid. My statement that 1 percent of scientists think climate change might not be human caused may be “argumentum ad verecundiam,” but it is nearly accurate…the number varies slightly from survey to survey, but in all the reports I could find it has never been above 4%. So we’re looking at, at worst, 97% consensus that climate change is a reality, and that human activity is the driving force behind it.

I have read the “climategate” emails, and frankly, there is nothing in them that suggests a vast conspiracy of scientists. They contained unprofessional language concerning doubters of climate change, but all of the quotes which seem to point to such a conspiracy were obviously removed from their proper context when reprinted by the media. In fact, I blame the media for the fact that so many people in the United States are not sure if climate change is a reality. That 1 – 4% of scientists is given equal time with the 97 – 99% who are positive climate change is happening, which creates widespread doubt when it should be minimal.

Now, again, I don’t know exactly what should be done about climate change. Action on a large scale is needed, and frankly I don’t know if people are ready for that. But the consequences of inaction will be very high, and will be seen in my lifetime. The consensus is that our emissions of greenhouse gases (e.g., our consumption of fossil fuels) must peak by 2015 for the temperature to stabilize at no more than 2 degrees Celsius above temperatures at the end of the last century. So I don’t know about you, but I’m probably going to buy an electric car when they hit the streets, and I think I’ll be doing my shopping at local farmers’ markets whenever possible. Even those little things (buying potatoes grown in your state instead of ones that were flown or trucked across country) make a difference. I just hope those little things are enough.

I’m kind of swamped today, but I trust other readers will set him on the road to wisdom. I would suggest though (because it’s not obvious that he did) that he start (as I suggested at the time) by reading the piece I wrote at PJM that the post was partially about.

Business, Satire, Science And Society, Social Commentary, War Commentary

“Because We Can”

5 Comments

Christopher Hitchens:

Why do we fail to detect or defeat the guilty, and why do we do so well at collective punishment of the innocent? The answer to the first question is: Because we can’t—or won’t. The answer to the second question is: Because we can. The fault here is not just with our endlessly incompetent security services, who give the benefit of the doubt to people who should have been arrested long ago or at least had their visas and travel rights revoked. It is also with a public opinion that sheepishly bleats to be made to “feel safe.” The demand to satisfy that sad illusion can be met with relative ease if you pay enough people to stand around and stare significantly at the citizens’ toothpaste. My impression as a frequent traveler is that intelligent Americans fail to protest at this inanity in case it is they who attract attention and end up on a no-fly list instead. Perfect.

It will continue until we demand our rights again. And unfortunately, this is a bi-partisan problem. This idiotic philosophy applied in the last administration as well. It’s a natural tendency of bureaucrats of any stripe.

Also, I was listening to some talk radio today in the car (Prager) and it occurred to me that people have this strange notion that “safe” is a binary condition. Something is safe or it is not. But it’s not. As I’ve said in other contexts (what a mess the human spaceflight program is), there is no safety this side of the dirt. Every decision you make, every action you take, carries some level of risk. Each one must be balanced against the expected benefit. When someone asks the president if it’s “safe to fly,” he should use it as a teachable moment. But he won’t.

Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Space

The Foolishness Of Reliance On Authority

6 Comments

Roger Simon runs into a Hollywood nitwit who believes in global warming because NASA says so.

Point 1: “NASA” doesn’t say so. One duplicitous ideologue masquerading as a climate scientist at one particular NASA center says so. That center had to confess error on his behalf (no doubt through clenched teeth).

Point 2: “NASA” has no opinion on anything. NASA is a government agency, with thousands of employees, of varying opinions. The previous NASA administrator, in fact, famously outraged the warm mongers with his own skepticism, but if any one person could have spoken for NASA at the time, it would have been Mike Griffin, not James Hansen.

Point 3: NASA has had many spectacular achievements in the past. It has also had many spectacular failures. To rely on it, as an agency, as a source of authority for something (particularly when there is no official agency position on it) is foolish. In fact, this false sense that people have in NASA as an authority has contributed greatly to the difficulty over the past decades to raise money for private ventures. This is because investors, when doing due diligence on an investment decisions, have often gone to someone at NASA who knows nothing about the venture, and relied on their foolish advice, for no other reason than they worked for NASA.

Anyway, this gets back to the foolishness of relying on people who claim to be scientists, instead of on science itself.

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

Punishing Us For Our Sins

27 Comments

High AGW Priest Tom Friedman thinks that we deserve to be hit by a massive storm:

Absent such a storm that literally parts the Red Sea again and drives home to all the doubters that catastrophic climate change is a clear and present danger, the domestic pressures in every country to avoid legally binding and verifiable carbon reductions will remain very powerful.

That will be our come-to-Gaia moment.

[Update a few minutes later]

Is global warming a dead issue?

It may well be. We’re now too broke to be able to afford such an ostentatious, gaudy and pointless religion.

[Update a few minutes later]

I kind of buried the lede in the link above — it cites a paper claiming that global temperature is more influenced by CFCs and cosmic rays than CO2. It’s peer reviewed, too.

If the biggest problems are cosmic rays and solar radiation, it’s hard to see how the power-hungry bureaucrats are going to leverage that into taking over the global economy.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

That Didn’t Take Long

2 Comments

When I wrote that denizens of the east coast had to shovel a couple of feet of global warming, I was right:

…this record-breaking snowstorm is pretty much precisely what climate science predicts. Since one typically can’t make a direct association between any individual weather event and global warming, perhaps the best approach is to borrow and modify a term from the scientific literature and call this a “global-warming-type” deluge…

Global warming. Is there anything that it can’t do?

More over at The American Spectator, where I got the link, with some history in comments:

The worst storm for the East Coast occured in late Jan 1888 (just a few weeks after the horrible Children’s Blizzard). The entire Mid Atlantic states were buried under 15-20 foot snow drifts

The strongest cyclone to hit the UK occured in the 17th Century, and resulted portions of upper Scottland be buried under 60 foot of sand.

Some of the most spectacular rain fall events for Europe occured in the 14th and 15th centuries, which caused widespread famine and starvation. In Normandy, during the summer of 1318 it rained every day but 3.

Ditto for China. The 14th through the 17th centuries saw both record droughts and rainfalls.

And none can be attributed to AGW.

Of course it can. The planet was anticipating our voracious energy usage in the future.

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

The Politicization

9 Comments

…of peer review:

What these and other episodes reveal was that there was a concerted effort to stage-manage the appearance of an ironclad consensus at the expense of the scientific process. Rather than make an open and honest argument that, despite persistent uncertainties, there is substantial theoretical and empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that human activity is contributing to a gradual warming of the atmosphere, they focused on squelching dissenting scientific views, corrupting science in the process.

Unfortunately, as a commenter there notes, there isn’t anything really new about this. Kuhn understood it over half a century ago. This episode simply provided an ugly window into it, and in a case where the science is deeply consequential. It doesn’t “prove” that the earth is not anthropogenically warming (and people who think that science “proves” things in general simply demonstrate their lack of understanding of science). What it does show is that the people who have been telling us that it does are not to be trusted, and that a thorough, and transparent, review of the evidence is in order before we base major policy on their preferences.

[Update a few minutes later]

Another good point in comments, and you should really read all the comments over there. It is in response to the comment that we shouldn’t throw out all of the good science and scientists based on these bad apples:

100% of the scientists with like conclusions who have had their emails and code exposed to the world seem to have engaged in bad behaviour. Furthermore, very few of the scientists with like conclusions condemned the bad behaviour, instead beginning by defending it. Given these facts, I think we should say that we don’t know whether other scientist with like conclusions have engaged in bad behaviour, rather than just assuming that they haven’t.

Also:

…it is critical to examine the influence the bad apples have had over everything subsequent. To do that you first need to realize that although there are reams of studies on AGW indeed, they are almost all based off a shocking small group of data. Historic temperature wise, there are 3 major datasets in the world, and (apparently now that CRU has lost theirs) one repository for raw data. These datasets are references in a staggering amount of research, and their creators and care takers are the exact people in question here. Doug [sic] Jones being the godfather. The Wegman report warmed of how a small group of climate scientists from a small number of institutes were working too closely together to hope for any independent analysis. That has proved entirely true.

Slightly OT, but that first comment reminds me of the national, even global exchange we’ve had over the past eight years:

Defense: Not all Muslims are terrorists.

Retort: Yes, but to first order, at least lately, all terrorists have been Muslim.

Sadly for those scientists with integrity working in this field (and we don’t know how many there are — perhaps most of those with integrity have been chased out by now), this scandal has tainted them all, even if the media continues to misreport or ignore it.