Category Archives: Science And Society

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

No Fools, They

10 Comments

India won’t sign any binding carbon reductions. They’d be crazy to, just when they’ve finally thrown off much of the socialism that has held them back for decades, and are finally bringing their people out of poverty, particularly when it’s based on flimsy science, and economic ignorance. The Warm-monger religion demands that they remain in poverty for the good of Gaia, but they’ll stick with their traditional beliefs, and fully bellies.

[Update a couple minutes later]

More from Shikha Dalmia:

The resulting emission cuts won’t even make a dent in global temperatures. India’s per capita energy consumption is 15 times less than America’s and half of China’s—the two biggest polluters. To be sure, President Obama is poised to pledge to cut U.S. carbon emissions 80% below 2005 by 2050 at Copenhagen. But it’s an empty promise because there is little to zero chance that he will be able to get Congress to go along. China too announced plans—modest by all accounts—to curb its emissions. So India will certainly face pressure at the conference to act, despite the fact that bigger polluters won’t.

But as a developing country, India can least afford to give up its right to consume as much energy as is necessary to deliver all Indians a living standard comparable to the one that rich countries take for granted. There is every reason to believe that the new License Raj will damage India’s economy every bit as much as the old one in the preliberalization days, when India’s growth rate remained stuck at around 2%. This would be unfortunate at any time, but especially now, when the West itself is in the middle of a huge rethinking on this issue.

Yup.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Climaquiddick And The EPA

3 Comments

It’s about to hit:

I cannot think of any instance where the EPA depended so heavily on non-EPA synthesis reports to justify proposed regulatory action in their almost 39 years of existence.

As a result of this EPA decision, the EPA’s fortunes in regard to regulating GHGs are directly tied to the fate of the IPCC reports.

Let the lawsuits begin.

[Late afternoon update]

Here we go. CEI has petitioned the EPA to suspend its CO2 regulations.

[Bumped]

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

What Is Science?

5 Comments

APS has an explanation for the warm-mongers:

Science is the systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the universe and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories.

The success and credibility of science are anchored in the willingness of scientists to:

1. Expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others. This requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials.
2. Abandon or modify previously accepted conclusions when confronted with more complete or reliable experimental or observational evidence.

Adherence to these principles provides a mechanism for self-correction that is the foundation of the credibility of science.

But, but…it’s settled! We have to save the planet!

Humor, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire, Science And Society

It’s Really Quite Simple

9 Comments

I think I’ve found the pseudocode for Mann’s temperature charts:

input hockey_stick array
input year_data array
For each year (1000 - 2009) {
   while (year_data_of_year less than hockey_stick_of_year) {
      if (year_data_of_year less than hockey_stick_of_year) {
         year_data_of_year += 0.1 degrees
         }
      }
   plot year_data_of_year
   }

See, nothing to it. Poor Harry wouldn’t have had so much frustration if he’d just stuck with the script.