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

The Climate Cult

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Thoughts from Steve Hayward on the latest propaganda failure:

The temperature plateau and the persistent limitations and errors of the computer models strongly suggest the kind of “anomalies” that Thomas Kuhn famously explained should constitute a crisis for dominant scientific theories. What’s more, several papers recently published in the peer-reviewed literature conclude climate sensitivity is much lower than previously thought, making the problem of climate change much less likely to be catastrophic and more likely to be easily managed. But with the notable exceptions of the Economist and straight-shooting New York Times science blogger Andrew Revkin, these heterodox findings, which have steadily eroded the catastrophic climate change narrative, have received almost no media attention.

Despite all this, there has been not even the hint of a second thought from the climateers, nor any reflection that their opinions or strategies could bear some modification. The environmental community is so deeply invested in looming catastrophe that it’s difficult to envision a scientific result that would alter their cult-like bearing. Rather than reflect, they deflect, blaming the Koch brothers, the fossil fuel industry, and Republican “climate deniers” for their lack of political progress. Yet organized opposition to climate change fanaticism is tiny compared with the swollen staffs and huge marketing budgets of the major environmental organizations, not to mention the government agencies around the world that have thrown in with them on the issue. The main energy trade associations seldom speak up about climate science controversies. The major conservative think tanks have no climate change programs to speak of. The Cato Institute devotes just two people to the issue. The main opposition to climate fanaticism is confined to the Heartland Institute, the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and a scattering of relentless bloggers who have acquired surprisingly large readerships. That’s it. These are boutique operations next to the environmental establishment: The total budgets for all of these efforts would probably not add up to a month’s spending by just the Sierra Club. And yet we are to believe that this comparatively small effort has kept the climate change agenda at bay. It certainly keeps climateers in an uproar.

Well, someone has to do it.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Next Commercial Crew Battle

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OK, we lost the fight in committee, but now the bill goes to the full Senate. As noted here, individual senators actually can throw a wrench in the works, because there is a preference for unanimous consent. So now you don’t have to have a senator on the committee to fight the good fight — anyone with a senator or two (that is, any USian voter) can call one or both of them and try to fix this before the floor vote.

Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Skepticism

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Just what is it, anyway?

I consider myself a skeptic, in general. I don’t really “believe” in anything, including deities, except the scientific method. Of course, that means that I also don’t actively disbelieve in deities. I simply have no opinion about them.

When it comes to science, I accept as a working theory that which best seems to scientifically explain the available data, which is why I think that evolution is the best explanation for the fossil record and the structure and relationship of DNA in life on earth. But I don’t “believe” in it. I don’t even “believe” in gravity. I simply view it as a useful invention of Isaac Newton, improved upon by Einstein, to explain a lot of empirical phenomena, like things falling when dropped, or bodies in space orbiting other bodies. And what makes it useful is that it is very predictive.

Which brings us to climate “science,” which seems to be anything but. Which isn’t surprising, because the models remain primitive, both in terms of the computer power needed to properly model such a thing, and our understanding of the interactions. So when asked if I “believe” that the earth is warming, or if that warming is being caused by humans, I don’t really know what to say, since I don’t “believe” anything. I certainly can’t “deny” it, since I have no idea, but (as I’ve often said), if the planet is warming, it would hardly be surprising, considering that we’re less than half a millennium from the Little Ice Age.

To repeat: Here is what I do deny:

I deny that science is a compendium of knowledge to be ladled out to school children like government-approved pablum (and particularly malnutritious pablum), rather than a systematic method of attaining such knowledge.

I deny that skepticism about anthropogenic climate change is epistemologically equivalent to skepticism about evolution, and I resent the implications that if one is skeptical about the former, one must be similarly skeptical about the latter, and “anti-science.”

As someone who has done complex modeling and computer coding myself, I deny that we understand the complex and chaotic interactions of the atmosphere, oceans and solar and other inputs sufficiently to model them with any confidence into the future, and I deny that it is unreasonable and unscientific to think that those who believe they do have such understanding suffer from hubris. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, extraordinary policy prescriptions require extraordinary evidence.

Nothing has changed in the interim to cause me to change my opinions in that regard.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Obama’s Competence

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Americans are finally starting to figure out that he doesn’t have any.

Which is, of course, quite frustrating to those of us to whom this was obvious six years ago. And there was never any sensible reason to think otherwise.

[Update a few minutes later]

“Relentless incompetence: Americans are starting to give up on Obama.”

Unfortunately, at least two years too late. I’d like to see the latest “buyers’ remorse” polling of 2012 voters.

[Update a while later]

Obama’s failing foreign policy: Groping for a reset:

At this point, none of President Obama’s foreign policy problems can be solved by a teleprompter. The President doesn’t need more speechwriters or better ones. He needs something totally different: He needs some real-world wins. You don’t demonstrate your mastery of world events by making smart speeches about how intelligent your foreign policy is; you demonstrate your mastery of world events by having things go your way.

…The world is a big place, and there are lots of issues to choose from, but the President now urgently needs to put some points on the board. Otherwise, his authority will continue to erode.

As it is, the President appears to be second guessing himself, but in the worst possible way. He is stepping up support for the Syrian rebels, but not by enough to make a difference on the battlefield. He is proposing new military spending for Europe, but at such a low level that his proposal disappoints his allies and reassures his opponents. One can hope that some things are happening behind the scenes, but from what we can read in the press, President Obama is still splitting differences and splitting hairs when he could and should be making a stand. This is President Obama at his worst: months of agonizing and logic chopping ending in a strategy that fails.

The essence of strategy is to align your ends with your means: to match your goals and your resources. The core problem that has dogged this President from the beginning is a failure to do that. His goals have always been high and difficult, but he hasn’t wanted (or perhaps felt able) to invest the political, financial, or military resources that such large goals require. To heal the breach between the United States and the Arab world, for example, is a noble and a worthy goal, but it is extremely hard to do and would take much more money, political engagement, and policy change than President Obama has been willing to put on the table. Nuclear disarmament, a global climate change treaty, democracy in the Arab world, victory in Afghanistan, detente with Iran, the establishment of R2P as American doctrine, Israeli-Palestinian peace: This is less a foreign policy than a catalog of Holy Grails.

Based on a delusional view of the real world, and how it works. As he notes, the “reset” that is really needed is in the White House. And it won’t happen with its current inhabitant.

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