Tuesday, 22 November 2016

Essential Reading

This is a list of essential readings (apart from maybe the climate model section). For those interested in science, public policy and climate. Everyone should read all of this (apart from the optional climate models). There are some Green Fallacies here but I tire of them. So I put in some good green ideas to replace them.

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Monday, 21 November 2016

Anti-environmentalism

There are real people out here who might classify ourselves as anti-environmentalists. It does not mean against the environment, nor against conservation. It means opposed to the green movement. Given:

  • every proposal made by them is toxic to humanity.
  • their politics by-pass democracy, because they are unpopular and will always fail to convince the public their measures make sense. They can only succeed by sneaking measures in through the backdoor, generally via unelected, unaccountable, bodies.
  • The more their ideas are taken up by society the more harm they cause. For example: every green idea ultimately comes down to some notion of limits. There's not enough to go around, we're running out or resources or making too much waste. That's how it embeds itself in popular consciousness. This will only lead to conflict among groups of people. Calls to restrict immigration. The Nazi invasion of Poland was ultimately a bid to increase Germany's agricultural land. Because Hitler and the Nazi's believed that farmland productivity had been maxed out in the 1930s, and that German people's prosperity was ultimately limited by agriculture. Perhaps the experience of allied blockade in the First World War had something to do with that.
  • Today media and think tanks seriously discuss the possibility of future wars caused by environmental disputes. Disputes over the greenhous gas effect - which is now, essentially, fake, fraudulent science could be starting wars in the next few decades. Just like eugenics started the second world war 82 years ago.
  • Environmentalism is anti-progressive, and anti-human. Everyone on the left, right and centre of politics should oppose and marginalize environmentalists.

Goolge: 'anti-environmentalism'. I bet every article out there written by know-nothing greens. They are blind to their faults.

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Friday, 18 November 2016

Green strategies

  • “The roas to hell is paved with good intentions.” -- 1831
  • “Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.” -- T.S. Eliot

The Problem, as they see it

Environmentalist / green anti-humanism is quite literal. They look at the world and understand their enemy is Man. No girls. They are not sexist. They include you as their enemy too.

The common enemy of humanity is Man

In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interaction these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
-- Alexander King & Bertrand Schneider: The First Global Revolution A Report by the council of the Club of Rome, 1991, page 75 (quoted from Tim Ball)

How to solve a problem like Man:

You can stop a car engine by cutting off the fuel supply, but that would be extremely difficult and elicit quick anger in a country, as anger when fuel prices jump demonstrate. However, you can also stop a car engine by blocking the exhaust. Transfer that idea to nations and show that CO2, the byproduct of combustion of fossil fuels, was causing runaway, catastrophic, global warming to achieve the goal. What nastier image than the belching car exhaust or the even more dramatic chimneys of industry?
-- Tim Ball: The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science, 2014

If you know anything at all about the history of the anti-nuclear power movement, you'll know that constipating nuclear power is an important strategy they pursued since they began. It's also what the greens called it.

Reflecting on this, I wonder can we enumerate Green strategies?

This does not imply any kind of conspiracy, or even plan, by greens. I've seen some of their plans and they are very detailed. Instead: consider politics as a set of groups/institutions, in a similar way to an ecosystem as a set of organisms. Over time evolution happens. Some niches, previously unoccupied, gain occupants by adaption. Green politics may evolve as strategies, rather than plan. They invest their time in what works, a virtuous circle. This is unsurprising. Greens are about the thickest bunch of idiots I've come across. Often with very little understanding of the wider world of history, politics, economics, science, how other people think, how actual environments (real nature) works.

What key strategic themes do we observe?

  • Regulation: Greens prefer regulations that can not be challenged. Their favoured regulations by-pass democracy. This is an important reason why greens favour trans-national, non-democratic institutions such as the United Nations, European Union, etc. In the USA, they favour legally independent QUANGOs: such as the Environment Protection Agency, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Ideally, for enviros, such agencies are free from government controls (and democracy), and are able to make up law as they see fit, without having to account for how many jobs they destroy. The ideal result of green regulation is a ban. If not bans, then a spaghetti of endless red tape.
  • Kick it into the long grass: If it can't be stopped now, delay for a few years or decades. A good of example of this is the runway at Heathrow. At first glance, it looks like much of the delay had nothing much to do with greens. At second glance: consider just how far greenery embedded itself within the institutions of society. Strategies pursued here are: Legal challenges, Lobbying, endless commissions.
  • Precautionary Principle: This is not quite a ban. It's kicking into the long grass such that the ball is lost, almost forever. It's clearly impossible to prove that any activity is absolutely safe. Living itself is lethal. Even our civilization, and perhaps humanity itself, could be wiped out by a stray asteroid. I suppose you may counter this by saying but we can show an activity is safe: that's why we have drug trials, etc. isn't it? Such an answer misunderstands the nature of the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle is "prove the drug safe before we give you permission to test it, or even make it".
  • Constipation: Block the exit. Stop them making waste. Kick up a fuss about 'nuclear waste', carbon dioxide, whatever. In the nuclear power example: greens harp on about nuclear waste. Their motive it not fear of nuclear waste. It's not even to prevent disposal. With advanced nuclear reactors, using a closed fuel cycle, the amount of waste is so little it could all be kept on site without any problem at all. Bury the waste under 20 feet of packed earth and no measurable radiation escapes. The constipation strategy is simply aimed at wasting our time and resources. For example: Conning the US government into taxing nuclear power, so they can build a huge site, costing billions, that greens make sure is never used. They succeed when they con us into thinking that nuclear waste is an issue. Likewise: global warming and carbon dioxide. At first glance it looks like the con is more expensive energy. Green, carbon-free, energy. Yet what of green energy? Much green energy emits more CO2 than the energy it replaces. This is often the case with biofuel, bioenergy, and biomass. If, someday in the future we ever develop the advanced nuclear power I just alluded to: global warming would've been a green own goal. By that time, The Science, will be more settled. We'd have developed ways to show the effect of CO2 is far more marginal than the catastrophists claimed. By then, greens will have developed some new scare to terrify us with.
  • Innovation: Green scares don't last forever. Their anti-GMO scare is standing on shaky legs now. A recent innovation giving a 15%/20% increase in tobacco plant yields by applying genetic engineering to the photosynthetic pathway itself may be the final nail in the coffin of the anti-GMO drive. This GMO technique is very general. It could be applied to many, perhaps nearly all crops. it is applicable to all C3 crops. It, or related techniques, will also apply to C4 crops. In another example: the global warming scare influenced an entirely new generation of, often utopian-minded, nuclear power engineers. To develop perfect nuclear fission reactors, such as the LFTR, or near perfect reactors such as other MSRs. It even influenced rich people to fund the work. I doubt greens had that in mind when they threw their entire weight behind climate change catastrophe ideas.

    Consequently: greens are always on the look out for some new environment scare they can pose as an existential threat to humanity, in order to recruit more novices to their death cult, and replace the old guard with an new generation of Marks. Because, we need to admit it: most greens are marks, not grifters, although some are both.
  • Master Goal: Make everything more expensive. Strangle economic development. These are the real goals of the green movement. Environmentalism is a death cult. The Freudian Thantos in action.

A green says: Oh no, you're wrong. I'm a green and I don't think like that!. I reply: what of the organization or group which you belong to? What about the billionaires funding the group which you belong to, and setting its policy? What do they think? Why do these billionaires pick the kind of groups they pick to fund? Groups like Greenpeace. Every single environmental group is opposed to nuclear power. Deep green Jim Hansen, even went so far to say the leaders of such groups would like to support nuclear power but they can't. They are afraid of having their funds cut off. [You see - there was a reason I began with a quote by Ur-Greens The Club of Rome, founded by with Uber-Green: David Rockefeller's money - the man with the golden arm.]

A green again: You said we were stupid. We are actually: clever, wise, humane, and the only people taking the long view for our common home. I reply: Well, I always thought the same of myself (especially the clever bit). Clever but stupid enough to fall for CAGW, renewables, and sustainability. It's only when I looked at those things with a dispassionate eye I saw the flaws. Trust me, you are not so clever, otherwise you would not lie so much. Nor be so easily found out. Nor would you promote obviously failing, and contradictory, policies. As for the rest:

Notes:

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Thursday, 17 November 2016

U.S. Presidential Election

The Dems tried to win the election with a combination of Identity politics and green policies

Clinton lost, Trump did not win as such. She had far fewer votes than Obama in 2008 and 2012. Trump's vote was about the same as Republican presidential candidates in those years.

Technically Clinton lost, but it was the Dems who really lost. By selecting her as The Anointed One. More realistically she was given Buggins' turn. Republicans even gave Dems the opponent they craved: Trump. Dems were tooled up with a more efficient (better educated, scheming) Party machine. Just as much money. Still lost!

Identity Politics offers nothing positive

"vote for us because they are racists"

At the the end of the day, that kind of thing is all identity politics comes down to.

Identity politics are nothing new. The USA was founded on it. Whites played off against blacks. Each wave of immigrants played off against newcomers. Catholics, Jews, Irish marginalized in turn. Yet there was always some hope on offer: The American Dream. That's gone for sure. Multiculturalism is supposed to lead to different identities living in harmony. That's not how multiculturalism plays out in actual politics. In practice it's the same old identity politics reversed. This time the people to fear are whites: white men, white women, white privilege, or white racists - as the Dems propaganda machine would have it. Because if we're to coalesce the multiple cultures around something, what can it be? The American Dream is yesterday's dream. Hope for a better future is gone. Tomorrows nightmares are all that's left.

With no positive policies : just same old, same old. They make a new anti-white identity politics. This tries to unify the multiple 'marginalised' identities (blacks, latinos, gays, women) against white men. It works the same way the same old identity politics 'worked'. Yet knowing they can't sell identity + green because there is nothing positive there to give people. They end up selling hate. Hate is hard to sell when your message says Love Trumps Hate. Incoherent. I'm glad lots of people rejected the Dems nowhere campaign. It leaves me with a sense of hope for the American people. A sense they are wiser than their wannabee Machiavellian politicos.

Green Policies are intrinsically negative too

The other big influence on Dems : the greens. Green policies are directly opposed to the old economic growth policies of FDR's New Deal Dems. Today's Dems have no economic alternative because growth is off the table. No American Dream. Not even a mildly pleasant slumber. Just green nightmares: 'carbon' pollution, the weather misrepresented as climate change, humanity as the villain murdering Gaia. There are good reasons why environmentalism has such a low priority on voters' minds: everything about it is associated with bad things or limits.

Malthus: the ghost is the Dem machine.

Left greens suppose they exorcised Malthus from their policies/politics by never talking about him.

Look: we are all for immigration today : we are left greens!
Anyone who dares mention him will be torn down by a torrent of PC emotional blackmail. The elephant in the room: is all green policies implicitly invoke Malthus, even as they try to explicitly hide him. Green Luddism, anti-GMO, antinuclear power, the focus on limits, sustainability, renewables, organic farming, climate, whatever. All limits obsessed. It follows: if there are limits there are already too many people. Not saying so does not make it otherwise. The hate that dare not speak its name will be heard. It is all shot through with Malthus. Not enough to go around.
“Please sir, may I have some more”

No. You cheeky blighter. You already have too much. Americans with a lower standard of living than their parents, decaying infrastructure, harassed by a media doom machine, are told to open the borders! Au Contraire, they say: if there isn't enough in America for those already living here, how can there be enough for new immigrants?

Even a mid-ling, at best, realtor beat the wannabee Machiavellians running the Dem machine. All he had to do was offer a glimmer of hope: Make America Great Again

By embracing green ideas, the Left commit political suicide. The Dems can't see what they did. They are blind to their self-immolation.

To finish it off: there is no such practical project as left-wing environmentalism. No such thing as green socialism. Fortunately, the typical voter can smell rotten politics and will never vote for it. This is why greens are always trying to smuggle their policies in through the back door. In through some unaccountable body such as the EPA, UN, a global treaty. Demands for democratic accountability are a good way to counter the threat of environmentalism.

Notes:

  1. Mike Davis: "Prisoners of The American Dream", 1986
  2. Kenan Malik: "The Meaning of Race", 1996: Why pluralism plays itself out as identity politics, and why it fails.
  3. Green billionaire hedgie: Tom Steyer invested $74 million in the Dems campaign. I suppose his reward would've been Hillary installing 500 million solar panels (or was it 700m ?). With green subsidies, Tom's hedge funds were probably expecting to make a killing on solar and RE futures. Closing coal and nuclear power just makes electricity dearer for the put upon U.S. people.
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Wednesday, 16 November 2016

Climate catastrophe 'science'

Mass paranoia over CO2 emissions is not such a great boon to nuclear power as some nuclear power supporters think. Because their science (AKA The Science) is not nearly as strong as climate catastrophists make it out to be. It increasingly looks to me that the impetus behind climate catastrophe science was just another excuse by greens to impose austerity and energy poverty upon the world. Fortunately for us mass paranoia over climate catastrophe failed. They may have conned politicians but reality can't be so easily tricked. Many self-styled climate scientists promoting climate catastrophe scenarios (Greg Laden, Joe Romm, Michael Mann) are also anti-energy greens. Climate catastrophe scientists spend most of their time dissing anyone who opposes their climate catastrophe hypotheses. Supposedly because skeptics have the science wrong. Yet anti-nuclear activists, who use bad climate science to oppose nuclear power unsurprisingly get a free pass promoting bad science. My enemy's enemy is my friend, or so they must think. Other climate scientists who began climate catastrophe scenarios were anti-nuclear once upon a time. Anti-energy means anti-nuclear power foremost, before anti-fossil fuel. Because they know nuclear power has the potential to supply us with far more energy than fossil fuel ever could - for millions of years into the future.

  • However, you can also stop a car engine by blocking the exhaust. Transfer that idea to nations and slow that CO2,
  • Many 'climate' activists are obsessed with stopping nuclear power:
    • Andrew Lawrence, Benjamin Sovacool & Andrew Stirling at the Sussex Energy Group
    • Joe Romm - climate activist and supposedly a climate scientist
    • Greg Laden - climate activist and supposedly a climate scientist
    • Michael Mann singles out Paul R. Ehrlich and Rachel Carson as 'persecuted saints' of environmentalism.
    • the green movement, in general, are universally opposed to nuclear power. Many climate campaigners are greens or ex-greens.
  • There's a striking similarity to the strategies they use to stop nuclear power and fossil fuels. Constipating nuclear power, and blocking the exhaust. No accident.
  • Actual science of the supposed greenhouse catastrophe is very poorly explained. The GHG effect itself.
  • Science works by creating theories based on assumptions, which other scientists, performing as skeptics, test. The structure and mandate of the IPCC was in direct contradiction to this scientific method. They set out to prove the theory rather than disprove it. Maurice Strong and his UN committees made sure the focus was on human-caused change and CO2 as the particular culprit. They’d already biased the research by using a very narrow definition of climate change as discussed earlier. Properly, a scientific definition would put natural climate variability first, but at no point does the UN mandate require an advance of climate science.
    --Tim Ball
  • Following on from above, scientists who try to perform the role of skeptic are demonized, their careers sabotaged. This includes mainstream, moderate, greenhouse gas believers like Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Jr. It seems the more mainstream they are, the more vitriol they attract from the climate catastrophe crowd. I've had, otherwise sensible people, tell me Judith Curry and Roger Pielke are 'deniers'. Not on the basis of anything they ever said. Both these two accept man-made global warming, and greenhouse gas radiative forcing. They just don't accept the rest of the lies piled on that. Climate extremists want me to side with them on this and other issues! Unlikely: if you can't get basics right, don't expect to sign me up for the extended programme.
  • Wikileaks exposed how senior Democratic Party organizers ran a systematic defamation campaign against Roger Pielke Jr.
  • Government does not like people exposing its climate mafia. Sends the feds to steal back the evidence.

What does 'The Science' get wrong?

  • The projected atmospheric rise due to a doubling of CO2 = 1.1ºC. Catastrophists claim an amplification of 3 ×, to 3.3ºC caused by a warmer climate evaporating more water. Because water is a more serious GHG than CO2. The amplification depends on water vapour increasing in the atmosphere. AKA: a global increase in specific or absolute humidity. That hasn't happened. If anything global humidity fell!, when it was supposed to rise. Climate models work on the basis of increasing humidity. Reality does the opposite. This is fraud, not science. Skeptics claim a dampening of a half. So expect 560 ppm to give a temperature rise = 0.55ºC. The dampening happens because water condenses to clouds. Clouds reflect sunlight. Ha, ha. Skeptics steal an idea from James Lovelock. The climate is self-adapting to a degree. The 'deep green' CAGWers ignore the Gaia hypothesis and propose chaos and catastrophe at every opportunity. Ironic
  • "CO2 ... cannot hold heat, all gases radiate heat as fast as it is absorbed"
  • In the historical record temperature increase precedes atmospheric CO2 increase. The opposite of what CAGWers claim. This is most likely because a higher climate temperature causes CO2 to be released from oceans. Because CO2 is less soluble in warm water. There is far more CO2 stored in earth's oceans than atmosphere.
    How many times does it have to be said that temperature increases before CO2 in every single record? For some, it becomes a form of the precautionary principle: the idea that, even if humans are not causing warming, shouldn’t we limit population anyway?
    -- Tim Ball, The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science, 2014
  • Misapplying the scientific method. By cherry-picking the data. By prioritising hypothesis over data. By not validating their hypothesis.
  • Writing bad models, and thinking their models have something significant to say. Their models reflect their bias, but hide it from themselves. They fool themselves.
  • Ignoring the data. Their science says: more global warming is leading to more extreme weather, including more and more violent tornadoes. Real science shows fewer tornadoes today (in supposedly the hottest year on record) than any time since 1954:
  • Data curation: Actually it is called 'homogenized' by the WMO not 'curated'. Either way it is BS and basically involves 'adjusting downwards' historical land based data at specific sites on the basis of data cherry picked from elsewhere. BOM freely admit they do that but when CSIRO use that BOM 'data' in their own graphs and papers, they (i) deny that it is homogenized data, and (2) refuse to go and clarify that point with BOM themselves. That how dissembling, dysfunctional and post-modernist the whole 'hottest temperatures since...' charade has become. (Steve Short)

    Example: Curating history to correct the evil climate change thermometers from yesteryear. Must've been purchased from Republicans!
  • Several bad things they are doing with science above. They are also:
    • Leading people astray, which misdirects our energies to the wrong problems (or pseudo-problems), leading to us to promote wrong solutions.
    • Giving credence to anti-humanists who seek to further energy poverty, degrowth, and Luddism.
    • Promoting unworkable policies. The majority of the public will recognise what's in their interest. Catastrophism, Luddism, degrowth and austerity are not.
    • Enviros are obsessed renewable energy.
      • A good way to cool the earth (if it really is getting too warm) is to paint sky-facing surfaces white. To reflect sunlight back into space. Isn't it strange we've never heard the enviros campaign for this measure when it is so cost effective?
      • The often hate nuclear power. Which is the most scalable technology for making non-CO2 emitting energy.
    • From the two points above (which enviros reject and deny). I conclude enviros know that CAGW is a fraud.

But lots of CAGW believers support nuclear power!

Typical of them. Yet many CAGW believers changed their mind on nuclear power, because they had to resolve a contradiction in their own minds over CO2 greenhouse gas. This actually leads to several problems or contradictions, which I do not think are helping to drive forth nuclear power. Supporters of CAGW, and nuclear power:

  • Obsess over greenhouse gas. They often talk as if low-GHG emissions are the only game in town. This ignores nuclear power's other advantages: energy security, safety, abundance, potential to be the cheapest source of power by some margin.
  • Ignore the need for major changes in nuclear power regulation. Limited deregulation could set nuclear power free to give us cheaper energy than ever before. Even safer too!
  • They concede too much to greens. Green Luddism, degrowth metaphysics, and anti-humanism are some of the most pernicious and reactionary forces at work in modern politics. Nothing good, nor progressive is coming out of the green movement.

Reference

  1. Ball, Tim. The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science (Kindle Locations 815-816). Stairway Press. Kindle Edition.

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"The" Science.

This is a bit of a reaction to reading Tim Ball's book. I'm none too happy with the philosophy of science implied therein. What is Science? From whence did it come? I'm also a bit obsessed with philosophy of science and meta-theory in general. Why do we meta-theorise so much and is any of it, apart from science, of any use. No not really, but some is.

Science, as I understand it, began about 2,600 years ago on the East coast of Turkey, in what was called Ionia, near the island of Samos, in a trading port settled by Greeks called Miletus. Here two philosophers Thales, followed by Anaximander sought to create a new world view. Their new world view attempted to explain all worldly events and phenomena using naturalistic explanations. They tried to replace explanations based on the supernatural: myth (e.g. The Dreamtime), whim, will, or law of the Gods, luck, nature spirits, and fate, ... Over the years, science stumbled on, adding maths quite early on. So consistent were Anaximander's naturalistic explanations, one is led to believe he was attempting to found an entirely new way of looking at the world. The Ur of science is not experimental method. It is naturalism. Eventually this led to the European scientific revolution: Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. To a degree these early European scientists stressed the importance of scientific method. That they were merely trying to explain the natural world. Not seeking to overthrow the Church with its supernaturalism. In truth, in order to do science at all they had to compromise like that. Many were, in fact, perfectly happy to believe the compromise legitimate too.

Note: (added 2021-10-22) Fundamentally, the European scientific revolution introduced a focus on empiricism. Modern science has lost this. Too many people use science as ideology. In some fields, many academics, don't do empirical research, or worse, they have such a straight-jacket on they minds that the empirical research is only done to confirm their prejudices.

Taking an overview I come to some conclusions:

What characterises science?

How is science different to other ways of talking about the world? E.g. Apart from it's naturalism. As already stated: science overthrows all supernatural explanations.

  1. Scientific explanations are naturalistic, and only so. There is no creation science. It would be orthogonal to the project of science from the earliest times.
  2. Scientific explanations begin with observation of the world. Precisely recording what happens.
  3. Precision and fidelity to the record are of great importance.
  4. Maths is big in science. Maths allow prediction but mathed science theory has often been approximate (to nature) in the past. Either slightly or very.
  5. Once data has been collected, scientists try to find patterns. Such patterns are often called "Scientific Laws". So in a sense: data is sacred. Messing with the data is fundamentally anti-scientific. Because how can you tease out the laws if you are cherry-picking or faking data?
  6. There are many ways to detect patterns or laws. Statistics has been one of them. Statistics is misused; so careful before you accept any statistical inference. Stats has not only been misused but rampantly so. Much pseudoscience was promoted with weak stats. [Gelman 2016], [Stark & Saltelli 2018]
  7. The discovery and promotion of the experimental method was a great step forward and this really launched Western Science, to bring us where we are today. A fundamental pattern in experiment is to hold many variables constant while varying only one or a few.
  8. Observation is still important, but not so useful because the effect of variation can't be examined independently.
  9. Scientists seek to systematize and unify established patterns ("Scientific Laws") with theories. A theory will both explain a Law, and, usually, be able to derive it from fundamental explanations. For a theory to be generally accepted it must be able to explain everything important. Theories can not contradict Laws. Remember: laws are derived from patterns in the data.
  10. A hypothesis is a candidate, or proposed, theory. A theory is generally accepted by nearly all scientists.
  11. Because there are so many possible hypotheses, we need to limit investigation to testable hypotheses. Such a hypothesis will be formulated with tests. Tests are observations and experiments which can be done.
  12. Occam's Razor: A good hypotheses/theory should be the simplest explanation compatible with the data. (sacred data again!)
  13. Validation.
  14. Symmetry/Beauty: This is a modern addition to the scientific method. Scientists prefer hypotheses which show symmetry. Meaning: They are mathematically pretty! Examples: it works that same way with anti-matter as with matter. It works the same way in all directions, in all places in space/time. Symmetry may be a false flag. The effort put into string theory was certainly not worth it. We got nothing from any of the 'studies' and PhDs published.
  15. All the theories of science gel together to form a holistic world view. Which is naturalistic. The scientific world view. Theories must unify patterns (or Laws) yet the best theories unify with each other to form a totality.
  16. There is, of course, "the scientific method", but this is really a caricature. Scientists don't hang about dreaming up hypotheses, then try to prove them with experiment. That would lead to bad science, or string theory. Better to experiment. Carefully record the results, and tease out a law, or hypotheses from the facts. Knowing full well: any law or hypothesis teased out must be compatible with the totality of science as it currently is. Otherwise big paradox: like dark energy / dark matter, or dose-response. In a nutshell: The scientific method, as it's often presented, is wrong. I.e. The explanation is wrong. Students are misled. The scientific method, as it is really practiced to give us better science, must be right. Otherwise there wouldn't be better science. Perhaps this is, in part, due to the influence of Popper (on the one hand), and philosophers of science (like Kuhn) on the other. The link I gave here gives a classic misrepresentation of the scientific method. In reality: scientific explanations are all naturalistic, faithful to the data, and consistently form a coherrent body, or world-view.
  17. The Popperian view is: "science is what works". Clichéd, as his fans love to tell it. In other words: if the hypothesis leads to predictions which fail, then it's wrong. A good theory is testable. Unfortunately this elides the fact that science has been a collective endeavor for 2,600 years. I'm not refuting Popper. He is right. I just think he's too simplistic. A 'good' theory relying on a nature spirit explanation, which was perfectly compatible with the data is: not naturalistic, nor the simplest possible, and it does not gel with the rest of science. It may be OK for a Popperian. It's rubbish for me; anti-science if you like.
  18. Then there's the Kuhnian point of view. For Kuhn scientific theory is paramount. Current accepted theory establishes a world view (scientific paradigm) of a society and/or the scientific elite (a bit like an Hegel's, Spirit of the Age, like a Zeitgeist, except something we all accept without question). People love to tell us how primitive humanity once was: how Columbus (or was it Magellan) first found the world was round by sailing it. Except they did not. The Greeks, 2,300 years ago already knew the earth floated as a sphere in space. Kuhn's caricature is just that. Kuhn considers theories as some kind of pick and mix. Yet points: 1), 2), 5), 9), 12) above show there is no pick and mix. Any new theory attempting to displace an existing one must fit the totality of what science means and what it is to do science. Philosophers love Kuhn. They love relativising science, and Kuhn is their big artillery argument.

'The Science': AKA man-made global warming

  • CAGW : Catastrophic, anthropic, global warming. A hypothesis that greenhouse gas (like Carbon dioxide, water and methane) released into the atmosphere by human activity will cause runaway global warming and catastrophe. In some extreme variants: destroying humanity.
  • CAGW promoters nearly always call their idea climate change. Whenever they talk about climate change they mean CAGW, but refuse to use the term that describes their beliefs. Extraordinary really!
  • Consider how CAGW came about. Did they carefully observe, tease out climate laws, then find a hypothesis which was the simplest possible explanation? All the while, remaining faithful to the data? 'Listening to' the data? It does not seem so.
  • CAGW is not a theory. It can't even be considered a hypothesis really. It is not consistent enough. They have not even found a model they all agree on!. It ignores too much due to it's 1-dimensional obsession with GHG.
  • Tim Ball, "The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science", 2014

Reference

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Tuesday, 15 November 2016

Tornadoes in 2016

Liberal media tell us 2016 is the warmest year on record. That global warming is devastating the the climate with extreme weather. Yet, as of today 2016 US tornadoes are fewest in a calendar year since record-keeping began in 1954.

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Climate modeling fraud

" The data does not matter... We're not basing our recommendations on the data; we're basing them on the climate models. "...