scientific method

Nice Weather, Female Exhibitionism, and Scientific Research

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Religion , , , , , ,

Something interesting happened in Santa Cruz the past two or even three weeks. (I write on January 25 2014.) Or rather, something did not happened that should have. (I am alert to the dog that did not bark, as in Sherlock Holmes.)

For a long time now in the winter of 2013-014, comments on the weather have been in the national news much more frequently than is usual.

It’s been rather warmer here in Santa Cruz this January than it usually is in the middle of August. The Japanese cherry tree across the street has even been fooled into blooming! Although it’s a small city, I think Santa Cruz is a world center for warmism and for climatism (also for organic foodism, for vegetarianism, for nutism – it means eating only nuts – for deadly bicyclism,* for primitive feminism, for obligatory lesbianism, for residual Trotskysm, for holistic medicine, and perhaps also for holistic plumbing, I am not completely sure.)

Yet, yet, I never heard a peep through the local grapevine in the past few weeks about how the unseasonably warm weather was another proof of global warming. I only refer to the informal grapevine; I wouldn’t know if the local press had said anything. I don’t read it much; I have many unimportant things to do.

I have two explanations for this apparent surprising silence, one pretty sure, one tentative.

First, warm weather in January puts people in a good mood, even in California, even if they don’t want to be in a good mood. For one thing, the young women were walking around for days with the smug little look of nearly all women, everywhere, who get to show a bit of skin at a completely unexpected time. Their ebullient mood is catchy. The young men appreciate though they have been taught to avert their eyes lest they be accused of visual rape. The old guys frankly stare and smile, trying to remember why they do. (I know wherewith I speak!) The older women don’t seem to mind; it brings back warm memories, I would guess.

How about this: The strength of a national feminist movement is inversely correlated with mean winter temperatures?

My second, and tentative hypothesis about the lack of sententious comments about the warm weather in California is that ordinary people have finally caught on: You cannot argue that unexpectedly high temperatures in one fifth of the country are proof of global warming while maintaining that unprecedented low temperatures, at the same time, in three fifth of the countries do not contradict this view. You can’t have it both ways.

Of course, there is that other, newer beast, “climate change.” It goes like this:

If it’s warmer than usual, it’s because of man-made greenhouse gases. If it’s colder, it’s because of man-made greenhouse gases.

I laugh, I laugh stupidly but I could actually see this kind of argument made in a legitimate manner. You could try to show oscillations around a baseline. The baseline would have to be fixed. You couldn’t chose another baseline every time you did not like the weather facts. You would have to show that the oscillations have greater amplitude than was/is the case in some other test period or place (planet?). The greater amplitude oscillations would have to last for some reasonable period (not six years, for example). Finally, you would have to make a credible effort to show that high-magnitude oscillations are causally linked to greenhouse gas emissions. You couldn’t simply show two graphs looking a little bit alike and beginning and ending at times of your convenience, for example.

You would also have to publish prominently all the results of well designed research that indicated no greater oscillations than usual or no link between greater oscillations and the magnitude of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Honestly, you would also have to explain which man-made emissions do what: car exhausts, air pollution from nuclear plants, cattle belches. (The seconds don’t exist, I am just toying with your minds; the third is not a joke at all; look it up.)

Note that I did not use at all the word “proof.” A reasonably objective demonstration satisfying all the above would give this denier pause. Also, climate scientists who, I am told, overwhelmingly “believe” in climate change would have to make an creditable effort to stop the irresponsible media bullshit spread every day in their names. (More on the last point another day soon.)

Not much to ask and a tall order!

* See my piece “Global Warming and Child Sacrifice” at Facts Matter

Climate Change Worse (No Matter How You Look At It)

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Links , ,

In some places, it’s much warmer than usual. That’s so many instances of climate change, of course.

I some places, it’s much colder than usual. That’s also evidence of climate change.

Good technical article in the Wall Street Journal of  5/8/13  to remind us that  CO2 is plant food. The more CO2 the more plants, and the more food for humans. It’s by NASA astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt and W. Happer, a professor of Physics at Princeton.

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , ,

Hey all, I’m entering into a tough stretch at school, so my posting will be minimal for the next little while. Before I get to the cool links I’ve been reading, I thought I’d highlight Evgeniy’s recent piece on the chemical warfare taking place in Syria. If I am not mistaken, it is the rebels – al-Qaeda and Hizbollah – who are responsible for using chemical weapons. These are the same rebels that Dr Delacroix advocates the United States not only support morally, but militarily as well.

You can spot weak reasoning – morally as well as logically – when a person starts to hurl epithets like ‘isolationist’ or ‘pacifist’ around even after the other side insists that their position is anything but.

  1. Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware.
  2. China: Year Zero. 1979 and the Birth of an Economic Miracle.
  3. “Of the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of people that has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution to date, virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution of resources from rich to poor.”
  4. GMO Opponents are the Climate Skeptics of the Left. Not quite. Climate skepticism is rooted in scientific inquiry and politics, whereas the anti-GMO backlash is rooted in superstition. Nevertheless, a good read.

Y’all have a great week!

Lies and Untruths

Jacques Delacroix Philosophy , , , , , ,

Big lies are pretty much the same on all ends of the political starfish. I am more interested in persistent white lies and in the mechanisms of collective self-delusion. I think they are more common on the Left. In fact, I believe they underlie liberal thinking to a large extent.

Although I have been living most of my adult life with these kinds of untruths, in academia, I am only now trying to gain a precise understanding of the relevant psychology. It takes leisure time and some perspective, I suppose. I have spotted two big sources of half-involuntary mendacity, so far .

I have frequent conversations with a young liberal I chose deliberately because he is thoughtful, curious and he seems intellectually honest. (I don’t waste time on older people and I don’t waste time with liars; they are almost always boring.) We have had several exchanges on the reality of global warming. He sent me a long email explaining why he believed it was real while admitting he did not understand the science behind the claim and did not try to. I don’t try either; I don’t understand it either; I don’t have to. I know a liar and a fabricator when I see one. If your cause or your theory is good, you never have to lie about it. The last sentence of his last email stated that he had to go, on this issue, with the “majority” of scientists. I heard a click go off in my brain. This sounds oddly familiar though I have not heard it said so clearly. Continue reading →

Am I Smarter Than Everyone? Experts and Advocates (Revised)

Jacques Delacroix Religion , , , , ,

“Do you think you are smarter than everyone, Jacques?” asked the young intelligent liberal man with whom I have occasional conversations. He was referring to my deep skepticism regarding global warming, its consequences, its remedies, its very existence, when it comes down to it. He was also implicitly referring to an alleged “consensus” about global warming, of course.

Good question. Let me answer in two steps. First, I don’t think I am smarter than everyone and I don’t have to. Fortunately, the question does not arise. (See Part Two below.) Rather, I think I am smarter than most. It’s not much of a claim. It does not involves much conceit. “Most” means the same as “a majority.” That’s half, or 50%, plus one person. If you divided the human race in two equal halves based on intelligence, I think I would be standing somewhere to the right of the divide. So?

Part One

Here is my second answer to the question (That’s Part One – 2): I am much smarter than most in two important respects. I don’t have a religious fiber in my body and I don’t care if I belong to the club or not. In fact, I would rather not join. Many intelligent people, many much smarter than I, have a religious streak and they crave belonging. (The whole history of Communism in the West tells us that this is true.) Religiosity and wanting to belong have a great deal to do with belief in the global warming syndrome, I am sure.

The global warming syndrome is first and foremost a successful contemporary cult: It has its dogma (the world is ending because of our sins) and its priesthood (climate scientists with no scientific conscience, and other scientists who have no training regarding climate issues, a large majority of signatories of climate change manifestos, by the way.) It has its promised Armageddon, the Death of Life on Earth through global warming. But it’s a religion of redemption, like Christianity. We can still avoid the End, collectively, if we repent, give half of our money to the poor and accept future poverty for ourselves and for the poor themselves in the form of much diminished economic activity. The originality of this cult is that its Holy Places are nomadic. Its Rome used to be Kyoto, then it was Rio; today it’s Copenhagen. It will be somewhere else tomorrow (unless the End catches up with us first, of course. )

The cult also allows for individual salvation but only through rigorous methods: Sinners must reduce their individual carbon footprint, whatever it takes. As in some other religious groups, high-ranking members are exempted, however. The manager of the biggest limousine service in Copenhagen says she had to bring (gasoline and diesel) cars from Sweden and Germany because there aren’t enough in all of Denmark to satisfy the demand from delegates to the climate conference. It has now exceeded 1,200 vehicles of which five (5) are electric. (Confirmed by the Wall Street Journal on 12/14/09.)  I am not that smart actually so, I wonder why militant environmentalists seeking to reduce everyone’s carbon footprint can’t use the city’s vaunted public transportation.

Last but absolutely not least (see below), the global warming cult has its Grand Poopah. Like the Pope in Rome the Grand Poopah is infallible when speaking on matters of faith. No amount of evidence, and certainly, no misdeeds by his clergy, can persuade him to alter the intrinsically truthful dogma.

So, finally to answer the question: Yes, I think I am smarter than most because I am an atheist, Thanks God! None of the trappings of the global warming cult makes any impression on me. Zero! And, no, I have no desire to follow to the cult. As I have said, I have no wish to belong in general. In fact, I take a small and discreet but nevertheless real perverse pleasure in not going to church.

Part Two

The global warming cult uses the idea of science the way the Catholic Church used the arts, graphic, statuary and musical, for centuries, as an attractive wrapping for ideas that are basically unsound and unpalatable. The cult betrays itself when its spokesmen claim that there is a “scientific consensus” about climate change. There isn’t and if there were, it would not matter. The way a scientific theory comes to dominate any part of reality is through elimination of competing theories. That’s what happened with evolutionary theory for example. It was never “proven.” Rather other ways of explaining the same observations fell by the wayside and lost almost all their advocates. The global warming cult tries to pass for “scientific” precisely as it combats as forcefully as it can the consideration, and even the production, of competing explanations.

The public allows this to happen because of an excess of generosity, paradoxically. There is widespread confusion about what the holder of any intellectual position owes the public. The confusion is about the important distinction between “expert” and “advocate.” The American public generously allows the latter to operate with the rules intended for the former.

Experts are your doctor, your dentist, your car mechanic, your “chef de cuisine.” It’s generally accepted that experts’ performance should be assessed as a ratio of good decisions to bad decisions. People don’t withdraw their confidence from an expert because of the occasional misdiagnostic, because of a slip of the drill, or because of the rare extra nut on the car floor. It hurts me to say this but even a boring dish coming from a great chef allows him to remain a great chef. In this country, the courts even admit this kind of assessment. “Negligence” won’t get you much; it takes “gross negligence” to cash out.

An advocate is someone who is trying to make you change your ways and therefore, trying to make you change who you are. Because of the seriousness of their endeavor, and,often, its irreversibility, advocates must be held to a higher standard of truthfulness than are experts. Like this:

“If you don’t know what you are talking about, why should I change my life to make it conform to what you preach?”

And,

“If you have to lie for your cause, it’s a bad cause and I am not for it.”

The global warming cult had some of its clergymen in good standing caught telling untruths recently. The so-called “scientists” at the University of East Anglia both showed that they didn’t know what they were talking about and they lied. To make matters worse, the cult did not immediately spew them out but it tried to defend them and to minimize their crimes against truth. End of story. It’s absolutely fair and intellectually appropriate to stop believing any of the cult’s pronouncements.

And I haven’t even touched on he cult’s heartlessness. The best example is turning food crops into unnecessary and expensive fuel, which was sure to raise the price of food for the poorest of the poor in the world.

By the way, I could have saved you all this tedious reasoning. You just have to look at the cult’s Grand Poopah: Al Gore is an ignoramus who believes the inside of the earth is “millions of degrees” hot (I heard this with my own ears); he is a liar on multiple counts; he is a hypocrite who uses private jets and lives in a house 25 times larger than mine, with a corresponding carbon footprint. He is a moron who could not even carry his own state when he was running for President. That’s the same state of Tennessee where is daddy was a beloved Congressman for nearly thirty years. Of course, he, little Al, invented the Internet, but still!

Reminder: My fellow rationalists, there is not much reason to despair. Whatever, if anything, comes out of Copenhagen, will be an international agreement. Contrary to rumors in some right-wing circles, the President does not have the constitutional authority to enter into such agreements. They must be ratified by the Senate. And whatever has been ratified can be un-ratified after the next election.

Autism and National Public Radio

Jacques Delacroix Religion , , , , , , ,

I am obsessed with the question of widespread misinformation and even of stupidity among otherwise intelligent and formally educated people. That’s one big reason why I listen to National Public Radio.

On a recent episode of “Meet the Nation,” there is a far-ranging discussion of autism. The discussion begins well with a report on studies which show differences in frequency of diagnosis of autism according to socioeconomic status (some studies, predictably, with race as a stand-in) and also, according to spatial patterns. The latter, is important. It means that there are geographic clusters of autism. A New York sociologist showed that those patterns are not geographical in a simple physical sense but that they vary according to school district boundaries. Continue reading →

From the Comments: The Climate Change Cult

Jacques Delacroix Comments, Current Events, Politics , , ,

I reread your paragraph, Travis:

“I can see Delacroix’s point that a few un-peer-reviewed sources make one question what other sources are also un-reviewed, but it seems absurd to me to throw out all the information in all of the chapters of the IPCC report because it contains one un-peer-reviewed source. The chapter-leads who ultimately allowed the un-reviewed source to enter the IPCC report are not in charge of other chapters, which are essentially independent manuscripts, so why arbitrarily distrust them as well?”

You seem to say that the process by which papers (peer-reviewed papers, another issue discussed above) are compiled within each chapter of the IPCC reports is like  Wikipedia’s process for each of its entries.

Would you say that IPCC is as open to revision as Wikipedia is? I mean only revision by means of serious peer-reviewed papers. Suppose someone produced a study using good methods and trustworthy data and had it peer-reviewed (say on Mars). Suppose further the study concluded that there has been no real appreciable global warming since 1780. Do you think that there is a likelihood that the new study would be incorporated into the next IPCC report? What likelihood: 100%, 75%, 50%, 5%?

This is a real question for Travis . I don’t know if Travis is listening so, anyone besides Travis should feel free to answer it.

[Editor’s note: you can find the context of this post in discussions found here and here]

From the Comments: Climate Change Advocates and Religion

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events , , , , , , , , ,

Jacques Delacroix has a thoughtful response to an equally thoughtful comment by a climate scientist (full disclosure: the climate scientist is also a childhood friend of mine and a fairly decent man; I say “fairly decent” because he sometimes associated with people like me!) in his post on the peer review process. I thought I’d reproduce the whole thing here: Continue reading →

What’s Peer Review and Why it Matters

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , ,

WELCOME MBA STUDENTS. IF YOU NEED A BREAK, IF YOU FEEL LIKE SCHOOL AND WORK ARE GETTING TO YOU, TAKE A WALK THROUGH MY BLOG. YOU WILL BE AMAZED,  PLEASED AND SHOCKED. WELCOME.

JD

Global warming update: In its 2007 report, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that 40% of the Amazonian rain forest could be gone in a short time because of climate change. The source cited is not peer-reviewed. Its authors are a public policy analyst, that is, an advocate, and a journalist at the Guardian of London. Neither is a scientist. The main thing is that they did not even try to get their piece published in a real, scholarly, and therefore peer–reviewed journal.

Reliance on sources that are not peer-reviewed is forbidden by the UN Panel’s own rules. The fact that the IGPCC violated its own rules does not imply an evil intent but carelessness or zealots’ quasi religious enthusiasm. (I keep telling you that climate change is a religion.) I ask myself: How long would I continue to patronize a car mechanic who told this level of untruths?

The story was in the Telegraph, a UK left-wing newspaper, on January 25th. This came up after the 300+ mistake I talked about before, about the time it will take for Himalayas glaciers to melt down. (It’s 300 years longer than announced by the Panel, according to the correction given by the Panel itself!)

You can find everything including linked to references in the “ Watt’s Up With That” site. Continue reading →

Organic Food and Red Herrings

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Religion , , , , , ,

I use my editor’s privilege to respond here to Ryan MH’s argument in the piece entitled: “The Cost of Organic Food: An Exchange.” I do this for the sake of clarity alone. Ryan has unfettered access to this blog.

Let me begin by stating that I congratulate myself for having elicited a serviceable and seemingly complete definition of “organic” from Ryan. This is the first time someone give me a definition, in my whole life!

Ryan MH is all over the place  to such an extent that I felt like crying in my turn as I read. So, let me specify what I am interested in.

The issue of the high cost of organic food only matters to me because I believe that it is not different from a health standpoint from non-organic food grown in this country. I think it has no merits for the consumer except in his head.

I am focusing on the portion of the organic definition that had to do with the genetic modification of organisms by methods others than the traditional methods of artificial, guided, purposeful selection and hybridization by sex methods and such. This means pretty much methods that existed before World War Two.

Ryan said in my presence that  foods modified by new methods (“genetically modified” except that these terms have no meaning.), that such food have adverse effects on human health.

If Ryan MH did not say this or something identical, for practical purposes, I have no discussion with him. I must have misunderstood him and I apologize for wasting his time and yours. Continue reading →

Exploring Irrationality: Clusters

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , , ,

With great trepidation, I want to use this blog to do something that may be verging on the obscene. Don’t worry though, it does not involve my disrobing on-line, at least, not yet.

Let me explain: I style myself a strict rationalist. I have spend much of my life fighting and trying to destroy superstitions. Since I have lived in Santa Cruz, California, for more than ten years, I have been busy. Tech. note: Santa Cruz is where half digested vulgar Marxism meets endlessly with New Age beliefs, diet and exotic health practices. It’s also a major center for the cult of Gaiia. (“Gaiia” is the poetic name for that contrary bitch, Mother Nature.) I think facts matter and the people whose influence I fight every hour of the day when I am not sleeping think only beliefs and intentions matter. They are further sure that beautiful beliefs are more real than facts and that they trump facts (if any).

So, here I go: I have to speak about something I cannot quite explain and that has been puzzling me all my adult life and perhaps before. And it’s a little bit shameful:

Events that have little importance in my life and that I encounter rarely tend strongly to happen in clusters. Two interrelated examples below. Let me tell you right away: what’s below is both perplexing and fairly unimportant.

Example 1: I go to the beach with my grand-daughter who is three. It’s the same beach where we have gone fifty times this past summer. There is small concrete space there in front of a coffee shop and in front of a restaurant. That nice day, the space is jammed. I need to go to the restroom inside quickly. I scan the small crowd for a likely person or persons to whom to entrust my grand-daughter for a very few minutes. My eyes rest on a nice, hearty older couple. I ask them. They say yes with an accent I recognize as German. They confirm they are German tourists. Continue reading →