Please don’t shoot the messenger (or burn me at the stake for trying to speak truth to power). facts are facts…. consider this quote from article copied below.
The United Kingdom’s Met Office has been a major source of global temperature data in recent decades, and has been heavily relied upon by global-warming proponents. On March 12, a report written by David Whitehouse and published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation concluded that “there has been no statistically significant increase in annual global temperatures since 1997.”
After reading this article is occurs me to ask the question: What else are the so called experts wrong about? the way I see it science has no business forecasting complex systems like the economy or earth climate. Like I’ve said before, far from equilibrium (natural) complex systems like the economy and climate are analytically unresolveable. That means we can’t model these systems without making bogus simplifying assumptions that lead to flawed model forecasts. There are certain systems that we now know are beyond our capability to model. Climate and economy are two examples. This is a “fact” that we now know thanks to the latest developments in the science of complex systems. As the article below explains FA Hayek understood this intuitively and explained it in his “fatal conceit” idea related to the folly of central planning in the economy. It is ironic that science itself tells us that the sciences of climate and economic forecasting is really pseudo science, more like a religious belief than a “hard” scientific discipline.
Just because a vast majority of so called “climate scientists” agree that their models are correct doesn’t mean the models are correct or even relevant. We have other math and science experts outside of the field of climate and economic sciences who can tell us that the very idea of forecasting the earth climate or economy is futile and potentially very dangerous because it gives the impression we know what we are talking about. Bogus forecast results have hugely important policy implications as we saw as late as the 2H of 2008 when the economic models of the IMF and Fed and World Bank and most mainstream economists forecast no recession coming let alone a global credit shock with the potential to trigger a Great Depression II.
The author of this article copied below points out that it “is hard for believers to admit they are wrong.” of course, we all know how hard it is for religious fundamentalists to believe in anything that challenges their religious orthodoxy. But now we have the new modern religion of modern climate science (high priest Al Gore) and modern economics (high priest Paul Krugman) where true believers have a hard time admitting they are wrong. like I’ve said before, global warming science (now expediently called climate change science because the warming trend is dubious) is a new excuse for believing in something that we are told is true because it is “science.” Politicians have hijacked climate science and turned it into a bogus fundamentalist religious belief system that gets its validation from the so called experts who slice and dice the facts the way it suits them, just like religious leaders sliced and diced religious ideas to suit their purposes for 2000 years and still do it today.
I don’t say we should now throw science or religion over board because neither can give us the so called Truth and leaders in both manipulate the institutions for their own self interest and power. We need science and religion to make sense of the world, but we should be more modest in what we expect from either. The best we can do is use science and religion and art and literature and movies and whatever else there is in the world to help make sense of the fundamentally mysterious world we live in. if we use religion or science to answer fundamental mysteries that are beyond our power to understand, we risk turning them into fundamentalist belief systems that can be exploited by elites for their own selfish interests. Al Gore flies around in his jet and lives in the biggest house in Tennessee. Why do we listen to this self serving hypocritical a-hole any more than we should listen to Jerry Fallwell or George Bush or Obama or Clint Eastwood or fox new anchors or Bill O’Reilly, fat ass rush limbaugh, or Bill Maher, jon stewart or anyone writing in Rolling Stone or for Huffington post, or any politician, sport or movie star, climate scientist or economist who claims to know what is good for me or you let alone the whole earth.
Ethanol has been a disaster, but it is impossible to undo the damage let alone undo the policy because special interest groups hijack all public policy. We are supposed to believe the next great government idea for green energy will work. we’ve learned our lesson. We know more… blah blah blah. That is the same thing people say about socialism in any form it is tried or called.
Sam
Global Warming’s ‘Fatal Conceit’
This article appeared in The Washington Times on April 2, 2013.
Back in 1998, scientist Michael Mann published a paper with the famous “hockey stick” showing a sharp rise in global temperatures. Mr. Mann and others argued that if global action was not taken immediately, then the temperature rise would be rapid and uncontrollable. Much of Mr. Mann’s work was the basis for Al Gore’s famous film An Inconvenient Truth. What has turned out to be an inconvenient truth is that Mr. Mann and his allies were sloppy in their research and engaged in a campaign to disparage their critics.
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It’s hard for believers to admit they’re wrong.”
The United Kingdom’s Met Office has been a major source of global temperature data in recent decades, and has been heavily relied upon by global-warming proponents. On March 12, a report written by David Whitehouse and published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation concluded that “there has been no statistically significant increase in annual global temperatures since 1997.” In the accompanying chart, using the same official data from the Met Office that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses, it can be easily seen that global temperatures have not been rising as predicted by the best-known climate models.
According to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, “The report shows that the temperature standstill has been a much discussed topic in peer-reviewed scientific literature for years, but that this scientific debate has neither been followed by most of the media, nor acknowledged by climate campaigners, scientific societies and prominent scientists.” Lord Turnbull, former Cabinet secretary and head of the Home Civil Service, commented: “Dr. Whitehouse is a man who deserves to be listened to. He has consistently followed an approach of examining observations rather than projections of large-scale computer models, which are too often cited as ‘evidence.’ He looks dispassionately at the data, trying to establish what message it tells us, rather than using it to confirm a pre-held view. “Those of us who have studied “public choice theory” are not particularly surprised that many scientists and their media followers are in denial about what is increasingly obvious — that is, most of the climate projections were just plain wrong. If a person has a strong vested interest in a particular point of view and obtains government grants to show what politicians want to hear, or if he has been very public in his beliefs based on faulty data or information, it is hard to say, “I was wrong.” Politicians embrace any theory that justifies more taxing, spending and regulating because their power increases along with the accompanying financial opportunities.
Nobel laureate, economist and philosopher F.A. Hayek explained how there are limits to the knowledge that any one individual can possess, yet many have the “fatal conceit” that they know more than they do, and thus, they think they can plan and predict in ways they cannot. It is no surprise that climate models were wrong. For them to have been right, the model builders would have had to know all of the significant variables that affect climate, and the magnitude and interaction of each of those variables. There is virtually no single variable on which scientists are in total agreement about the magnitude of its effect. Carbon dioxide (CO2), for example, is considered to be very bad by most global-warming alarmists, including many officials in governments. We know that some level of CO2 is necessary for life, but we do not know the optimum level. The higher the level, the more rapidly plants grow, and the cheaper food becomes. It is just as plausible to say that there is too little CO2 in the atmosphere as that there is too much to maximize human well-being.
One of the world’s foremost experts on climate change, professor Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado at Boulder, recently wrote: “Flooding has not increased over the past century, nor have landfalling hurricanes. Remarkably, the U.S. is currently experiencing the longest-ever recorded period with no strikes of a Category 3 or stronger hurricane.” These anecdotes, along with a cold March, prove nothing one way or the other except that human beings know very little about what drives the climate.
Germany has spent more than 100 billion euros ($130 billion) on subsidizing the solar industry; yet, as Der Spiegel reported, “the 1.1 million solar systems have generated almost no power” this winter, and Germany is forced to import power from elsewhere. They are paying three or four times the U.S. rate for electricity, making many of their industries noncompetitive. The U.S. has been equally stupid. Even The New York Times has acknowledged that the U.S. ethanol experiment has been a disaster. It has actually increased carbon emissions and the price of fuel and world food, which really whacks the poor — all because of a “fatal conceit.”
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