Krauthammer belongs to the same lineage as people who -- in my lifetime -- denied the pathogenicity of tobacco; people who also decried the use of seat belts because they "wanted to be thrown clear of the car."
Note well: Dimwits comprise a continual "conservative" constituency,
denying science with"magical thing."
denying science with"magical thing."
"The Danger of Science Denial" http://paxonbothhouses.
"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals" http://paxonbothhouses.
Alan: As a physician, Krauthammer should know that "settled science" does not mean absolutely certainty. Rather, "settled science" describes the achievement of enough statistical probability that reasonable people take action. Krauthammer's allegation that "scientists pretend to know exactly what this cause" and that this purported presumption makes them "white-coated propagandists" is, itself, the frank falsehood of a rank propagandist. Except for the reasonable assertions that greenhouse gases are culprits that make global temperatures and sea levels rise, I see no consensus that scientists "know exactly what to do." As is true for the members of Krauthammer's own medical profession, climate scientists offer opinions. And it good that they offer opinions for -- in the absence of absolute knowledge -- we gather informed opinions and from them make the most reasonable decisions possible. The dream of "doing nothing" is no longer tauted by anyone with a folded cortex, not even Sarah Palin who admits that "Alaska feels the impacts of climate change more than any other state." http://paxonbothhouses.
- Charles Krauthammer
- Opinion Writer
The myth of ‘settled science’
“The debate is settled,” asserted propagandist in chief Barack Obama in his latest State of the Union address. “Climate change is a fact.” Really? There is nothing more anti-scientific than the very idea that science is settled, static, impervious to challenge. Take a non-climate example. It was long assumed that mammograms help reduce breast cancer deaths. This fact was so settled that Obamacare requires every plan to offer mammograms (for free, no less) or be subject to termination.
Now we learn from a massive randomized study — 90,000 women followed for 25 years — that mammograms may have no effect on breast cancer deaths. One out of five of those diagnosed by mammogram receives unnecessary radiation, chemo or surgery.
So much for settledness. And climate is less well understood than breast cancer. If climate science is settled, why do its predictions keep changing? And how is it that the great physicist Freeman Dyson, who did some climate research in the late 1970s, thinks today’s climate-change Cassandras are hopelessly mistaken?
They deal with the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans, argues Dyson, ignoring the effect of biology, i.e., vegetation and topsoil. Further, their predictions rest on models they fall in love with: “You sit in front of a computer screen for 10 years and you start to think of your model as being real.” Not surprisingly, these models have been “consistently and spectacularly wrong” in their predictions, write atmospheric scientists Richard McNider and John Christy — and always, amazingly, in the same direction.
Settled? Even Britain’s national weather service concedes there’s been no change — delicately called a “pause” — in global temperature in 15 years. If even the raw data is recalcitrant, let alone the assumptions and underlying models, how settled is the science?
But even worse than the pretense of settledness is the cynical attribution of any politically convenient natural disaster to climate change, a clever term that allows you to attribute anything — warming and cooling, drought and flood — to man’s sinful carbon burning.
Accordingly, Obama ostentatiously visited drought-stricken California last Friday. Surprise! He blamed climate change. Here even the New York Times gagged, pointing out that far from being supported by the evidence, “the most recent computer projections suggest that as the world warms, California should get wetter, not drier, in the winter.”
How inconvenient. But we’ve been here before. Hurricane Sandy was made the poster child for the alleged increased frequency and strength of “extreme weather events” like hurricanes.
Nonsense. Sandy wasn’t even a hurricanewhen it hit the United States. Indeed, in all of 2012, only a single hurricane made U.S. landfall . And 2013 saw the fewest Atlantic hurricanes in 30 years. In fact, in the last half-century, one-third fewer major hurricanes have hit the United States than in the previous half-century.
Similarly tornadoes. Every time one hits, the climate-change commentary begins. Yet last year saw the fewest in a quarter-century. And the last 30 years — of presumed global warming — has seen a 30 percent decrease in extreme tornado activity (F3 and above) versus the previous 30 years.
None of this is dispositive. It doesn’t settle the issue. But that’s the point. It mocks the very notion of settled science, which is nothing but a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate. As does the term “denier” — an echo of Holocaust denial, contemptibly suggesting the malevolent rejection of an established historical truth.
Climate-change proponents have made their cause a matter of fealty and faith. For folks who pretend to be brave carriers of the scientific ethic, there’s more than a tinge of religion in their jeremiads. If you whore after other gods, the Bible tells us, “the Lord’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit” (Deuteronomy 11).
Sounds like California. Except that today there’s a new god, the Earth Mother. And a new set of sins — burning coal and driving a fully equipped F-150.
But whoring is whoring, and the gods must be appeased. So if California burns, you send your high priest (in carbon -belching Air Force One, but never mind) to the bone-dry land to offer up, on behalf of the repentant congregation, a $1 billion burnt offering called a “climate resilience fund.”
Ah, settled science in action.
Follow-up correspondence:
Lefties are not immune to religious fervor and have, in fact, made a sacrament of abortion.
More Follow-Up Correspondence:
Dear Fred,
On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 11:36 AM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
Climate change is the left-wing apocalypse. I hear the word "believe" too many times. Lefties are not immune to religious fervor.My writing blog is Frog Hospital
send mail to:
Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001
Dear Fred,
Thanks for your email.
However, climate change is real and it is really caused by green house gases as Swedish scientist, Arrhennius, first pointed out in 1896.
Even Krauthammer admits that "it cannot be good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."
Anthropogenic global warming is not subject to litmuses of belief.
It is a fact - plain as potatoes or a tit in your mouth.
To deny that humans cause global warming is to align with the same folk who denied the pathogenicity of tobacco and the lethal danger of seat belts.
It's like saying: "Despite the alternatives, I will burn fossil fuels because I want to be thrown clear of the planet."
Pax tecum
Alan
More Follow-Up Correspondence:
Dear Fred,
More Follow-Up Correspondence:
On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 12:55 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
Who can I count on? Do I depend on some academic twit screaming "I told you this would happen" -- what good is he?Krauthammer is one of the people I want on my team if the going gets rough. It really doesn't matter if he's right or wrongThis is where I'm having trouble with climate change advocates -- who is going to be sandbagging and manning the dikes when the river floods?
Thanks for your emails.
As witnessed in New Orleans, it will not be Republicans who man the dikes and do the sandbagging.
As witnessed in New Jersey, it will be Democrats who man the dikes and do the sandbagging.
As for the academic twits...
On one hand they are "all" democrats so that politically at least they will do what they can to ensure the dikes are manned and sand bagged.
It is also true that prior to The Revelation (now in progress) humankind believed that political activity was only possible when "the swamp was up to our ass in alligators" so that we couldn't even think about draining it.
But recently, science and technology have begun to expand exponentially -- despite Laura's satanic rebellion against God.
Liberalism: "Satanic Rebellion Against God?" (The Thinking Housewife)
(Why is it The Thinking Housewife can get away with shit like "Liberalism: Satanic Rebellion Against God" whereas "putting the shoe on the other foot" sounds like an unfair attack?)
Notably, one of God's many guises is Truth-Science and now that the purview of Truth-Science has begun to end millennia of benightedness, I am delighted that these twits are strategizing actual ways to drain the swamp.
The twits may not "pull it off" but they are getting REALLY, REALLY good at solving problems in the material world.
Pax tecum
Alan
More Follow-Up Correspondence:
Dear Fred,
If Republicans are right, "things" trickle down - including leadership.
Consider.
Despite his a__holeness, Bush is better than any 2016 GOP contender.
Lately, I've been contgemplating Jung's comment that everyone's psyche is shifted by the zeitgeist.
But, because the shift takes place chthonically, we think ourselves more or less stationary on the political spectrum when, in fact, the entire spectrum -- let's say it measures "three feet long" -- has moved a kilometer to The Right.
When The National Lunacy ends, we will look back on these times with astonishment, marveling that we tolerated unmitigated "conservative" nonsense, a tsunami of bilge so towering that it pushed the country to the right of George Wallace, a fellow who eventually repented his racist past and now looks rather human in a field of apes bellowing for bigotry, sotta voce White Supremacy and ceaseless violence against people of color, all of whom are guilty of walking while black and should be shot because they inspire suspicion. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/01/son-says-former-gov-george-wallace.html
What does the GOP have in its "intellectual" arsenal?
Benghazi!?!
That's ALL the Repugnicans have got.
The GOP is so bereft of skill and thought that it doesn't even know how to parasitize good ideas.
Benghazi!?!
Here's Benghazi in context:
Pax on both houses: 13 Benghazis Occurred on George Bush's ...
paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.../13-benghazis-occurred-on-george-bu...
Pax on both houses: Obama's Benghazi and Reagan's Beirut
paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.../cover-letter-to-beirut-bombing-mass....
And the second slice is free!
Pax tecum
Alan
On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 2:10 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
No one showed up in NO, not the feds, the state, or the city, and the people themselves acted in a most helpless manner.It was a failure on many levels. The mayor skipped out to Houston. The refugees were crying for help but couldn't even organize a line to the toilet. Bush didn't react with any speed.
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