| Thursday,
March 15, 2007
The Ides of March
Birthday of Stefan T.
Possony
Stefan T. Possony, 15 March 1913 - 26 April 1995 RIP
Steve Possony was one of the architects of our strategy for the
protracted conflict.
==========
If you have not seen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU then do so. (While you can; I
expect it to be taken down.)
It presents the case against Man Made Global Warming, and is called The
Global Warming Swindle. I have seen it and recommend it. Many readers have
also.
Hedging Bets
There are apparently intelligent scientists who simply do not believe in
hedging bets or testing hypotheses. Apparently once there is a consensus, it
should not be challenged, and anyone who suggests spending any money on
testing a generally accepted hypothesis is a fool.
As for instance one correspondent, unhappy that I don't believe in man
made global warming, said "You remind me of the good old days when you were
hyping Duesberg." Now I have no idea why he said that, but apparently he
thought it clever.
And of course I have never been "hyping" Duesberg. For those who don't
know what this refers to, Duesberg is the Chief Virologist at the University
of California, and was instrumental in discovering retroviruses. Duesberg
does not accept the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS. This is not a popular
hypothesis. I have no great expertise in this matter (nor does the chap who
is playing this game with me) but my personal belief is that Duesberg is
dead wrong. On the other hand, there are billions spent on AIDS research;
Duesberg wants a few million to conduct crucial experiments to test the 'HIV
causes AIDS' hypothesis. I thought some years ago, and still think now, that
this would be a good thing to do. After all, HIV doesn't meet the Koch
Criterion of medical causality, and that is itself a useful enough principle
that it is worth being sure it has to be ignored in this matter. Perhaps
Duesberg's tests will refine our definitions of medical causation.
In my judgment, whenever there's a lot of money to be spent because of a
scientific hypothesis, it's worth a percentage of that money to be certain
the hypothesis is correct. This is in fact one of the conclusions from
Bayesian analysis: as a general principle, it's worth spending money to
reduce uncertainty before spending money when there's uncertainty about how
the money ought to be spent.
That has been my conclusion about the whole man made global warming
business: the costs of chasing CO2 reduction are enormous; surely it's worth
spending money to test the C02 causes warming hypothesis before we start
de-industrializing. I suppose that makes me a tool of the oil
companies hyping Big Oil or something.
Ah well.
http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/
Corbella_Licia/2007/03/14/3748254.html is another place you can find the
British Channel 4 film on man made global warming.
Dairy Farms in Greenland
I am told that the total area of the Eric the Red/ Lief Ericson Greenland
colonies was about 250 square miles, which is quite a small area compared to
the total size of the island. This says little about how much of the
area was actually green and inhabitable. What we do know is that the climate
was warm enough that the colonies survived for centuries, several
generations. It's one more data point. It also implies periods of ice free
ocean allowing sailing between Greenland and Iceland.
There are many such data points from which we can infer the length of the
Medieval Warm period. Records of vineyards in England. Records of earlier
planting times and longer growing seasons. The general agricultural plenty
of the time. Indeed, had Mann not needed to get rid of the Medieval Warm so
that his Hockey Stick would work, no one would be questioning the Medieval
Warm period.
Now, of course, it has to go. And anyone who points out that the case for
man made global warming is at best not proven must be ridiculed. So it goes.
=====================
EarthLink still hasn't been able to fix the encrypted order system
for Roberta's web site. It worked for years, but then they changed things,
told no one, and it doesn't work. They are good at collecting the money,
though. They just don't seem to be so good at delivering the services. They
are trying. They just don't seem very competent about it.
=========
Good Grief. I just heard the news. "The President needs to follow the law
of the land," say prominent Democrats. Are they idiots, illiterates, or
ideologues? The law of the land is that US Attorneys serve at the
pleasure of the President and can be fired at his whim. Clinton fired all 93
of them; it was rumored that he did that so that he would not be seen to be
singling out the two US Attorneys working on his own Arkansas corruption
cases. It was never asserted that he did not have the legal right to fire
them. It was said that doing that was unwise, or shady, or even unethical,
but I don't recall even the most rabid anti-Clintonite Congresscritter
asserting that he wasn't following "the law of the land."
This has gone beyond insanity. Both parties are working overtime in a
contest to demonstrate which has less right to govern a free people. They
are both winning.
=========
On insurance and hedging bets: I would be willing to bet that most of
those who say we should not spend comparatively small sums on allowing a
competent investigator like Duesberg -- he is a member of the National
Academy of Sciences and was instrumental in the discovery of retro virus --
to test the 'HIV causes AIDS' hypothesis do have fire insurance, life
insurance, automobile insurance, and so forth.
The expected value of an insurance policy is negative. It has to be, else
the insurance company could not exist. You expect -- indeed you hope -- that
your fire insurance policy will never return you a thin dime.
Funding contrarian research is much like that. If there is an
overwhelming consensus of scientists on one hypothesis (that is decidedly
NOT true in the case of global warming, but it most certainly is true
regarding HIV and AIDS) then spending money to examine fundamental
assumptions of that hypothesis is a bit like buying insurance. You don't
expect to get a positive return. On the other hand, you may save yourself
spending a lot of money betting on the wrong horse.
Scientific research has another difference from insurance: the research
itself, if well done by competent people, is generally valuable in itself.
Well done research often finds something we didn't know, no matter what the
intent of the research. It also trains the staff.
==========
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