Boulder is a Stoopid Place

Freezing Is the New Warming | RealClearPolitics.

Let’s jump to Robert Tracinski’s conclusion. Those of you outside of Boulder can read the article for the details (and it’s worth your time)….

Note that there is never any pause to acknowledge that maybe scientists should investigate the hypothesis that warming isn’t as big or inevitable as they have predicted. No, it’s on to the next ad hoc rationalization. That’s the basic pattern: an unproven theory reinforces itself in the face of contradictory evidence by generating additional unproven theories.

What interests me is how global warming is degrading, in plain sight, into a textbook case of pseudoscience—all while remaining an unassailable article of belief among those who think of themselves as pro-science.

One of the famous characteristics of pseudo-science is that it is “unfalsifiable.” That is, the theory is constructed in such a way that there is no evidence that could possibly refute it. The classic example is Freudian psychoanalysis, which tells you that you have an Oedipus Complex, and if you deny it, that’s just proof that you’re repressing it. Or take the creationist theory that God created the world to appear as if it was older than it really is. So if we find evidence that the dinosaurs lived 100 million years before the events of the Bible, that’s just because God planted the evidence there. Try refuting that one!

Or try refuting global warming. Temperatures have stopped warming for more than a decade? That’s just a temporary “pause” in the warming that we just know is going to come roaring back any day now. Antarctic ice is growing? That’s actually caused by the melting of ice, don’t you know. A vicious cold snap that sets record low temperatures? That’s just because the North Pole is actually warming. So if the winter is warm, that’s global warming, but if the winter is cold, that’s global warming, too. If sea ice is disappearing, that’s global warming, but if sea ice is increasing, that’s global warming.

Now we can see what they mean when the warmthers say that global warming is supported by an ironclad scientific consensus. The theory is so irrefutable that it’s unfalsifiable!

Which is to say that it has become a cognitive spaghetti bowl full of ad hoc rationalizations, rather than a genuine scientific hypothesis.

Counterpoint: Here’s a typical letter from the global warming true believers from the Boulder Daily Camera: We need to stop burning fossil fuels now

Opposed to the few remaining skeptics, the IPCC ‘s voice represents 1,089 reviewers from 52 countries who drew their conclusions by combing through 9,200 scientific publications on climate change. This is not just a handful of scientists, and they should not be cavalierly dismissed as “true believers.” Their conclusions are based not on belief but on hard science. Their report states with 95 percent certainty that humans have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.

Also, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (ucsusa.org), there is now an overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is happening and human beings are contributing to it. Their website includes a long list of scientific societies that support this statement.

Ahh that overwhelming consencus from scientists with obvious conflicts of interest. Perhaps it’s Cargo Cult science? And of course, letter writer Susan Secord pulls out the overused “it’s for the children” guilt trip…

For the sake of our children and future generations, it’s time to “stop fiddling while Rome is burning,” as the saying goes. Bottom line, we need to stop burning fossil fuels, and we need to convert to an economy based on renewable energy. There are many economists who say that the fastest way to get this done is through a national revenue-neutral carbon tax.

Taxing what you don’t want has worked. The problem is the unintended consequences that Susan Secord and other true believes of the Global Warming religion are too blind to see. NOT TO MENTION, there hasn’t been any global warming lately and it seems, just as mentioned in the original article, that there isn’t any weather phenomenon that can occur that doesn’t support global warming.

Psuedoscience plain and simple. Let’s get back to the Cargo Cult science, a term coined by Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman..

Feynman cautioned that to avoid becoming cargo cult scientists, researchers must avoid fooling themselves, be willing to question and doubt their own theories and their own results, and investigate possible flaws in a theory or an experiment. He recommended that researchers adopt an unusually high level of honesty which is rarely encountered in everyday life, and gives examples from advertising, politics, and behavioral psychology to illustrate the everyday dishonesty which should be unacceptable in science. Feynman cautions,

“We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult Science.”

Integrity is missing in today’s science, although it’s a reflection of larger issues with our society in general.

All bold and bold red in this article are courtesy of the blogmaster.

The trouble is that climate change has become what philosophers call a “non-falsifiable hypothesis.” Everything—Hurricane Sandy, warm winters, cold winters—is said to be proof of climate change.

via Climateers Caught in the Vortex | Power Line.

Steve Hayward goes on to suggest this exercise…

Try this parlor game out at a cocktail party next time you’re clinking ice-free glasses with a warmist: ask him to specify what climate or weather phenomenon would not be consistent with the general theory of climate change. And then step back and enjoy the fun. Being a climateer is almost as easy as being a Keynesian.

Sounds like a plan.

University of Colorado Professor Steven Hayward, their Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy, comments on global warming (or lack thereof).

Al gore made one of the biggest mistakes in environmental doom saying. he actually made near-term predictions. You want to make long-term predictions so when they don’t come true, nobody remembers you made them. But five years ago al gore said we might have an arctic ice-free location by now. And then there’s the sheer comedy of the ship getting stuck in the ice in antarctica, in what was an eco tourism stunt that back fired badly.