Comments on: Simonizing

By: Gil

Gil — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:41:00 +0000

The big point being . . .? The free market were going to end whaling anyway so when governments passed legislation it was just water off a duck’s back? Or something like that?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:26:00 +0000

OK, I read the article on the other end of this link. I noted that the American Chemical Society was one of the signatories. The ACS, on its own site, describes itself as “a congressionally chartered independent membership organization which represents professionals at all degree levels and in all fields of chemistry and sciences that involve chemistry.” I won’t suggest that congressionally chartered and independent are incongruent because that will only start a fight.Before I get to the quote in the article, I just want to point out that “consensus” is a political (in the loosest sense of the word) conceit, not a scientific one. I don’t require the consensus of leading scientists to assert that the Heliocentric Theory of the Solar System is fact, or that the speed of light in a vacuum is 186 thousand (and some change) miles/second. These things are not only provable, but demonstrable. Regardless of the consensus, I have yet to encounter a sound piece of science that causes all other interested scientists to challenge or prove the hypothesis in question. Which brings me to the strangely vague quote from the so-called consensus letter…“Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science.” Gosh, where to begin. “Rigorous scientific research” has been done on cancer, but there are no absolute proofs of (all of its) causes (as seen in the “consensus” science of nutritionists, who have given the FDA ill guidance for decades), with notable exceptions like the demonstrable presence of radiation. What’s worse is that there is still no cure. But we are to believe that science — suddenly and magically funded by advanced Earth governments — will solve problems involving millions of variables from solar activity to methane from dog poop?Whenever you hear “contrary assertions are inconsistent” from a so-called consensus group, what they are telling you is that they are better organized than their opposition and are drawing a rhetorical line in the sand. Those four simple words are inconsistent with the natural humility that stems from the practice of real science. Every scientist worth his degree will tell you he’d love to be proven wrong, but that until he is, he’s right. Proclaiming that opponents are wrong in the absence of an informed (i.e., non-political, non-hysterical) dialog with them is not scientific. It’s political.So, I join other skeptics about climate change and am not interested in letters to Congress from its supporters. I’d rather see the science.

By: Seth

Seth — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:13:00 +0000

By definition, yes. Thankfully, for all of us that’s a bogus question. Like asking what if gravity repelled, rather than attracted.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:14:00 +0000

An excellent example of planning can be found here:

http://reason.com/blog/2009/11/09/new-londons-carefully-consider#comments

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:07:00 +0000

Yes, thanks for the correction, I think. For past performance may in fact provide no indication at all in this case. Liquidating the planet of fossil fuels, biodiversity and fertile soils has allowed us to so far grow our economy and population. The fact we found technofixes in the past is in my view a pretty shaky footing on which to bet the future of our children. We may have run out of miracles.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:55:00 +0000

I think you mean that past performance is no *guarantee* of future results. If it provides no indication at all, we might as well ignore everything that happened yesterday.

By: Sam Grove

Sam Grove — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:35:00 +0000

Do you know what the EVIDENCE is? How many people who have that reaction have no clue as to the actual evidence, but assume that the repeated meme “scientists believe” (ALL scientists?) blah, blah, blah.

Do you get that the so-called “consensus” is based upon several significant assumptions and on models that failed to predict the last decade climate?

Do you know that there are some very prestigious climate scientist who challenge the AGW theory as currently being sold to the public?

Do you know any of this?

And yes, everybody knows that there have been several decades of warming.

Your friends don’t take offense at you because you express the sharing of the assumption that climate change will be bad, as expressed in “but we don’t know how bad it will be”.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:12:00 +0000

No, you’re not. You’re not by pointing out that we’re headed down the same path to tyranny.

Those who trivialize real suffering are the Useful Idiots who breathlessly support totalitarian ideas and regimes and become apoplectic when you call a spade a spade because they insist on slightly different terminology.

Rebranding the same ideas and selling it to us is bad in enough. The fact that they sold themselves on it is truly pathetic.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:01:00 +0000

You’d pick him off once. He’ll blow up in his first trade and that’ll be the end of him. That’s why I love trading. The stupid don’t last long.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:30:00 +0000

And you believe it’s that corporations who are running the show here? I honestly do not see how you arrive at the corporation-controlled government when even the examples you have cited show who’s really making these decisions. Are you physician diagnosises this horrendous?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:23:00 +0000

Where are you getting your leeches from?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:20:00 +0000

You don’t have to to worry about my patients. My practice is evidence based and relies on the latest science and peer reviewed literature to make treatment decisions.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:01:00 +0000

Re: “This is Friedman’s basic insight – that economic and social freedom support political freedom, and not the other way around.”

I have to cringe at that. If Friedman had a basic insight it was that inflation was a monetary phenomenon. If you’re going to narrow it down to one basic insight, forget his forays into political economy.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:56:00 +0000

Of course it’s genuine – don’t be so suspicious! I disagree with you, it’s not like I’m not out to get you!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:53:00 +0000

I haven’t noticed that. I’ve never been on board with the doomsday scenario and nobody has criticized me for that EXCEPT for here on Cafe Hayek and one other outspoken friend. No liberal friends, no liberal blogs have called me anything for my “this is a major concern and it’s real, but we really don’t know what’s going to happen or how bad it’s going to be – a lot of that is speculation, and we do a good job at inventing ourselves out of these problems”. That position has been called “alarmist” here on Cafe Hayek and by a friend on facebook that’s a fairly outspoken skeptic too. I’ve never been accused of anything by people who have a more dire view of climate change than I do.Now – if I claimed that humans aren’t doing anything to change the climate and a carbon tax is going to wreck our economy rather than make it more efficient at allocating resources, then maybe I’d be called a denialist or compared to a creationist – and perhaps rightfully so.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:47:00 +0000

I think that is one of those “simultaneous discoveries” things – he didn’t necessarily pick it up from someone else. It’s the first reaction a lot of people have talking to climate change skeptics – the feeling that:

“wow – these people are like those creationists I used to know… they ignore the preponderance of scientific evidence, cling to one or two genuine scientific findings that they feel brings down the whole eddifice of climate change science, put on the veneer of scientific respectability themselves, and get deeply personally offended when anyone suggests that there’s good reason to think that they’re wrong – it’s like creationism!”.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:38:00 +0000

He really wrote that? I must find it and attach a link to all future replies to him.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:36:00 +0000

>>Wow. That’s pathetic.<>People like you are undeserving of the fruits of science. You don’t even deserve to be typing on this internet.<>Ideology before science… really sad.<<

Liberty before tyranny is not so sad in my book.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:10:00 +0000

>>Government run by corporations will be tyrannical.<<

Explain how that works. I mean really explain how that works. Please do not duck this question. Think it through and detail how that (what you wrote above) can happen.

We fight wars for their oil. We pay for those wars with our kids and tax dollars.

We pay to bail them out when they crash the economy. We pay to make them stable so they can start lending but instead they take the money and invest it elsewhere and give themselves huge bonuses.

It's sad your so willing to lose your liberty to nameless faceless multi-national corporations and fear so much a government by the people.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:04:00 +0000

Wow. That’s pathetic. The country’s and the worlds premier scientific organizations and your not good with them as sources. People like you are undeserving of the fruits of science. You don’t even deserve to be typing on this internet. Ideology before science… really sad.