The Science Is Settled?

Posted on | May 16, 2014 | 59 Comments

Definition of intellectual: Someone who presumes to judge, outside the field of their own expertise, who qualifies as an “expert”:

Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio came under attack this week for refusing to submit to scientific authority. “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” he said in an interview with Jonathan Karl.
Nonscientist Ruth Marcus, writing for the Washington Post, declared that Rubio’s words “undermine his other assertion,” namely “that he is prepared to be president.” Juliet Lapidos, also lacking in scientific expertise, went so far as to assert, in a New York Times blog post, that Rubio had “disqualified himself” from the presidency. . . .
[T]hey’re entirely typical of the genre of global-warmist opinion journalism, in which ignorant journalists taunt politicians for their ignorance but have no argument beyond an appeal to authority. . . .
Appeals to authority aren’t necessarily fallacious, except in the realm of formal deductive logic, where they entail adopting the unfounded premise that the authority is infallible. . . .

Read the whole thing. Conservatives are often accused of being “anti-intellectual” for the very reason that we are suspicious of the kind of “expertise” which demands that we accept tendentious claims without criticism, skepticism or dissent. But our skepticism toward climate-change doomsayers is not a reflection of conservative ignorance — quite the opposite. There is a well-established pattern, dating back to the 19th century (if not earlier) of erroneous “consensus” among self-appointed scientific “experts,” and it is our knowledge of this pattern — repeat, knowledge, not ignorance — that leads us to be skeptical of global-warming Chicken Little prophecies.

The sky is (probably) not falling. Earth’s atmosphere is (probably) large enough to absorb anthropogenic CO2 emissions without catastrophic damage. The result of global warming will (probably) not resemble any of the doomsayers’ predictions, and it is entirely possible that the global warming trend is not actually anthropogenic, but is instead mostly the result of normal variation in Earth’s temperatures. Inaccuracy in measurement, misguided computer modeling, flawed theories and other methodological errors (probably) explain most or all of the “science” that claims we are hurtling toward an impending man-made climate disaster.

Conservatives skeptical of climate-change doomsaying should not let themselves be bullied by arrogant “experts,” nor by the naive “intellectual” apostles of this Chicken Little cult.

Category: Global Warming, Science

Comments

59 Responses to “The Science Is Settled?”

joethefatman
May 16th, 2014 @ 12:48 pm

I read that yesterday and the AGW cult has truly reached the heights of cultism. It’s purely a religious exercise to them at this point, and heretics will be sacrificed to appease Manbearpig himself.
Atari 2600
May 16th, 2014 @ 12:56 pm

To put it polemically, the gas bags of global warming are CO2mmies. The point of this bit of invective is to highlight the anti-free market, totalitarian, and politically correct ideological nature of this so-called ‘science.’
McGehee
May 16th, 2014 @ 1:40 pm

I am more inclined to blame politicians and the Mass Stupidity Media, who should have known better than to listen to alarmist frauds like Michael Mann.
Reg Inchmale
May 16th, 2014 @ 1:48 pm

Print this column and put it in a safe place. Look at it again in ten years.
MichaelAdams
May 16th, 2014 @ 1:49 pm

I have not forgotten the “Scientific Consensus” that taught us that Black people were intellectually and even physically inferior to Caucasians.

Of course, I am also still looking for English wine, Greenlander cheese and beef, as we could have gotten if those Medieval SUVs had not stopped producing greenhouse gasses.

I feel myself to be suspended between Scientific Consensi. Wheeee!
Julie Pascal
May 16th, 2014 @ 1:55 pm

Rubio didn’t even say he didn’t agree that “climate disruption” or whatever it now is, is happening, or that the world is not getting warmer. (At least in no quotes I’ve seen.)

But what happens when anyone puts even the slightest qualifier in there, that he doesn’t think it’s happening “the way it’s described” and that the legislation would do absolutely nothing to solve the problem and is bad legislation… well, it’s an all or nothing thing.

You either are 100% on doctrine or you’re full on into apostasy.

There is no room for discussion, even at the margins.
Zohydro
May 16th, 2014 @ 1:59 pm

Let us assume, for a moment, that all of the assertions of the climate alarmists are true… How does it then necessarily follow that we should be compelled to do something about it?

I should think that if all this is real and that if massive totalitarian government action is the only solution then it would be far more preferable to burn, starve, drown, suffocate, whatever, than to live under such a system! It’s not like we’re all going to be quickly and simultaneously killed by an asteroid or something like that…
Neo
May 16th, 2014 @ 2:01 pm

Just ask …
Can you cite the definitive “peer-reviewed” scientific study that incontrovertibly links man with current climate change ?

You will be greeted with various ad hominem attacks.

If you actually get an answer, let me know.
The Science is Settled! | Batshit Crazy News
May 16th, 2014 @ 2:03 pm

[…] The science is settled! How dare Marco Rubio refuse to recognize Science!™ Remember a lot of people make a lot of […]
Evi L. Bloggerlady
May 16th, 2014 @ 2:04 pm

Separated at Birth: http://batshitcrazynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/separated-at-birth.png
Quartermaster
May 16th, 2014 @ 2:06 pm

You are clearly worthy of strong denunciation for noticing such unacceptable facts. Consider yourself properly denounced.
Cactus Ed
May 16th, 2014 @ 2:23 pm

It’s not like we’re all going to be quickly and simultaneously killed by an asteroid or something like that.

Will the greenies be waiting under that asteroid, perchance?
Frankly Bored
May 16th, 2014 @ 2:28 pm

I wonder how humans are responsible for the massive climate change being observed on Jupiter?
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/may/nasas-hubble-shows-jupiters-great-red-spot-is-smaller-than-ever-measured/index.html
It’s almost as if the some force greater than humans such as, I don’t know…the freakin’ SUN…was responsible for climate change, climate weirding, climate ping-pong or whatever our betters are calling it this week.
HarlemGhost
May 16th, 2014 @ 2:30 pm

don’t forget this … the AGW CO2 theory can only be applied from about 1940 … prior to that CO2 emissions from man where minor … so any warming prior to that had to be natural …
anyone that starts out talking about the warming over the last 100+ is already cheating with bad start dates …
PCachu
May 16th, 2014 @ 3:03 pm

So that it will shatter to no effect?

This is the new definition of “human shield”.
TiminAL
May 16th, 2014 @ 3:04 pm

Ruth Marcus, writing for the Washington Post, and Juliet Lapidos, in a New York Times blog post (probably) showed their ignorant asses.
Neo
May 16th, 2014 @ 3:21 pm

Yet another victim of Climate Change.
We must have a “Carbon Tax” in order to save the “Great Red Spot” on Jupiter … or something
Friday May 16, 2014 | Rebel Yid - Ideas beyond the left/right, red/blue, and liberal/conservative thinking
May 16th, 2014 @ 3:30 pm

[…] From The Other McCain, The Science is Settled? […]
MichaelAdams
May 16th, 2014 @ 3:31 pm

I am unworthy of so high an honor.
Ambas Ador
May 16th, 2014 @ 3:32 pm

Al Gore has always reminded me of some sort of fortune teller. A self-proclaimed prophet, preaching from some sort of pagan altar of end-of-days.
Julie Pascal
May 16th, 2014 @ 3:44 pm

Methane from the invention of rice farming in China 8000 years ago. (Not making that up.)
Quartermaster
May 16th, 2014 @ 4:12 pm

Mine is the lowest Honor. Kinda like the Iron Cross Second Class. You ain’t nothing if you don’t get it. Now, if Dana denounces you, then you know you’ve arrived.
Remember When Scientists Didn’t Have ‘Causes’? | Regular Right Guy
May 16th, 2014 @ 4:12 pm

[…] scientists actually researched subjects without determining in advance what their conclusions would absolutely must […]
Art Deco
May 16th, 2014 @ 4:55 pm

For about 17 years now (or is it longer?), he’s been an exemplar of intellectual and characterological decay. Thirty years ago, he was one of a corpus of mainline Democrats in Congress who took exception to some of the Democratic Party’s unpleasant aspects; he was also a family man with a generous mess of kids. The downhill slide may have begun with his grossly opportunistic about-face on abortion in 1987, continued with his hitching his wagon to Bilge Clinton (who put him to work in skeezy fund-raising endeavours), advanced further with his 2d campaign for president (“Bradley seemed dumbfounded by Gore’s willingness to say just anything” – George Will) which concluded with the Democrat’s gross and graceless exercise in lawfare, continued further through his ‘documentaries’, his unearned Nobel Prize, his massive windfall from stock-options for corporate directorships, and the implosion of his marriage amidst tacky sex scandals (co-incident with the implosion of the marriages of two of his four children, the other two never having married).

What happened to this guy? Usually, its the drink that to you if you are ruined in late middle age, but supposedly his sister and his son cornered the market on that in the Gore nexus.
K-Bob
May 16th, 2014 @ 4:58 pm

Antarctic Sea Ice at record levels.

No warming at all for the past Sixteen years.

No statistically significant warming for the past Forty-Five years.

For all these superstitious, AGW frauds know, we might finally be at the end of the Little Ice Age.

(that is, if they’d ever admit we had a Little Ice Age)

This is the new Climate McCarthyism (to use the left’s abuse of the term back on them). And it’s going to cost them. This bullying of Lennart Bengtsson to resign is appearing to be as bad as the ClimateGate emails.

(Links go to Steyn and Watts)
joethefatman
May 16th, 2014 @ 5:21 pm

Remember, it’s now Global Climate Disruption.
Adobe_Walls
May 16th, 2014 @ 5:27 pm

One wonders how presstitutes got the notion they were either qualified or empowered to make that determination.
Adjoran
May 16th, 2014 @ 5:29 pm

Why bother?

Every single scientific fraud case of the last 30 years or more has peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals. One guy got away with publishing a “scientific study” every month or so, when the AVERAGE study takes 18 months.

The sad fact is that today’s “peers” in most fields are afraid to be the one who rigorously challenges a colleague, especially if more senior “peers” have already given a thumbs-up to it.
Adjoran
May 16th, 2014 @ 5:35 pm

The “denier” charge, intended to equate skeptics with Holocaust deniers, shows how shrill the so-called “scientific community” has become now that skepticism is widespread. More and more eminent scientists with greater resumes and reputations than the warmists are coming forward in dissent. Their numbers will grow as ALL the predictions made by the warmists and models fail.

Remember, the best and brightest minds never go into “climate science.” Those are the courses for the wannabes, the only science courses that weren’t filled up with the smart people.

Climate scientists are as a class second-rate. Their work as seen in the last 25 years has been third-rate. Their attitudes have been classless and unscientific throughout.
K-Bob
May 16th, 2014 @ 5:39 pm

I was gonna say broad brush, but you might be right. For years, the best trained “climate scientists” were those trained in meteorology, working for the Weather Service, which is essentially a national security thing, and therefore the province of those who head agencies like the Border Patrol and the Postal Service.

The university-based “climate researcher” is more akin to those in Womens’ Studies departments than they are to anything dedicated to scientific research.
K-Bob
May 16th, 2014 @ 5:42 pm

This week, you mean.
joethefatman
May 16th, 2014 @ 5:45 pm

Pretty much. They have already given us a preview of the next name though. It will be: Global Climate Chaos.

Wait and see…
Jon Kahr
May 16th, 2014 @ 8:34 pm

That blacks have lower average IQs than whites and yellows is proven by both scientific study and our everyday experience.

In fact, the average IQ of central Africans is barely 1/2 as much as the average Asian IQ.
jakee308
May 16th, 2014 @ 8:55 pm

When they can input their “data” into their models and arrive at a snapshot of the climate that is statistically predictive of what ACTUALLY HAPPENED on a particular date in the recent past, THEN I will concede that their models just might, might be able to predict the weather more than a few years from now.

To date, those models CANNOT DO THAT.
joethefatman
May 16th, 2014 @ 9:39 pm

White Privilege?
SDN
May 16th, 2014 @ 10:27 pm

I’ll settle for the scientifically determined “ideal temperature” for life on Earth. Show your work.

I put that challenge up to AGW cultists regularly. Never have gotten an answer.
Latimer Alder
May 17th, 2014 @ 1:48 am

English Wine? Look no further:
http://www.denbies.co.uk/
McGehee
May 17th, 2014 @ 8:51 am

I know there have been studies that make the former claim, but that second one will need a link.
McGehee
May 17th, 2014 @ 8:53 am

If belief is the issue, it ain’t science.
Kirby McCain
May 17th, 2014 @ 9:35 am

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10837146/Climate-change-science-has-become-blind-to-green-bias.html
MichaelAdams
May 17th, 2014 @ 10:12 am

Ain’t global warming grand?
MichaelAdams
May 17th, 2014 @ 10:27 am

Well, facts often turn out to be counter-intuitive, so your crazy-sounding assertion could, conceivably turn out to be right, but there are some problems with this hypothesis that would need to be resolved. Cultural bias in the testing is an obvious example. A neighbor’s son, in first grade, and Caucasian, BTW, failed to pick out a telephone from a row of small drawings, because he was born after 1988, and had never seen a Strowger dial ‘phone.

Lower IQ means an inability to handle abstract concepts. This is a problem right now in America, because lower IQ voters are putting some real losers into office. However, these low IQ/information voters are not restricted to one race, and LIV of all races are manipulated by the incest media, so sorting the idiots by color is, at least, a detour from the road to a solution. There’s more, but this is not my blog, and I don’t want to crap up RSM’s band-width. I’ll just say that this theory of racial inferiority does not pass the smell test.
Latimer Alder
May 17th, 2014 @ 10:47 am

Sure. And 1600 years ago it was just as wonderful. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/veni-vidi-viticulture–remains-of-roman-vineyards-found-in-uk-738723.html

But wait! The evil Koch Brothers weren’t born then. Oil hadn’t come into widespread use as a fuel and Henry Ford hadn’t made the first model T.

How can we have had global warming without all those fossil fuels being burnt?

The world awaits your thoughts.
cmdr358
May 17th, 2014 @ 10:55 am

Next up…..Armageddon?
cmdr358
May 17th, 2014 @ 11:04 am

Since the great thinkers and inventors of the time were already contemplating the next levels of human societal advancement and out of great ideas come great things?

The dawning of progressivism?
cmdr358
May 17th, 2014 @ 11:05 am

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
MichaelAdams
May 17th, 2014 @ 11:17 am

Please, Mr. Alder, turn on your sarcometer!
Eric Ashley
May 17th, 2014 @ 11:41 am

Time travel.
K-Bob
May 17th, 2014 @ 9:13 pm

Good link. Thanks

And now Krugman is on the case, telling us that AGW is going to be the end of the GOP. Woo Hoo!
Jon Kahr
May 18th, 2014 @ 1:39 pm

In Notes on the State of Virginia Thomas Jefferson wrote a couple of pages about the lack of intellectual ability inherent in blacks:

http://books.google.com/books?id=DTWttRSMtbYC&pg=PA149#v=onepage&q&f=false