A fascinating ReasonTV interview:
Author: Redactor
“A co-founder of Greenpeace told a Senate panel on Tuesday that there is no scientific evidence to back claims that humans are the ‘dominant cause’ of climate change,” the Washington Times reported yesterday.
But what about that grand consensus — “97 percent” — of scientists saying the exact opposite?
Well, economist and legal theoretician David D. Friedman wrote, this week, that one of the most famous citations about the climate change consensus is the result of some, uh, data fudging.
Friedman chased down the origin of that infamous and oft-repeated 97 percent figure through three papers, all available online. Despite the high tone of certainty, the scientists who collated information from surveys of other scientists did not find that “over 97% endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.” At best, a huge cohort of these scientists agreed that humans merely contributed to global warming. Very different.
Friedman concluded that the main author responsible for the strong interpretation of weak findings, John Cook, told “a deliberate lie.”
This scientist’s misrepresentation of “the result of his own research” doesn’t prove that Anthropogenic Global Warming is true or untrue, of course. But it does suggest that the “consensus” so much talked about is shaky indeed.
I began the week talking about our reliance upon experts to gather, analyze and report on information honestly and reliably.
And how horrible it is when they let us down.
The climate change we need is in the culture of academic responsibility.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Rein Taagepera Feb 28
Estonian physicist, politician, and analyst of democracy, Rein Taagepera, was born on February 28, 1933. He is the author of “Predicting Party Sizes: The Logic of Simple Electoral Systems.”
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Frédéric Bastiat
Force . . . is what the organizers need who would subject humanity to their experiments. When they shall have gained over to their cause the Russian autocrat, the shah of Persia, the khan of Tartary, and all the other tyrants of the world, they will find that they still lack the power to distribute mankind into groups and classes, and to annihilate the general laws of property, exchange, inheritance, and family; for even in Russia, in Persia, and in Tartary, it is necessary to a certain extent to consult the feelings, habits, and prejudices of the people.
Oh, how the other half lives!
And lies.
By “other half,” I don’t mean “the wealthy.” They’re as honest as any other group. No, I’m talking about those with their hands on the levers of government power . . . along with their subsidy-seeking cronies.
Mayor Kevin Johnson, an all-star in the National Basketball Association before becoming a politician, is splurging nearly $300 million tax dollars — roughly the city’s entire yearly budget — to build the owners of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings a brand new arena.
People objected, with 23,000 citizens signing petitions to put this lavish subsidy to a vote. Yesterday, a judge ruled that the measure would be kept off the ballot: errors in the wording of the petition “disqualified” it.
In a prepared sore-winner statement, Mayor Johnson called the petitioners “outsiders” who “have tried to undermine the right of Sacramento to control the destiny of our Kings, our downtown and our future.”
Johnson doesn’t mean the right “of the people” to control. He means his right to dictate for Sacramento even against the will of the majority.
The leader of one group working against a public vote on the arena giveaway attacked local businessman Chris Rufer, charging that “Rufer’s funding . . . is supporting STOP’s effort to steal 4,000 jobs, steal a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform downtown and makes him an accomplice in Seattle’s attempt to steal the Kings.”
Who’s stealing? Those spending their own money so people can vote? Or those blocking a vote so they can spend other people’s money?
“I’m against subsidy, period. It’s simply a moral argument,” Rufer explains. “If it was a subsidy for a fish pond, I’d be against it.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Frédéric Bastiat
The social mechanism . . . must be very ingenious and very powerful, since it leads to this singular result, that each man, even he whose lot is cast in the humblest condition, has more enjoyment in one day than he could himself produce in many ages.
On Feb. 27, 1933, Germany’s parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, was set on fire. The event was pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany, as the Nazis used the fire as evidence that the Communists were plotting against the German government, and promptly suspended civil liberties and arrested Communists in mass, including members of the parliament, leading to a gain in seats for the National Socialists.
On Feb. 27, 1951, the Twenty-second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, was ratified.
On Feb. 26, 1993, a truck bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City was detonated, killing six and injuring over a thousand people.
On Feb. 26, 1866, Herbert Henry Dow was born in Canada. He was a prolific inventor and a successful businessman, who founded the Dow Chemical Company in 1897.
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22nd Amendment
The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, was ratified on February 27, 1951.
February 27 marks the Dominican Republic’s Independence Day.
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Frédéric Bastiat
The economists do not say that a man may kill, sack, burn, and that society has only to be quiescent — laissez faire. They say that even in the absence of all law, society would resist such acts; and that consequently such resistance is a general law of humanity. They say that civil and penal laws must regulate, and not counteract, those general laws the existence of which they presuppose. There is a wide difference between a social organization founded on the general laws of human nature, and an artificial organization, invented, imagined — that takes no account of these laws, or repudiates and despises them — such an organization, in short, as many modern schools would impose upon us.