Tag: science

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Accountability folly ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government

A Hailstorm of Orthodoxy

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Don’t worry, scientist Roger Pielke, Jr., informs us. He is doing fine — he has tenure.

It is too bad, though, that he no longer works in climate science.

He was drummed out of that endeavor by journalists, big-​monied foundations, and the White House.

Climate Scientist

Are you skeptical? Well, drill down into the Podesta emails on WikiLeaks. There you can read infamous billionaire Tom Steyer gloating, “I think it’s fair [to] say that, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change for 538,” a popular website. Pielke has not been published there at all since 2014.

Pielke had made the mistake of publishing the results of his research. He claims not to be heretical on the main points of the current orthodoxy. But Pielke ticked off all the wrong people with his demonstration that the evidence did not back up the climate change movement’s much-​repeated charge that the weather has gotten more traumatic as the planet has gotten warmer.

Pielke relates all this in a fascinating Wall Street Journal commentary, “My Unhappy Life as a Climate Heretic.” Pielke is actually somewhat philosophical about the political and foundational forces arrayed against him — expressing more dismay at his betrayal by journalists and academics.

“You should come with a warning label,” jested one journalist who had merely quoted him. “Quoting Roger Pielke will bring a hailstorm down on your work from the London Guardian, Mother Jones, and Media Matters.”

This “hailstorm” is more widespread and damaging than the results of global warming itself. It effectively distorts both scientific research and the news.

Thus, a political orthodoxy rides herd over public opinion. Over us. By squelching good journalism and honest science.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly insider corruption moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies porkbarrel politics responsibility

Settled Science?!?

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You probably know that America’s sugar industry is protected, making astounding profits because of high tariffs and artificially raised consumer prices.

And you likely know that government has worked hand-​in-​hand with agribiz interests to cook up (and regulate) a competitive sweetener, high fructose corn syrup. You understand that there are various types of sugar, and almost certainly suspect that refined sugar is bad for you, with high fructose corn syrup perhaps worse.

In fact, the scientific evidence for the danger of a high sugar diet has been around since the 1950s.

Well, what we now know, Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes at Reason, is “how the sugar industry essentially bribed Harvard scientists to downplay sugar’s role in heart disease — and how the U.S. government ate it up.”

Before Reason weighed in, my colleague Eric D. Dixon sent me a New York Times story, which stated the main proposition plainly: “How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat.” But Reason’s Brown is right: it was government that really made this a nationwide disaster. The imprimatur of government sanctified the anti-​fat craze, and the government’s own dietary guidance (and regulations) proved grossly wrongheaded.

Now we’re the ones who are gross.

Scientists and government (bought off by a protected industry) fed us a line that many swallowed. We increasingly swapped fat for refined sugars, causing health to decline as girths went out and weights went up.

So when I hear outrageous claims for the “settled science of climate change,” I look at my middle and doubt that “settled” part. And I nurture an unsettling thought.… it’s the political science that’s settled: government lies to us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture

Spoiler Alert — Making Socialism Work

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Despite the hoopla, I did not get a chance to watch Childhood’s End, the miniseries that aired this week on the SyFy channel.

But I didn’t really need to — and not just because it failed to receive critical or popular acclaim.

This is the age of the Internet, and — Spoiler Alert! — many cats get let out of many a bag. Facebook, Twitter, water coolers … we all hear things outside the designated venues.

Of course, many people knew the plot line of SyFy’s miniseries — simply because it’s based on a 1953 novel by Arthur C. Clarke.

So, when we notice that one of the show’s creators interprets the story’s stark ending as being more personal than cosmic, that it is about accepting the inevitability of death, we are not going to go into a snit about “spoilers.” We can all can handle it like … grown-ups.

Yes, the tale is in the “out there” branch of science fiction. Aliens come. They bring mankind a Golden Age, an era of plenty, curing disease and ending the need to work. And then, after a long stretch, they reveal themselves, in full-​frontal corporeality: they look like devils, with huge horns, red gnarly skin, cloven hooves, wings and a tail. But finally the big truth dawns: the last generation of children becomes clairvoyant, ascend into the air, and, while destroying the planet, become “as one” in the universal Overmind.

Accepting death? Why not this interpretation: sure, socialism can work — but only by stripping us of our individuality and destroying humanity along with all life on the planet.

The devil, you say.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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responsibility

Who’s Really Doing Science?

Recently, comedian and talk show host Bill Maher defended his questioning of the wisdom of mass vaccination by saying it’s “not settled science, like global warming.”

And, around the world, scientists and critical thinkers and just generally knowledgeable folks fell out of their chairs, like so many calving icebergs.

Climate science remains controversial. Maher’s trendy gambit claiming that the science has been “settled” is absurd.

To really settle the matter, a whole lot more scrutiny would be required. And the critics who have mounted attacks on the anthropogenic — “human-​caused” — hypothesis for global climate change would have to have their work considered more openly to earn any credit for the now-​dominant hypothesis.

Why? Because science is all about open, public testing. As Karl Popper explained, science is the process of conjecture and refutation. When those who criticize a theory are castigated as being unscientific simply because they criticize, science is no longer happening. Then we have pure ideology, non-​science if not pure nonsense.

Though the critics of anthropogenic global warming catastrophism often get dubbed as kooks and crazies by current scientistic prophets of doom, they are, in fact, doing the work of science. Even if they are eventually proved wrong.

And Bill Maher is no more the judge of “settled science” than I am. 

Full disclosure: I haven’t got my flu shot yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.