Saturday, July 22, 2017

Two Wrongs Make Two (more) Wrongs For Bill Nye

Bill Nye: Older people need to 'die' out before climate science can advance
First Problem for Bill Nye: It's not "old people" who reject the rush to accept AGW, it's the people who know what science entails, what is a contingent fact, vs. what is bogus huckstering.

Second Problem for Bill Nye: We know that what he's really talking about is not the "science", which is funded to the gills; it's the political acceptance of the purported responsibility to transfer $Trillions from developed countries to those who have been "developing countries" for many generations but haven't seemed to actually "develop". Follow the money, follow the Leftist glory beam that shines on such people. If we had a dispassionate journalism caste, Nye wouldn't even get a "man on the street" blip, much less national sensational coverage.

5 comments:

Bruno said...

Who understands these contingent facts better?

"a Pew Research Center survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) found 93% of members with a Ph.D. in Earth sciences (and 87% of all members) say the Earth is warming mostly because of human behavior"

http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/04/public-views-on-climate-change-and-climate-scientists/

Stan said...

Not familiar with the state of science in general, are we? Science as a class has hit the skids.

The vast majority of science papers are not replicable. How do you factor in the fact that science has lost its way and has become a process of scams, frauds and ego protection, with the occasional valid construct thrown in? Don't believe it? That's on you.

But here's the real issue: the AGW fraud cannot and does not answer the basic questions: Why does the raw data show a down trend, and the MODIFIED data show an up trend? Why does the actual annual temp follow the sunspot activity? Why do the models not conform to two decades of real data? Why should any rational being believe these people, whose jobs depend upon the existence of AGW and who will be completely unemployable if AGW is not the case? Of COURSE they project AGW; their own fates depend on it.

Steven Satak said...

Of course, I am sure the majority of the IPCC also agrees that the earth is warming mostly due to human behavior.

Then again:

- consensus is not science, it is politics.

- the IPCC has already admitted, through its various members, that it is primarily in the business of the redistribution of the world's wealth.

- as Stan notes, the data has been revealed to have been jiggered, again and again and again, by people with a vested interest in pushing the AGW agenda (Michael Mann, Al Gore) or 'supported' by people whose livelihood depends on their faithful chanting of the party line.

Someone with a gun to their head and their financial future at stake cannot be relied upon to give anything near the truth. They, like many of us, do what they are told. Or else. That is how the Left works. To be honest, that is how Big Business - or indeed, any human corrupted by power - works.

So say what you like, but please don't tell me that because a high percentage of 'earth scientists' agree on a particular cause celebre', it simply must be true. Just because they are 'earth scientists' does not mean they cannot lie.

Robert Coble said...

Can we put to bed the Big Lie about the "97% consensus" on AGW? (I'll charitably ASSUME that no one who knows anything about science and the scientific method buys the Big Lie about a "consensus" having any meaning whatsoever in empirical science.)

Here's an explanation of how that bogus "consensus" figure was derived.

Link: Testimony before Congress

Not surprisingly, it appears that somebody "cooked the books" in order to vomit out this 97% value of "consensus."

There are lies, damn lies, and (totally bogus) statistics.

My BS meter pegs every time I see this type of statistic.

One of the common "statistics" floated around in studies of chess psychology is that chess masters have 50,000 distinct "patterns" engrained in their memory, which enables them to recognize and recall all of those positions and make appropriately good moves. It took some time, but I finally tracked down that "estimate" to its source. Herbert Simon and William Chase are two of the pioneering giants in the field. They used a model called EPAM (Elementary Perceiver and Memorizer) to EXPLAIN what goes on in a chess master's head while examining positions. The model was implemented in a computer program called MAPP (Memory-aided Pattern Perceiver). (Where do we see computer models touted as "reality" these days - AGW!)

Link: Skill in Chess

On the basis of the MAPP program, Simon and Chase "estimated" how many positions that MAPP would have to "know" in order to "perceive" at the level of a chess master. Here is the relevant statements which created the "50,000" statistic (read the entire article to see just how speculative this "statistic" actually is):

The chess master's vocabulary. We can extrapolate from the present performance of the MAPP program to estimate how large a vocabulary
of chess patterns would have to be stored in the EPAM net to match
the performance of the chess master. The distribution of different
patterns by frequency is HIGHLY SKEWED, like the frequency distribution
of words in natural language. ASSUMING that the patterns in the
present MAPP net are those most frequently encountered in chess
games, and ASSUMING the same degree of skewness for chess patterns
as for words, we can ESTIMATE that something of the order of 50,000
patterns would have to be stored to match the master's performance.


[Emphasis added.] The actual number of PATTERNS stored in any particular chess master's brain is UNKNOWN to science.

A similarly bogus statistic is Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hour" RULE for the (minimum) amount of time it takes to become an expert in any field. If you review the actual literature, you will not find that ANYWHERE as an absolute minimum amount of time to reach expert level. It's not even a good average. The best debunking of that "statistic" is the most prominent researcher (whose work was appropriated and popularized by Gladwell) Dr. K. Anders Ericsson. He debunks the misuse of "statistic" in his book:

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

(The book is well worth reading if you have any interest in becoming better in any field of expertise.)

COULD WE P-L-E-A-S-E HAVE A LITTLE MORE HEALTHY SCIENTIFIC SKEPTICISM ABOUT UNSUBSTANTIATED STATISTICAL NONSENSE THROWN UP BY SCIENTISMISTS?!?

Oh, I'm sorry (N-O-T!): we can't see the AGW data because we might come to a different conclusion. Can't let the little people muck up the Narrative, now, can we?!? Somebody might lose their stranglehold on that generous government teat!

Robert Coble said...

A second "helping" of skepticism:

Link: Nobel Laureate Smashes the Global Warming Hoax

For those with an interest in seeing how statistics can be used to "lie":

How to Lie with Statistics

Fond memories of that book from my introductory class in statistics in college!