An Important Science Lesson

What did we learn from the CRU e-mail leak and the less-than-flattering "inside baseball" look at the way that climate scientists talk to each other and about their peers?

We learned that scientists are not Vulcans. Rather than being passionless, logic-driven, rational creatures, scientists are very much like anybody else: driven to fits of pique, paranoia, close-mindedness, mean-spiritedness, and just generally being jerks.

It is important that everyone let that sink in, particularly you non-scientists out there. Most particularly you non-scientists who are journalists or public policy makers. The scientist you speak to may, in fact, be pushing an emotional agenda that has little or nothing to do with the issues at hand.

You can understand scientists by remembering that there are two Thrilling Life Moments for scientists.

Thrilling Life Moment #1 is to discover the way that something works that nobody else ever figured out before!

I've been fortunate enough to experience this on a few occasions, and let me tell you: it's better than booze, better than drugs, and better than sex. It's the ultimate ego gratification. You have figured out how to explain some phenomenon that nobody else ever could. And the more people that tried and failed, the bigger the high is.

The best part is when you roll out your controversial theory and your peers reject it, but then you spool out data, and proof, and challenge them to refute it, and when they can't they have to admit that you were right.

This is particularly satisfying when the peers who at first doubt you are people that you revile. And, since we're not Vulcans, scientists revile as many people as anybody else. Since familiarity breeds contempt, the most numerous group of people that we scorn is other scientists.

Which brings us to the Thrilling Life Moment #2 for scientists: the moment when you prove some moronic jackass wrong.

Yeah, you read that right: some moronic jackass. He might wear a lab coat, and he might have a PHD, but if he makes some pseudo-scientific claim that you can prove wrong, he's a moronic jackass.

The rules of the scientific method are well established, but they are essentially the rules of dominance and submission. I make a claim, and I back it up. If you test it and find it correct, you must submit to my interpretation. If you prove me wrong, I must withdraw my assertion and submit to your rebuttal.

It's all a question of who rolls over for whom.

So we should not be surprised that, when given the chance, climate scientists seized the opportunity to do both things at the same time when they were aided and abetted by an ignorant and partisan press.

These scientists were allowed to make sweeping claims without any verification at all (Moment #1) and summarily dismiss their critics as a group of cranks and morons (Moment #2).

As their egos grew, so too did their hubris: it was not enough to forecast warming, it had to be severe warming. Then dangerous warming. And finally apocalyptic, cataclysmic, the-end-of-humanity warming.

All the while they got to engage in a festival of masturbatory self-congratulation while shutting out any dissenting voices, because not agreeing with them became a sign of mental illness.

Rather than recognizing their models for what they were, they were uncritically accepted by the press and by politicians, neither of whom were capable of analyzing their work with anything approaching competence. And these moronic jackasses themselves were allowed to set the terms of debate, which they of course set to be as favorable to them as possible.

So in short, the arrogant led the blind, while the child yelling "the emperor has no clothes" was sent to the insane asylum.

This is not a good state of affairs. And it comes about because the public perception of scientists as Vulcan-like robots incapable of human greed and venality is spectacularly wrong and willfully ignorant of the basic fact that scientists, like everybody else, have emotions and do stupid things and often think only of their own self-interest.

Of course the scientists at CRU didn't want to share their data or their models. Nobody likes to be the "moronic jackass" in Thrilling Life Moment #2.

But science is absolutely not advanced by wallowing in our own human insecurities and failings. It's only advanced when we take the risk of being that moronic jackass by trying for our own Thrilling Life Moment #1.

No matter how afraid we are to do so.

World To End?

Scientists are warning the public that there is a very good chance that the world will end tomorrow, Wednesday, September 10, 2009. Sometime in the morning, two highly-charged particles will slam into each other, with implications that are impossible to precisely predict.

"We're expecting the end of life as we know it," said spokesman for the scientific group ALARM. "Worst-case scenarios include a black hole that sucks everything into it and Hell freezing over. Best-case is that Clinton agrees to help with the campaign, but since we don't have any early indications that Obama has hired a bunch of nubile interns we're pessimistic that this will be the outcome."

While many scientists have expressed confidence that the reaction will be fine, ALARM experts have been flooding the Internet with speculation that the situation is much less rosy.

"Obama is running out of steam, and he's forced to make a deal with the devil, only he just got finished beating the devil's wife, calling the devil a racist, and has a reputation for casting people aside the moment he's finished with them. You think Clinton will forgive and forget all that? If so, you're fooling yourself.

"That's why we expect disaster tomorrow. So eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we re-enter the Clinton Zone. It's like a black hole, only much, much more annoying."

A Simple Explanation

Climate Change deniers are all in a twitter this week because of recent studies showing that there’s not enough heat in the ocean and an allegation that the atmosphere isn’t infinitely thick.

You know what? Climate Change deniers are idiots.

Of course the oceans haven’t warmed! Only fools ever expected that they would. When you want to cool a drink, what do you do? You put in ice cubes. Similarly, millions of tons of ice have slid off the Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves into the oceans, keeping them cool.

Add to those all the frozen polar bear corpses and it’s a miracle that the oceans haven’t frozen up completely.

And as for this whole “newly derived equations” mumbo-jumbo; well, let’s just say that if Jim Cramer can’t figure out math, then there’s no way that some Hungarian bozo is going to suddenly derive equations better than the good old US of A.

Isn’t Hungary the country that put screen doors on their submarines?

Listen, NASA’s been all the way to the moon, so they know very well how deep the atmosphere really is. And the NASA guy says that the 200-year old calculations are good and that there’s not going to be any changes to the basic theory. Case closed, game, set, and match.

Now go buy your Prius and shut up.

Scientists: is there anything they can't do?

It's a miracle: scientists in South Korea have finally cloned glow-in-the-dark cats!

Sensible cat owners have known for years that they take a risk every night of their cat slashing out their jugular and then laughing as their owner expires, drowned by their own femoral blood. But with a glow-in-the-dark cat, that fear is completely eliminated: now you see the vile feline as it creeps up on you and you have time to retrieve your gun under the pillow and put six or seven rounds into it.

It also totally negates a cat's ability (and, indeed, predilection) to try to trip you in the dark during power outages to make you fall downstairs and break open your head, thus allowing it to feast on the goo inside. Now you can just kick the cat out of the way, as God intended!

Advantage: Man!

Space: Now 150% Deadlier!

Forget all of Gene Roddenberry’s hogwash about the final frontier: space is dangerous.

Send a microbe up into space and what happens? It comes back as a Rambobe, with thirty times the lethal killing power of its earth-bound brethren. Why? The scientists will give you some kind of claptrap about fluid shear, but we know what it is: deadly space radiation.

But we’re already seeing its effects here on earth. Reports of a baboon crime spree in South Africa are the natural result of NASA’s intemperate policy of firing monkeys up into space. Of course they got juiced up and came back with ‘roids rage. It’s what space does. And it’s not just baboons: orangutans (probably from the old Gemini missions) are going berserko, too.

Lest you think humans are immune, I have one name for you: Lisa Nowak. You think it’s coincidence that Buzz Aldrin defended her, or has he driven across the US in a space-addled rage wearing zero-G diapers swilling down TANG packets plotting the destruction of his rival?

The only solution is for us to immediately halt all space exploration and exploitation. I know, it’ll be tough without 24-hour satellite porn channels, but the Internet has grown so much now that I think we can satisfy our baser urges with streaming videos and stop playing Russian roulette with death from space.

Because with over 6 billion potential zombies on this planet, can we really afford to continue important space-strength bacterium?

Discredit, disgrace, defund

That’s the only reasonable reaction to the latest news on the Global Warming data and the shameful behavior of NASA and GISS scientists. What else can you say when scientists massage data to fit their theory?

If the issues put forth by McIntyre are true*, then everyone involved in this nonsense needs to have their credentials irreparably tarnished and their careers ended. Not tomorrow, today. These jackasses should never research, teach, write, lecture, nor be involved in the sciences ever again. I’m not even sure they should be allowed to continue to use running water.

I’ve ridiculed global warming alarmism, and I’ve always been skeptical about the data that we had: the amount of it, its reliability, and its overall statistical robustness. But I didn’t think they’d be actively altering unpleasant data to make it fit their ends. That’s criminal; it’s certainly not science.

Think I’m being harsh? If a stock analyst falsified data on a fund and defrauded investors, he’d be prosecuted. If a surgeon lied about the results of a procedure and it was performed on thousands of people, he’d be in jail and lose his license.

These happy fraudsters pushed fake data and junk science on us and tried to change the political, economical, and moral fabric of the entire world to fit their druidic ideas of purity and enlightenment. How much time, effort, and energy has been wasted on global climate change that could have gone to something useful?

Worse, they swept up gullible millions along with them. They’ve damaged relations between the US and Europe, inflated the price of oil (thus funneling money to terrorists), encouraged the creation of a European CO2-trading scheme only slightly less complicated than a manned mission to Mars, and distracted millions of dollars in capital and research from more important projects like cures for cancer or direct-to-iPhone porn.

But their true triumvirate of malfeasance was spawned from their unholy alliance with Hollywood:

1) An Inconvenient Truth, responsible for lowering the IQs of schoolchildren all across the United States
2) The Day After Tomorrow, which stole 124 minutes from the lives of millions of moviegoers across the world which they can never have back. It’s the greatest theft of time since Born on the 4th of July.
3) Live Earth, starring the Allman Brothers and jazz great Dizzy Gillespie, which would have interrupted the schedules of millions had it not been broadcast on NBC (total audience 412 crotchety old cranks)

For all those scientists out there who just patently accepted their junk, without adequate peer review or running the numbers themselves, shame on you. As a community, we’re supposed to be better than that. Thanks for damaging scientific credibility and dragging us closer to where politicians and journalists are.

You would hope that we’d advanced past rushing into mistakes like phrenology and eugenics, but something like this shows that we haven’t moved as far as we might like.

* In the interest of disclosure, there’s a link to Daily Dollop from Watts Up With That, an associate of the guy (McIntyre) who has done this research. It actually brought me lots of traffic. But I’ve never communicated with the site proprietor that I know of.

The End is Nigh!

I thought it was bad when scientists were tinkering with space radiation that would eventually spawn galaxy-conquering Green Slime, but this is even worse: now they’re propagating twelve-headed freshwater jellyfish! What possible use could these be, other than to murder unsuspecting beachgoers?

If scientists want to play God and manipulate the genes of some animal, why not work on making mosquitoes headless? Or a powder we could spray on politicians that would make them honest, or at least silent, or preferably both? Must they choose a nasty, vicious, mindless creature and make it even deadlier?

Actually, 'nasty, vicious, mindless creatures' pretty much describes Congress.

Stupid Guy Says Stupid Stuff

In life, when we choose to take advice from people, we need to be sure that we can have confidence that they know what they’re talking about and that we can trust their judgment.

In that vein, I ask you the following question: can you trust the opinions of Tom Cruise and John Travolta?

Well, Tom Cruise decided to go Nicole "I'm still smoking hot at 40" Kidman:
To Penelope "I look like a boy until my hair grows out" Cruz:
To Katie "Professional Beard" Holmes:

While moving from Cruz to Holmes is a step up, they’re both a big step down from Nicole Kidman.

On the other side, John Travolta claims he’s an actor. Once upon a time, he was a mega-star in this:

Then he decided to star in this piece of garbage:
And in this utterly unnecessary and ill-advised sequel:

Travolta says that “because you are famous doesn’t mean you have less of a right.” I think he can rest assured that, if he continues to use his keen script judgment, he won’t have to worry about being famous any more.

So with that in mind, I think we can safely tell them to go to hell over their opinions on school shooting, psychiatry, and Anna Nicole Smith.

And while I’m at it, can someone tell me why the news outlets continue to put these moronic scientologists front-and-center and treat their cultish mewlings as some sort of valid opinion?

They’re idiots, okay? You don’t go dig up Flat-Earthers when you’re looking for a story on sea travel, do you?

RIP Mr. Wizard

Mr. Wizard passed away at 89.

The obituary talks about how he taught science to boomers. It’s a pity his lessons didn’t take with so many of them that are now in congress.

Life Cycle of Junk Science

Below is the life cycle of junk science, as best I can figure it by analyzing the history of classic junk science, from diet pills to The Population Bomb. Can you think of any examples today that might fit this life cycle?

Genesis
1) Maverick Scientist has an Idea.
2) Other scientists deride the Idea.
3) SF Writers use Idea as image of bleak future.
4) Academics debate Idea.
5) Politicians begins to discuss the Idea, but don’t understand it.
6) General Public ignores the Idea.

Growth
7) Champion arrives to actively promote and publicize Idea.
8) Scientists form a consensus that agrees with Idea.
9) Academics teach Idea as fact.
10) Fast Adapters change lifestyle, ridicule General Public.
11) Hollywood makes disaster movie, sometimes based on SF novel from 3.
12) General Public makes token lifestyle changes.
13) Politicians use Idea to attack political enemies.

Hysteria
14) Scientific consensus begins ruthlessly crushing dissent.
15) Champion is hailed as Messianic Leader.
16) Academics announce society is doomed.
17) General public accepts Idea.
18) Opponents of Idea are cast as wicked and immoral.
19) Music Industry holds benefit, sometimes using film name from 11.

Critical Mass
20) Dissenting Scientist proposes alternative theory to Idea.
21) Scientific consensus denounces Dissenting Scientist.
22) Messianic Leader begins making ludicrous claims unrelated to Idea.
23) Politicians propose massive social, fiscal, and moral changes to accommodate Idea.
24) Time Magazine puts Maverick Scientist, Messiah, Idea, or all 3 on cover.

Death and Rebirth
25) Dissenting Scientist is proven to be right, nothing happens.
26) Scientists form new consensus, claim they knew all along.
27) Fast Adapters are ridiculed by General Public.
28) Academics continue to teach Idea as “compelling theory”.
29) Politicians raise taxes, just in case.
30) Messiah and Entertainment Industry find new Maverick Scientist.
31) Return to Step 1.