Climate Change
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Expertise vs Scholarship
I came across this article on Ars Technica “First, Kill All The Experts” and I was reminded of the importance of language.
The gist of the article is that people distrust experts leaving us vulnerable to the dangers of global warming, privatized health care, etc. The confusion is that of scholarship vs expertise. Seemingly if you can’t run tests or repeat the same experiments over and over you’re just well versed in the theories and literature. Seemingly one would give more credence the the predictions of a structural engineer about a structure than a climatologists about the climate (or a macro-economist about the economy) .
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Quote of the day – macroeconomics and climate science
From Arnold Kling (emphasis mine)
I am a macroeconomics skeptic. I think that my background in the subject is deep enough that my reasons for skepticism are legitimate. See, for example, my memoirs of a would-be macroeconomist.
I am a climate science skeptic, but not based on a similarly deep background. I just look at the superficial similarities with macroeconomics and infer that skepticism is warranted. It is plausible to me that the climate “consensus” is way off. However, it could be off in either direction–maybe the temperature increase will be faster and sharper than the consensus forecast.
When it comes to the differences between macro and climate science, points (1) and (2) favor climate science. However, point (3) leans against climate science. Good ideas are persuasive. If you need to excommunicate unbelievers, you are dealing in religion, not science.
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Saturday reading
- From George Will –
America says to foreign producers: We prefer not to pump our oil, so please pump more of yours, thereby lowering its value, for our benefit. Let it not be said that America has no energy policy.
- Wilkerson on Global Warming
- Joel Splolsky on Architecture Astronauts – worth reading, especially in conjunction with John Robb.
- This is weird
- Inventions by year
- From George Will –
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Random Sunday link roundup
- Argentina has decriminalized illicit drug consumption – hopefully a trend
- Hanselman on graphs and charts
- Soob on Global Warming
- A network visualizer
- A network map of corporate America
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Tuesday link roundup
- A guide to night photography
- JumpUp.com
- Samantha Powers resigns…
- Southern Baptists Fight Climate Change – if only we can get Nascar and Fox News on the bandwagon the Left will declare Global Warming a hoax
Anonymous Philanthropist Donates 200 Human Kidneys To Hospital
In The Know: How Can We Make The War In Iraq More Eco-Friendly?
Mysterious Traveler Entrances Town With Utopian Vision Of The Future
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Tuesday round up
- France is seeming warlike
- Personal Batwings!
- There’s a site for everything it seems. Including celebrity heights. Fred Thompson is six foot six.
- More on the Atlanta BeltLine Scam. There is no definite plan, no construction yet, and taxes are already rising.
the proposed 22-mile loop of park and trails ringing downtown will create a circle of wealth and an outer ring of concentrated poverty, warns the Georgia Tech professor who conducted the analysis.
Atlanta is an unconscious conspiracy of real estate developers.
- From LifeHacker – 7 Thinking Errors
- Jane Fonda caused Global Warming! A massive overstatement, but it’s sobering to think where we would be in terms of carbon emissions if we had continued our nuclear power pace from the 70s. Given cheaper electricity, we would probably be farther along with electric cars too.
- Zen Pundit on al Quaidastan
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Freeman Dyson
David Friedman links to this essay about climate change from mega-scientist Freeman Dyson. It’s quite interesting reading, and Dyson is a fascinating man. Check out the Wikipedia entry and the WikiQuote entry. I need to get some of his books.
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Tuesday link clearing festival
- Noir is a new club/restaurant in Atlanta that just opened up, decorated entirely in a film noir motif. They have movie nights too. Sounds perfect for me. The AJC review is here.
- WikiBroker and Zillow seem quite handy as well. The Zillow link is set to where I am thinking about moving.
- Robert Patterson (a blogger new to me) posts this excellent link to the Battle of Algiers.
- The Chinese ARE building the first affordable electric cars! Which is one of my predictions from a while back.
- Curiously underreported story about Global Warming.
These graphs were created by NASA’s Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data. . . .
NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.
- PurpleSlog responds to my 8 Random Facts Question. His blog tagline is now “Accepting the World As It Is Until Robots Get Better”
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What I’m reading while uploading…
- Hardcore Troubadours – a bio of the Old Crow Medicine Show
- Catalogs of Data Visualization on Coding Horror
- Minorities become the majority in 10 percent of U.S. counties – which has the interesting quote
In northern Virginia, Teresita Jacinto said she feels less welcome today than when she first arrived 30 years ago, when she was one of few Hispanics in the area.
“Not only are we feeling less welcome, we are feeling threatened,” said Jacinto, a teacher in Woodbridge, Virginia, about 20 miles southwest of Washington.
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“I think across the board all of us feel like we’re not welcome,” said Jacinto, who was born in the U.S. and volunteers for an advocacy group called Mexicans Without Borders.Perhaps it’s because she’s feeling unwelcome because she’s advocating an unpopular cause?
- The Old Crow Medicine Show on AT & T Blueroom
- Green Fakers on Radar. The celebrity excuses are funny.
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I coin a new phrase
I hereby dub Climate Change Activists “The coalition of the chilling”.
And here’s an article on public attitudes on Climate Change
The Ipsos Mori poll of 2,032 adults – interviewed between 14 and 20 June – found 56% believed scientists were still questioning climate change.
There was a feeling the problem was exaggerated to make money, it found.