America loves its models

 reality: i respect it too much to believe in it.

-Jean Baudrillard

In my most recent post, I discussed the problematic nature of scientific consensus in response to a comment on a previous blog from my friend, Jake.  The dubious nature of the scientific consensus that confirms the dangerous potential of anthropogenic global warming is only partially responsible for my skepticism on this topic.  Today I will discuss the equally dubious behavior of scientifically modeling immature sciences.

In Jake’s original comment he says, “So do you believe that the wealth of researchers who do believe (or at least purport to believe) that human action has had a significant impact is literally nothing more than a conspiracy and the studies and models are contrived?”  My answer to this question is to say, “how does America like it’s models?”  Why fake of course.  What good is a model, if it hasn’t been photoshopped, doctored up, and air-brushed to appeal to the baser emotions of humankind…fear, lust, greed.  In fact, it is no surprise that the oh-so-fashionable art of creating scientific models has mirrored the modeling industry’s advance of oh-so-fashionable art.

As one who has spent much time studying artifice and sophistry, it is an affront to those of us who love words to see engineers use their numbers and equations to endeavor to tell stories.  By any aesthetic standards, the stories that come out of the models designed by clever engineers are not good stories.  If you apply scientific standards to the same stories, they just get worse.

For example, one might create a model that harvests historical temperature data, and spin a fabulous yarn about how the planet is getting hotter.  Oh yeah, and did I mention that in this story that we are all doomed!  Ha, Ha, Ha! (evil laugh).  Then some hero comes along, named Anthony Watts, with a report that he produced about how the data was collected.

How to not measure temperature

In his report, Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?, Watts disrupts the narrative being presented by our wily, anonymous narrator.

According to Watts:

The reliability of data used to document temperature trends is of great importance in this debate. We can’t know for sure if global warming is a problem if we can’t trust the data. 

and

In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source. 

The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable.

Like your average supermodel, the mathematic supermodels of global warming are enhanced with perfectly manufactured pieces of silicon.  These microchip implants have given the average scientist a new-found self-confidence.  Unlike supermodels, I like my scientists to have enough self-confidence to doubt themselves.

Here is an article for further reading on the subject of problematic modeling.

Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines

-Isaiah 2:6

-Nicolaus Copernicus

In the comments area of Lamentation for Jake, Jake triple-dog-dared me to respond to his wieldy comment.  I have no problem accepting this challenge, but it will take several posts.  Although Jake brought up several issues, I decided to start with his comments on global warming.  He said:

It is apparent that you think that human action has done little to effectively change global warming trends. So, I guess this is another clarification, since I can’t engage in a debate unless I know where you stand. Do you believe that warming trends are temporary, or completely natural, and human action has little or no to do with them? It seems that you regard the widespread concern over global warming that may be attributable to human action to little more than a widespread liberal conspiracy. So do you believe that the wealth of researchers who do believe (or at least purport to believe) that human action has had a significant impact is literally nothing more than a conspiracy and the studies and models are contrived? I can certainly respect taking such an unpopular stance, and arguing it aggressively, but I am trying to figure out just what stance you are taking, so as to discuss it further. As for me, I believe that there is a natural warming trend that would occur regardless of human presence, but I also believe that the effects of masses of greenhouse gasses is multiplying the natural trend in ways that are noticeably affecting our climate. For example, I don’t think that miles of disappearing glaciers in places like Alaska have nothing to do with human presence and the emission of greenhouse gasses, and I do think it is sensible to invest in ways to minimize such emissions. So, all jokes aside, tell me what you actually believe and we can debate the evidence.

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

-Margaret Thatcher

I approach the discourse of global warming alarmism from the perspective of one who is a casual reader of both chaos theory and complexity theory.  I believe that warming trends are at best irrelevant.  To reductively approach something as broad and dynamic as the climate of an entire planet by analyzing the impact that a single element has on this complex system is an affront to scientific inquiry.  To politicize this reductive knowledge is an insult to democracy.

A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.

-Abba Eban

I am not sure who the wealth of researchers are to whom you refer that support your position.  I do know that Al Gore likes to claim that there is a consensus in the scientific community that his farcical view of global warming is a transcendental objective truth.  However, I have also read the primary source from which Al Gore makes this claim.  He quotes a brief essay from the scholarly publication, Science, called Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.  I also know from my own research that like Al Gore, the author of this article, Naomi Oreskes, has no legitimate credentials in climatology.  Here is Oreskes’ description of her methodology for this report:

That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords “climate change” (9).

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of theconsensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position oncurrent anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensusposition.

So basically she is just doing an analysis of what other climatologists have said based on ill-conceived and arbitrary criteria of judgment.  If you want to read about how a credentialed climatologist, Benny Peiser, rips her dumb little, non-peer-reviewed essay apart, you can read what Oreskes got Wrong.  

Here are some highlights:

Oreskes’ essay had covered not the entire corpus of scientific papers on climate change over the stated decade but fewer than one-thirteenth of them.

Oreskes’ essay does not state how many of the 928 papers explicitly endorsed her very limited definition of “consensus”. Dr. Peiser found that only 13 of the 1,117 documents – a mere 1% – explicitly endorse the consensus, even in her limited definition.

In any event, it is reprehensible that a learned journal should publish defective material and should then, in effect, expect its readers to surf the Internet to find the truth.

The editors of Science also refused to publish any of the numerous other letters that they had received pointing out the deficiencies in Oreskes’ analysis.

The article where I am pulling this from is five pages long and should be read in its entirety.  It was written by Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who is one of the leading anthropogenic global warming skeptics.

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.

-Michael Crichton

I appreciate that you can respect my desire to take an “unpopular” stance and argue it aggressively, but I don’t see any evidence that the global warming alarmismists are interested in open-minded and aggressive debate.  

Recently, Viscount Monckton was invited by Republicans to testify before Congress for a hearing on Climate Change where Al Gore would also be presenting his thoroughly discredited ideas.  However, the Democrats refused to let Monckton testify.  Monckton has challenged Gore to a debate, and Gore has refused in a most cowardly fashion.

If I were a Democrat I would be extremely embarrassed by this fiasco.  If your theory of anthropogenic global warming is so solidly supported by scientific evidence, then wouldn’t it be delightful to watch Gore put Monckton in his place?  Why are Democrats and liberals stifling this debate, that clearly isn’t over to anyone who even tries to read the scientific literature?  Since when did skepticism lose its status among those who purport to be scientists?  I always thought that skepticism was the fuel of science?  Above all, if you are going to work the public to a frenzy using shoddy science, and Soviet style suppression of dissent, why couldn’t we pick something sexier than the global climate? (Although I do understand that by picking such a boring topic, most of the general public will be too lazy to look into it).  Reading scientific literature on climate change is tedious and boring.  I can’t blame climatologists for trying to create a little controversy- given the drollness of their profession.  I would much prefer a fabricated crisis  having to do with astronomy, genetics, carnivorous animals – anything but climate.  It would be a lot more fun to follow policy debates about the sun moving into red giant phase, thus causing genetic mutations in polar bears that enables them to endure hot climates, so they migrate south and start ravaging major metropolitan areas.  Now that’s good science…fiction.

Stay tuned for my next post:

America’s Next Top Model

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXvpDoGrRGU

If this video doesn’t convince you to stop burning fossil fuels, I don’t know what will.  I found this video from the blog that I have linked to my blog called Watts up With That.  If you are a follower of this blog and you haven’t checked out Watts up With That, then you are missing out.  This guy is ripping the global warming thesis apart, and he is doing it with scientific data and evidence instead of propaganda.  Since the so-called scientific consensus on global warming is fraudulent, the orthodox followers of the inconvenient religion have resorted to pathos-heavy narratives of suicidal animals.   Shouldn’t PETA be protesting this blatant exploitation of animals?

More importantly, shouldn’t Darwinists be more adamant about protecting their religion?  A theory of evolution is completely screwed up if certain species start selecting themselves for extinction through suicide.  This video is an affront to the theory of evolution, which suggests that species will adapt to their environments and that the survival instinct will supersede man-made phenomena such as global warming (notice how I said man-made instead of man-caused).

Darwin in Corner 1

Al Gore in Corner 2

I see this youtube video as evidence of a Great Schism occuring in the world of scientific religions.  This video is a brazen attempt by the global warmingists to enlist animalia to their cause and extricate the animal kingdom from the clutches of the Darwinists.

May the images of these CGI animated animals committing suicide haunt you every time you turn on the ignition of your car.

Mathematical Proof that Homosexuality is Genetically Determined

Before the stock market developed a severe case of Baracktile Dysfunction, I was starting to invest in a company called Illumina.  Even though the stock for this company has crashed pretty hard, I still believe that the long term potential for this company is pretty good.  Their mission is to revolutionize the healthcare industry by providing personal medicine solutions tailored to your DNA.  In other words, it is likely that in the not too distant future when you are born they will take a blood sample and map your DNA right after they record your fingerprints.  They will then use this DNA sample to determine which chronic diseases your are susceptible to.  They will also develop medical treatments based specifically on your DNA.  I imagine that within the next 20 years we will look back at our current healthcare system the same way that we look back on the intinerant quacks of the 19th century.  We will joke about how we used to go to a doctor, recount our symptoms, and the doctor would prescribe us medicine after some educated guesswork.  I believe that Illumina, if it fulfills its mission, will be a giant like Merck or Pfizer.

However, this post isn’t to encourage you to go buy Illumina stock (even though it is a relative bargain).  This post is intended to be a response to the comment that Wallace left on my post, “Homosexuality is Demographically Doomed.”  In the comment he said that homosexuality isn’t going away, and he linked to an article called “Sexually Antagonistic Selection in Human Male Homosexuality.”  The article makes a compelling argument to demonstrate that homosexuality is genetically determined.  The writers of the article admit that the stable permanence of homosexuality in all human populations presents a puzzling Darwinian Paradox.  Where the article itself was quite fascinating, the following passage was the most interesting to me and probably reflects the main point the Wallace was trying to get across:

Sexually antagonistic selection is at present recognized as a powerful mechanism through which genetic variation of fitness is maintained despite sexual selection in biological populations, in insects, birds, and mammals, leading to population divergence and possibly speciation. Our findings firmly establish, with a particularly relevant example, the occurrence of sexually antagonistic characters in humans. This point of view may help shift the focus away from male homosexuality per se: rather than concentrating on the sole aspect of the reduced male fecundity that it entails, we can place it within the more general framework of a genetic trait with gender-specific benefit, which may have evolved by increasing the fecundity of females. A consequence of this is that the entire population exhibits a high fecundity variation, and, as we show, the trait can neither disappear nor completely invade the gene pool. Indeed, the GFMH may belong to a possibly wide, but at present still poorly understood, class of sexually antagonistic characters that contribute to the maintenance of the observed genetic variation in human populations. As such characters are mostly expected to have a sex-linked component, the present treatment of the GMFH should provide basic understanding also of the dynamics of any such general sexual antagonistic traits.

To unpack the latent ideas in this quote might take several posts, or you can just watch the third installment of the X-Men trilogy.  However, in response to Wallace, I agree that homosexuality isn’t going away, but I also agree with the article that homosexuality will not completely invade the gene pool.

The point of my post was to point out that the demographic foundation upon which the current gay rights movement stands is tenuous.  Many of the social groups who are most hostile to homosexuality have the highest birthrates in the world.  While it is true that America in 2008 is relatively tolerant of homosexuality in a historical sense, I don’t think tolerance is the end result of some linear form of progress.  It is probably more likely that tolerance is a cyclical phenomenon.

If it is true that homosexuality is a genetically determined, then in the brave new world being engineered by a company such as Illumina, homosexuality will be able to be treated as a genetic medical condition.  If this is the case, then the Darwinian paradox of humans evolving to the point where they can determine evolution with technology might trump the Darwinian paradox inherent in the idea of sexually antagonistic selection.  In other words, the studies that are being conducted to determine that homosexuality is a biological condition rather than a choice might be the same studies that lay the groundwork for some sinister future generation to be given the choice to eradicate homosexuality from the gene pool.

Whether homosexuality is biologically determined or not will become less important than the question, “Will homosexuality choose to not offend its host society (fully empowered with tools of genetic engineering) to the point of annihiliation?”

During the Olympics, you would commonly encounter the debate over which medal count counts. There seems to be a consensus outside of America that only Gold matters. Americans on the other hand believe that the overall medal count is what determines your national superiority. I propose that the only medal count that should really count is your country’s overall historical medal count since 1896.

According to the overall historical medal counts, America is in a commanding lead with 930 Gold Medals and 2238 overall medals. The next best performer is no longer a country, so they will have a hard time catching up. The Soviet Union has 395 Gold Medals and 1010 overall medals. China, who is so quick to gloat over their recent performance, still comes in behind France in both Gold Medal and overall medal counts. I am sorry, but any country that is outperformed by the French needs to be careful before they rush to any conclusions about their greatness. Final Conclusion: if athletics are the determining factor of national greatness, then the USA wins. Although Friedman’s article is interesting, I think China has a lot more to learn from the USA about how to make national greatness a long term trend rather than the result of short term national engineering. Otherwise, they might end up like Russia where half of their athletes get disqualified for doping and they have to go to war to distract the world from their dismal performance on the field.

However, when you put all macrocosmic analyses aside about how your olympic performance correlates with the overall sociopolitical/economic foundation of your country, there is one disturbing trend that I noticed during the Olympics that Americans might want to ponder: Genetic Engineering of Superhumans.

The first time I saw Yao Ming play basketball I concluded that he was the result of some Communist genetic experiment that had gone awry. After seeing other Chinese athletes in different contexts, I believe my initial assumptions that Chinese athletes are mostly genetically engineered organisms were probably correct. Although American media mostly focused on American athletes, the footage of the few Chinese in action that I did see raised some Red flags for me.

Test Case #1 – Wang Jie
She is the women’s beach volleyball player. She is like 8 feet tall, and 6 feet of her height is her torso. I don’t think any natural human DNA would produce a body of these proportions. She must have been crossed with a weiner dog.

Test Case #2 – Women’s Gymnastics Team
These girls might or might not be of the eligible age, but unfortunately we will never know. Assuming that the Chinese government is telling the truth about their age, then something else must be going on. It could be possible that the Chinese government has genetically engineered women that don’t go through puberty. This might be the result of some kind of population control initiative. Also, genetic experimentation is a productive alternative to abortion when it comes to all of those unwanted daughters. Fortunately for China these genetically modified female eunuchs turn out to be pretty good gymnasts.

Anyway, In a world where good old fashioned cheating through doping is getting harder and harder to get away with, genetic engineering will probably become the means by which nations produce super athletes. The race for a superbreed of genetically engineered athletes is a race we can’t afford to lose – even with a cushion of over 800 Gold Medals solidifying our lead towards national supremacy.