“Proof is for mathematical theorems and alcoholic beverages. It’s not for science.” – MannWashington Posts’s Steven Mufson and Joby Warrick gave a glowing account of President Obama’s warnings on Climate Change:
“The growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other,” Obama said in a speech at the Le Bourget conference center in Paris’s industrial outskirts. “What should give us hope that this is a turning point, that this is the moment we finally determined we would save our planet.”
Obama, who has staked his legacy on the fight against climate change, struck an ominous tone in describing the ravages of a warming planet, declaring that “no nation large or small, wealthy or poor, is immune.” He urged the leaders to take action even if the benefits were not evident for generations.
I find it interesting that leftists pride themselves on being pragmatic and pro-science when they so viciously reject mathematics at every turn. Why is this so? Before I go on to my main point I need to first address the 500 pound gorilla counter argument that lefties will race to respond with: evolution.
Evolution is one place where I have to concede that the lefties have some of us. I cringe every time I hear arguments for creationism, as these arguments ignore too much evidence to go against scientifically provable timelines. The more current version that we hear along this argument is for Intelligent Design (ID). In a nutshell, ID argues that (H/T to David H. for the source):
Michael Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University, claims that over the past decades, biochemical discoveries at the nano-scale have thrown Darwin’s theory of evolution into an unresolved crisis. It simply cannot account for the molecular complexity of life. Recent advances in science have in fact discovered evidence of intelligent design, though sociological and philosophical factors have caused this discovery to be repressed.
Personally, I don’t agree with teaching this in a science class either, for the same reasons I’ll be explaining why Global warming shouldn’t be. While Behe brings up an interesting point that isn’t as simplistic as Creationism as ID’s detractors would suggest, getting into motive doesn’t belong in a science classroom. I do think that this could be a good topic in a philosophy class, where ID could be presented alongside creationism and straight up random evolution. Speculating motive goes beyond the bounds of science class, which should stick to just provable facts.
That said, I do not believe that faith and science are incompatible. When the ID argument first got some national traction during the George W. Bush presidency my lefty DC pals were trying to dig at me on this issue one night when we were out for a few beers. My response was simple – the last biology class that I took was taught by a 70-something Catholic nun when I was a freshman in high school. When the subject of evolution came up she opened the lesson by stating something to the effect of, “The Bible says that the world was created in seven days, but it doesn’t state how long those days were.” And she proceeded to teach evolutionary theory that even the most rabid left wing atheist would have approved of.
Now with that out of the way let’s get to the heart of this post. If there is one ironclad guaranteed way to annoy a leftist it’s to ask them to quantify any kind of argument they’re making. My favorite one to pester them with is on the cult of Global Warming, Climate Change, or whatever it will be called next month. I admit I’m being a bit disrespectful in referring to Climate Change as a religious cult, but frankly I’ve lost patience with an ideology that so casually labels me a “climate denier” when they can’t even detail what it is I’m supposedly denying. Help me out here, but is it really radical or extreme that before declaring a crisis that you at least establish what the norm or steady state is, how much is change is acceptable, and how is it being measured?
A few years ago I wrote a post showing how we could balance the budget today with no tricks, gimmicks or BS. I used a few relatively simple spreadsheets to bridge the budget gap using a system where everybody pays regardless of income level, and the tax rate is savagely progressive enough to please even the Sandernistas. One of my lefty pals on Facebook took exception with my assertions and I asked for his plan of how we balance the budget. I even told him I wasn’t looking for something as granular as what I did, but something showing where my math was wrong or if he could show a plan that was in the ballpark of a balanced budget, and he just retorted that he didn’t need math. Really.
In another case, I posted the recent numbers showing that despite being years into Obamacare, America still has over 32 million Americans without health insurance. Another lefty pal tried snarking at me that we got 14 million people health insurance (which I would point out was mostly from expanding Medicaid), so how could this be a failure? I responded by asking him why 46 million uninsured was a crisis that demanded hasty, poorly thought legislation but 32 million was a success. For that matter, what made 46 million the crisis number? Had we started out with 60 million uninsured and reduced the number to 46 would you be calling it a success? Or if we had started out with 32 million would you have called it a crisis and deemed 18 million a success? While we’re at it – on any scale I’ve ever looked at when your goal is 46 and you score a 12 that’s a failure by any measure – what makes this different?
As you may have guessed, he went silent after that.
But months before this last guy I got into it with two more leftists, the argument over success of Obamacare. This led to two more questions from me, the first involved trying to get one guy to explain how he determined that “the curve is bending downward.” When he kept regurgitating White House talking points I asked him to what data or study he used to quantify that claim his response was:
“There are figures (Bob), I have seen things; suggest you Google them. I speak in generalities only to point you in the right direction. I’m not doing hours of research to try to convince someone who is motivated only by hatred if the president”
The second guy responded to my question of how many enrollments in Obamacare were needed to considered a success. The response I got was:
“A large number of people who previously didn’t now have insurance. That was the goal. That was the success. Period. Full stop.”
Basically the two responses were “I’m right – go google it”, and “It doesn’t matter. The law is awesome because I say it is”. Not coincidentally, this was the point where I realized both of these guys were completely full of dung and stopped taking anything they said on the subject seriously.
A couple of Facebook food fight anecdotes hardly equate research, but they illustrate the general problem with the left’s war on math.Washington Examiner’s Mark Tapscott explains that Feds lack the data to determine how well key Obamacare provisions are working:
The accounting system used by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, which manages Obamacare, doesn’t track “expenditure totals for CCIIO-related polling, focus groups, or advertising and other public relations activities,” GAO said in a report made public Monday.
How about the White House “Czars?” You recall the president’s cute way to end-run Congress to give high level jobs to friends too radical to withstand the nomination process to any cabinet position? Laura Fillault over at Right Straight from the Heart offers a thorough look at the Czars.
All of these czars with their own budgets along with all of the resulting policies, programs, rules and regulations beg the question: How effective are the White House Czars? And, how would we know? The challenge with administrative policies is that they rarely have measurable outcomes. And if they do have measurable outcomes, typically the voter is not the one setting them. Worse – it’s the government who is providing the data and measuring the outcomes. What hope do taxpayers and voters have in shrinking an ever growing government if we can’t even know what’s working and what’s not, especially when one government office is “auditing” the other?
Read the whole thing. There’s also Fox News’ George Russell looking at the UN’s “Sustainability Goals“:
When the United Nations approved a massive agenda of sustainable development goals last week, it over-rode pointed warnings by two international science councils that the program is in many ways uncoordinated, unmeasurable and unrealistically ambitious.
According to the 92-page ICSU/ISSC report, there was a lot of perfecting to do.
Among the 169 targets, for example, the report’s authors—40 of them, from 21 countries—declared that only 49, or 29 per cent, could be “considered well developed (i.e. thought out), 91, or 54 per cent, required more specificity, and 29, or 17 per cent, required “significant work” to be useful.
In other words, well over two-thirds of the targets that are supposed to reorganize much of the world’s sweeping self-improvement over the next 15 years are not deemed particularly useful or specific as currently laid out and approved.
Some of the targets, the report noted, tended to cancel each other out, at least to some degree: “For example, an increase in agricultural land-use to help end hunger [Goal 2] can result in biodiversity loss [Goal 15], as well as in overuse and/or pollution of water resources [Goal 6]and downstream (and likely negative) effects on marine resources [Goal 14], which in turn could exacerbate food security concerns [back to Goal 2].”
There are numerous other examples. Here is a link dump if you want to see more:
Neil “I love science sexually” DeGrasse is anti-science and anti-intellectual
Here are 9 absurd edits to Tyson’s Wikipedia page by his Truthers
By Obama’s own standards, Obamanomics is a failure
Despite biased facts and relaity documenting failure, Obamacare continues to have its disciples
The Top 5 leftist Lies Disguised as Math
Questions that Reporters who Claim to be Pro-Science Should be Asking
Of Course, this kind of Dishonesty Extends to the Amnesty Debate
Global Warm Mongers’ Silver Bullet of Peer Review has its Pitfalls
How About how Washington DC’s Five Cent Plastic Bag Fee Is Working Out?
Those of you who recall the title of this post might be wondering what that “1 of 5” part meant. This particular post began as a sidebar to a larger one I had been working on, and then I realized that these and a few other ideas I had tied together. I had been kicking around these ideas for a few years and a request to write all of this down from my friend Chris over at Liberato.us finally got me rolling. You might also be wondering why the fact that the Radical Left is so anti-math matters. I’ll get to that question, along with revealing the one metric that the Radical Left believes wholeheartedly and consistently uses in:
Part 2: The Left has Two Advantages, and I have No Idea How We Counter Them.
To close out this chapter, I’ll leave you with a line from the great Bill Whittle:
What’s your plan for meaning? Well, what’s required in the plan? If you’re going to plan for something, what’s required in a plan? You know, the difference between hope and plan is that a plan is hope on a timetable. And I don’t mean to be particularly vulgar about this but the difference between hoping and planning is the difference between sitting in your parents’ basement at 39 years old playing video games and watching online porn versus working your butt off with two jobs and taking out the high school homecoming queen on prom night. That’s the difference between hoping and planning. And I know which one I’d rather do ’cause I’ve done them both.
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Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
Looking forward to the remaining parts, but I doubt you can cover the ignorance of the left in relationship to real science in 5 parts.
@Randy: The rest won’t be focusing on science, but more on the leftist mindset. Coming soon!
The left mind set is simple, I FEEL this is bad so I throw someone elses money at it, the money spent has the opposite effect as desired, so double the money, without changing the method, then find someone else to blame, normally those who point out my folly, then throw even more of someone elses money at it. I feel therefore it is.
@kitt:
Amusing and accurate a description of the mental illness of leftism I have ever read. Nice.
I offer another version of the leftist approach:
=== ===
They have a solution that will work if we would only stop arguing and agree with them.
They may need to omit some information about the new arrangements and what these will cost. They observe that ordinary people do not think well enough to make decisions in their own long-term best interest.
Dissenters are either uninformed or selfish. There is no need to argue about the specific meanings of words. The good of the society justifies telling some lies, if it comes to that.
The solution requires that we all pitch in and not be greedy. The people with the most resources will put their extra income or property into the pot.
They will modify or replace the solution if it doesn’t work. They will design a new solution the same way they designed the first solution, through thought, research, and discussion among themselves. Further solutions may require more resources.
This is hard work which deserves to be paid, with travel, benefits, and a pension. They are working for the good of us all, selflessly.
=== ===
@kitt: “I feel therefore it is”
Great line, I’ll be stealing that one! =8^)
@Andrew_M_Garland: “Shut up”, they explained.
@Andrew_M_Garland: All research is done by obtaining a paper written by a professor that has never had a career in his field of expertise, they will in exchange for the paper give him an honorary seat on the board pay him a handsome salary then he can continue to write more papers with his new job position propping up his phoney experience. This attracts more lefties with other board positions ect. This highly educated person that sits on a board or 2 cannot be wrong, as Bob said Shut up and pay up, you are poorly educated and hate whatever poor thing we feel we need to help. As you said selflessly.
@Andrew_M_Garland: Actually, I wish your words accurately describes the issue. The left do not have a solution. They have not even accurately defined the problem. They present climate models as fact when the models are a means to develop a hypothesis. The have been “modifying” ground temperature archives down ward to show increases in temperature.
The left effort has nothing to do with climate or global temperature at all. Starting with the Koyoto Protocol where only industrial nations were affected (India and China were exempt) the basic result would not result in a change in global warming. It had to do with reducing industry in Western Countries. By making the CO2 standards equal to 1990 levels for western countries, the industry would move to developing countries. This would spread the wealth around without a world tax on western countries.
When the left provides facts instead of theory based on models that can not accurately predict recent temperature changes, that is the time to develop a comprehensive plan and spend the funds to implement the plan. The trillions of dollars proposed by the left will not stop any climate change or global warming until the facts show there is an issue or problem.
In the 50 years since declaration of war on poverty, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution.
The war has accomplished destruction of family, dependence on welfare programs it cant be won it would destroy a government industry.
The thing is, no one is asking for trillions of dollars to reverse creationism. Whether you believe in evolution or Adam and Eve, it is a personal choice of faith and is not being used to alter the world-wide economy…. or personally enrich individuals.
Thanks largely to FA, I have collected a substantial supply of links about the misuse of data and processes by those who support global warming. On the DMN blog, which I frequent, I often lay those out, in number. The usual response is that none of the sites are reliable. They don’t look at the data or analysis…. just that Hockeyschick or whatever is not to be believed. Obviously, because they do not parrot the left wing mantra.
Meanwhile, when NOAA or NASA says 2015 was the hottest year…. EVER (what a coincidence) with nothing at all to back it up, then it is believed as gospel. Even with loads of evidence showing the processes of skewing data and repeated failure (100%) of any dire predictions ever coming true, they will believe “hottest year… ever” without hesitation.
One point about all the programs you describe as not being very well thought out… that is what happens when one spends, exclusively, someone else’s money that will never run out. And, this is why liberals are so anxious to believe in the threat of global warming… why not? Don’t cost nuthin.
@Bill: Dont cost nuthin?? If they didn’t work in the coal industry where before losing jobs they took a 50% wage cut, all good union workers. If you were not hoping for a construction job working on a pipeline, if you are entry level and looking for full time hours (oops thats health-cares fault) How are we to win a war on poverty, or control emissions on industry if we cut everything to part-time and trade with the worst polluters of the planet? Well Sanders says it can all be done by raising taxes, its always the lefts go to ground game.
I know it was sarcasm but the lefties insanity is important to point out.
Oh please tell all the kids to beware of old guys with candy, a lost puppy or free college.
This is totally off topic, but I want the word sent out. I received, along with a lot of other physicians, a notice from the CDC this morning an advisory regarding the current strain of influenza that is out there. It is more virulent than expected, and for those who are at higher than normal risk (children under 3, the elderly, immunocompromised, asthmatics) who.experience flu-like symptoms should see their doctor and get started on antivirals like tamiflu, even if the screening test is negative. According to the CDC, this particular strain requires more advanced microbiological testing.
I’m a pretty healthy 50 year old, and despite my flu shot in the fall I got this one. Haven’t been this sick in probably a decade. For tamiflu and similar drugs to have the desired effect, treatment should be started within 2 days of onset of symptoms, the sooner the better.
Oh…and no charge for FA readers for this medical advice….
@Randy:
I presented the Lefty position as I see it. Of course, it is laughable, full of denial that any other evidence or view can come from a sane mind.
And I agree, Catastrophic Global Warming is a giant scam, with admitted lying.
” the left”
Is there any major political party on the planet besides the GOP who denies AGW?
Conservative Maggie Thatcher recognized that danger back in 1984
in the last poll I saw about the seriousness of AGW the USA finished 2nd from the bottom, we beat only Saudi Arabia
@John: Actually, anyone who understands true science principles denies AGW.
Europe is starting to come around
http://www.cornwallalliance.org/2014/01/29/europe-flees-economy-destroying-green-initiatives-while-obama-presses-on/
In my lifetime the poverty rate in the USA has been cut in half because of liberals
Conservatives seem to want more to protect the donor class so that they can trickle down on us
@John:
In 1965 when the population was 165,000,000, the percent of those living in poverty was 17%. Today, in a population of 325,000,000, the percent of those living in poverty is 15%. Do the math, you blind, liberal moron.
And all it cost was $17 trillion. More living in poverty, more dependent upon the government, more out of work, more cities going bankrupt. The liberal success story.
The left is very good at math. See how they manipulated the data to suit their theory.
Correct and fabricated temperature data
Questions regarding the reliability, accuracy, and adequacy of the temperature data used by NOAA and NASA to calculate the average global temperature were raised by Joseph D’Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology and co-founder of the cable TV Weather Channel, and Anthony Watts, a 25-year broadcast meteorology veteran and currently a meteorologist for KPAY-AM radio and the report published by the Science & Public Policy Institute (SPPI) in 2010 [21].
Following an inclusive assessment of the surface temperature record of Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the East Anglia University in United Kingdom, NASA’s GISS, and NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the authors concluded that: “Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and uni-directionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant ‘global warming’ in the 20th century… Global terrestrial temperature data are compromised because more than three quarters of the 6,000 stations that once reported are no longer being used in data trend analyses… In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Changes in data sets introduced a step warming in 2009.”
The D’Aleo and Watts report encouraged additional assessments by other scientist around the word to scrutinize adjustments or fabrication of temperature data in the NCDC and CRU databases. These additional assessments confirm that NOAA and NASA, systematically and widely, adjusted historic data and fabricated temperature data in areas with no measurements [22-35] to “cool the past” in order to show the increasing global temperature trend as interpreted by NOAA and NASA.
Correct and fabricated temperature data
Questions regarding the reliability, accuracy, and adequacy of the temperature data used by NOAA and NASA to calculate the average global temperature were raised by Joseph D’Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology and co-founder of the cable TV Weather Channel, and Anthony Watts, a 25-year broadcast meteorology veteran and currently a meteorologist for KPAY-AM radio and the report published by the Science & Public Policy Institute (SPPI) in 2010 [21].
Following an inclusive assessment of the surface temperature record of Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the East Anglia University in United Kingdom, NASA’s GISS, and NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the authors concluded that: “Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and uni-directionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant ‘global warming’ in the 20th century… Global terrestrial temperature data are compromised because more than three quarters of the 6,000 stations that once reported are no longer being used in data trend analyses… In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Changes in data sets introduced a step warming in 2009.”
The D’Aleo and Watts report encouraged additional assessments by other scientist around the word to scrutinize adjustments or fabrication of temperature data in the NCDC and CRU databases. These additional assessments confirm that NOAA and NASA, systematically and widely, adjusted historic data and fabricated temperature data in areas with no measurements [22-35] to “cool the past” in order to show the increasing global temperature trend as interpreted by NOAA and NASA
@John: What exactly are conservatives “denying”? Nobody is saying that the weather doesn’t change or that mankind doesn’t make any contribution to it.
And as for trickle down economics, conservatives oppose the endless cycle of poverty enacted by unending welfare, food stamps, etc. We prefer jobs, and support policies designed to create them.
@Bill:
In support of your position, there are two misrepresentations going on.
First, day to day poverty has been almost eliminated by massive public welfare payments, housing, and medical services. Yet, progessives/liberals always call for more.
Second, the reported poverty statistics are always based on cash family income, not counting most public support. This figure counts the truly poor and also all who “would be poor if we weren’t helping them”. This falsely supports the call for more welfare payments. We should ask, despite all of this help and trillions spent, why are they yet unable to support themselves?
09/14/11 – EconLib by David Henderson [edited]
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/09/30.html
30 Million Non-Poor Americans Have Been Mislaid
=== ===
Tim Worstall: The federal government counts people who are poor without considering many of the benefits the poor receive. If those benefits were included, many millions of those people would not be considered poor.
David Henderson: There is a proposal to increase the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) by applying it to people with larger incomes. Workers at the new upper end would likely cut their work hours. They would receive less in wages, offset partly by more income through the EITC.
They would be better off than before, counting the subsidy and more leisure, but their before-tax incomes would fall. Statistics would show an increase in poverty, and advocates might call for even larger EITC subsidies.
=== ===
AMG: Statistics which include people who would be poor without benefits ignore the help they are already getting and exaggerate actual poverty. We really should know three figures: the fraction of people in poverty despite aid, the number who are not in poverty because of aid, and the estimated amount people choose not to earn because they are receiving aid.
@Brother Bob:
It seems to me reasonable to propose that a Creator (aka Intelligent Design,) could certainly have included an option of “evolution” in it’s creations, so as to allow species to adapt, survive, moving beyond their original design and thus thrive.
@Andrew_M_Garland: People that eke out just above the poverty line because the government buys their food or pays their rent are still in poverty. Without assistance, they would be destitute and government assistance was not intended as a substitute for livelihood.
@Bill:
That seems wrong. If someone is just above the poverty line, then they are not in poverty by government definition.
Do you know what the government intends? The result has not been to prepare or motivate people to better paying jobs which would provide for a life far above poverty.
@Andrew_M_Garland:
What I am saying is that, without government assistance, they would be in poverty. With the government propping them up, they may be above the line and not counted, but their life is still one of poverty. In other words, the government simply keeps them alive for their votes. Like cattle, for slaughter.
They are addicts and, as you say, the artificial prop does them no favors.
@Ditto: I agree that ID has it’s place in a serious discussion, and I stand by my assertion that science teaching should just stick to provable facts. ID has its place, just not in science class.
…And Part 2 is up and posted!
@Bill:
I agree with you except for this. They are propped up above the poverty line, but they are still counted as in poverty. So, there is no end to progressive demands for more money and programs, and the official poverty percentage does not go down.
I said above, we need three numbers: People in poverty, people not in poverty because of government assistance, and the amount of income voluntarily lowered because poverty assistance is available.
@Brother Bob: IMO ID is basically a smokescreen disseminated by insecure Creationists continuing to deny Evolution.
Too simple?
@Rich Wheeler: Yes.