Hoaxes, conspiracies, groupthink and money

I watched a discussion between John Robson of Climate Discussion Nexus and Steven Koonin, author of Unsettled, What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. You can access the discussion here, but I won’t replay it as it is quite long. Over time I’ve become adverse to sending people off to watch or read things just because I did. You’re on your own.

It’s a good discussion highlighting the shortcomings of the Climate Alarmism movement, including lack of rigor in science, failure to make predictions of any kind at any time that actually come true. That is a bit of what I might call a cornerstone of science, to make accurate predictions validating theories, but the movement exists without that benefit. Al Gore was asked recently in some highlighted interview about the predications made in his movie An Inconvenient Truth,  and he claimed to be lecturing the sky, as all of the movie’s claims have come to fruition but nobody cares. That is a Burger King-grade lie, a whopper, as just the opposite is true. The movie has disintegrated into a pile of high production values carrying with it not a shred of truth. It is classic propaganda.

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Are our state populations overstated? World?

I don’t know how many of our readers here have ever traveled across Wyoming, either west to east or north to south, or visa versa. The western one-third of the state is beautiful, with Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and the Wind River Mountains, to name a few outstanding highlights. But getting there … say you enter the state via Gillette on I-80 traveling west. You’ll encounter high winds and blowing dust, pronghorn for hundreds of miles of what must be one of the busiest semi-truck highways in the country. It is almost unbearable.

There are miles upon miles of unsettled land in Wyoming. As much as 30% of the state is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). If you are unfamiliar with our public land hierarchy, it goes like this:

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Reality is bunk

“Perhaps Love is like the ocean, full of conflict, full of pain …”
(Perhaps Love, words and music by John Denver, allegedly)

The above words came to mind this morning, but it took some effort to uncover the recording that has Placido Domingo and John Denver singing side by side. Denver is said to have written it, but I doubt it – listen to the whole thing here and judge for yourself.

From my view, Denver was a gifted singer, played a mean 12-string, and was chosen for fame, assigned to a military family for management (Lt. Col. Deutschendorf). He was given songs that appealed to the environmentalist mindset coming of age in that time, the post-Earth Day 70s.

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Non-readers, plants, influencers, staged events

I am a mere observer and do not take much of “news” seriously. Yet the essential meaning of news stories penetrates the consciousness of the mass of humans so easily that it can be distressing. So much of what appears to be human stupidity is really just indifference based on trust, and it is trust that is the great human failing here.

Some years back I was in a conversation with a relative about some thing or event, and in passing suggested either a book or an article, some form of written reference to help support whatever claim I was making. “Oh, we don’t read” was the answer I got, so don’t bother sending along anything. Much later on, same company and playing a card game that had special rules in the various cards, I was repeatedly reminded that I had not read a card correctly. Asshole that I am, I replied “Oh, I don’t read.” My reference was not taken kindly to the two who knew what I was talking about. I could not help myself, as the idea of not reading has such large implications, and I lack filters.

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Judith Curry, farewell to arms, Roger Pielke Jr. scattering ♥’s all about the landscape

Climatologist Judith Curry announced she is retiring her blog, Climate Etc.  She has an impressive CV, which I will not detail here, and more than that, I’ve always enjoyed her writing and combativeness. Michael Mann, the seemingly psychopathic pseudoscientist, took pains one time to claim that her relationship with a divorced man at Penn State was “sleeping her way to the top.” He did so in a public email, finding Curry to be particularly dislikable, to her credit.

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The age of enlightenment begins, 8/6/1945

There’s something to be said for reading over other means of ingesting information, as long as we follow Daniel Boortsin’s advice, that we “Classify, make inferences, reason, and practice, practice, practice.” Other forms of receipt of information are less useful:

Television and other electronic forms: I created, not intentionally but rather by blurting a while back, a bit at a kerfuffle at a family gathering when someone mentioned some news item, and I observed that the effects of television news were not just belief, but instant belief. From there I was castigated with the usually defensive nonsense, that people get “news” from more than one source, that the Wall Street Journal is reliable, and that no one really takes TV news seriously anyway. A grandson mentioned reading something, and I said reactively to the overall tone of rebuke that “Paper doesn’t refuse ink”, which brought about laughter. That’s a saying I remember via my mother from my grandmother, a school teacher.

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Defensive medicine

This happened this morning … I’ve got time on my hands, as will show. The fall from the ladder resulted not only in a gash in my shin, not right on the bone but beside it, but also in what appears to be a bruised bone, aka contusion, that is very painful and limits mobility. Ergo, I’ve been sitting a lot in my recliner, applying ice, and reading that recovery time could be 3-6 months depending on severity. All that means is that I have to avoid aggravating it, to let it heal, so that I have to gradually return to activities.

So this morning my wife, who is reading about prehistoric matters, mentioned the Paleolithic period, which, of course, I knew nothing about. I knew the word, had a vague idea, but stuff like that does not stick with me. That led to a discussion of Darwin and evolution, and I expressed the opinion that all the man had managed to do was to demonstrate that species adapt, as finches on different islands in the Galapagos developed different features, longer beaks, shorter or longer wings., etc., in response to their immediate environment. But they never stopped being finches.

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The virtues of being a bad student

Although I cannot say what the date and time was, I do remember the incident. For reasons probably having to do with trauma, my brain was in an awakening state. I was reading, but in an unplanned fashion, merely taking in everything I could. I was raised to be a Catholic conservative Republican, and reflected that upbringing.

At a certain point I was sitting on our couch in our living room in our house on Pine Street in Billings, Montana. I had been furiously trying to solve the murder of JFK, to no avail. As designed, that event was fake but meant to grip anyone interested in perpetuity. It would be years before I came up on the information that set me free in that regard, that the event was fake.

Our leaders and influencers enjoy keeping everyone in a state of anxiety. Anxious people cannot think properly.

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Senior citizen tales

Last Friday I was washing windows. In our dining room we have four windows that are too high to reach, and require an extension ladder. I have one of those, and old one, but functional. The problem with it is sharp corners, as I learned that day.

I remember fixing a toilet in the last few years and in a tight space where it is so hard to reach the seat bolts. I have a power wrench that comes in handy, and so used it to reach the back bolts that were otherwise hard to get at, and I let one go too long and the entire toilet fell apart before my eyes. Ceramic will do that. Months later I related this story to my cousin’s husband, and he said “You never want to use a power tool on a toilet.” That was such obvious advice that I wanted to slap him, but instead I said “Now you tell me.” (I like the guy. He’s a musician, a piano/horn player, and a really good one. Deep inside I want to be a musician. They tried to recruit me for my singing voice in high school. I regret turning them down. It never occurred to me to say yes.)

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