Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. There is no such things as consensus science. If it is consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. (Michael Crichton, 1942-2008)
I don’t know enough of science to say this with any certainty, but I do not think there is much real science going on anymore. It is discussed here on this blog frequently, how Moon landings, space travel in general, atomic bombs, nuclear power (which I suspect is real**) are all fake. I am a complete skeptic about geology and evolution. Weather forecasts are indeed reliable for a few days time – there is good work going on there. Bridges do not collapse, nor buildings, which look like boxes. That says that engineering is reliable, but that architecture is not very creative.
Crichton’s remarks above are aimed directly at the climate change regime, which relies on a fabricated “consensus” of 97% of scientists to sell itself as real. Never mind that the consensus was not real, even as then-president Obama used it in a Tweet. The idea behind it was to prevent questioning of the fabricated science that was underway. It has been used as a hammer, and “scientists” and researchers have been cowed into submission by brute force by the progenitors of this fake movement.
I get tired of it all. I subscribe to the Substack of Roger Pielke, Jr. called The Honest Broker, and even get tired of him, even as he is honest to a fault. He’s a smart and accomplished man, and writes at length about climate, but he never seems to put the matter to bed. On some level, to me, he appears bought in. He’s debating the true believers, but only from the margins, and reflexively cites a belief that CO2 is a problem and that the measurements of its effects, based on “science”, are real. I leave a comment there now and then, as the one that follows. Pielke noted in passing about RPG 8.5, the latest screed by the IPCC that I knew was false, even as few others passing through the Pielke site did.
AR5, AR6, CMIP7, RCP8.5, SSP3.70, SSPS 8.5 … on and on. Not only is it alphabet soup, but unlike the real product us kids like so much, it is all inedible, completely without nutritional value.
It is so easy just to stand back from it all, stick your head out a car window, and see that whatever warming has gone on since the end of the Little Ice Age has not affected us much, and in fact even NASA says that additional CO2 in the atmosphere is beneficial. We were driving through the Alps yesterday on vacation, the came upon massive glaciers. Why are they still there? Worse yet, despite the David Vining effect, it still snows. A lot.
I came upon a scientist, Lusha Tronstad, who studied ice accumulation around Yellowstone Lake and found , zounds!, that it has not changed much in recent decades. She did not get paid to find that out. Her conclusion, “Things aren’t changing right now. But at some point, they will start changing and we need to keep an eye on the ecosystem and keep collecting data to understand how these changes will affect the ecosystem and how our species of interest could be affected by these changes in the future,.”
Unstated, “If you want me to keep studying something not happening, you gotta keep paying me.”
So what’s up with the alphabet soup? Money. As Ike’s ghost writers warned, science has become captive of a scientific-technological elite. Any scientist with any chops at all who finds by experimental observation that things just aren’t changing that much is serving your coffee and changing your sheets.
So what’s up with climate? Secret sauce: Nothing. CO2 is not a driver, never was, but if they want to attack fossil fuel use, it’s the best lever around. Where funding goes, science follows.
That comment drew one “like” at that site, and so I clicked on it to see who liked it: me. I do that now and then as a way of rubbing it in, to like my own words when they fly in the face of consensus.
Here’s another comment I left, and God be damned, Pielke liked it!
I was listening to a podcast wherein Ezra Klein’s guest noted that he “followed the science” on climate change as a way of asserting that there existed such a thing as un-politicized “science”. His attitude in “following” without questioning was an indicator of lack of intelligence. He’s a product of groupthink, which is one of, if not THE most potent forces in human affairs, second only to the power of money to marshal groupthink to its service.
That podcast was being played as I sat in the back seat as we traveled through the Alps of southern France, where glaciers abound, seemingly unaffected by science. They are supposed to be gone by now, their melt causing oceans to rise and flood our coasts.
So what is up with science? Has it always been like this? I have it in my mind that the 19th century brought forth better minds and more solid research. What changed? Money. It really is that simple. Science follows money like the little lamb and Mary. I close with the words from Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, referred to above. (Keep in mind that Ike took time off from the links to read it in public.)
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
__________________
** Nuclear power is really nothing more than heated steam running turbines. Is a nuclear process used to produce the necessary heat? It appears so. Maybe that’s as far as Manhattan ever got.
Piece of Mindful 
Something I need to deep dive into is the science of fusion. Fusion, as a way of making energy, unless you believe in “hydrogen bombs”, has never been proven on earth. I will use the terms endothermic and exothermic reactions, which are easy to understand from a common sense perspective. All explosives are exothermic, and explosive compounds have covalent bonds that are meta-stable – like TNT, that require a high activation energy but result in a large amount of heat being formed quickly, and often gases released. In general it requires heat and energy to make chemical bonds, and breaking chemical bonds results in the release of energy.
If we apply the same concepts to the nucleus, then fission would release energy – the breaking of “bonds”, and fusion would require energy. The present nuclear theory of consensus science says fusing hydrogen with a couple of neutrons thrown in, will result in a helium nucleus with the release of a massive amount of energy. However, it requires extremely high temperature to achieve. For years they have been claiming “cold fusion” – fusion at more Earthlike temperatures, without solid proof. And then they keep trying to build fusion reactors – which are supposed to work like the sun. The reason the sun can supposedly fuse hydrogen into helium is superhigh temperatures and pressures from “gravity”, holding the gas ball together. The composition of the sun is something i need to investigate – because gravity holding together a large hot gas ball at high densities seems rather counterintuitive.
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As far as nuclear power/nuclear warheads/etc goes….I struggle with this one. I agree with nuclear reactors creating power as something effective but here is this link which is excellent: If Nukes are a HOAX What about the Nuclear power plants I guess the question I have is my Grandfather worked at Oak Ridge on the ‘A Bomb’ and died of a very rare form of cancer that was suspected of his exposure to radiation. I know my aunt said they tried to have the body autopsied but were unable to do that. What then did they do to the engineers and scientists that made them so sick is my question….
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Radioactive substances are very likely harmful poisons. I don’t think that’s incompatible with nuclear power and weapons (being a hoax).
Nuclear power can be the result of radioactive decay, but turning that into a “bomb” is a whole other story. Most likely if you have purified radioactive isotopes they will overheat and meltdown – not explode “like a thousand suns” or whatever. If nukes were developed later, and the development timeline took longer, and had more failures, I’d be more inclined to give them some credence. However, the little boy, if that’s what is was called that was dropped on Hiroshima was a gun type device, super simple, you just clap two pieces of metal together quickly and you get 15 kilotons of TNT explosive force. Very hard to believe.
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As someone who has worked in science and engineering at a high level for 35 years, I can tell you that 81 years of no nuclear weapons exploding by accident is completely impossible. This was tipped me off to the hoax – I studied nuclear weapons intensely on side for years, and have a PhD in Chemistry FYI. After becoming “expert” in the making of nuclear weapons I decided to investigate so called “broken arrows” – there is a book on it I read that read like fiction – scores of bombs dropped on runways, launched by mistake, dropped from high altitude, and the payload never exploding. We used to build homemade bombs as kids, and damn you were nervous putting the things together. Do you know how many nuclear weapons have been purported to have been assembled? It’s well over 200,000 between the United States and Russia. Using a bunch of high school flunkies, probably a lot of them hungover, and never an accident. No way.
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My uncle worked high level in the Air Force on nuclear weapons detections in satellites, and then space shuttle. He’s a smart dupe. Why do people trust their relatives? I never believed a word my mom or dad said – your relatives are as dumb as the rest, so don’t trust them for the truth. But they make great subjects for interrogation, which I like to do.
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Excellent comment.
DSKlausler
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I was 4 years old living with my grandparents in Iowa when he passed, he was very sick. He was a mechanical engineer….very humble and honest man. I’m not sure what your comment is meant to do but what he died from at a younger age was very rare thats all I know. Just don’t think it is good business to tell me my relatives are dumb? Don’t think that is the case. Thanks for the comment.
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Hi, I was too blunt – my apologies. I could go on, but for example my father is still alive, and supposedly a smart man, but really to be honest completely clueless how the world works. Joined Demolay at a young age, was working for GE when he was 16, completely brainwashed. Nice guy, but watches the news all the time, and tells me every time i see him i should go to the doctor regularly. No thanks. My relatives with the exception of my dads oldest brother are all very sucessful but totally clueless.
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I agree, for all you said above, that nuclear weapons are a hoax. I’ll add one more element, the fear factor. The whole of the Cold War was built around fear of an enemy who had such weapons and who would actually use them, versus our side, which would not. That’s classic thought control, use of fear to keep everyone in line. In short, the basis of all war propaganda, “were rational, they’re not.”
Nuclear power is something else entirely. The “bomb” is a chain reaction that only ends when it runs out of fuel. The lie is that this chain reaction exists, and that if so, could be controlled. Set it all aside as fear porn. But what if on a micro scale it is possible to generate a nuclear reaction that generates intense heat, and that using that heat to procure steam it is possible to generate electricity. This would explain the nuclear plant to a degree, and the massive cement shielding would be there to contain accidental explosions, in part, and maybe to maintain the hoax of the bomb, an important element in modern thought control.
It gets more complicated, as power grids are like organisms the fluctuate and produce too much power, which has to be bled off. Those who say nuclear power is a hoax say that the sole purpose of the nuclear plant is to catch the excess power. That has very little explanatory power, as excess electricity could as easily be released underground. Think again.
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I think Miles would say they’re an excuse to raid the treasury, in part.. maybe at one time they also heralded a bright future of limitless cheap energy and the sci-fi utopia just around the corner.. (now replaced with dystopic visions)
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Maybe he said that … whatever he wrote on the subject, I know I read it. “Raiding the treasury” doesn’t really work for me since I came to accept Modern Monetary Theory as having legs. That, and I am not sure that nuclear plants that were/are in service are built with taxpayer money. Could be ratepayer money. Anyway, the idea that is a scam based on no science just strains credulity to the limit for me.
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I don’t know the science, I don’t know how they’re funded – but as far as MMT, I think the treasury/ printing press or whatever still needs to be “raided”.. eg, with defense contractors. I guess you still need some rationale to explain why the government cut you a check for millions of dollars? Could be they had more cousins that needed respectable jobs so they decided to build nuclear power plants. Siphon some money that way. Maybe you need multiple scams rather than just 90% of the budget for bombs and fighter jets? And use them to push other agendas as well? And it’s make-work for all kinds of people, a way if using MMT for employment and GDP without being open about it. Keynesian stimulus. Maybe.
But yeah Miles talks often about “your taxpayer dollars” and seems almost to consider economics beneath him, so I doubt he’s interested in MMT. In a very abstract sense even MMT “printing” is probably conceptually linked to “your taxpayer dollars”… In the sense of what the government chooses to spend its sovereign money creation on – which power is ultimately backed by real world labor and resources. So he’s not entirely wrong, even if he’s not up to speed on MMT..
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From what I have heard, and sounds true, is that a hunk of purified uranium feels warm. And I have done a lot of radioactive assays (carbon 14, postassium 31, and tritium), and you can measure isotopes on the mass spec, so that part of the science holds true. I am wondering about Plutonium – did you know it’s supposed to be so toxic a few milligrams inhaled can kill you? They used the toxicity of Plutonium to scare people away from nuclear power, since it is created as a by product of uranium fission. According to their numbers a few pounds of it could kill millions just through aerosol inhalation. But there’s also supposed to be thousands of pounds lying around from nuclear waste, or purified to make nuclear weapons. Dirty bombs could be a real thing, but again strategically useless, like a so called nuclear weapon. I do believe if nuclear weapons were possible they wouldn’t make them – too dangerous for any possible real use, far too much risk for no real gain I can think of – especially when you already control the world, who would make something some yahoo could accidently blow up and wreck your beautiful beachfront property, or NY city penthouse?
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I am certainly not omniscient on the subject. I just know the deficits don’t matter, and the national debt is not a problem. They could pay the debt off tomorrow with a dollar and nothing would change. But deficits and debt, from a political standpoint, are used as a lever to allow some programs that are politically favored like “defense” while not allowing others like single payer or publicly paid college because they might increase the deficit.
It all came about during the Wilson Administration, The Federal Reserve Act in 1913, and sure enough by 1918 we were in a European war, running deficits. I doubt the debt they ran up then has ever been “paid” any more than WWII has. Or any war. When it is time for one, no one talks about deficits.
I sat next to a banker at a luncheon one time, Jim Bennett was his name, who just died last year. He told me that during WWII they were selling war bonds, but that money was not used to pay for anything. They just needed to get it out of the economy, because there were not enough goods to purchase.
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Yeah Mark your posts on MMT make a lot of intuitive sense. That dollars and cents can be printed at almost zero cost, and really are just measures of relative versus absolute wealth. Federal Taxes, tariffs, and the creeping terror of local property taxes can all be tweaked so that the appropriate levels of society can live in the riches they believe they are entitled to. while making the hoi polloi sweat every day to survive.
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And the recent “war” with Iran is a great example – energy prices, for gasoline, heating oil, have gone up over 50% in recent months – when clearly petroleum is being produced at the same price it always was, but cheaper due to advances in chemistry and chemical engineering. And as you have suggested to the richest, these profits really mean nothing – what they do mean is less hoi polloi traveling, intruding on their precious spaces, having to work harder, less chance they actually spend time thinking about things getting restless.
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Even if the (federal) debt doesn’t matter, one could still object to “raiding the treasury” because of where they choose to direct the power of a sovereign currency issuer – in this case to an industry some consider a hoax, designed to prop up narratives and enrich the well connected with juicy government contracts for millions of dollars. Whereas, that money could have been directed to more broadly useful public purposes that would have benefited everyone. If, that is, nuclear energy is a hoax – then one could fairly accuse its hoaxers of “raiding the treasury” to feather their own nest, to the detriment of the public (misdirecting the real resources that money could employ.)
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This is why I said that I am not omniscient in these matters. Paper (or digital) currency has no value beyond the goods and services produced in an economy. If there is nothing to buy, a truckload of money is worth nothing. What is going on, as I see it anyway, is management of our economy by highly sophisticated computers, so that we no longer see the crash and burns of even recent time. They are feeding money into the economy via deficits, and pulling it out at the same time via taxes, and God knows what other tuning measures. They do this all to keep the economy humming with inflation in the mild 1-2% range, 3% at the highest. With the money explosion during Covid it got away from them.
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I see now, I misread your comment. I agree, possibly a lot of these “scams” serve at least a partial role as some sort of economic stabilizers or tuning forks.
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