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.
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** 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 