Is Study of So-Called Climate Change Even “Science”?
In early May, Lennart Bengtsson, a Swedish climate scientist and meteorologist, joined the advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a group that questions the reliability of climate change and the costs of policies taken to address it. While Bengtsson maintains he’d always been a skeptic as any scientist ought to be, the foundation and climate-change skeptics proudly announced it as a defection from the scientific consensus.
Just a week later, he says he’s been forced to resign from the group. The abuse he’s received from the climate-science community has made it impossible to carry on his academic work and made him fear for his own safety. A once-peaceful community, he says in his resignation letter, now reminds him of McCarthyism.
“I had not expect[ed] such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life,” he wrote in his resignation. “Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship.”
When scientists cannot abide people questioning their hypotheses, something besides “science” is going on.
But there is an even deeper and more fundamental problem here. Is study of climate change even “science” to begin with?
In a court of law, jurors are told to take the opinions of experts into account — but not to blindly accept them. And indeed, it would be difficult to blindly accept all expert opinion in an adversarial setting, where you often find “experts” on opposing sides, saying completely different things that cannot be reconciled.
But in the field of “science” we are told to trust the “experts.” To do anything else is to reject “science” and that is ignorant and wrong.
That may be, in fields that actually deserve the name “science.” I’m just not sure that study of so-called “climate change” merits that label.
“Science” is based on the scientific method: scientists propose a hypothesis, and then test it through experimentation. When a result can be reliably replicated, the hypothesis gains credibility. When it cannot, it is discarded.
Under this definition, I’m not sure that study of so-called climate quite deserves to be called “science.” The public has been shown no track record of hypotheses that are reliably confirmed by experimentation. Instead, we are told that over 95% of climate scientists agree on . . . something. (Then we find out that the number is phony, because it proposes a test for determining who supports the “humans cause global warming” theory that includes most skeptics among the supposed supporters.)
You want to know what else more than 95% “climate change” scientists agreed on? That their models predicted high temperatures in 2013 — higher, in fact, than the temperatures turned out to be. Climate change models are routinely wrong, and scientists are being forced to admit it. It’s the biggest issue facing those who study the climate.
Scientists are dealing with a system that is so complex, it’s difficult to make pronouncements. In this respect, it reminds me of economics. There is a priesthood of Keynesians who assure you that, for example, the Obama stimulus will “work” as defined by some set of benchmarks — and then, when those benchmarks are not met, we are told things would have been worse. And we are supposed to believe that because the guy telling us is Paul Krugman, and he has a Nobel Prize and you don’t, so how dare you question him?
That being said, I don’t agree with the idea that economists — or the climate scientists — are the priesthood, and we need only have faith in their pronouncements, no matter how often they’re shown to be wrong.
I don’t think that makes me “anti-science.” I think it makes me pro-science.
I will add, controversially:
My belief in the free market is not based on the idea that my pet economic theories are correct. It’s based on my belief that the system is so complex that almost any theory is limited in its ability to accurately predict the future — meaning that the wizards in whom we place our trust to run the economy actually don’t know anything. Therefore, it is better to let the market take over and let people make decisions for themselves.
Whether that should happen with the environment is a tougher issue. With the economy, we have shown that we are happy to live for today, and to hell with our grandchildren. That’s not an attitude we can afford to take with the planet.
But we can’t make these decisions without questioning the methodology (and indeed in some cases the honesty) of the alarmists. Again, the scientific method must prevail.
Patterico (9c670f) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:50 amit’s not that our betters don’t know anything so much as they don’t know any where near as much as they believe they do, and much of what they “know” is wrong.
redc1c4 (abd49e) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:55 amAnd we are supposed to believe that because the guy telling us is Paul Krugman, and he has a Nobel Prize and you don’t, so how dare you question him?
They don’t actually attempt to make this argument – not in the field of economics.
Sammy Finkelman (bcd7c8) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:58 amas for “global warming”, or whatever it is they are calling it this week, i’ll be more inclined to view it as possibly being a problem when the very people who are so busy telling me it’s a problem start living their lives as if it is, instead of trying to constrain mine for the “greater good”.
when Al Gore destroys his mansions, moves into an energy efficient apartment of no more than 600 square feet total space, eschews his SUV convoy for public transportation and telecommutes to his speaking engagements instead of flying in a private jet, he’ll finally have the moral standing to talk to me about my lifestyle.
until then, he can pound sand.
redc1c4 (abd49e) — 5/16/2014 @ 8:01 ama couple of links on the general subject, ganked from Ace’s place
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303908804579564082072318084
http://www.steynonline.com/6342/six-degrees-of-warmerization
redc1c4 (abd49e) — 5/16/2014 @ 8:07 amHere’s a good interview with Lennart Bengtsson, and why he joined the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Seeing his name in print this morning made me smile a little bit at my departed uncle Lennart. carlito is nothing but a sentimental dirty scandie.
carlitos (e7c734) — 5/16/2014 @ 8:13 amI have full respect for the scientific work behind the IPCC reports
carlitos (e7c734) — 5/16/2014 @ 8:15 am–Lennart Bengtsson
A distinction might be made between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ science.
The social sciences, like economics, unfortunately amount to studies of human behavior.
The real scandal with the the Atmospheric Science departments the world over is that they have broken faith with physics, chemistry and statistics, providing their own offerings in such studies.
Statistics seems so accessible, requiring only arithmetic for calculation, but is conceptually formidable that valid, significant results obtain.
PhD. oversight ought to be encouraged routinely and to the contrary is eschewed.
Modern physics is similarly ignored wholesale because of its inaccessibility. Consequently Nineteenth century theories are employed, e.g., Beer’s Law, Stewart’s Law, rather than more up-to-date treatments accommodating QED principles.
Bluster and hand waving does not constitute science of any flavor.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/16/2014 @ 8:22 am5. It’s incredible to think Taranto has a GED, such a sober mind.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/16/2014 @ 8:32 amclimate change pansies are brutal fascists but so far they haven’t physical harmed anyone yet have they?
i think that would be a new thing
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/16/2014 @ 8:49 amThe central failure of Climate Science is the concept of ‘Backradiation’, see Trenberth, which even at this late date is being significantly massaged.
The idea is that greenhouse gases, predominately water, absorb OLR at the 10-15 millimicron range, half being radiated spaceward the remainder to the ground is manifestly wrong.
The energy, a photon, is absorbed as bond-vibrational energy. It does not excite an atom’s electron into higher orbit as would visible light of higher energy and shorter wavelength.
It is, therefore, kinetic energy, shared in collision with the surrounding major components of the Atmospheric gas.
The emissivity of low-pressure gases, its readiness to accept or give up radiation, is vastly lower than that of solids or liquids. For H20 it is 1/500th that of leaves or tilled dirt, for CO2 1/1000th. Water is 60% that of asphalt, snow 75%.
Warm air does not heat the earth, or water, or ice, by radiation but by conduction, by direct conduction via collision with the surface.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/16/2014 @ 8:57 amTrofim Lysenko would be proud of MIchael Mann and his cohort.
Mike K (cd7278) — 5/16/2014 @ 8:59 amNow doesn’t this sound like the alarmists ?
Lysenko’s methodology was the opposite of the scientific method — he designed his research to reach pre-ordained results, and by habit and policy he ignored any results which did not advance his theories. He claimed that the process of vernalization could be inherited in plants, and reported experiments that supposedly yielded healthy, robust pea plants even in the dead of winter, in subsequent generations of plants untreated by vernalization. In the impoverished and frequently frozen Soviet Union, Lysenko’s falsified findings were trumpeted widely in state-owned media, and he was portrayed as a hero of the Soviet state.
Mike K (cd7278) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:01 amSnow in Chiraq this AM. Sorry, no record, that will wait for June 2nd.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:06 amLysenko’s vernalization of wheat worked, his broader theory, that the treatment would become an inherited trait and vernalization would not need to be repeated if seed from the vernalized crop was used, was bunk.
nk (dbc370) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:21 amtherein lies the tale;
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324216004578479410300334682
narciso (3fec35) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:24 amEven America’s water is racist!
http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2014/05/16/study-young-black-children-drown-at-far-higher-rates
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:29 amFrom carlitos’ link,
bold is carlitos’ quote:
Bengtsson: Yes, the scientific report does this but, at least in my view, not critically enough. It does not bring up the large difference between observational results and model simulations. I have full respect for the scientific work behind the IPCC reports but I do not appreciate the need for consensus. It is important, and I will say essential, that society and the political community is also made aware of areas where consensus does not exist. To aim for a simplistic course of action in an area that is as complex and as incompletely understood as the climate system does not make sense at all in my opinion.
Carlitos, I am not sure that what you quoted is a fair representation of his views in full.
Elsewhere he has had a paper rejected writing something that might be harmful to the cause
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/05/105856.php
He has a history of working to make weather predictions more accurate; when the climate predictions aren’t accurate, he thinks the models should be questioned.
What an idea.
I am hoping that when the American Physical Society appointed 3 AGW skeptics to their policy panel it is a sign that at least one “official organization” wants to not be left AS THE Last abandoning the boat.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:31 am“Scientists” are teh New Journolistas…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:32 amAnd climatology is junk science in my opinion, like Bertillon’s biometrics to predict criminal behavior*. There are two things you need when you measure phenomena in order to reach a conclusion. Relevance and validity. Relevance is “does my eye color help you determine my weight”, validity is “does a sound meter measure eye color”? Climatology’s methods fail in both areas if their goal is what they say it is. Of course, it is not. Their goal is the same as that of astrologers and snake oil salesmen — to create a belief in the usefulness and efficacy of their product.
*Bertillon found that proportionality among body parts could be averaged out in the population and then went on to theorize that guys who whose feet were longer than their forearms (which is “disproportional”) were sexually precocious. Or something like that.
nk (dbc370) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:34 amThe science I was trained in, at a zeroth-tier STEM school, went like this:
Theorize
Experiment
Publish so that others can test your results.
Discard what doesn’t hold up.
When people are prevented from publishing because their results challenge previous understanding, it is not science, it is fraud.
Or politics, which is organized fraud.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:37 amThis guy is a former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg and winner of the IMO Prize from the World Meteorological Organization. He is not just some crank.
But he stepped out of line and they are going to crush him. His surrender won’t help. He will never get another grant, and he will never publish another paper. His grad students will leave by end of term.
These fascists put HUAC to shame.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:47 amBy the way, Keynes would be aghast at what Obama has tried.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/04/news/economy/meltzer_keynes.fortune/
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:57 amThe Scientific Method is the most important invention in the history of mankind (and probably always will be) since it is the engine that churns out all the others.
And watching these barbarians-on-stilts turn it into a mockery of itself is frightening.
So, Patterico, you are definitely on the side of science here.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 10:04 amWhat’s good for the goose shall be imposed.
http://collegeinsurrection.com/2014/05/prof-wants-to-jail-climate-change-deniers/
That’s not how it goes?
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/16/2014 @ 10:05 am“The public has been shown no track record of hypotheses that are reliably confirmed by experimentation.”
We have not even been shown a reliable computer model that could be back checked.
Jim (145e10) — 5/16/2014 @ 11:14 amJust for the record: it’s not “the market” that addresses the issues – Adam Smith’s entire point about the Invisible Hand is that *there isn’t one*. (And I think it misleads people to suggest there’s an independent force there)
But the millions of individuals all working for their own good in a free-market system have the *effect*, but not the purpose or guided design, of maximizing the benefits for everyone.
JWB (c1c08f) — 5/16/2014 @ 12:05 pmGood write up. So he is threatened, intimidated and harassed …. funny, just what I’d expect today.If there is a certain collective consensus, this is it.
Bullright (4dfde5) — 5/16/2014 @ 12:15 pmThat’s fair. I left out his non-sequitur about “consensus” and the weasel wording.
carlitos (e7c734) — 5/16/2014 @ 12:21 pmJim #26 … you are not being fair !
The Cult of Climate Change has shown us all their hypotheses that are reliably confirmed by experimentation … which is to say none at all … they have also shown us more than one hypothesis which has been predictably refuted by the scientific method … and they are not letting that latter slow ’em down one bit …
Alastor (2d2903) — 5/16/2014 @ 12:51 pmClimate is what people expect will happen. Weather is what you actually get.
Since climate is an abstract measurement of human expectations, it falls into the rubric of sociology.
To me sociology is closer to philosophy than a science.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 5/16/2014 @ 1:31 pm“Didn’t Keynes advocate temporary deficit spending in a recession?”
He also advocated running a surplus in good times. That is where he proved he didn’t understand politicians. The last surplus we ran was under Eisenhower. The Democrats say Clinton had a surplus but that excluded the raid on the Social Security “trust fund.”
Mike K (cd7278) — 5/16/2014 @ 1:45 pm“Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification.”
– Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970), Austrian-American philosopher
(I was first made aware of this definition on the TMBG “Here Comes Science” DVD I got for my kid a few years back.)
The Holy Climate Models, on the other hand, are a system of grant-renewal tools based on alarmist propaganda, and have failed every verification that has been allowed upon them. No wonder the Climate Cult so unwilling to let anyone look at them; they’re even more fragile than the World’s Oldest Bubble from Atlantis Squarepantis.
PCachu (e072b7) — 5/16/2014 @ 1:58 pmLatest Sharyl Atkinson scoop:
http://sharylattkisson.com/research-immunologist-sees-vaccine-link-to-autism-obesity-diabetes-in-children/
So there’s another place that the “consensus’ of scientists is not correct.
The specific theory (general immune system overload) that Dr. J. Bart Classen has may be wrong, but there is apparently correlation with vaccines, especially as to timing.
I think the point of his study is that U.S. children are getting things that children in some other countries without so many vaccinations do not get, so there has to be some epidemological explanation. And it is likely to be what vaccines.
I myself would think it is more likely to be one particular vaccine or two rather than the sum total. There may several that cause diffeernt kinds of diseases.
A comment on that site says that both the control group and the other group in some study y the CDC that attempted to prove that vaccines do not cause autism have extremely high rates of autism. The study that needed to be made was one comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated children, and this may have been doe now.
Autism and juvenile diabetes are auto-immune diseases. This kind of causation does not benefit lawyers. They can only benefit if it is impurities in the vaccines, not if the vaccines themselves – or one of them – is the problem.
Now juvenile diabetes I know is actually caused by ingesting cow’s milk before the age of 6 months (not a vaccine, but something more typical of the USA than rural Bolivia or some place like that) and is activated by an infection, which increases the production of antibodies.
Obviously getting vaccinated for something or other could possibly do that too.
Obesity is probably more complicated. It can be the result of conditions in the mother, and it could be increased by antibiotics (not needing to fight infections helps animals gain weight.)
It might be the problem is that very young children and infants are being overfed – parents are not relying on the childrens’ desire for food or not but give chuldren as much food as thy are told to.
Autism might be caused (in a person who inherited the “right” HLAs) by an antigen that has not been identified. This could be something out in the wild or a vaccine. It is in fact, an auto-immune disease, to the extent that anybody can tell if anyone has it or not..
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/16/2014 @ 2:06 pmJesus Christ. Autism – vaccine nonsense? Seriously?
carlitos (e7c734) — 5/16/2014 @ 2:13 pmchill carlitos– this is Sammy.
elissa (b0eb09) — 5/16/2014 @ 2:15 pm17. Good find.
I took squirt to swim regularly from six months to 4 years or so, after the swim lessons began.
We now have a water bug, can’t keep her out. The whole goal was her safety and enjoyment.
I would just as soon she not take up competitive swimming but that much will be her choice.
This privilege thing couldn’t be reduced to investment, could it?
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/16/2014 @ 2:16 pmAh. I knew that Sammy was verbose, but not that he was such a crank. My bad.
carlitos (e7c734) — 5/16/2014 @ 2:19 pmKrugman claims the oppsoite
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/opinion/krugman-points-of-no-return.html?_r=0
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 5/16/2014 @ 2:45 pmThe oppsoite of what?
carlitos (e7c734) — 5/16/2014 @ 2:52 pm40. Comment by carlitos (e7c734) — 5/16/2014 @ 2:52 pm
The oppsoite of what?
This:
Comment by Jim (145e10) — 5/16/2014 @ 11:14 am
In Paul Krugman’s universe:
In Paul Krugman’s alternate reality, the models apparently have held up, although, if you read that column closely, he doesn’t actually say that.
It’s the climate alarmists who can be compared to the inflation alarmists, not the people who took the opposite position.
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/16/2014 @ 3:13 pm36. Comment by elissa (b0eb09) — 5/16/2014 @ 2:15 pm
chill carlitos– this is Sammy.
People have bought into the public relations on autism without understanding the science. The refutations are invalid. Proving a theory incorrect doesn’t prove the larger hypothesis incorrect.
Incorrect theories as to how vaccines caused autism (in genetically susceptible individuals) were the only ones that would work for lawyers because if it was the vaccine itself, liability was very strictly limited by federal law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Injury_Act
If they wanted to collect a lot of money the trial lawyers had to make a false claim. They couldn’t say using the vaccine, some vaccine, whatever it might be, as approved could cause the injury.
They had to claim an additive.
They couldn’t say it was an auto-immune disorder caued or exacerbated by some vaccine.
What kept them going was that autism in fact was caused by vaccines, and they knew it.
Sharyl Atkinson’s work here in this area is good too, just like it is in oher areas.
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/16/2014 @ 3:30 pmSammy, not everything you find on the Interwebs has the same probative value.
The vaccine-autism thing has proven false EVERY time it has been looked at. EVERY TIME. The one guy who claimed to have shown it was a criminal, aiming to use his “expert” status to get consulting money.
However, that probably makes it relevant to the topic at hand, although not in the way you had in mind.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 3:35 pmSammy. I view people who perpetuate this criminal claim to be criminals. Some speech is so rancid and harmful that it should be suppressed and the speakers jailed, or fined.
Continually shouting fire in crowded theaters, for one, and this autism thing which kills children for another. Sadly, this is not yet public policy, but it should be.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 3:39 pmOK, perhaps not quite jailed.
But this crap is just rancid.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 3:41 pmSammy, I contracted chicken pox at age 40 in an area where this idiot theory was popular. NOT a good thing. In the next 5 years my wife miscarried twice. I think Jenny McCarthy should rot in hell.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 3:47 pmYou would need to be an expert to understand the proof behind climatology, if it was available.
No one needs to be an expert to understand that no proof was really offered.
Phillep Harding (0ae744) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:11 pmProof, not a ‘nice to have’, not ‘irrelevant’ but an ‘error’:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/16/the-bengtsson-paper-rejection-its-models-all-the-way-down/
Reality is wrong because its not as bad as we want it to be.
This is supposed to make sense?
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:21 pmComment by Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 3:35 pm
The vaccine-autism thing has proven false EVERY time it has been looked at. EVERY TIME.
They’ve all tested specific claims of how autism could be caused by vaccines, not the general theory. Every single disproof is of this nature.
You’re falling for the fallacy where a weak or false argument in favor of a proposition becomes a strong argument against it.
It’s a very powerful fallacy, often used by defense lawyers.
The original idea of a connection arose from parents who observed this and I think it probably happened enough times for it to be true. Nothing disproves that and now Sharyl Atkinson reports there is astudy that tends to back it up.
I also think that the lawyers probably wouldn’t pursue it if there wasn’t something there, just not what they alleged.
They needed a false theory. The most likely
explanation one wouldn’t help them because of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. They had to come up with mechanisms that wouldn’t be covered by it, and all this smoke was smeared.
There is a very logical patently obvious theory as to how autism could be caused by vaccines, or rather some unknown particular vaccine, but you don’t hear of it.
It wouldn’t benefit the trial lawyers.
The one guy who claimed to have shown it was a criminal, aiming to use his “expert” status to get consulting money.
Yes, he claimed that an impurity in the vaccine caused it, or that was the theory the lawyers were using. And he also named a specific vaccine, for no good reason.
By the way, there is no good vaccine for chicken pox. It doesn’t immunize.
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:23 pmComment by carlitos (e7c734) — 5/16/2014 @ 12:21 pm
There is a point made which I do not think you appreciate. There is a difference between the science buried in the hundreds of pages in the IPCC reports and the much shorter “Summaries” which is what reporters and politicians quote. What the fellow said was that he had no problem with the compilation of studies, the science, but he did have a problem with the fact that the (increasing) discrepancies between the model projections and actual observations were being largely ignored in the Summary Reports (the “consensus”.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:24 pmAs my link reports, he has now had a paper rejected, I think for trying to bring attention to this matter.
You think chicken pox causes miscarriages?
Miscarrages indeed can be caused by infections.
Cerebral palsy and the like is most likely caused by an infection, one for which there is no vaccine – CMV, or maybe some others – but it was more usewful for John edwards to claim failing to do a Caesarian section caused that so he argued that.
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:25 pmBy the way, there is no good vaccine for chicken pox. It doesn’t immunize.
Comment by Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:23 pm
Excuse me???
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:26 pmDo you mean to say it is not 100% effective?
Well stated! I’ve been saying this for years.
Craig Mc (b890e3) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:34 pmBy the way, there is no good vaccine for chicken pox. It doesn’t immunize.
The problem is that there are many people like me, who were born long before there was a vaccine, which became available after I was an adult, and was contraindicated then. So, the herd immunization effect will be better as time goes on — assuming that people don’t opt their kids out.
I have heard this same immunization-doesn’t-work from other autism-vaccine
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:35 pmfoolspeople, but it is pretty much just second-order nonsense, to paper over the most glaring problems with the original nonsense.#53: Open publication is a necessary part of the Method. Closing publications to one side of a scientific issue is organized fraud.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:37 pmYou think chicken pox causes miscarriages?
It is accepted science that it causes genetic damage in adults. But of course, to you that must be suspect, while wild-ass 5-sigma correlations are to be respected.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:39 pmHere is a wonderful example of a true scientist. Guy disproves his own previous award-worthy results.
http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/05/gluten_sensitivity_may_not_exist.html
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:43 pmHe does follow the ‘Book of Mann’ as I’ve dubbed it,
narciso (3fec35) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:50 pmwith manbearpig, Gore as one of the chapters.
I think you could have a science of climate study. I don’t think that what’s being sold as such is that, however; we just do not know enough, in enough detail, to make accurate models to use instead of physical experiments. What we do know is that the models we do have, do not reflect reality sufficiently to be useable to make long-term projections. Or even short term projections. (There’s a whole question about how do you know when you know enough, but we haven’t gotten close enough to begin worrying about that problem.)
htom (412a17) — 5/16/2014 @ 5:01 pmYup. They might as well use their models to predict their wives’ hot flashes. They would be just as reliable.
nk (dbc370) — 5/16/2014 @ 5:11 pmnk@60– that made me laugh. But you may be on to something. Reports of global warming surfaced around the time millions and millions of boomer women around the world started getting hot flashes. Coincidence? I think probably not! We’ll have to see what Sammeh thinks about this.
elissa (b0eb09) — 5/16/2014 @ 5:34 pmEleanor Clift must have hot flashed, because she was MIA on this weeks McLaughlin Group.
mg (31009b) — 5/16/2014 @ 6:02 pmWas it also about the same time the “obesity epidemic” came to attention, elissa? And league expansion? And Google was founded in 1998! We may be on to something.
nk (dbc370) — 5/16/2014 @ 6:06 pmi think we’re really close to an event where we’ll have a group of these climate change fascists engineer a mass release of methane just so they can preen and tut tut and goosestep around merrily
they’re very invested in this nonsense
and they’re fanatical and dangerous
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/16/2014 @ 6:11 pmThe sun has cooled, and we are in a mini,u, period for ??? how long. There is some lag in things, but we should know within ten years what the effect of the sun vs the effect of man is, or at least a lot better than we do now.
Assuming of course, that SCIENCE and not POLITICS rules the discussion.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 6:19 pmWe’re gong to get the tiger dust argument, Kevin. They’ll say 1) their warnings were effective or 2) that we didn’t do enough. If they report honest measurements to begin with.
A man is on the street reaching into a bucket and sprinkling something invisible. A cop goes up to him and asks him what he’s doing. He says, “I’m sprinkling tiger dust”. “Tiger dust?” the cop asks. The guy says, “Yes, it keeps tigers away”. The cop says, “There aren’t any tigers around here”. The guy says, “See?”
nk (dbc370) — 5/16/2014 @ 6:27 pmThe Cubs continue to puke it up, losing 4 to 3 on 2 earned.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:03 pmnk,
You mean like the warnings of ZPG, Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome stopped Malthusian population growth in it’s tracks? Norman Borlaug had nothing at all to do with it.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:05 pmThe Cubs continue to puke it up, losing 4 to 3 on 2 earned.
California will go solid red before the Cubs win the Series.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:08 pmtheir output is by their very nature, toxic, pikachu,
narciso (3fec35) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:10 pmi don’t trust them
they’re extremely erratic and unstable people, these climate change fascists
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:12 pmHere is the proof that we are not getting out of this mess whole.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-16/where-worlds-unsold-cars-go-die
Quit believing this can be fixed if we just get along.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:14 pmPatients reported gastrointestinal distress without any apparent physical cause. Gluten wasn’t the culprit; the cause was likely psychological. Participants expected the diets to make them sick, and so they did.
That’s fascinating and a good example of mind over matter. A study also was done a few years ago on various pharmaceutical drugs to determine the main reason they were effective. It turns out the placebo effect or, again, mind over matter, was the leading cause of such drugs’ positive influence (if there were any), not the components of the drugs themselves.
Similarly, the liberal impulses in many of those people most devoted to the idea of global warming (aka “climate change”) is another form of mind over matter. In the case of such people, it’s a weird guilt complex they’re suffering from, in which they think humans must genuflect before and prostrate themselves in front of Mother Earth or else Mother Earth will become angry, so reality and statistics be damned.
BTW, just as the canard of “global warming and CO2” takes on a life of its own — well after its expiration date — there is the matter of “low fat” and “non-fat.” I was in the grocery store the other day looking at a new brand of Nabisco Ritz Crackers. Even though fat no longer should be deemed the cause of obesity or singularly damaging to human health, the nitwits in the food industry (and presumably many of their customers too) still obsess over fat. No surprise, therefore, that the Ritz box proudly declared “low fat!” Not “low sugar” or “reduced sugar,” which at least would be a good thing, but “low fat.”
“Low fat!” is to food and the human body what “reduce CO2!” is to climatology and the Earth.
Mark (99b8fd) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:33 pmSmug? We know where you live:
http://streettalklive.com/images/1dailyxchange/misc/Dshort-median-incomes-051614.png
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:37 pmBeing a devout supporter of the idea of global warming really is merely another illustration of “limousine liberalism” on parade, certainly if it’s being espoused by people like Al Gore or most well-off Democrats/liberals, who are quite anxious to raise taxes on the working stiff and, in the process, to Solyndra-ize more of the US’s and world’s economy.
Here’s another example of liberals talking the talk (in this case, about equal pay for women), but not walking the walk:
I’m now more convinced than ever before that liberalism is so two-faced and disingenuous, that it has to be a form of mental illness.
Mark (99b8fd) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:46 pmThis one is easy to answer. Krugman has clearly sold out, and no longer champions truth over agenda.
This is proven by his assertion in public — at least twice — of a popular but known and demonstrable economic fallacy, to wit, “The Broken Window Fallacy”.
This is something which even a mature child can follow, not some esoteric theory requiring years to understand — yet Krugman has expressed in public venues support for the fallacy not just once but not less than TWICE.
“But those are both about 9/11!!” You say? OK, then, let’s show a third instance, this about the results of Tropical Storm Sandy
Q.E.D., Krugman has abandoned all support for The Truth in favor of supporting an agenda.
Smock Puppet, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d) — 5/16/2014 @ 7:47 pmWho’s keeping tabs on the IRS, Judicial Watch or Congress?
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2014/05/another-judical-watch-bombshell-emails.html
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/16/2014 @ 8:00 pmMore anti climatic humor…
mg (31009b) — 5/16/2014 @ 8:01 pmhttp://americanthinker.com/2014/05/climate_change_and_the_great_european_corn_borer_mystery_in_the_american_corn_belt.html
Good article about the corn borers, mg. Thanks for posting. Yes, corn borers can be destructive and need to be controlled. But they are manageable with good farming practices such as crop rotation. Farmers in the corn belt are generally more askeered of the EPA maniacs than they are of insect pests.
elissa (fcdf94) — 5/16/2014 @ 8:17 pmyup you gotta rotate them crops
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:10 pmdon’t get me started on the weevils
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/16/2014 @ 9:55 pmQuick, we must do something about climate change or the polyester with go extinct. The children of planet earth will never forgive us if we don’t prevent the wholesale destruction of those wonderful little critters tots depend on keep otherwise unemployable fear mongers feeding at the public trough instead of waiting in line for disability checks.
ropelight (c9c6c7) — 5/17/2014 @ 5:59 amPatterico – it is science-y
JD (590a3f) — 5/17/2014 @ 6:02 amlike Jason Voorhees, he’s back;
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/may/16/murdoch-media-hypes-lone-climate-denial-big-oil
narciso (3fec35) — 5/17/2014 @ 6:33 am84. narciso takes one for the team–reading Al Guardia so we don’t have to. I felt a sickening knot just scanning the sucker.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/17/2014 @ 6:41 amTaranto flagged it, slapping it with a wer mackerel,
narciso (3fec35) — 5/17/2014 @ 6:54 amGo ahead, try to make ‘heads or tails’ of it;
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/16/4121911/fabiola-santiago-those-who-deny.html
narciso (3fec35) — 5/17/2014 @ 7:32 am87. Hey, they drained FL a century ago and found the limestone sub-basement needed the water to float the sinkholes.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/17/2014 @ 7:55 amHere’s some commentary by the referees that rejected the paper:
http://ioppublishing.org/newsDetails/statement-from-iop-publishing-on-story-in-the-times
carlitos (e7c734) — 5/17/2014 @ 8:44 amGreetings:
Having completed 13 years of Catholic schooling (with no do-overs) I’ve made my observations, formulated my hypothesis, conducted my experiments, analyzed the results and reached my scientific conclusion.
Climate continuation is real.
11B40 (6abb5c) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:08 amForget these doubters, carlitos. My curandera told me one time not to leave the house because Venus was in conjunction with Aquarius in the fourteenth page of the ephemerides. I followed her advice and I was perfectly safe at the end of the day. But these deniers here will say that doesn’t prove anything even when I’m living proof.
nk (dbc370) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:16 amcarlitos – A few significant paragraphs from the peer reviewer in your link @89:
So the reviewer doesn’t like what the authors of the paper did, preferred they would have focused on something else, acknowledges the paper would have a big impact, but the impact would be negative.
The reasoning is not exactly consistent with the Journal’s explanation now, is it?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:53 amcarlitos, do you think they would do anything but defend themselves?
They might as well have declared the guy involved senile, otherwise how would the former director of the Max Planck Institute (for weather?) make errors that people on par with his former students had to point out to him.
If they want to be serious about protesting their innocence, they, and the author, need to make the paper and the criticisms available for open review.
I think this is my last comment in exchange on this, you think the global warmers are correct, and I’m waiting for the APS to come out with a position statement that corrects their previous agreement with the “consensus”.
But that really won’t mean anything. At this point in time, I bet every major scientific society could change their position and the IPCC and Dem politicians would just say the Koch brothers bought them off and ask, “Where is my hockey stick?”, and the media would write stories about a vast right-wing conspiracy to steal it.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:59 amfrom daley’s quote:
where no consistency was to be expected in the first place.
Somebody pointed this out elsewhere, but it bears repeating, again and again.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 5/17/2014 @ 10:03 amThere is no consistency to be expected between the models and reality.
Really?
MD in Philly – The study reviewed three papers presenting three different models over a period of time with an overlap of authors and pointed out the inconsistencies in forcings and weightings given data before instrument data was available and after.
The reviewer thought the authors should have taken the time to explain what he/she viewed as the valid reasons the modelers kept revising their models, which was not the purpose of the paper.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 5/17/2014 @ 10:26 amthat some new definition of science, more like magic I think,
narciso (3fec35) — 5/17/2014 @ 11:14 amIn other words, “we’re looking for cheerleaders not critics”.
nk (dbc370) — 5/17/2014 @ 11:14 amI asked the Gods of Science Fiction to explain all this to me. The Great Keith Laumer answered thusly:
“It’s a failing of your culture,” [he] said, “that hypothesis becomes dogma almost overnight. You’re too close to your Neolithic, when the blind acceptance of tribal lore had survival value. Having learned to evoke the fire god from sticks, by rote, you tend to extend the principle to all ‘established facts.'”
nk (dbc370) — 5/17/2014 @ 11:17 amDear Global Warming Nutjobs,
There was a time when scientists said that the science was settled, and I was indeed a planet.
Then the science became unsettled, and so I became decommissioned as a planet. Now the science is back to being settled; they settled on the fact that I am no longer a planet. It is all very unsettling to me. All these global warming nutjobs spend too much time studying Uranus, anyhow.
Signed,
The Planet Formerly Known as Pluto
P.S. I decided to settle down with a nice supernova. She’s my entire galaxy. As Shakespeare once wrote, “The fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
Elephant Stone (a3634b) — 5/17/2014 @ 12:04 pmOr something.
“In other words, “we’re looking for cheerleaders not critics”.”
nk – Alarmists are like cockroaches. They really hate it when people shine light on what they are doing.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 5/17/2014 @ 1:03 pmWhich explains why they’re so litigious.
University of Queensland threatens lawsuit over use of Cook’s ’97% consensus’ data for a scientific rebuttal
Anyone referring to some supposed consensus to “prove” AGW is real is not doing science. I don’t know if it’s impossible for something to be more untrue than that, but even the consensus is not real.
Anthony Watts has been doing an excellent job of tracking this pseudoscience of consensus. The “97%” figure is bandied about quite a bit. But it doesn’t even represent the conclusions of actual scientists. Global warming hysterics at the University of Queensland in Australia looked at some peer-reviewed papers on the subject of global warming and rated them as to whether or not they supported or refuted AGW theory and, if in the raters opinion the papers supported AGW theory, how strongly.
In other words, the 97% figure represents the biases of the raters, nothing more. In fact, when some of the scientists whose work was rated were contacted, they said the raters had completely misrepresented their work. And not all these scientists were AGW skeptics. But that doesn’t mean every bit of their work supports AGW theory. But it’s entirely possible to subscribe to the theory that humans are contributing to climate change a) without concluding that human activity is the primary factor and b) without concluding that the effects will be disastrous, thus requiring economy destroying responses.
Simply put, if the AGW hysterics had a leg to stand on they wouldn’t have to sue people to prevent them from examining or discussing their data.
Steve57 (c8cb20) — 5/17/2014 @ 1:42 pm“Which explains why they’re so litigious.”
Steve57 – They’re sort of like the gay mafia, only not quite as intolerant and fascisty.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 5/17/2014 @ 2:21 pmHow many “creation science” institutes are there?
Conservatives and “science.”
JEA (fb1111) — 5/17/2014 @ 2:40 pmOur old friend Ron Brownstein is wetting his pants.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/political-connections/miami-will-likely-be-underwater-before-congress-acts-on-climate-change-20140515
elissa (fcdf94) — 5/17/2014 @ 4:11 pmStooge Brownstein, sooper jeenus, didn’t bother to educate himself about Florida is sinking, as is most of the East Coast. Incurious intellectualism—it’s all about feelings.
hadoop (f7d5ba) — 5/17/2014 @ 4:25 pmAnd they’ve closed off their comment sections, because criticism is evil;
narciso (3fec35) — 5/17/2014 @ 4:30 pmGlobal poverty has had to get worse with this climate alarmism.
mg (31009b) — 5/17/2014 @ 4:35 pmI would venture to guess that climate alarmism is the 3rd most dangerous ideology going. Right behind –
1. Progressivism
2. Islamism
Comment by Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:23 pm
Comment by MD in Philly (f9371b) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:26 pm
Excuse me???
Do you mean to say it is not 100% effective?
It doesn’t raise the antibody levels to the levels that would show you were immunized. I had to help a nurse over ten years ago show that, when she got vaccinated for chicken pox, and was in trouble because she wasn’t immunized against chicken pox to her employer’s satisfaction even though she got vaccinated. She did it 2 or 3 times. It didn’t help. It would never help.
I guess later on they decided it was counter-indicated, although the CDC is still recommending it.
I see this explanation now:
http://www.immunize.org/askexperts/experts_var.asp
I don’t know how taht makes sense. Less antibody, or difefrent antibodies?
Here we see the CDC say that people still gee sick, but less sick:
http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/vaccination.html
Or this: http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/hcp/lab-tests.html
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/17/2014 @ 7:30 pm65. Comment by Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 6:19 pm
There is some lag in things, but we should know within ten years what the effect of the sun vs the effect of man is, or at least a lot better than we do now.
The Twentieth Century was probably a period when changes due to the sun were relatively small. You could have much bigger variations.
Assuming of course, that SCIENCE and not POLITICS rules the discussion.
At some point, the models will simply diverge too much from reality. It is not taht difficult to make amdel fit the past, because you can always adjust things with various fudge factors, but it is much harder to make it fit the future, if your basic premise is wrong, and now some time has gone on since they first made predictions for the future. All you have to do is insist people be held to their old climate models.
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/17/2014 @ 7:36 pmVia Powerline:
Why Global Warming Alarmism Isn’t Science
Steve57 (c8cb20) — 5/17/2014 @ 7:39 pm57. Comment by Kevin M (b357ee) — 5/16/2014 @ 4:43 pm
This doesn’t make sense:
Trial 1:
After Trial 2:
How could it be psychological if it is was double-blinded, randomized, and placebo-controlled???
What was different in the second study? Whatever it was, it can’t make the results of the first study “psychological”
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/17/2014 @ 7:42 pm106. Comment by mg (31009b) — 5/17/2014 @ 4:35 pm
Global poverty has had to get worse with this climate alarmism.
I would venture to guess that climate alarmism is the 3rd most dangerous ideology going. Right behind –
1. Progressivism
2. Islamism
Of course not.
The most dangerous ideology is
1. Marxism or socialism, although it is dying, and no longer new policy almost anywhere.
The second most dangerous ideology (for promoting global poverty) is
2 Anti-immigrationism. Very much alive. (I need a better word)
The 3rd most dangerous ideology for promoting poverty is:
3. Anti-colonialism. This is opposition to rich people going to poor countries, or investing in them, or making that difficult or unsafe.
Islamism hasn’t had chance to affect too many things (it exists in places where there are other problems) although maybe we should say Somalia, and climate alarmism hasn’t had much of a practical effect yet.
It could, but it hasn’t. There has been very little practical things done as a result, the most serious thing being restructions on the f manufacture or sale of light bulbs, although they are gearing up to go coal fired electrical generation. Things done in the name of protecting “endangered species” have had much more worse effects.
I’d say the ideology that’s currently having the most effect in promoting global poverty is anti-immigrationism, since Marxism is mostly a legacy policy.
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/17/2014 @ 7:54 pmThe test of your test is if you can repeat it and get the same results, Sammy, no matter how sure you are that your methodology was sound the first time.
nk (dbc370) — 5/17/2014 @ 7:58 pm109. Most important quote on that Powerline page: (from Don Easterbrook) at Watts Up With That?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/13/checking-the-nca-report-against-real-data-reveals-major-discrepancies/
Figure 5 is too blured to read, but seems to show water vapor or whatever it is, staying approximately stable.
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/17/2014 @ 8:05 pm112. Comment by nk (dbc370) — 5/17/2014 @ 7:58 pm
The test of your test is if you can repeat it and get the same results, Sammy, no matter how sure you are that your methodology was sound the first time
I think it maybe requires a third test or more. It could be the second test that had the wrong results or the wrong methodology. The second one was apparently not double blinded. They knew what diet they were taking or if they weren’t being told to alter their diet, or the gluten test was maybe different. Something, just not “psycholgical”
It might be that the remedy was wrong, or a co-factor was different.
The second test doesn’t sound like re-test, but an attempt to build on the first one.
I suppose you could argue that a trial was randomly wrong, but you can’t say which one.
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/17/2014 @ 8:11 pmSteve 57 @101.
You could also add:
c) without limiting yourself to economy destroying remedies, because geo-engineering is environmental sacrilege, or suddenly the knowledge isn’t good enough to go ahead with anything.
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/17/2014 @ 8:16 pmI disagree Sammy. The amount of money and time wasted on this climate jockey b.s. is unmeasurable.
mg (31009b) — 5/17/2014 @ 8:25 pmI think Sammy is a moby. As a tautology no test is necessary, proof is accomplished by inspection.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 5/17/2014 @ 8:31 pmwell no, gary, but he does tend toward the sophistic;
http://www.steynonline.com/6342/six-degrees-of-warmerization
narciso (3fec35) — 5/17/2014 @ 8:37 pmSammy, that some people get milder cases of chicken pox after vaccination does not mean the vaccine doesn’t work. This happened to my daughter, not news to me.
More rarely people can get chicken pox a second time as well, again very mild. Saw it once, may have missed it more than once as very subtle.
Chicken pox can kill an adult. A med student died from it while I was in residency, before the vaccine was available.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 5/17/2014 @ 8:53 pmThere is more that can be said, but it’s bedtime.
I’m told that my smallpox vaccination, from fifty-two years ago, will make me an asymptomatic carrier in the event of an epidemic.
nk (dbc370) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:01 pmyou rock
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:04 pmMy mother-in-law did not let her daughter, six years younger than me, get the vaccine. Granted the smallpox vaccine is dangerous in and of itself, but anti-vaccine prejudice is nothing new. Now, she is traveling to Africa to treat children with tetanus. Anti-vaccine people suck.
nk (dbc370) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:09 pmhttp://www.bt.cdc.gov/training/smallpoxvaccine/reactions/ec_vac.html
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:17 pmOh, yeah. And you can infect other people with it too. Babies, for instance, who are too young to be exposed to it yet. I understand that it’s even used to kill some cancers, like chemotherapy does. It’s a mean virus in and of itself but with way less than the one-third death rate and one-third scarring rate of smallpox.
nk (dbc370) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:22 pm119. That is probably a fair summary of the situation.
The chickenpox vaccine will probably give people a head start in resisting an infection, and make more cases subclinical, but it doesn’t immunize quite like most other vaccines.
And that means, doesn’t it, that some vaccinated people who will never get strong symptoms may become contagious for a while? Or is that true even of vaccines for other diseases?
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:26 pmCali IS solid “red”, Kevin.
Don’t allow the media to change the tradition, just because one of them noticed that Dems=Libs=Red=Socialists is a blatant logical truism in 1998 (yeah, it took them that long to figure it out), and decided to reverse the colors from then on.
Cali, NY, NJ, Mass — all solid Red, and have been for over 50 years.
Smock Puppet, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:27 pm124. Comment by nk (dbc370) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:22 pm
I understand that it’s even used to kill some cancers, like chemotherapy does. It’s a mean virus in and of itself but with way less than the one-third death rate and one-third scarring rate of smallpox.
What’s “it?” Cowpox? That doesn’t have one third the death rate of smallpox, or it never would have been used.
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:29 pmDude, you can’t even handle the lesser of two weevils….
😛
Smock Puppet, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:46 pmSigh. It’s a mean virus in and of itself but with way less than the one-third death rate and one-third scarring rate of smallpox. Smallpox is the one with the one-third death rate, Sammy. And that’s in Europeans. It wiped out whole Indian tribes which had not been exposed to it before and had no resistance.
And vaccinia is related to cowpox but it’s not exactly the same. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinia
nk (dbc370) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:50 pm“Consensus science” is like “Sensible government”, or “honest politician”. The two words have no business applied in conjunction to one another…
In 1886, Every Scientist knew EXACTLY how Light propagated, through an all-pervading substance called “Aether”, which was the thing that “waved” when light transmitted (since light demonstrated wavelike properties, it was clear that the important question was, “what was waving?” The answer was “the aether”… think “Dark Matter”, and you won’t be far off…)
Then, in 1887, two guys, Michaelson and Morley, did an experiment…
As the results of that experiment got published and otherwise widely disseminated, by 1890, pretty much Every Scientist knew they had no ephing clue how Light propagated…
And THAT says all you need to know about the value of “consensus” when it comes to Science.
Smock Puppet, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d) — 5/17/2014 @ 9:58 pmOh. Not that vaccinia or cowpox has 1/3 the death rate that smallpox has, (so that if smallpox had a 60% death rate in a certain population, vacinnia would have a 20% death rate); but that one third is the death rate that smallpox has (in Europeans)
Sammy Finkelman (18bea8) — 5/17/2014 @ 10:01 pmthe weevils thing comes from back when I was little
i was in this lil college where they were just starting to get their multi culti on
so for american history – a blow-off class I took as a senior, I had to read “All God’s Dangers”
it was very snoozy and dreary, and at one point the guy goes on this extended soliloquy about the different kinds and varied perniciousness of weevils
the weevils and that at some point the professor called me an asshole is all i remember
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/17/2014 @ 10:01 pmweevils wobble but they don’t fall down
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 5/17/2014 @ 10:19 pmprofessor multiculti would’ve had a few choice words for you as well mister
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/17/2014 @ 10:20 pm