Perhaps, along with loyal opponent MSetty, you have wondered why the Antiplanner hasn’t pontificated about a certain former vice-president getting a Nobel Prize. Beyond the fact that the blogosphere is already overburdened with commentary on this subject, the Antiplanner has always had a policy of saying little about subjects about which he knows little.
“It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so,” said early American humorist Artemus Ward. Or maybe it was Josh Billings who said, “You’d better not know so much, than know so many things that ain’t so.” I haven’t been able to verify the true source, but isn’t that really the point? If you don’t know, it is better not to say you do.
Many people think they know that suburbs cause obesity, and since everyone knows that obesity causes heart disease, the suburbs must be evil. When I first examined the question of suburbs causing obesity, I went to the original medical journal articles about the subject. I was surprised to find that the journals did not even claim that obesity causes early mortality for heart disease. In fact, for people over the age of 50, the research found no difference in mortality rates due to obesity.
A few days ago, New York Times writer John Tierney reviewed a new book that demolishes the myth that high-fat foods cause heart disease and other illnesses. Tierney observes that myths like these result from an “information cascade” when one expert hazards a guess and many others, taking their cue from that expert, agree simply because they respect the expert’s authority.
“Cascades are especially common in medicine,” says Tierney, “as doctors take their cues from others, leading them to overdiagnose some faddish ailments (called bandwagon diseases) and overprescribe certain treatments (like the tonsillectomies once popular for children). Unable to keep up with the volume of research, doctors look for guidance from an expert  or at least someone who sounds confident.”
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By coincidence, the New York Times republished an article by another Nobel Prize winner, Doris Lessing, commenting on a related subject: political correctness.
“While we have seen the apparent death of Communism, ways of thinking that were either born under Communism or strengthened by Communism still govern our lives,” wrote Lessing. “Not all of them are as immediately evident as a legacy of Communism as political correctness.”
“The trouble is that, with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog,” Lessing goes on to say. “For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to examine our assumptions, there are 20 rabble-rousers whose real motive is desire for power over others, no less rabble-rousers because they see themselves as anti-racists or feminists or whatever.” Or environmentalists.
Today, fifteen years after she wrote those words, political correctness has been replaced by environmental correctness. Does someone dare say that rail transit doesn’t get people out of their automobiles? Then he or she must be anti-transit and anti-clean air! Does someone dare say that keeping housing affordable might be a higher social priority than preserving open space when 95 percent of the country is rural open space? Then he or she must favor paving over the country!
Obviously, if anyone suggests that the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is weak and the cost of trying to do anything about it is extremely high, then they must be in the pay of the oil and automobile industries. Someday I might become enough of an expert on climate change to confidently say one way or another, but for now I’ll just sit this one out.
I like the fact that you chose not to focus on the facts, Randal. You know: all those facts on your side about the falsehood of man-made climate change – the data, the papers, the models, the prestigious scientists’ assertions…oh, yeah, all of that and so much more.
“The dogs bark, the caravan passes.”
And you know when I agree with Fumento, Randal, you must be far out in the wilderness:
So yes, it’s caloric input overage from especially corn that is the issue: supersized HFCS sodas, etc; our biology and physiology just have us keep eating rather than cut portion size. Add to this our sedentary lifestyle. All well-known but conveniently “forgotten” in this review by a non-doctor.
Dog-whistle, dogs barking, societal caravan passing.
Now. Let me find my heavy tights as I’m going on a nice bike ride in the frost, in a landscape that is changing due to man-made climate change.
DS
I saw that article the other day and was going to point it out here.
When I first read the article, I was immediately struck by how the ‘information cascade’ applies to “climate change” and most of the doctrine currently in vogue at the American Planning Association.
Science by consensus is not science.
Science by consensus is not science
Please provide a paper, and quote from it, where the conclusion was reached by consensus rather than analysis of the data.
Thank you in advance for this remarkable paper.
DS
Yes, there are some “environmentalists” out there who longingly wish for the results of global warming, here for example.
“Information cascades” are obviously one of the mechanisms at work in economic bubbles, such as the recent housing price debacle. But it’s another thing entirely to allege that scientists are as susceptible to such things in the same way the general public is with our dismal media. You claim the same thing is at work among thousands of scientists, but provide little evidence.
The chattering classes are now chattering incescently away about global warming, but the underlying premise that “your long consumption and energy binge is now over, and now you must greatly tighten your belts” is not exactly a meme the U.S. public will easily accept. I certainly don’t agree with every detail extoled by Kunstler, for example, but I understand his frustration about his message not getting across beyond those who independently came to the same general conclusions–being a prophet in one’s own country is usually a curse.
Dan said: Please provide a paper, and quote from it, where the conclusion was reached by consensus rather than analysis of the data.
JK: Any UN IPCC report.
BTW, your warming religion has lost its main icons:
*1998 is no longer believed to be the warmest year, 1934 is.
* The 1990s only has two of the warmest years since 1880 (so did the 1910s and the 1930s.)
* Al Gore/Mann temperature chart that resembles a hockey stick has been proven false.
* The famous chart of temperature and CO2 rising and falling together left out one little detail: CO2 rises after temperature.
*CO2 goes up since 1934 and the temperature hasn’t. Your religion has a false god.
Can we please drop this warming crap until the last of those Viking farms emerge from under the ice? I am getting really tired of you preaching your pagan religion to us.
BTW, when do you think the first ship will make from Vancouver to Nova Scotia through the Arctic sea?
Thanks
JK
Huh:
I take back what I said, Randal. What’s farther out than wilderness?
DS
When Republicans start to claim concern about “poor workers who drive long distances,” in the article linked by Dan, my b.s. meter has a full charge. Karlock I just ignore.
Karlock I just ignore.
Typical planner, ignore relaity when it conflicts with planning dogma.
Which of these do you not recognize as fact:
*1998 is no longer believed to be the warmest year, 1934 is.
* The 1990s only has two of the warmest years since 1880 (so did the 1910s and the 1930s.)
* Al Gore/Mann temperature chart that resembles a hockey stick has been proven false.
* The famous chart of temperature and CO2 rising and falling together left out one little detail: CO2 rises after temperature.
*CO2 goes up since 1934 and the temperature hasn’t.
Thanks
JK
Jim:
Funny you should mention the IPCC. Here’s what one member testified to Congress
http://www.atmos.uah.edu/atmos/christy/ChristyJR_EC_v2Written.pdf
And with regard to Dan’s post (#6) – Now that republican politicians are pandering to align themselves with mis-informed public opinion (joining the ‘consensus’, as it were), I guess we skeptics should reconsider our position!
Funny thing about that 95-0 senate vote, too – not all of those 95 Senators were Republicans. I guess that shows how far the discussion has shifted among the democrats, too!
I guess consensus on physiology is bad too – surely the strong individuals here who eschew “concencus science” eschew medicine as well.
And the consensus on gravity – aw, who believes that stuff?! Hang on, small minority in the wilderness! Hang on tight!
Thanks for the laugh this morning boys.
DS
Typical planner, ignore relaity when it conflicts with planning dogma.
Karlock, use your spell checker.
Also, can’t you be more creative when you insult me? Like the nice juicy and original snarky insults related against the author of this article?
Hey Danny,
Which of these do you not recognize as fact:
*1998 is no longer believed to be the warmest year, 1934 is.
* The 1990s only has two of the warmest years since 1880 (so did the 1910s and the 1930s.) see http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/US_USHCN.2005vs1999.txt
* Al Gore/Mann temperature chart that resembles a hockey stick has been proven false.
* The famous chart of temperature and CO2 rising and falling together left out one little detail: CO2 rises after temperature. see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13
*CO2 has gone up since 1934 yet the temperature hasn’t.
Thanks
JK
Keep building, setting up, and knocking down those strawmen, Dan.
Thank you Artie.
So you cannot provide an example of a paper that replaced empiricism and the scientific method with consensus.
Thank you for the affirmation & have a nice day.
DS
I provided a link to the testimony of a member of the IPCC who clearly states that the IPCC reports – the foundation of global warming scare-mongering – water down the empirical data and interpretation of that data (though there can be multiple ways a data set can be interpreted) through the process of consensus in putting the report together.
Seems pretty clear to me, scarecrow.
Report, not paper.
The IPCC does no science, they report on extant papers.
Therefore, individual papers that make up the report is the science. You inferred that the science is done by consensus. Show how it is so. Give an example of a paper that replaced empiricism and the scientific method with consensus.
That is: your task is to show how the science (not a report) is done by consensus, as that’s what you inferred. It is clear that 99.925% of empirical papers posit that AGW is real and happening. Your evidence will be a paper that replaced empiricism and the scientific method with consensus.
Your evidence is not a lone voice in the wilderness, as that is not data. That lone voice, whose data once released to the public, was shown to have an analysis flaw and needed correction, is one voice. It is ever thus with denialists, is it not: latching on to the voice that agrees with their ideology to replace the 99.925% of other voices that are not the lone, siren-like voice.
Paper, please that replaced empiricism and the scientific method with consensus.
DS
LOL.
99.925%?
Keep the laughs coming, scarecrow.
I’d hate to think, Artie, that you have to resort to calling namie-names because you have no evidence to back “your” assertion that [s]cience by consensus is not science .
Surely you can come up with something, anything, that backs “your” claim. After all, the “consensus science” talking point has been out for three-four years now. Surely the Wurlitzer has come up with a paper or two from the half-gross or so of the usual suspects.
One example of a paper that replaced empiricism and the scientific method with consensus. Just one. No Platonic or Cartesian empiricism. No replicable scientific method. No falsifiable hypothesis. No Enlightenment principles. No Methods and Materials. No Discussion and Conclusions. No analyzing collected data to the data but to your thouuuusands of co-conspirators’ whispers that you must say ‘x’. Just a simple “yup, they said it and so do I”.
How hard can that be, given how much the talking point gets recycled every so often, then passed around like a joint at a frat party? Golly it must be true!
Something, Artie. Anything. The world needs your voice, as societies no longer are debating attribution and instead are debating action. Sheesh – it’s so bad even Bjorn Lomborg is saying man-made climate change is real.
Bring the world back from delusion, Artie. It’s up to you. Speak up before its too late and even NRO says AGW is real. Oh, wait. Well, never mind that. Anyway, speak up before it’s too late, Artie.
DS
Most of what we know ‘just ain’t so.’
Our knowledge is either erroneous or incomplete. From the days of the flat earth to this morning’s newspaper, when has something thought or taught NOT been subsequently changed, modified, altered, updated, or plain wrong?
The news media seems to be totally disinterested in facts … just headlines. When did you last read a story that didn’t prove, later, to be in error, somehow?
Ah, rats…. even this entry should probably be changed … or deleted!