"A Cherry-Picker’s Guide to Temperature Trends"
Assuming his numbers are right, Chip Knappenberger has posted the single best piece summarizing the recent global temperature trends that I have ever read. It really is a tour de force.
Chip takes on both sides, accusing a RealClimate guy and Richard Lindzen of cherry picking to bolster their claims. Here’s Chip’s overall message:
What I can say for certain, is that the recent behavior of global temperatures demonstrates that global warming is occurring at a much slower rate than that projected by the ensemble of climate models, and that global warming is most definitely not accelerating.
If you are at all interested in the climate change debate, you need to read Chip’s post.
Airport Lounges
I am blogging from an Admirals’ Club in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. (I’m actually writing the post late Sunday night, but I’m delaying it so as not to detract from the main Sunday post.) I have two items:
First, if you travel a lot but are too much of a cheapskate to sign up for access to these things, I strongly encourage you to take the plunge. I actually get access as one of the perks from my AmEx business card. But oh man, when you have a canceled flight or–like me tonight–you take a much later flight thanks to one of Milton Friedman’s* good ideas, then it is heavenly to be able to hang out in these lounges as opposed to the main airport, amidst the riffraff. You don’t have to be as paranoid about someone stealing your stuff, the restrooms are not as big germ factories, you don’t have CNN blaring into your skull, there are nice workstations, and you even can get free liquor!
Second: For those who are amongst the elite and frequent these lounges, let me ask you something: Have you ever snuck into the Children’s Lounge to play the Dora the Explorer computer game? I’m not saying I want to do it or anything, I just like to stay on top of things. So is it fun? I mean, maybe my kid will be traveling with me one day. That’s why I ask, really.
* Actually, Google informs me that it was Julian Simon who was the workhorse on voluntary seat auctions for overbooked flights–not Friemdan. Didn’t a bunch of you, dear readers, think it was Friedman who invented the idea? I guess he coasted after withholding and the negative income tax?
Science vs. Religion: Doug Casey Edition
I clicked on this recent LRC article because–as an academic in the front lines of the climate change debate–I am particularly sensitive when fans of the free market dismiss global warming as “a hoax.” That phrase could mean many different things:
(1) The best science tells us that human activities are increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere, and this is partly responsible for the rise in global temperatures since 1750, but government efforts to punish CO2 emissions etc. will cause more harm than good. (I would definitely agree with this.)
(2) There is no conclusive evidence that human activities have anything to do with the increase in global temperatures since 1750. (I have read credentialed natural scientists making this type of claim, but I can’t say who’s right. I would need to be an expert myself in order to say NASA expert A is definitively wrong while MIT expert B is definitively right.)
(3) CO2 concentrations haven’t been rising; this is a lie by the environmentalists.
(4) Global temperatures haven’t been rising; this is a lie by the environmentalists.
I am comfortable saying that (3) and (4) are not supported by “the science.” Even people at the Heartland conference–premiere “skeptics” or “deniers” like Lindzen, Christy, et al.–agree with the basic premise of the IPCC theory, namely that human activities release carbon and–other things equal–this would lead to higher global temperatures. The primary debate is over feedback effects, and thus how much of a temperature increase results from a certain amount of economic activity. (And even then, the economists come in and wonder how much of an impact a given temperature change will have, and then the political economists come in and wonder if Barney Frank is really going to lower global emissions with tax policy.)
In any event, it is Sunday so I am allowed to talk about religious things as well. (That is my deal with atheist readers of Free Advice.) So here were two passages from the article that struck me as funny. (Note that technically Casey isn’t the author of this, so perhaps Louis James, his editor, is inaccurately reproducing what Casey actually said.)
So here’s the first statement:
The world will come to an end, of course, maybe even before the sun dies in about five billion years. But these people have no perspective at all. They don’t realize that the earth is just an insignificant ball of dirt, in a nothing/nowhere star system, in a nothing/nowhere galaxy – of which there are billions, each containing billions and billions of stars. And that’s just in this universe. There’s reason to believe that there’s an almost infinite number of universes like ours, with new ones being created virtually every second.
Casey (if quoted correctly) is talking as if these are self-evident facts. Science can demonstrate that the earth is a ball of dirt, but not that it is insignificant. Science can demonstrate that our sun is a star among billions of others, but not that our solar system is nothing/nowhere. Even if it’s true that every living thing on earth today, shares a common single-celled ancestor, that brute fact by itself doesn’t mean that humans have no higher purpose.
Also, as an aside, just how much “reason to believe” is there that there are an infinite number of parallel universes? Many years ago I dabbled in that sort of speculation, but if I recall correctly, wasn’t the primary reason for such a view that you need it to make sense of why life evolved in this universe? By definition, we can’t observe things in other universes, so there’s certainly no empirical evidence (unless I am missing some subtlety). And is it really true that these new universes are being created every second–rather than every nanosecond, every minute, every hour, or every fortnight?
My point here isn’t to jump up and down on Casey’s musings, but rather to underscore that the “hard scientists” are prone to flights of fancy that are as whimsical as wondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Let’s check out another quotation:
[Doug Casey:] …I have to say I’m not sure I care if mankind is going to survive –I’m not sure why anyone should care, since most of us aren’t going to live more than three score and ten years anyway. Perhaps the world ends when we end… Mankind’s future seems beyond any individual’s concern, at least beyond the lifespan of your immediate friends and family. Too much worrying about things beyond your control can turn you into a busybody.
[LJ:] You’re speaking as one with no children. Having children, I have a different view on that.
Doug: How about your great-great-grandchildren, whom you’ll probably never meet?
L: I’m not so sure about that. Life is already longer than it has ever been in history, and medical technology keeps advancing. And that’s not even getting into nanotechnology. I believe my generation may live for centuries, aside from violent death and acute, fatal illnesses.
Doug: Well, I’m sympathetic to that view. But the morality of caring for one’s posterity is a philosophical issue we can perhaps discuss another day. For now, I’ll say that I don’t like to think of myself as a survival machine for my genes – so I don’t give a damn what happens to my genes. I have my own plans. The consideration I would have for my children, if I did have any, would be reserved for those who earned it as individuals, not just because they’re my children.
I think anyone who actually has kids will agree with me that the last sentence (which I’ve put in bold) is almost laugh-out-loud funny. It’s like when some extreme libertarians tell me, “If I had a kid, I would reason with him, and explain that he shouldn’t run into the street, but ultimately it would be his decision.” Right, and that’s probably why you don’t have a kid.
Casey’s (quoted) statement is all the more ironic for me, because my pastor actually uses that angle quite a bit to get people to stop feeling so awful about their sins. He will say something like, “God loves us unconditionally. We don’t have to earn it. It’s not like your girlfriend or boyfriend, where you love them so long as they meet your standards. For those of you with kids, think of it that way. Do you love your kids because they’ve met your objective criteria for being worthy of your love? Of course not–you love them because they’re your kids. And that’s how God loves us.”
Also, I should clarify that–contrary to Casey’s implication–you don’t love your kids because you think, “Heh heh, half of those genes are mine. The planet is mine!” It’s because you have known them from birth (in the standard case) and have watched them develop, etc. To the extent you “see yourself” in them, a lot of it is because they copy you. (Although Bryan Caplan might disagree.)
Finally, let me acknowledge that Casey could easily say, if he read this blog post, “Well we’re just different. I don’t need some fictitious Daddy in the sky to shower me with undeserved love. If you need that as an emotional crutch, so be it.”
To that type of view, I have two answers: First, I actually doubt the rugged atheist individualist is as happy as s/he maintains. To take an extreme example, Ayn Rand’s personal life was not one I would wish on her followers. (And of course, there are televangelists who demonstrate that belief in Jesus isn’t sufficient for a stable personal life.) When I was an atheist, I actually ended up going down a pretty bleak road psychologically, a topic I may someday return to. But of course I can’t speak for everyone. I don’t know what’s in somebody else’s head.
Second, and more definitively: I do NOT believe in God because it makes me feel good, or because “I don’t want to live in a world with no meaning.” Say what you will about my Sunday posts, I hope you will admit that I am not making feel-good arguments. I have been trying to show that the Christian worldview is not irrational, in the sense that atheists think it is.
I believe that there is an omnipotent Being who created all the universe, including each of us. And thank God He considers us His children and loves us more than we can possibly imagine!
The Policeman Is Not Your Friend, Part 321
William Grigg posted this outrageous story at the LRC blog. For those who think, “Sure, once in a great while there are a few bad apples in the police force, but these whiny liberals need to quit their bellyachin’,” I encourage you to read these stories I occasionally relay. I only pass on the most outrageous and most documented ones. In this case, in Phoenix cops enter a house where the homeowner is holding an intruder calmly at gunpoint. The guy’s wife told one of the cops outside what the deal was, but apparently the message didn’t get relayed. So one of the cops shoots the homeowner, and then when they realize their mistake, they plan to cover it up by saying the homeowner pointed the gun at them first.
How do I know? Is it the homeowner’s word against theirs? Nope. Unbeknownst to the cops, the phone was still sitting there, with the 911 operator recording it, after they shot the guy (6 times–in the back–2 of which occurred when the homeowner was on the ground). Oops. Then here’s what happened, according to the victim’s family:
“Tony believed he was going to die; the 911 tape records his plaintive goodbye to his family: ‘… I love you … I love you.’ Then Tony made what he believed was a dying request to the officers; he did not want his young family to see him shot and bloodied. Officers callously ignored his request and painfully dragged Tony by his injured leg, through the home and out to his backyard patio, where they left him bloodied and shot right in front of Lesley, Matthew and Zachary.”
The Arambulas say the officers later dragged Anthony onto gravel, then put him on top of the hot hood of a squad car, and “drove the squad car down the street with Tony lying on top, writhing in pain.”
…
The complaint continues: “Still not knowing that he is being recorded [on] the 911 tape, Sgt. Coutts interrupted Officer Lilly’s admission and apology with his assurance that the cover-up would commence: ‘That’s all right. Don’t worry about it. I got your back. … We clear?'”
After the shooting, the Arambulas say, the Phoenix Police Department treated them “like suspects in a drug bust,” denying Lesley, Michael and Zachary information about Anthony’s condition and denying friends and family members access to him at the hospital.
(To be crystal clear, I am not certain that the 911 people have confirmed the family’s account. I.e. I don’t know for sure if that news story is simply reporting the family’s charges of what the 911 tapes reveal, but it seems that this is an accurate rendition.)
Oh here’s another nice one from Grigg. A cop on video breaks a 15-year-old special ed student’s nose because…the kid didn’t tuck his shirt in fast enough.
Buy Local?
Today was the ISI conference on “Freedom and Virtue: Challenges and Prospects in a Time of Economic Crisis.” It was fun for me because (a) it’s my first ISI conference and (b) one of the speakers was Hillsdale College’s Gary Wolfram, who was my professor and then boss. I’ll post the videos when they’re available.
One of the speakers, Andrew Abela of the Catholic University of America, was giving a qualified defense of Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton’s program of “distributivism” [.pdf].
Abela’s talk was really good, and I don’t want to dismiss the things he was talking about with a libertarian wave of the hand. However, he was defending the idea of “buying local,” and during the Q&A I relayed a true story (and you need to know that the conference was held in Indianapolis):
Last night when we all went out to dinner, the waiter was explaining to all of us that the meats were all raised within 25 miles. But I thought, “Why did I care about supporting Indiana farmers? If the waiter told me the meat came from Tennessee, then that would be an extra reason for me to buy it, if I want to support people in my community.”
Obviously I was mostly making a joke, but the point is a serious one: People are actually supposed to feel good about “buying local” even when they’re from out of town. Do you see how ridiculous that is? Would the waiter have objected if I ordered a cut of meat, raised in Indiana, while sitting in a restaurant in Nashville?
I know I know, one of the reasons you’re supposed to prefer locally grown vegetables etc. is that it is fresher. Fair enough. But a lot of the “buy local” people aren’t simply saying, “You should do this because it tastes better and is better for you.” No, it is a moral argument, that you should provide income to people who live down the street from you, rather than providing income to people who live in other states, or–gasp!–people who live in other countries.
P.S. It just occurred to me that the word Indianapolis is the name of the state with “polis” added. I’m guessing everyone else knew that when he was 3 years old. Well good for you. It was also relatively late in life when I realized Thanksgiving was a giving of thanks; up till then it had just been a blur of syllables to me that arbitrarily referred to a holiday.
I’ve Heard of Hedging Yourself With Gold, But This Is Ridiculous…
Robert Wenzel discussing the views of billionaire investor Carl Ichan:
That’s why he could say this morning on CNBC that there is a real risk of a double-dip recession and the market is acting in a “schizophrenic” way, which could cause a “bloodbath” for investors. How much more schizophrenic can you get than my forecast that depending on how things break, you could see gold at $500 per ounce or, on the other hand, $3,000 if they break the other way.
I can’t find the link right now, but Wenzel also forecast that depending on how things break, unemployment next year could be anywhere from 5% to 30%. You heard it there first.
(For those interested in civility and playing fair, here is the context of Wenzel’s gold forecast.)
It’s Hard to Outfox Me
I was flipping through the radio on my way to the airport this morning, and in between songs the DJ said, “The White House today reacted with surprise to the announcement that President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.”
I was astounded. They couldn’t possibly have given it to him. That would be even more blatantly political than the Krugman award. Even regular Americans might be suspicious at such a ridiculous choice. I mean, that would be like if you had a printing press, and just went crazy with it, instead of bilking people methodically for decades.
The DJ then said, “And NASA bombed the moon this morning.” I felt foolish for my gullibility. Clearly this guy was reading fake headlines, though I didn’t really get the joke.
(Seriously, I was sure it had all been dumb jokes. It wasn’t until my cousin texted me “OMFG…” that I realized Obama really had won. My new hypothesis was that the DJ was making some subtle rip on the Nobel committee, like Obama wins the prize while sending Predator drones into Pakistan, so he might as well bomb the moon the same day he wins the prize. It wasn’t until checking out the LRC blog that I realized that too was for real.)
Potpourri
I have yet another trip, this time to the ISI Conference in Indianapolis. So no blogging until at least Friday evening. In the meantime:
* My discovery, Edward Gonzalez, in his first Mises Daily.
* Mish doesn’t like all this fuss about oil not being priced in dollars. Does anyone actually know the details here? Do foreign institutions hold reserves in dollars because of oil purchases? I get what Mish is saying, but I’m not sure if his armchair theorizing is correct. At the very least, one could argue that the move away from dollar-quoting oil prices is reflective of the demotion of the USD as a reserve currency. And certainly that has implications.
* I meant to post this a while ago, but Aristos makes a basic–yet crucial–point that our political reporting usually neglects. The government doesn’t give rights to anybody, including terrorism detainees.
Recent Comments