- There have been a lot of prophecies of doom before.
- As before, the prophets of doom are making money and gaining power from their prophecies
- Some of the data supposedly demonstrating global warming turned out to be fraudulent.
- The major scientific global warming authorities, notably the IPCC seem curiously relaxed about employing some fraudulent data, which casts doubt on the rest of their data.
- The anthropogenic global warming movement is a movement, akin to a religious or a political movement, rather than normal science.
- Notable movement activists such as Al Gore and Ted Turner have a lengthy past record of supporting tyranny and mass murder, while preaching virtue most piously.
- Real scientific theories do not have movement activists.
AGW may not be the 21st Century parallel to the 20th Century’s Cultural Anthropology, but it sure does look similar. Michael Mann + Hockey Stick are amazingly similar to Margaret Mead + Coming of Age in Samoa.
In each case, a single, wildly implausible study was used by the elite of the relevant profession to make broad conclusions overturning a seemingly secure prior base of knowledge. In each case, the author was feted by that elite and by the broader cultural elite. In each case, the study was seminal, in that it generated its own literature. In each case, the study lined up curiously well with a major prevailing zeitgeist in elite culture and in the culture of the relevant profession. In each case, the study collapsed utterly the first time it was subjected to any serious scrutiny. In each case, the relevant profession not only failed to discipline the feted author for their shoddy or fraudulent work, but actively protected the feted author’s reputation, the literature their work led to, and the conclusions implied by the work.
This last point is the most telling. What rational people concluded from the Margaret Mead episode is not merely that MM was a charlatan and that what she said about Samoa was bull, but that Cultural Anthropology lacked a mechanism for detecting politically pleasant charlatans in any reasonable time frame and, even worse, lacked a mechanism for dealing with such charlatans as were detected. And this lack means that Cultural Anthropology is not to be trusted, for if there are no meaningful mechanisms to detect and root out fraud then there are no reasons to believe since there are always incentives for fraud and people willing to respond to such incentives.
As weird as it is to say, the Bellesiles controversy reveals that History, that softest of soft sciences, has higher standards of professional conduct than does climate science, which is largely staffed by scholars from very hard sciences.
What I find baffling about the Hockey Stick controversy is how long it is taking for the climate science establishment to turn on their own MM. Even if we assume (falsely, probably) that the whole climate science establishment is composed of charlatans, they must realize that they will eventually run down their credibility to Cultural Anthropology levels. Already people like Freeman Dyson, an extremely eminent physicist who does not work in climate science, have noticed the problems with this field. Why do they persist?
There is a general corruption in science as a whole, with the hard sciences softening, and the universities softening. This results from government funding – whatsoever is government funded, is apt to speak power to truth.
Agreed.
I have one quibble with 7. Evolution has movement activists, certainly from the 1980s, and arguably in the 19th century also (Herbert Spencer, etc.)
The modern evolution activists are not notably preferable to the climate activists, despite their science being more obviously sound. They are similarly concerned with political power and stamping out dissent.
And if we lump in the early “social Darwinists”, we are reminded that the science can be right, and the movement wrong.
You are right that the existence of state-supported “official science” is the root of the problem. Do you read Unqualified Reservations?
AMcguinn wrote:
Evolution activists tend to accept Gould’s pseudo science – accepting evolution as an alternate creation myth, but not Darwin’s evolution. Darwin’s evolution predicts significant differences between males and females on many important matters, and, unlike Gouldian evolution, is consistent with large differences between races on important matters. Gouldian evolution is not what those doing research in evolution believe – they think he is a crank – but it is what gets taught in universities, what properly educated people tend to take for granted as true. If someone is taught biology, and does not specifically do research in evolution related matters, he is going to believe that Darwin’s account of speciation is wrong, and that something like Gould’s account is true, Darwin’s account being that differential selection is primary, thus speciation is always in progress everywhere all the time, with no sharp distinction between subspecies and species, whereas Gould’s account is that genetic separation is primary, thus speciation events are rare, special, and sudden, and have little to do with variation between groups within a species. Darwin’s account is that kinds eventually cease to interbreed as a result of becoming very different, cease to interbreed long after they have become distinct species, with genetic exchange slowly diminishing to a smaller and smaller trickle largely as a result of differences, whereas Gould’s account is that they cease to interbreed, totally and completely, and usually suddenly, and are then able to become different.
But if a researcher sticks to three spined sticklebacks, the number of people who detect that his research has alarming implications for human beings is small enough that a researcher can get away with it, which is not the case in climate research.
Yes, but I disagree with him as to which is the tail and which is the dog:
In his account, the Soviet Union was a colonial possession of Harvard and the State department, while South Vietnam was a colonial possession of the pentagon, and the Vietnam war was a proxy war between the State department and the Pentagon.
Let us recall the reaction to the Ukraine famine and the Khmer Rouge holocaust. That the New York Times blessed the Ukraine famine is equally consistent with the Harvard being a colony of the Soviet Union, or with the Soviet Union being a colony of Harvard, but when the Soviet line on the Khmer Rouge changed abruptly in 1979 January – February, we may conclude that those leftists that changed their line on the Khmer Rouge well before 1979, or well after, were not Soviet sock puppets, and those who changed between January and February were sock puppets, in which case it is apparent that the great majority of the MSM were definitely not Soviet sock puppets, but that the New York Times and Harvard were Soviet sock puppets – Mencius Moldbug sees the moderate left running the show, but this is only partially true, and supposing it to be so is an error akin to dismissing Hitler as a puppet of Papen in 1930. Theocracy has an inherent tendency to drift towards extremism and fanaticism – “no enemies to the left”
I also disagree with him on monarchic government. Long established hereditary authority, for example Dubai, has a tendency to moderation, and thus provides government that is less inclined to turn society on its head and steal everything not nailed down than other forms of government, such as democracy, but on the whole monarchy rather resembles the system depicted by Machiavelli – insecure bandits that kill, loot, rape, and burn. Although Dubai is operated as a for-profit-business, and thus supplies what the customer wants (moderation, security, and some degree of liberty) it is not apparent that joint stock corporation could do the same. Since the core of the business is violent enforcement of a monopoly of violence, management is apt to imprison the shareholders, leading to instability, leading to methods of government described by Machiavelli.