The Thinker

In my last post, I indicated that I would be doing an analysis of the latest topic on Cato Unbound, namely “what to do about global warming.” The lead essay and the first response essay are now both posted, so here’s my analysis…

First, the lead essay, “Keeping Our Cool: What To Do About Global Warming,” by Jim Manzi. If you read his bio (click the link), you will find that Manzi is a business-world mogul with no real scientific credentials. And not surprisingly, his essay provides a cost-benefit analysis of global warming solutions in largely financial and economic terms. Indeed, Manzi starts out by characterizing the problem this way: “The danger of potentially catastrophic global warming is an almost paradigmatic case of decisionmaking under conditions of extreme uncertainty.” True enough. Let’s see how he does.

Manzi does not challenge the IPCC “consensus forecast” although it could easily have been challenged; he merely accepts this assertion, and goes on to examine its implications. He characterizes the cost of global warming, based on IPCC’s findings, as “costs on the order of 3 percent of global GDP in a much wealthier world well over a hundred years from now.”Specifically, Manzi’s points are as follows:

• IPCC consensus forecast: global warming will cost approx. 3% of worldwide GDP in economic losses, in a much wealthier world, over 100 years from now.
• An optimally designed and implemented global carbon tax system would provide an expected net benefit of about 0.2% of global GDP over the next several centuries.
• It’s not realistic to believe such a global carbon tax could ever be realized, given the politics involved (e.g., sacrifices in economic development it would require of countries like China and India).
• Theoretical benefits of such a carbon tax would be more than offset by the economic drag it creates.

Manzi then proposes that government-funded alternative energy research and research into technologies that use energy more efficiently, as a hedge against (unlikely) catastrophic warming, should be in the form of a DARPA-like agency with a single-digit billion dollar per year budget. Why? Because this model of government-funded research has been shown to work, while other larger-scale government-funded approaches (e.g., past funding of large-scale wind turbines) have been shown to fail.

* * * * *

Manzi’s exclusive concentration on the economic considerations of global warming completely ignores the humanitarian costs. Sure, global warming will only cost 3% of GDP, but how many people will die? What about the victims of floods, landslides, crop failures, and other natural disasters that we can expect as the result of global warming? If he is going to accept the IPCC’s forecast without challenging it, he must also accept these potential consequences.

Really, this analysis should have been cast in terms of balancing the cost (both in economic and human terms) of not doing anything against the costs (again, both in economic and human terms) of various candidate options for abating anthropocentric global warming. And this is assuming you accept the IPCC’s forecast. A more rigorous analysis would also attempt to account for the very large uncertainties regarding our estimates of future global warming.

Next up will be the first response essay: “A Small Cost Will Avoid A Catastrophe,” by Joseph Romm.

Tags: Scientific studies, Economics, Global Warming, Decision Analysis, Problem Solving, Critical Thinking // Add Comment »

In endeavors such as The Thinker, there exists the danger of becoming a self-licking ice cream cone (love that phrase): something that exists primarily to justify its own existence. In the professional world, much of this behavior can largely be attributed to the déformation professionnelle cognitive bias, but in general anyone who becomes too passionate about a particular subject can succumb to this type of bias (e.g., single issue voters). The self-licking ice cream cone is an easy trap for me to fall into, since this blog exists in large part to convince people of the importance of critical thinking, and the importance of critical thinking in turn is the justification for this blog.

So it is at the risk of taking another lick at my own ice cream cone (so to speak) that I further bemoan the state of critical thinking in this country, by highlighting yet another astute observer’s take of how badly dumbed down we’ve become.

First, recall that in this post, I reviewed an article by Susan Jacoby in the Dallas Morning News, wherein she opined that America was getting dumber. She attributed this to a combination of two factors: (1) the growth of digital and video media over print; and (2) a rise in, and the synergistic fusion of, anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism. The first factor has caused a shortening of our attention spans, and the second has caused both an erosion of knowledge among the general public and a lack of concern about this erosion of knowledge.

Although it was an opinion piece, I agreed with her assessment, and provided some pedigreed evidence (e.g., a Pew Research Center report) that supported her opinions. I went even further than she did: I asserted that the lack of knowledge, combined with a denial of that ignorance (or a denial that the ignorance matters) amounts to intellectual arrogance: the belief that you are more competent or capable than you in fact are.

Now, courtesy of Butterflies and Wheels (which is in my blogroll) comes an editorial by R. Joseph Hoffmann which makes this same assertion, but in the updated context of our modern culture and the current presidential election. This article is really priceless, and you should read the whole thing. Here’s just a taste:

But the real cost of America’s hate-affair with knowledge is paid by children, for whom words like “learning” and “wisdom” sound biblical and words like “intelligence” elitist and judgmental. Those of us old enough to remember the sixties well remember that every classroom had at least one kid (usually an immigrant from Canada or Pakistan) whose father (usually an academic or ACLU attorney) had turned the television set into a planter. But those of us who have survived The Love Boat, Three’s Company and Charlie’s Angels to enter the world of Rap and shows about whinnying wannabe Britneys celebrating million dollar Sweet Sixteen parties have survived to witness the reversal of culture—a new barbarism and a vulgarity that, unlike the old vulgarity, incoherently accepts political correctness while exploiting and expanding every stereotype, every dumb opinion, every rude form of discourse. It’s a barbarism fueled by technologies made available to the know-nothings by the know-hows, free speech driven to the limits of incivility, and a generational clash that makes the “generation gap” of my own teenage years look like a catechism class at St Marty’s.

But the real money quote is the closing paragraph:

We have created intellectual weaklings who are absolutely convinced that they have to be “defined” by the culture they live in, not by the (archaic) standards of old people (anyone born before 1960), whether teacher, parent, or employer. Bauerlein sees them as impervious to criticism because the I’m OK You’re OK platitudocracy into which they were born caused them to see criticism as a form of abuse. Praise, good grades, promotions and success are not exceptional but expected. And even that might be OK, Jack, except for a cloying sense that Orwellian mysticism undergirds the system, and the fear (even among panderers like me) that we are now calling mediocrity excellence and failure a new challenge.

Other than that this helps to substantiate the claims I’ve made on this blog regarding the degradation of critical thinking in this country, I have nothing further to add, except that I find myself (a) in 100% agreement; and (b) jealous that he said it far better than I could have.

Tags: Critical Thinking // 2 Comments »

In this post, back in April, I introduced the Cato Institute’s Cato Unbound site to my readership. To quote from that post:

Cato Unbound (which is in my blogroll) has a very unique and interesting format. Each month, a question such as “What to do about Iran?” or “How global should government be?” is introduced in an initial essay by one of the world’s leading thinkers on the topic. The ideas in that essay are then tested by the comments and criticisms of equally eminent thinkers, each of whom responds to the initial essay as well as to each other. The resultant stream of essays and counter-essays provides great insights into the subject at hand from the viewpoints of many well-informed experts.

This month, the topic is “What to do about global warming?” The lead essay, by Jim Manzi, is here.

Time permitting, I’ll try to comment on both this lead essay and the “response” essays over the next few weeks.

Tags: Global Warming, Decision Analysis, Critical Thinking // Add Comment »

This Boston Globe op-ed piece is by John P. Holden, a professor at Harvard and director of the Woods Hole Research Center. Presumably a Harvard professor has written quite a few peer-reviewed academic papers in his time, and understands the need and importance of substantiating his claims with some actual evidential data. But since this is an opinion piece, Holden is off the hook. He can make whatever assertions he wants, without needing to actually prove any of it, and he can reach a much broader (and less informed) audience, than if he were writing a paper for a scientific journal.

So, I’ll do my best to keep him honest here myself. Here, I’ll just Fisk the whole thing:

THE FEW climate-change “skeptics” with any sort of scientific credentials continue to receive attention in the media out of all proportion to their numbers, their qualifications, or the merit of their arguments. And this muddying of the waters of public discourse is being magnified by the parroting of these arguments by a larger population of amateur skeptics with no scientific credentials at all.

“The few?” “Out of all proportion to their numbers?” I take it that Holden belongs to the “the debate is settled” camp.

I’ve already addressed this “consensus” issue here and here. Bottom line: There is no consensus. A large and ever growing number of scientists are becoming increasingly skeptical about anthropocentric global warming. And as far as “the parroting of these arguments by a larger population of amateur skeptics with no scientific credentials at all” goes, there is arguably an even larger population of ill-informed amateur alarmists who have been parroting the man-made global warming talking points much more loudly than the skeptics have been vocalizing their opinions.

Long-time observers of public debates about environmental threats know that skeptics about such matters tend to move, over time, through three stages. First, they tell you you’re wrong and they can prove it. (In this case, “Climate isn’t changing in unusual ways or, if it is, human activities are not the cause.”)

“Long-time observers… know ” is an appeal to authority fallacy, also known as the argumentum ad verecundiam. And as far as this particular “first” stage goes, I don’t know of any skeptics claiming that climate change isn’t happening; only that the evidence that human activities are the predominant cause is unconvincing. So Holden is setting up a straw-man here. Two fallacies in the same paragraph, and from a Harvard professor. For shame.

Then they tell you you’re right but it doesn’t matter. (”OK, it’s changing and humans are playing a role, but it won’t do much harm.”) Finally, they tell you it matters but it’s too late to do anything about it. (”Yes, climate disruption is going to do some real damage, but it’s too late, too difficult, or too costly to avoid that, so we’ll just have to hunker down and suffer.”)

More straw-man arguments here. If there are any skeptics who have taken these positions, they are in the vanishingly small minority, and it is intellectually dishonest for Holden to lump all skeptics in with them.

The true position of most skeptics can be stated as follows. Human activity might be causing some of the climate change being observed, but we can’t say for sure how much. And before we do anything about it we need to better understand the extent (if any) of the problem and what the full consequences of any actions would be.

All three positions are represented among the climate-change skeptics who infest talk shows, Internet blogs, letters to the editor, op-ed pieces, and cocktail-party conversations. The few with credentials in climate-change science have nearly all shifted in the past few years from the first category to the second, however, and jumps from the second to the third are becoming more frequent.

This is just a continuation of Holden knocking down the straw-man he’s set up for himself.

All three factions are wrong, but the first is the worst. Their arguments, such as they are, suffer from two huge deficiencies.

First, they have not come up with any plausible alternative culprit for the disruption of global climate that is being observed, for example, a culprit other than the greenhouse-gas buildups in the atmosphere that have been measured and tied beyond doubt to human activities. (The argument that variations in the sun’s output might be responsible fails a number of elementary scientific tests.)

First of all, the absence of a plausible alternative to explain global warming (if such were in fact the case) does not mean that greenhouse gas buildup (presumably he means CO2) is in fact the true culprit. This is a combination of the affirming a disjunct fallacy (since other culprits have not been proven, it must be greenhouse gases), and the argument from ignorance (greenhouse gases must be the culprit because no other culprit has been found) fallacy. The appropriate position for a scientist to take is that the cause of global warming is either greenhouse gases, or something else, regardless of whether or not that “something else” is yet known. Our lack of awareness of Pluto prior to 1930 doesn’t mean that Pluto didn’t exist before it was discovered! One can be legitimately scientifically skeptical of CO2 as the root cause of global warming without knowing what the true cause of global warming actually is, and it is disingenuous of Holden to imply otherwise.

Second of all, I question Holden’s assertion that the solar output claim “fails a number of elementary scientific tests.” There are any number of scientists who would disagree with him, and there are a number of scientists who would also claim that his greenhouse gas culprit likewise fails a number of elementary scientific tests (see, e.g., here).

Second, having not succeeded in finding an alternative, they haven’t even tried to do what would be logically necessary if they had one, which is to explain how it can be that everything modern science tells us about the interactions of greenhouse gases with energy flow in the atmosphere is wrong.

Actually there have been a number of exposés done on the modeling methods used to support anthropocentric climate change claims made by the IPCC and others (again, see, e.g., here), and how they are rife with errors and unproven assumptions. The models themselves have not accurately predicted the past 10 years of reality. That is enough to tell us the global warming alarmists are (pardon the pun) full of hot air.

Members of the public who are tempted to be swayed by the denier fringe should ask themselves how it is possible, if human-caused climate change is just a hoax, that:

• The leaderships of the national academies of sciences of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, China, and India, among others, are on record saying that global climate change is real, caused mainly by humans, and reason for early, concerted action.
• This is also the overwhelming majority view among the faculty members of the earth sciences departments at every first-rank university in the world.

This is an appeal to authority fallacy combined with argumentum ad populum fallacy (”if a large number of experts believe it, it must be true”). The language is a bit dishonest as well; I hardly think the majority (if there in fact is one; see the posts I referred to earlier on the alleged “consensus”) could be referred to as “overwhelming.” It’s also interesting that Holden has singled out scientists at facilities who depend upon public and governmental concern over global warming to keep their funding flowing. Doesn’t mean their opinions are wrong, but you should perhaps consider their motivations.

• All three of holders of the one Nobel prize in science that has been awarded for studies of the atmosphere (the 1995 chemistry prize to Paul Crutzen, Sherwood Rowland, and Mario Molina, for figuring out what was happening to stratospheric ozone) are leaders in the climate-change scientific mainstream. US polls indicate that most of the amateur skeptics are Republicans. These Republican skeptics should wonder how presidential candidate John McCain could have been taken in. He has castigated the Bush administration for wasting eight years in inaction on climate change, and the policies he says he would implement as president include early and deep cuts in US greenhouse-gas emissions. (Senator Barack Obama’s position is similar.) The extent of unfounded skepticism about the disruption of global climate by human-produced greenhouse gases is not just regrettable, it is dangerous. It has delayed - and continues to delay - the development of the political consensus that will be needed if society is to embrace remedies commensurate with the challenge. The science of climate change is telling us that we need to get going. Those who still think this is all a mistake or a hoax need to think again.

“Most of the amateur skeptics are Republicans?” Yeah, I suppose I can believe that. I could also believe that most of the amateur alarmists are Democrats. As I posted about here, there is a strong socialist ideology underlying certain segments of the global warming movement. McCain himself has been somewhat to the left of mainstream Republican positions on a number of topics for quite a while, and is also posturing himself for a general election. What’s your point, Holden? That because the two leading presidential candidates in the 2008 election believe in anthropocentric climate change, we all should as well? If so, then it’s just more argumentum ad populum.

And there are just as many prominent scientists who would — and have — claimed that it is the extent of alarmism, not skepticism, that is dangerous. The remedies being proposed by many are very costly and will have enormous secondary consequences.

* * * * *

I get the distinct impression from this piece that Holden is a firm global warming alarmist of the “the debate is settled” variety who is offended that it’s becoming increasingly obvious to the public that the debate is not in fact settled. This opinion piece exposes him as biased — whether due to political worldview or research funding motivations, one can only speculate — and serves as yet another example of how the public discourse on global warming has been politicized beyond redemption.

Tags: Politics, Global Warming, Critical Thinking // 3 Comments »

Via the Science and Public Policy Institute:

Mathematical proof that there is no “climate crisis” appears today in a major, peer-reviewed paper in Physics and Society, a learned journal of the 10,000-strong American Physical Society, SPPI reports.

Christopher Monckton, who once advised Margaret Thatcher, demonstrates via 30 equations that computer models used by the UN’s climate panel (IPCC) were pre-programmed with overstated values for the three variables whose product is “climate sensitivity” (temperature increase in response to greenhouse-gas increase), resulting in a 500-2000% overstatement of CO2’s effect on temperature in the IPCC’s latest climate assessment report, published in 2007.

Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered [title of the paper appearing in Physics and Society] demonstrates that later this century a doubling of the concentration of CO2 compared with pre-industrial levels will increase global mean surface temperature not by the 6 °F predicted by the IPCC but, harmlessly, by little more than 1 °F. Lord Monckton concludes –

“… Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no ‘climate crisis’ at all. … The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.”

Well said, Lord Monckton.

Here is a link to Monckton’s paper appearing in the American Physical Society’s Physics & Society.

Tags: Global Warming, Critical Thinking // 1 Comment »

In his latest Townhall column, Thomas Sowell says:

One of the most naive notions is that politicians are trying to solve the country’s problems, just because they say so– or say so loudly or inspiringly.

Politicians’ top priority is to solve their own problem, which is how to get elected and then re-elected. Barack Obama is a politician through and through, even though pretending that he is not is his special strategy to get elected.

That’s exactly what I said in this post and elsewhere. (Fine, so Sowell said it better than me. But still.)

The bottom line is that politicians generally care only about projecting the appearance of solving problems. Sowell gives another example:

Obama is for higher minimum wage rates. Does anyone care what actually happens in countries with higher minimum wage rates? Of course not.

Economists may point to studies done in countries around the world, showing that higher minimum wage rates usually mean higher unemployment rates among lower skilled and less experienced workers.

That’s their problem. A politician’s problem is how to look like he is for “the poor” and against those who are “exploiting” them. The facts are irrelevant to maintaining that political image.

And this misplaced motivation can have damaging consequences. When a politician’s real motivation is only to maintain the image of solving a problem, rather than to in fact solve the problem, there is a serious risk of making things worse than if nothing had been done at all. Sowell gives a couple of examples in his article:

The New Deal was new then but it is not new now. Moreover, increasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that New Deal policies are what prolonged the Great Depression.

Putting new restrictions of international trade, in order to save American jobs? That was done by Herbert Hoover, when he signed the Hawley-Smoot tariff when the unemployment rate was 9 percent. The next year the unemployment rate was 16 percent and, before the Great Depression was over, unemployment hit 25 percent.

This is why The Thinker is a libertarian. The less power and scope government has, the harder it will be for politicians to to project the image of “solving problems” while in reality only mucking things up even worse.

Tags: Politics, Critical Thinking // 2 Comments »

Faith is a firm belief in something for which there is no proof (source: Merriam- Webster online dictionary). Typically when we talk about faith we are referring to religious faith, i.e., a belief in the existence of God and/or certain attributes about God. (There are some who would claim to have proof, or at least evidence, of God’s existence, but let’s not quibble here; there are plenty of people who have faith in God’s existence without having seen that proof or evidence, and it’s that kind of faith that I’m talking about in this post.)

In contrast, belief (as I am defining it for purposes of this post) is a conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence (emphasis mine; source: Merriam-Webster online dictionary). Thus, belief is an opinion held as the end result of critical thinking.

There is nothing wrong* with having faith, as long as you recognize it for what it is: a belief that is unsupported by any proof. And there is certainly nothing wrong — and in fact, there is everything right — with having belief that is based on sound critical thinking applied to evaluating the evidence.

However, when people confound their faith and their beliefs, problems often arise. Faith and belief usually don’t mix very well.

Here’s why.

In order to effectively apply critical thinking and the scientific method, you must adopt the habits of a good critical thinker: intellectual humility (an awareness of and willingness to admit to the prejudice of one’s viewpoint and the limits of one’s knowledge and abilities), intellectual courage (a willingness to challenge one’s own beliefs), intellectual empathy (ability and willingness to examine issues from others’ viewpoints in an open-minded manner), fair-mindedness (treating all viewpoints equally without regard for one’s own feelings or vested interests), and so on. (See my model of critical thinking for full detail.)

But if you use a faith-based belief as the basis for subsequent critical thinking and the scientific method, then ultimately your whole line of reasoning — no matter how logically well-formed and evidence-based it may be — is fundamentally flawed from a critical thinking standpoint, because it rests on a root assertion for which there is no evidence. And worse still: if you are unwilling to yield on your faith-based assumption regardless of evidence to the contrary, then you’ve thrown quite a lot of critical thinking — intellectual humility, intellectual courage, fair-mindedness, and so on — right out the window.

Take, for example, the strict creationists who believe in a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, i.e., that God made all of creation over a 7-day period some ~6,000 years ago. As you can read about in gory detail here (among other places), strict creationists seek to refute evolution. And their root assertion is based purely on faith, with no evidence to support it and a huge amount of evidence to the contrary. They are so adamant in their faith-based belief in a literal interpretation of Genesis that any evidence in support of evolution is immediately viewed as wrong; it’s just a matter of finding out why it’s wrong. This attitude is utterly inconsistent with critical thinking and the scientific method.

I could argue that the same holds for a certain segment of the “global warming alarmist” community, i.e., those who believe in man-made global warming as a matter of faith, and automatically seek to discount any evidence to the contrary. Really this is just a combination of worldview (see, e.g., my post on global warming and socialism), wishful thinking, and the confirmation/ disconfirmation bias working together. (And in all fairness, the same could be said of a certain segment of the “global warming denier” community.)

Bottom line: Whenever you are unwilling to critically examine one of your beliefs (whether faith-based or not), you CANNOT, by definition, be engaged in critical thinking.

——————–

*Various atrocities committed in the name of religion (the Crusades, the Inquisition, radical Islamic terrorism, etc.) notwithstanding, of course.

Tags: Religion, Global Warming, Critical Thinking // Add Comment »

This post is not about the legendary Canadian rock trio known as Rush (bestest band evar!!!!). Rather, it is about the other Rush: conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

In this NY Times article, Limbaugh responded to the interviewer’s question about what his own presidential agenda would look like. From the article:

A Limbaugh administration would seek to:

1. Open the continental shelf to drilling. Ditto the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
2. Establish a 17 percent flat tax.
3. Privatize Social Security.
4. Give parents school vouchers to break the monopoly of public education.
5. Revoke Jimmy Carter’s passport while he is out of the country.
6. Abandon all government policies based on the hoax of man-made global warming.

No. 5 was a joke. I think.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m not exactly a Rush Limbaugh fan (a “dittohead” as I believe they call themselves). In my opinion, to put it rather bluntly, Limbaugh is a pompous windbag. But as a conservative/ libertarian I do find myself agreeing with some of what he has to say.

Let’s take the “Limbaugh presidential agenda” one point at a time.

1. Open the continental shelf to drilling. Ditto the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge [ANWR].

As I noted in this post, the cost of oil has risen due to “a sharp and sustained rise in worldwide demand led by China, India, and the United States.” It’s Economics-101: if the demand increases and the supply does not, the price will rise. And the oil supply has not increased commensurately to meet the increasing demand. This alone explains the rising gas prices without any need to demagogue about greedy oil companies. Opening the continental shelf and ANWR to drilling will help to increase the supply, thereby lowering prices. Sounds good to me.

2. Establish a 17 percent flat tax.

Nice idea. But it will never work.

Why it’s a nice idea: (1) Because it’s simple. Your tax form would have three boxes; you would enter your income, and you would enter 17% of your income, and then you would enter how much your employer actually withheld. The huge cost of tax compliance would go away, as would the expense of the current IRS. (2) Because everyone would pay, not just the wealthiest Americans. This means that everyone is impacted when the government proposes some new expensive entitlement program that must be funded by the taxpayers. When politicians propose to raise the flat tax rate from 17% to 19% to fund some new programs, everyone will howl. Under the current tax system, many/most voters pay little to no taxes, and politicians can fund programs that benefit the majority of voters by raising taxes only on wealthier Americans; consequently it is too easy to grow the size of government. So a flat tax would serve as a brake on government growth, whereas the current system only encourages growth.

Why it will never work: (1) Because it would only remain simple until politicians start adding various exemptions and loopholes to the tax code, in order to garner favor with special interest groups and voting blocks. This will increasingly defeat the purpose over time. (2) Because it would be too hard to pass it to begin with. It’s not “fair.” The wealthy would pay the same (rate) as the poor would. Taxes would go up for too many voters under this scheme, and that means it’s politically untenable.

In any case, I prefer the Fair Tax.

3. Privatize Social Security.

This is a great idea, but I have an even better idea. Let’s invest $100B in time travel research, build a time machine, travel back in time, and prevent this abomination from ever having been foisted on the public in the first place. That will solve the problem at a fraction of the cost of any other alternative.

The Social Security program is a perfect example of good intentions run amok, and supports my assertion that it is intellectually arrogant to believe that a gaggle of smart politicians, however well intentioned, can solve complex social and economic problems without causing unintended, unforeseen, and damaging secondary consequence.

4. Give parents school vouchers to break the monopoly of public education.

This is another nice idea. Basically what it would do is force public schools to “compete” for students, in the same sense that the free market forces producers to compete for business. Parents would be issued a voucher covering the cost of school for each child, and would get to choose what school to send their children to; the school would then receive the funding for that voucher. Schools that are successful will attract students, and schools that are bad will have to improve or close.

5. Revoke Jimmy Carter’s passport while he is out of the country.

Joking or not, Jimmy can do what he wants, but does not speak for the country. No more really needs to be said.

6. Abandon all government policies based on the hoax of man-made global warming.

I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say man-made global warming is a “hoax,” but I would definitely require some pretty substantial proof (far beyond what has been offered up thus far) before implementing costly and burdensome measures to reduce CO2 output. And even AFTER such proof has been produced, I would also require a thorough study to determine whether the costs and burdens of those measures are actually justified, relative to the costs and burdens of just leaving things alone.

= = = = = = = = = =

And on another note…

My posting has been getting lighter and lighter here on The Thinker over the past few months, for a number of reasons. First, I seem to be in a humor mode lately, and consequently I’ve been inclined to focus my attention on The Thinker’s humorous companion blog, The Stinker. This may change, and it may not. I can never predict what I’ll be interested in for more than a few minutes ahead of time. That’s just the way my flighty INTJ brain works. Second, far more people read The Stinker than The Thinker, so it’s more gratifying to me to spend my time there. (If you want me to post more here, then leave some comments to show you care!) And finally, in case you haven’t already read about it on The Stinker, I’ve accepted a position at a company in Houston, and I’ll be working at Johnson Space Center on NASA’s Constellation program. So posting will probably continue to be light for the next few weeks during my relocation.

Tags: Politics, Myers-Briggs, Miscellaneous, Problem Solving, Critical Thinking // 3 Comments »

I hereby submit the following hypothesis for consideration: Obama is the candidate of those who have fallen victim to the cognitive bias of wishful thinking.

This hypothesis occurred to me upon reading this article in the Wall Street Journal, which states (emphasis mine):

Democrats are nominating a freshman Senator barely three years out of the Illinois legislature whom most of America still hardly knows. The polls say he is the odds-on favorite to become our next President.

Think about this in historical context. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were relatively unknown, but both had at least been prominent Governors. John Kerry, Walter Mondale, Al Gore and even George McGovern were all long-time Washington figures. Republican nominees tend to be even more familiar, for better or worse. In Mr. Obama, Democrats are taking a leap of faith that is daring even by their risky standards.

No doubt this is part of his enormous appeal. Amid public anger over politics as usual, the Illinois Senator is unhaunted by Beltway experience. His personal story – of mixed race, and up from nowhere through Harvard – resonates in an America where the two most popular cultural icons are Tiger Woods and Oprah. His political gifts are formidable, especially his ability to connect with audiences from the platform.

Above all, Mr. Obama has fashioned a message that fits the political moment and the public’s desire for “change.”

So we have a relative unknown, far less experienced than his Democrat opponents were, without much of a track record to examine in order to see what he really stands for. During the campaign thus far, he has been long on rhetoric and bumper sticker slogans — he stands for “change you can believe in” and a “spirit of change and hope” — but short on detail. My hypothesis is that this is intentional; he is playing on the natural cognitive biases of voters, hoping they will all mentally fill in the missing details in a positive way based on wishful thinking. Just by saying “change” he is playing upon the country’s dissatisfaction with the Bush administration, without offering up much detail on just what that “change” would be.

Of course I have no way of knowing if this is truly an intentional scheme, since I cannot read minds and have no insight into the real motivations of Obama and his campaign staff. That’s why I offer it up only as a hypothesis. But it is consistent with the way I have modeled politicians’ behavior (see this post).

Tags: Politics, Critical Thinking // 1 Comment »

John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, recently had this to say on the subject of global warming.

Of particular note:

Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?

The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.

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I suspect you haven’t heard it because the mass media did not report it, but I am not alone on the no man-made warming side of this issue. On May 20th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.D’s. Think about that. Thirty-one thousand. That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, five hundred of scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming. A few more join the chorus every week. There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC.

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The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades. It was the environmentalist’s prime force in blocking any drilling for oil in this country and the blocking the building of any new refineries, as well. So now the shortage they created has sent gasoline prices soaring. And, it has lead to the folly of ethanol, which is also partly behind the fuel price increases; that and our restricted oil policy. The ethanol folly is also creating a food crisis throughout the world – it is behind the food price rises for all the grains, for cereals, bread, everything that relies on corn or soy or wheat, including animals that are fed corn, most processed foods that use corn oil or soybean oil or corn syrup. Food shortages or high costs have led to food riots in some third world countries and made the cost of eating out or at home budget busting for many.

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Global warming: the greatest hoax ever? See this editorial by Eric Creed, Features Editor of CityView Magazine.

Of particular note:

Many leading scientists firmly believe that more CO2 in the atmosphere is actually good for the planet. David Archibald, PhD, at the Biology Department of San Diego State University, is one of those leading scientists. In a lecture given at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, Dr. Archibald said that more CO2 in the atmosphere will give us a lusher environment and actually increase plant growth rates in addition to increasing the sustainability of crops in arid regions.

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The U.S. alone spends over $4 billion per year on climate change research. That seems like a lot of money to spend on something that is so well settled and agreed upon by all but a few “flat-earthers.” Gore has started giving a disclaimer during his lectures. Gore, and Global Investment Management, LLP (GIM), the London-based private equity firm of which Gore is the founder and Chairman, stand to benefit in untold riches if we invest in the companies he recommends in his lectures.

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Joseph D’Alea, the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chief of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecast, says that “carbon dioxide (CO2) is 0.000383 of our atmosphere by volume. . . Only 0.0275 of atmospheric CO2 is [man-made] in origin. . . We are responsible for 0.00001 of this atmosphere. If the atmosphere were a 100-story building, our [man-made] CO2 contribution today would be equivalent to the linoleum on the first floor.” Do we really want to spend a trillion dollars on linoleum?

“We’ve been warming up about a degree per century since the Little Ice Age (LIA) in about 1600. We’ve been warming for 400 years, long before human-generated CO2 could have anything to do with the climate,” says Dr. Don Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus Geology, Western Washington University. Dr. Easterbrook is not alone in his opinion. Reid Bryson, founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, opines “[O]f course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the LIA, not because we are putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

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On March 4, at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, more than 500 scientists closed the conference with what is referred to as the Manhattan Declaration. In short, they declared that “global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life. . . There is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change. . . Now, therefore, we recommend that world leaders reject the view expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided, works such as An Inconvenient Truth.” How many of you heard or read about these declarations in the mainstream media? Is this the consensus that Saint Gore and his co-conspirators in the media speak of?

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