Category Archives: Science

The Pseudoscientific Method Of ‘Climate Change’

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Pseudoscience, Reason, Science

“Evidence that contradicts the global warming theory, climate Chicken Littles enlist as evidence for the correctness of their theory; every permutation in weather patterns—warm or cold—is said to be a consequence of that warming or proof of it.” That was “Reincarnation of the Reds,” my 2006 article which first articulated the “scientific” principle that undergirds “climate change.” Back in 2006, when I wrote the piece, the movement was still called global warming.

The media continue to blow hot air about global warming, as much of the country’s South and Northeast looks as though it is heralding an Ice Age. If you want to master the watermelons’ scientific methods, here’s more from “Reincarnation of the Reds”:

“These mutant Marxists have had to create a theory that can’t be falsified—the kind of ‘theory’ Karl Popper referred to as irrefutable. As Popper reminded us, ‘A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is,’ of course, ‘non-scientific.”

Here’s how you use the Socratic method to question a climate kook with the hope that reason will prevail. It never does.

Zombie Zakaria Has Some “Ideas” For You

Affirmative Action, America, Education, Europe, Government, Labor, Multiculturalism, Outsourcing, Political Economy, Science, Technology

Fareed Zakaria: is there anyone more inane and wishy-washy than he? Zombie Zakaria’s “Restoring the American Dream” presentation is in the tradition you’ve come to expect from this CNN pundit.

Thus, Fareed vows to “bring you solutions” to “the hollowing out of the middle class” by growing the state’s role in R & D, for, as he concludes, “Almost all of the science and technology research that we take for granted now came out of the Defense Department spending post World War II.”

But surely, and logically, we cannot assert that because the DOD (the Department of Defense) gave rise to certain technologies, without it these inventions would not exist, as ZZ claims? It might be the case that sans state intervention, there would be even more innovation than with it.

This guy’s “ideas” are festooned with similar falsehoods.

Another of ZZ’s lessons comes courtesy of the super-productive German workforce.

“Despite some of the highest wages in the world, strong unions, lots of regulation, Germany has maintained a very powerful manufacturing base, employing millions,” ZZ opined. “It has held in good stead during this economic crisis. Germany’s unemployment rate has actually fallen for the past 15 months straight, an unbelievable record in this economic climate.”

As ZZ narrated the above passage, images of industrious German factory workers flashed on the screen, and were contrasted with the long lines of the unemployed in America. Guess what the American assembly and unemployment lines look like? You are right: By comparison, the German workforce so famous for its industry looked relatively homogeneous.

Still, ZZ hopes to apply efficiencies learned from the German cohort to America’s increasingly third-world, imported, underclass of workers. (“The United States,” we are told, “now ranks 52nd in the world in quality of science and math education.” It used to have “very high levels of performance in math and science.” What happened other than suffocating unionization in education, third-world immigration, and affirmative action?)

As Fareed and his well-to-do, high-achieving (indubitably high IQ) guests conclude, and I paraphrase, opportunities are indeed boundless if somebody has the smarts and the motivation; everybody can be the designer of an iPod or a programmer at Google; this essentially, is not a rarified group. Any one can get to be at “the top end of America.”

ZZ’s smart panel, which can never be called an interest group plumping for government/taxpayer subsidies (no never!), included Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google; Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola; Lou Gerstner, who has run R.J. Reynolds, American Express and IBM; and Klaus Kleinfeld, CEO of Alcoa, the aluminum giant.

All were agreed that laborers are interchangeable in as much as potential is concerned, and if given the right conditions by government.

I have advocated in my writings for “a natural shift from a credit-fueled, consumption-based economy, to one founded on savings, investment and production.”

ZZ favors only a shift from consumption to investment; massive federal-government investment.

UPDATED: Production Depends On Pressing Flesh In Washington (Big Biz Was Once Small, Dah!)

Business, Democracy, Economy, Healthcare, Political Economy, Regulation, Science, Technology

As discussed over these pixelated pages, the effects of the Obama healthscare are percolating down. Now the EETimes reports that, “As many as three-quarters of venture capitalists are exiting the health care field as the total pool of venture capital decreases and regulatory hurdles increase.”

Medical electronics companies face increasing hurdles getting funding and regulatory approval to bring new technologies to market, according to executives at a medical device event here.

“We’re in a bit of a perfect storm right now with some of the worst things I’ve seen in 30 years,” said Eamonn Hobbs, chief executive of DelCath Systems and chairman of the Medical Device Manufacturers Association (MDMA), host of the event.

As many as three-quarters of venture capitalists are exiting the health care field as the total pool of venture capital decreases and regulatory hurdles increase, said Kevin Wasserstein, managing director of Versant Ventures (Menlo Park, Calif.) which focuses on health care.

“Even entrepreneurs have started to retreat from pursing big ideas [in health care], and we risk as an industry evolving to incrementalism and safer projects,” said Wasserstein.

Some of the about 100 medical devices executives gathered here complained about what they said was an increasingly conservative and slow-moving U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The chief executive of one medical device company said his product is approved for sale in Europe, but is still waiting on an FDA OK to begin clinical trials.

UPDATED: (Sept. 21): Big Biz Was Once Small, Dah! What do you know, Bernie Marcus, Home Depot co-founder, was once the owner of a small business. How can that be? (Yeah, Obama … and the Republicans are idiots).

Yes, big business was once small. Through the democratic vote of the consumer, a small concern grows and grows to become a big, invariably, bad business. (Irony alert.)

Democracy practiced in the free market is the only democracy worth a dime. Let’s destroy the only honest democracy we have: the free market.

UPDATED: Germany’s Geert Wilders (Meanwhile Back At Home…)

Europe, Human Accomplishment, IMMIGRATION, Intelligence, Islam, Racism, Science

Germany has a Geert Wilders, only more outspoken. His name is Thilo Sarrazin, and he is a board member of Germany’s central bank. His new book, Germany Does Itself In, is flying off the shelves. Via Yahoo News:

“In the book, Sarrazin says Europe’s top economy is being undermined, overwhelmed and made ‘more stupid’ by poorly educated, fast-breeding, badly integrated and unproductive Muslim immigrants and their offspring.

‘If I want to hear the muezzin’s call to prayer, then I’ll go to the Orient,’ he says, saying that allowing in millions of ‘guest workers’ in the 1960s and 1970s was a ‘gigantic error.’

He also says that Turkish and Kurdish ‘clans’ have a ‘long tradition of inbreeding,’ leading to higher rates of birth defects, and ponders whether this might be one reason for immigrants’ poor school performance, Spiegel said.

This and his comment to a newspaper that ‘all Jews share a certain gene’, critics say, is akin to the kind of pseudo-science used by the Nazis.”

[SNIP]

Yes, Sarrazin must be a racist. Germany must be racist, because, as we all know—and having been so indoctrinated—people are all the same. Give them sufficient nutrition and democracy, and differences dissolve. You may note and record difference between individuals, but don’t dare to examine aggregates. Hey, isn’t it the job of science to draw conclusions based on a representative sample of a group? Don’t this man’s observations comport with the kind of reality science might affirm? Should we perhpas ban science so as to spare ourselves from reality?

UPDATE (Sept. 7): CNSNews.com: “As of Sunday, Sept. 5, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had a backlog of fugitive illegal aliens of 506,232 people. …

The fugitive illegal aliens are individuals who were apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for being in the United States illegally and then were released ahead of their court proceedings and deemed fugitive when they failed to appear in court.”