RedStateEclectic

Against Political Biology

Lysenko, one of the masters of political biology.

Following up on my Scientists Not Interested in Science, find below a level-headed reminder of some facts of basic, depoliticised biology.

In his summary, Luboš Motl writes:

The basic theme of the [below] article is simple and most of us learned it as fifth-graders: CO₂ is primarily the plant food while its other implications for nature are negligible in comparison. Humanitarian organizations should work hard to help the mankind to increase the CO₂ concentration and it's surprising that virtually all of them are failing to do so.

Thus, ex-moonwalker Harrison Schmitt and physics professor Will Happer of Princeton argue:

Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That's simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.

The entire brief article.

Palatine Boors

[W]hy should the Palatine Boors [ie Germans] be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.

The source.

 I'm asking you, Benjamin, don't let's be beastly to the Germans.

See also A Plea to James.

PS

The above image represents the distribution of German Americans according to the 2000 census.

Hormesis versus Leviathan

Radiation hormesis hypothesis compared with LNT and linear model with threshold. In all 3 graphs, x-axes represent radiation dose and y-axes represent magnitude of health effect. Zero-equivalent point (ZEP) represents level of health effect in absence of radiation. The quadratic model of Figure 1 approximates threshold graph of this figure. A threshold model would imply no effects of radiation up to certain level, after which risk rises linearly with dose. The radiation hormesis model, in contrast, shows beneficial effect at low levels of exposure as it drops below ZEP.

Dr. Calabrese presents his (highly generalisable) findings about the nature of dose response in the low dose zone, discovering that longstanding "scientific" standards underlying regulatory rulings systematically ignore the true reaction pattern, thereby introducing massive bias. The key insight presented by Dr. Calabrese seems to me to consist in the fact that rather than following a linear pattern, dose responses are characterised by two phases such that at low doses they may act in a stimulating way, only to display inhibiting effects at higher doses - (hence the terms "biphase" or "hormetic"). Low doses of radiation for instance may stimulate healthy reactions in the human body, thus actually improving their well-being, while causing harm only at higher doses.

For more on what hormesis is, consult my post Hormesis and Regulation Failure. See also Hiroshima Victims Live Longer.

 

Greenpeace Urging Obama To Ban Cats

Image credit.

No, no, not quite.

However, following up on Who Is Going to Kill Those Cats, I ask our readers to note:

The review estimates that if Keystone is not built, oil sands production will be only 0.4 to 0.6 percent less that if the pipeline is built, or less than 0.83 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent emissions annually. This difference equates to less than two hours of U.S. emissions, a negligible amount. Seventy-four million US housecats annually cause an estimated 196 times this emissions volume. Why isn’t Greenpeace urging President Obama to ban cats?

The full article.

See also The Cat in Me.

Letter to Charles Darwin

The older I get, the more I cherish the experience of getting closer to the truth by being wrong at a considerable rate.

The amazing thing about this story, Charles, is that not a jot of it was known even when I was a boy, let alone you. There is something almost miraculously exciting about the way we can recover and relive the past adventures of the planet in glorious detail thanks to modern science.

You once wrote, in a letter to your sister from the Falkland Islands in 1834, of the pleasure of "finding a fine group of fossil bones, which tell their story of former times with almost a living tongue." Today, almost 180 years later, the fossils, isotopes and spores not only speak softly of slow and gradual changes but cry out the story of a violent and truly terrible catastrophe that once transformed life on Earth.

Read the articles here and here.

Iceland

Image credit.

I hope, in the near future, I will be able to look more closely at recent and ongoing events in Iceland. For starters, listen to this fellow:

 

The source.

Scientists Not Interested in Science

Richard Lindzen commenting on a speech given by president Obama at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

On the one hand, he was calling for sound science and critical analysis, on the other he was calling for the marginalisation of naysayers concerning global warming. It is, as an aside, an appalling feature of the present environment that this kind of abuse of scientific integrity is conducted to cheers at universities. Universities as such provide virtually no defense against this kind of behaviour by important officials.

(See time mark 22:00 of the below video)

The field is corrupt, without any question. I would say most scientists don’t believe this and didn’t believe it 20 years ago. But for young scientists they know they're in trouble if they say it, and so they don’t.

You created a community of scientists who are not interested in the science.

(See time mark 47:20)

On potential converts to the cause of veracity amongst scientists knowledgable enough to see through the politically correct travesty of climate science:

How do you describe these people 'for' or 'against'. It's meaningless. They're opportunistic.

(See time mark 49:20)

 

See also one of my earliest posts (from January 2008): The Sun Queen of Germany, and the very recent Tangents of Wisdom - Dürer and Popper.

Sapere Aude

Früh übt sich, wer ein Meister sein will - Start young, if you want to be a master. (Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell)

Can tablets take the place of teachers? (h/t askblog)

I seem to remember, both before going to school (and in school) it was impressed on me that I could not (yet) learn and grasp what was being taught in school (the higher grades). I believed them. It took me decades to systematically distrust educational authorities and to practice my ability to approach truth independently of human totems of authoritativeness, be they teachers, professors or other ritually empowered experts.

Eventually it dawned on me, in remarkably large measure, (pre-)educational socialisation and education itself are aimed at incapacitating the human urge and need to learn, so as to subordinate the human mind to concerns of social station and self-importance.

“Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit …”,

the full quote in English:

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!”

Immanuel Kant, Königsberg (Prussia), 30 September 1784

Kar

So far, we've had an exceptionally mild winter in Germany. Now, it looks like we're in for colder weather, from the weekend onward. I wouldn't mind a pattern like last year, when a mild winter was briefly interrupted by three weeks of severe cold and a wonderland of blue sky, ice, and snow.

The first days of the new year stealthily advancing, it'll be February in no time, with Fasching (carnival) arriving early this year. March does not count as winter, to me; it's the month that makes you smell the joyful imminence of spring. The stretch from March to July is the best part of the year, except for the spectacular bloom of autumn. Beautiful as they are, August and September usually hold a slight surplus of melancholy for me. Depriving the world of warmth and light, November and December find me depressed. Winter solstice is an important date that I eagerly await: the days get longer, more light.

Rather on the warm and sunny side, and only two flying hours away, Istanbul, the capitol of Turkey, is at the top of my touristic agenda. However, one does not associate the place with 'kar':

Snow, or "Kar" in Turkish: The eponymous novel by Orhan Pamuk tells a complex, darkly humorous and politically fraught tale about modern Turkey. But yesterday it simply covered Pamuk's hometown of Istanbul -- and some intrepid fisherman on the city's Galata Bridge -- in a blanket of white. A heavy snowstorm on Jan. 8 virtually shut down the commercial hub, disrupting air traffic and ground transportation in the city of 15 million people.

The source.

Big 'SIS'

From the review at Amazon:

"Ending Big SIS (The Special Interest State) and Renewing the American Republic" is a stern look at the current crisis in politics and government. The surface problems are known to all: uncontrolled spending; exploding debt; legal and regulatory absurdity; imperious bureaucracy; misdirected investment; and crippled private businesses and institutions. But these are actually symptoms, not basic problems. They cannot be cured until we face up to a deep crack in the structure of our political institutions. We have allowed special interest groups of all kinds – the Founders of the republic called them “factions” – to capture segments of the government and then use its sovereign powers to tax, legislate, spend, and regulate to promote their own agendas rather than the interests of the nation as a whole. Indeed, we celebrate capture. We assume that this jockeying for governmental advantage is part of democracy, and that somehow it will all work out. But it will not work out, because too many interests have won too much over too long a period. Our institutions, which were designed to make government act slowly, make it impossible to reverse course, especially because the winning interests support politicians who will block reform. In fact, the problems will worsen, as ever-more groups demand a share of the pie. The Founders regarded capture by faction as a threat to the existence of the republic, using, in the words of one historian, “a dreadful image of a spreading rot” of a cancer eating at the vitals of the body politic. They were right, and American politics is approaching the day when the very legitimacy of the government will come into question. The book assesses the fears of the Founders, how their ideas governed our political arrangements for 150 years, and the rise of the special interest state in the 20th century. It analyzes the powerful forces that uphold Big SIS, and closes with some specific suggestions on how to reverse course. From the book: The Founders’ view: Like architects analyzing the lines of force necessary to prevent the collapse of a building, the Founders focused on making the forces of factional passion neutralize each other, thus keeping the republic standing. (p.2) Effect on other institutions: The leverage exerted by Big SIS affects decisions far beyond the money that it commandeers directly. It distorts the incentive structures throughout society, and sends investors and workers skittering off in unproductive directions. (p.91) The ratchet: Big SIS [is a ratchet that allows] motion in one direction only – toward greater government activism -- and then locks. (p.112) Rational ignorance: As more rules are created, and as complexity and opacity grow, it becomes more difficult to be “well-informed”. The rational response is not to increase one’s efforts but to cut them back, becoming even less diligent in seeking knowledge. 9p.119) Rapacity: The interest gets the benefits while the costs are borne by society at large, so there is “no constraint on the social cost such an organization will find it expedient to impose on society in the course of obtaining a larger share of the social output for itself.” (p.120)

 

The source: