Friday 2 June 2017

The polar opposite of science


The very foundation of science, as was taught to me, is that to get anything close to an accurate picture you must have a control - a precedent against which you measure your results. You must also use the same means of measuring. What I see in most climate science is statistical models underpinned by assumptions and statistical probabilities. There are too many variables and too many unknowns to arrive as anything conclusive, and the margins we are speaking of are so small as to fall well within the margin or error.

There is another cause for scepticism. Central to the scientific method is having the intellectual honesty to admit when results do not match your expectations and follow where the evidence leads. This is a rare trait in humanity I find. Yet bizarrely there is a widely held belief that academics and scientists are somehow elevated above these very human flaws - that they are not subject to the same political and peer pressures, and that the competitive need for recognition does not distort their motivations.

In this, climate scientists have two assets on their side. Mystique and prestige. They have the high prestige of the UN and academic institutions on their side (which is nearly always a free licence to talk crap) and then there's the fact that what they do is inaccessible to us mere mortals, what with it being shrouded in complex mathematics. They can say with some justification that "you wouldn't understand". So they are asking us to take their word on trust. And I don't. Not when you look at how corrupted academia has become. LSE's wholly disingenuous Brexit coverage was enough to shatter any remaining confidence I had in the system.

But actually, it's recent experience that has taught me to further doubt climate change. Brexit has been an eye opener into human behaviour. The lengths groups of people who believe in a particular thing will go to in order to preserve a narrative is really quite astonishing.

Now it would be easy to say "ah but that's just ignorant Brexiteers" but I have observed this as a typically human trait. Leftists will invent just about any mental contortion to justify massive state authoritarianism and central government spending and the socialist delusion carries down the ages. The inner circle of climate alarmists behave in exactly the same way seeking to purge or silence anyone with a differing opinion. Plenty of journalists and theorists have found themselves out of a job for contradicting the narrative. One sure fire way to end your public career is to question the orthodoxy.

What you tend to find is that whenever people have decided upon a "truth" there is no low they will not stoop to in order to advance their agenda. This particular agenda, though, is the perfect tool for social control which is why so many politicians, particularly on the left, can't get enough of it. What better subtext do you need to place limits on human freedoms and undermine democracy? Meanwhile the corporates love it because it gives them ample opportunity to consolidate their global oligarchy.

I will always keep my mind open to the possibility that they may be right, but ultimately, humanity will adapt because it will have to, and I doubt the ill-directed political measures to combat it will make the slightest bit of difference. If anything can save us though it is human ingenuity and innovation - and you tend to find this most prevalent in free and democratic societies. Our salvation does not lie in surrendering our democracy to the globalists and technocrats. More to the point, it is humanity, not the planet which is supposedly threatened. If humanity's survival requires that we give up democracy then why survive at all?

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