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I got something about 16 months ago: mostly a persistent sore throat like strep (without the blotches). My wife was also feeling crappy, then she hollers down to me that she had covid, I took the test again and the test device showed lines. I infer that I had covid, but I don’t “know, with certainty” that I did. The main question, then, was “what should I do?”. I decided to take the benevolent path and not risk transmitting it to others for the requisite time, and just waited to get over it. The alternative would be to assume that I don’t have any bio-disease, so maybe I would go shopping or partying, or something. In other words, when you don’t know “for absolute positive certain” what the correct conclusion is, you have to carefully weigh risks and the quality of knowledge that you have. My direct knowledge was pretty minimal, everything that I know about covid is second to third hand (I don’t classify “common knowledge” as “knowledge”, and gen-pop health services announcements are also not “knowledge”, they are social-management strategies). Mask facts and distancing facts were prime examples of ideologically-engineered conclusion which had a mild relation to scientific fact. The 6’ figure was derived from standards applied to doctors, a number for reducing chances of getting whatever the patient was emitting (20’ closer to the Truly Safe distance, also completely impractical for ordinary human interaction). I decided to read a couple of serious (paywall) articles when the plague first happened, and like everything else in medicine (and science in general), I found multiple tiers of information. Popular media and politicians rely on the lowest level of pseudo-information, the executive summary. This is strictly a series of conclusions and recommendations, and no evidence – the existence of evidence is implied. You can either accept or reject the popular statements, but to do so on a reasoned basis, you have to work hard, ultimately you have to engage the peer-reviewed scientific literature. This goes for covid, lipids, pollution, global warming, species endangerment, homelessness, and every other hot-button political issue. I just don’t have the bandwidth: I’m gonna do what makes sense for me, knowing that death is always possible and fearful death-avoidance isn’t living. Others may prefer to prolong their process of dying, in the mistaken belief that living is “not being dead yet”. Anyhow, I assume your grandfather had something, which the professionals decided was “covid”, and it isn’t important whether covid is “one thing” or “a class of things”. In terms of declaring what they (the CDC mouthpieces) should have said or done, the one thing that I would fault them for is the huge missed opportunity to elevate the population’s understanding of science. They could have focused more on evidence and logic, rather than the resulting conclusions. The main reason why they did not was that suggestion any possibility of doubt would encourage irrational rejection of conclusions that were not absolutely, definitively and with certitude proven beyond imaginable doubt. Some aspects of this thread are ridiculous, mainly the implied conspiracy theory that nothing actually happened, it was like the staged landings on the moon. Sweeping aside the innuendos and nit-pickings at the lower margins of the science, there are only two important questions. First, was there a disease (or class of…) – can we rationally be Holocaust-deniers about the event? I say no, it happened, details of the disease are of lesser importance. The second question is what the government should have done, and that is pretty obvious at least here: nothing. The function of government is not disease control. But we have been saying this for decades, covid presents nothing new, and IMO losing serious ground in that struggle for hearts and minds. It is up to the person who cares to find the evidence that objectively (in)validates their conclusions. It would have been nice if the CDC had packaged the science better, but there shouldn’t be an official governmental voice of science in the first place, so applying a “should” to a “shouldn’t” requires you to embrace a contradiction.

David Simon of the American Spectator writes a piece in answer to recent assertions by Pete Buttigieg to the effect that proposed legislation to prevent global warming will save lives. Here's a small sample:Image by Caspar Rae, via Unsplash, license.As Copenhagen Consensus president and environmental statistician Bjorn Lomborg wrote in the Wall Street Journal on September 16, "Global warming now prevents more than 166,000 temperature-related fatalities annually." In addition, reams of scientific data fail to show a connection between global warming and natural disasters such as hurricanes, fires, and floods. Global temperatures have been rising since the latter part of the 19th century. Yet a 2021 EPA report shows that the annual number of hurricanes has not increased since 1878: "Since 1878, about six to seven hurricanes have formed in the North Atlantic every year. Roughly two per year make landfall in the United States. The total number of hurricanes (particularly after being adjusted for improvements in observation methods) and the number reaching the United States do not indicate a clear overall trend since 1878." [links in original, bold added]I recommend reading the whole thing. -- CAVLink to Original

NBC News reports that the party that spent the last presidential term swooning over Trump as supposedly some kind of natural Alinskyite has decided to borrow yet another page from the left's playbook: relabeling. Never mind that conservatives routinely make fun of the left for doing exactly this: They seem to think that they can go from making fun of, say, the "alphabet brigade" every time a new letter or symbol gets added to LGBT one moment -- to changing "pro-life" to some term-to-be-named-later for their anti-abortion crusade -- the next. And without anybody noticing:Image cropped from screenshot of the Center for Reproductive Rights, I believe this use to be protected under U.S. Copyright Law as Fair Use.Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the polling made it clear to him that more specificity is needed in talking about abortion. [(!) --ed] "Many voters think ['pro-life'] means you're for no exceptions in favor of abortion ever, ever, and 'pro-choice' now can mean any number of things. So the conversation was mostly oriented around how voters think of those labels, that they've shifted. So if you're going to talk about the issue, you need to be specific," Hawley said Thursday.Has Hawley seen a map of where abortions remain legal lately? (Blue, above.) The piece is mute on whether Hawley, who helped confirm anti-abortionist Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, offered any more specifics as to what his own position on reproductive freedom might be, or which specific legal stand on abortion his party should stake out and clarify. Let me help. Either a fetus is a human being, and all abortion should be outlawed as murder, or it is not, and abortion should be treated under the law like any other medical procedure. I support the second position, but I could at least muster some respect for an opponent who would openly state and offer a rational justification for even the former position. But that is not the kind of "specificity" that surfaced in the Republicans' closed-door meeting:Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., summarized Wednesday's meeting as being focused on "pro-baby policies." Asked whether senators were encouraged to use a term other than "pro-life," Young said his "pro-baby" descriptor "was just a term of my creation to demonstrate my concern for babies."How insulting and infantilizing is that? At least leftists occasionally appear to have semi-plausible reasons for changing their sleazy terms. This, to use a term even Hawley might understand, is as subtle as a fart in church. The reason voters react differently to the term pro-life these days is because, with Roe overturned, there is now a real danger -- as seen in the numerous Republican states that have banned abortion since -- that a "pro-life" "pro-baby" (i.e., anti-abortion) politician will be able to do the same if elected. In other words, previously Republican-leaning voters, who used to feel safe ignoring the term "pro-life" now know they can't. Voters know this, and they'll still know it if and when anti-abortion Republicans -- too cowardly to state their actual aims openly and too sneaky to give up on them -- relabel themselves in the same way leftists relabeled "corporate responsibility" to ESG, or "global warming" to "climate crisis" not too long ago. -- CAVLink to Original

... for fun and profit. In addition to making me smile with his skewering of an insufferable-sounding letter-writer, the Bad Advisor at You Literally Asked for It got me thinking, as is usually the case:If there is one guaranteed way forward through the climate crisis, it is to silo ourselves into individual categories of "good people" who use paper straws (like you! you are so good!) and "amoral reprobates" (such as your mother-in-law, who sucks!) who do not. The very future of humanity depends on demonizing and shaming other people until they behave as we want them to, privileging individual actions over collective resistance to and accountability for the worst global offenders, and rejecting community-building opportunities in favor of being the only best good person ever. [bold added]Regulars here will know that I strongly disagree with the conventional wisdom on both the severity of global warming and the propriety of most of the proposed solutions. Having said that, even if I did agree that the world was going to fry within the decade, I would have found the attitude of the letter-writer off-putting and counterproductive. I will add that there are plenty of equally alienating people from the "red" half of America, too, and the more they focus on "owning the libs" the more like "the libs" they look to me. There are lessons here for anyone who cares enough about a cause to try to advance it -- which is part of why I like the Bad Advisor. Lots of humor stops at ridicule, with a wink and a message something like, Well, at least we aren't that bad! But something about the answers provokes introspection, a sort of Good grief! I hope I'm not doing something like this! We all have lost perspective from time to time, and the humor here is a good reminder to check on the possibility that one isn't as grounded as one hopes. So, yes, there are lessons here. A couple are: 1. Honey is more attractive than vinegar. 2. Other people are complete human beings, and almost never the cardboard caricatures America's warring tribes would have us believe about anyone who doesn't march in lockstep with them. But the premise of the site invites further inquiry. These are alternate answers to those given by mainstream advice columnists. They're almost always bound by etiquette to be more diplomatic: What did they say? Climate catastrophism is widespread and many people see fighting for their conception of a solution as a moral battle. And they're winning it despite people like the letter-writer. How? As I guessed, the more conventional answer was also useful to look at. In that vein, some good advice comes indirectly from the original reply, from "Care and Feeding" of Slate:Image by Miquel Parera, via Unsplash, license.Part of raising environmentally conscious kids is helping them develop a healthy attitude toward conservation that doesn't vilify others and also doesn't make them feel like the entire burden of environmentalism is on them. One thing to look into is the theory of ecophobia, coined by David Sobel, who says, "Let us allow children to love the Earth before we ask them to save it." [link omitted, bold added]The end is misguided, but the method is damned good. You can't expect someone who sees something as an abstraction (e.g., "the environment" or capitalism) to care about it enough to want to fight to save it. Regarding the latter, just think about how modern technology and even a semi-free economy have made this one of the best times (if not the best) to be alive in human history. And yet most people take these things for granted, to the extent they are really even aware of them at all. (And this is why the work of the likes of Jason Crawford and other advocates of progress studies is so important.) There is much to think about here, and I'd say that's a handsome return on this week's quick scan of the advice pages. Two big lessons directly important to persuasion came out of this: Remember that you are speaking to other human beings, and make sure your cause is real, from the concretes on up. (And that's just as important for yourself as it is for your children.) My thanks go to the Bad Advisor. -- CAVLink to Original

The first Republican debate of the presidential primaries is tonight and Nick Reynolds of Newsweek weighs in with his list of things to look out for. These are:DeSantis vs. Ramaswamy,"Pile on Ron,"Splintering on Ukraine,Nuance on Abortion, andWho Takes on Trump?Of these, only the third and fourth interest me and the fourth is -- I think -- already settled. Except for Nikki Haley, all the candidates who will be present will, to my knowledge, sign whatever abortion ban a GOP-controlled Congress sends to their desk. Haley thinks abortion should be left to the states, so Haley, as the status quo candidate, is the "best" of the bunch in the short term on that issue. The fact that aiding Ukraine is an issue at all reflects the regrettable fact that Donald Trump is at least setting the agenda despite his absence. That said, at least he won't be there to prevent anything serious being said by turning the debate into a circus. It's too bad everyone there is so fixated on Trump and his cultish followers that they will walk on eggshells rather than take full advantage of that fact. Much has been made of Trump's decision to skip the debates, including a pro-and-con piece in The Hill, but what I dislike the most about that decision is that it was an open invitation to the media to make the debate all about him, which it has stupidly and predictably accepted. Image by Amy Reed, via Unsplash, license.There are major issues we could and should be discussing instead of paying all our attention to Donald Trump: Here are just three: What can we do about global warming hysteria? How will we deal with the looming Social Security funding crisis? What should we do about China's increasing hostility? What would I like to see in a debate? I'd like each candidate to pretend Trump doesn't exist and tell us why he or she would be a good President. We already know what Trump thinks. That's old news, and his most loyal voters are (a) unreachable, (b) won't be paying attention, and (c) will stay home (or write him in) if Trump isn't the nominee, anyway. (A remedy -- in the form of a vast pool of politically homeless independent voters -- exists and is there for the taking.) Impress those of us you can reach, and remember that independents make up much more of the electorate than Democrats or Republicans. An impressive-enough performance need only galvanize the significant number of Republicans who want to move on from Trump. Consolidate these voters and get the attention of enough people who support Trump, but more by default than slavish loyalty. Another Republican can defeat Trump, and he has just left an opening to start doing so. Will anyone there have the wits to get that ball rolling? There is no need to hope that Donald Trump drops dead or gets disqualified from office: Luck is there to be made. -- CAVLink to Original

Here‘s the lecture. Below is my outline. Please don’t hesitate to point out errors. Also, in brackets are my own contributions. Finally, Dr. Salmieri topically jumps around a few times so I placed them in the outline where they should be topically for cognitive organization and ease of understanding. Does anyone have the redacted Q&A? ———————————————————————————— How do we decide between competing claims? I. Testimonial knowledge A. Types 1. Witness: Perceived something we didn’t 2. Expert: Completed specialized intellectual work B. Challenges 1. Types a. Lying b. Mistaken i. Rudimentary mistakes involving the misapplication of knowledge are easy to catch by competing experts ii. But we don’t automatically know the right method and standards for each science and thereby, mistakes of method and standards are [relatively] difficult to catch c. Biased i. This is a major problem affecting both witnesses and experts—including whole fields of science (a) The more intellectual work is required, the more opportunities there are for bias (b) Teaching institutions are biased (especially a problem for experts) (i) The teachers could all be biased (ii) Admissions selection criteria could be biased (c) Cultural biases d. Politics (extent of freedom vs. force) i. Insofar that there is [the initiation of] force, the more difficult it is to identify expertise and act on the best options II. How can knowledge be communicated when knowledge is a [personal] process? A. Chronology of the work involved in the process of knowledge 1. Perception 2. Form concepts based on perceived significant similarities 3. Make judgments identifying existence by applying concepts to them 4. Keep track of epistemic statuses of judgments 5. Integrate concepts and judgments into consistent whole B. How to divide up process of knowledge 1. Mistaken approaches a. Slavish following of authority, i.e., authoritarianism i. Types (a) Insistent/militant (i) Example: “95% of scientists say X so how can you challenge it? Who are you to challenge it?” (b) Passive: Takes for granted that what was learned in school or people in general is true because everything thinks it ii. Proper approach instead of authoritarianism: Take what one learned [claims] as unprocessed content and assign it an epistemic status when relevant to do so (a) Familiarity [i.e., knowledge of claims] vs. expertise b. Faux independence i. Types (a) Universal Google/Wikipedia/newspaper/magazine/etc. Scholarship: Reads a few things on an issue and concludes that one is on intellectual par with experts (i) Proper approach instead of such “scholarship”: Present these things to an expert [or experts] to integrate (b) Illegitimate appeal to personal experience (i.e., perception or low level conceptualizations, e.g., “It’s hot in here”) and ordinary knowledge (i.e., knowledge that is available without specialized knowledge) (i) Examples: “Of course there’s global warming: It was hot yesterday and Hurricane Sandy was awful”; “There’s no global warming: It was freezing yesterday”; and many medical self-experimentation [by laymen] (ii) Proper approach instead of such illegitimate appeals: Ask an expert [or experts] on how to integrate one’s personal experience and ordinary knowledge because such integration requires expert knowledge 2. What we need from experts a. Evidence of expertise i. Evidence of the field’s legitimacy ii. Evidence of the expert’s proficiency in the field b. Specificity of claims and level of certainty c. Relevant context that one needs to assess the expert’s judgment (this includes the status of his claim in his field) d. Outlined [epistemological] reduction of claims e. Respect for one’s intelligence, context, and intellectual independence 3. After getting what we need from an expert [or experts] a. How does one know that the claim is true? What’s the epistemic status? i. “I judge the <proposition> with having <epistemic status>. Here’s why: <Proposition> is a matter that would have to be determined by a certain science. How do I know that? <Proposition> requires specialized knowledge and this science is the relevant specialty. <Expert> is a reliable expert in this science. How do I know that? He has the relevant qualifications. How do I know that? I have every reason to think that he’s honest and none that he’s dishonest. I have every reason to think that he’s an objective thinker as shown by his respect for my cognitive needs. <Expert> asserts <proposition> with <epistemic status> on the following grounds: <Outlined [epistemological] reduction>.” (a) Essentially: I have reason to think that he’s an expert and he says it for these reasons. 4. How does one assess that the person is an expert, that the field is valid [i.e., legitimate], and that the argument that requires expertise to make is a good argument if one doesn’t have the expertise? How does one judge the outlined [epistemological] reduction? a. Ignorant -> educated -> expert b. What enables one to make the assessment and judgment is being educated in the field i. Most generally, one is an objective thinker (e.g. knows the principles of logic) -> more specifically, one is knowledgeable on how much one knows about the methods and standards of a field, as well as knowing when one needs to supplement that knowledge ii. Example: ScienceBasedMedicine.com [sic; it’s actually dot org] 5. Consensus a. It’s arbitrary to favor one expert when the evidence of expertise is equivalent among other experts b. One must integrate, not ignore, the presence of conflicting expert opinion c. Awareness of consensus is essential [to being an objective consumer of expertise] d. Authoritarianists use consensus to justify their claims i. But historically, most consensus was wrong ii. One needs evidence that a field is not pseudoscience because nonobjectivity in cutting edge science is the norm per history, mistakes, and biases. One needs evidence of the exception. iii. There are degrees between pseudoscience and legitimate science (a) Example: Evolution (race theory and eugenics were based on evolution and advocated by good scientists) III. Alternative science: School of thought that is rejected/marginalized by the consensus of experts (i.e., consensus of people in the culture that deem who are experts) in the relevant field A. Examples: Skeptical climate science, creation science, revisionist history, alternative medicine/nutrition, Austrian economics, Montessori education, the Theory of Elementary Wave, Bohmian mechanics [and Objectivism] B. Tends to directly appeal to the public rather than go through the usual channels C. Valuable to have in the culture as a check. A healthy culture will have alternative sciences. There is something wrong if a culture doesn’t have alternative sciences. D. Challenges 1. For experts in the alternative science, it’s more difficult to maintain objectivity 2. It’s easy to develop a persecution complex, making one defensive to criticism 3. Social isolation from reviews from critics with different views because alternative science experts cluster together due to no one else wanting to talk about the alternative science [and this applies to Objectivism too] 4. It’s more difficult for non-experts to acquire positive knowledge from alternative science 5. Objectivism is at high risk of crackpottery [and I can attest to this, especially on Facebook]

Over the weekend I learned that Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, died in federal prison. Good riddance. Unfortunately, as the obituary makes apparent, the evil, nihilistic ideas that animated him are alive and well:[P]olitical change and the passage of time caused some to see Mr. Kaczynski in a new light. His manifesto accorded centrality to a healthy environment without mentioning global warming; it warned about the dangers of people becoming "dependent" on technology while making scant reference to the internet. To young people afflicted by social media anomie and fearful of climate doom, Mr. Kaczynski seemed to wield a predictive power that outstripped the evidence available to him. In 2017 and 2020, Netflix released documentaries about him. He maintained postal correspondence with thousands of people -- journalists, students and die-hard supporters. In 2018, Wired magazine announced "the Unabomber's odd and furious online revival," and New York magazine called him "an unlikely prophet to a new generation of acolytes."These "acolytes," exemplified by the likes of Greta Thunberg, are working towards the same end, whether they admit it or not, of destroying Western civilization -- which depends on technology and reliable sources of energy, and will die without them. Worse, there are armies of conventional people who, reading this, might think something like, He was evil, but he had a point. That is because the article -- like I imagine many others will -- does not connect or deliberately evades the causal connection between Theodore Kaczynski's ideas and his actions. Toward that end, it is worth remembering the words of the late John Lewis regarding Kaczynski and his brothers-in-spirit:Image by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.Morally there is no difference between an environmentalist who bans DDT at the price of millions of malaria deaths, the Unabomber who selects his victims personally, the anarchist who smashes store windows and dreams of smashing structural steel, and a terrorist who rides a passenger plane into the World Trade Center. Each glories in destruction for its own sake, and each advocates death as the epitome of that destruction. It is no accident that they are all defined in terms of "anti-something." Nothing is the aim, and the goal, of all of them. They are brothers-in-arms. Now you see the scope of the battle that America faces.It is no comfort that an evil man has finally expired when there are so many people ready to continue his work -- thanks to the widespread acceptance of the very conventional, incorrect, and evil attitudes about Western civilization Kaczynski held. The only comfort is that there is a way to fight back -- by learning and advocating better ideas. In a better age, we would not read an obituary speak approvingly of a barbaric murderer inspiring acolytes. Let us work for that better age now. -- CAVLink to Original

A couple of days ago, I ran across a debunking that still has me scratching my head a little, so I am going to think out loud about it now. Image from MSN. I believe my use of this image for commentary to be protected under US copyright law as fair use.It concerns the map shown here, which was obviously created by superimposing a map of the Mediterranean and Black Seas over one of North America. It shows that the Med would fit comfortably within the borders of the Lower 48 States. Neato! That's vaguely interesting, and perhaps worth a tweet, but I wouldn't call that newsworthy. Perhaps a step up from there in terms of interest, and perhaps genuinely newsworthy, there were apparently thousands of people who tried to pass this off as -- or perhaps even believed it to be -- a projection of the consequences of sea level rise due to global warming climate change the "climate crisis." I am no journalist, but if there's a story here, it might concern the appalling lack of basic geographical knowledge imparted by our mostly state-run educational system. Or, given that most semi-educated adults have seen those two maps all over the place numerous times, there might be a story -- à la Leonard Peikoff's The DIM Hypothesis. That one would concern what would be an even more staggering apparent inability of large swathes of the American population to retain or make even the most basic connections between things that ought to be common knowledge. So what do the legacy media do? They have a crack team of learned and indefatigable "fact-checkers" perform and publish a piece that is part (a) rectal exam of the ridiculous claim about sea level rise and (b) rehash of context-free claims regarding sea level rise due to global warming that will occur unless we quit using fossil fuels. It is revealing that they seem to think that a significant portion of the U.S. adult population would not take one look at this map and be struck by the startling coincidence that, if we flooded the U.S. enough, we'd get the boot of Italy right smack in the center of our map. Or, perhaps if they did see the coincidence, they'd stop there and not wonder if someone were pulling their leg. If they are writing for such people, how do they expect to get through to them? And if not, for whom do they write? With today's propagandists who pose as journalists, just about the only thing I might find more remarkable than someone missing the boot of Italy would be someone who hasn't heard -- in the news, on the order of ten million times -- something to the effect that the world is ending in a decade and the only way to stop it from happening is to quit using fossil fuels post-haste. I think this article is aimed squarely at those who accept such claims and at those who aren't sure, but are receptive to them, for two different reasons. For the first group, this is red meat. Look at those denialist rubes! They're clueless about geography -- just like they're clueless about everything else! Hooray for me! By contrast, members of the global warming catastrophist camp can bask in their own smug status as thoughtful and well-informed while they listen to the laundry list of catastrophes that they don't have to be told about like it was the first time they ever heard of it. Boy! MSN really took them to the woodshed! This is a sort of mini-pep talk for them. Somewhat similarly, the second group is reminded that they'll be smeared as near-illiterates if they don't buy the prescription for the crisis so excruciatingly spelled out -- column space and today's lax standards of argument permitting. This is yet another small bullying attempt on them. Nobody likes being regarded as an idiot, and on this one, lots of people will just go along because it feels easier. The rest of us -- who are well-informed and know it, who are decently-educated and know it, who have formed dissenting opinions from the anti-energy orthodoxy and know why we have -- are mostly left to roll our eyes at what has become a commonplace in social media and journalism: Yet another session of bizarre nitpicking seemingly directed at people who can't walk and chew gum at the same time, mixed in with a sermon about a left-wing article of faith. It would take at least a book or two to push back against climate catastrophism and refute the prescription for disaster that always comes with it, so I'll content myself by quoting the following "Snappy Answer" to the prospect of rising sea levels:Q: Even if we've been able to adapt to CO2 rises so far, won't further change be overwhelming? A: The pessimistic UN is talking about a few degrees of warming and a few feet of sea level rises over a century. We can adapt to that with today's tech, let alone future tech. There is no mention of this in the "fact checking" piece, nor of the overwhelming benefits of continued and increasing fossil fuel use (of which emissions are a side-effect by comparison), nor of the benefits of a warmer climate, even if to question them. See the Talking Points or the books (linked above) for that and more, including an examination of how faulty the thinking on climate is on the part of most mainstream intellectuals and influencers. Today in Sri Lanka -- collapsing under its 98% ESG rating -- and Russian's hostage, Germany, we are seeing the beginnings of what life would be like if we "left it in the ground" to the degree these "fact checkers" would have it. You can be 100% correct about anything, but that knowledge can be worse than useless if it is misapplied, such as to advocate a destructive policy like ending fossil fuel use absent a credible replacement. -- CAVLink to Original

Steven Milloy of Junk Science fame debunks the hysteria surrounding the smoke from Canadian wildfires. Among other things, he notes that "At least eighteen of these dark or 'yellow days' occurred in the US and Canada from 1706 to 1910." On top of all this, Milloy raises a fair question:Image by Marcus Kauffman, via Unsplash, license. Per EPA's PM2.5 [soot --ed] modeling, New York City's death rate should have just about doubled on June 7-8. But not a death occurred that was or could be attributed to the atrocious air. Even EPA's back-up expectation of an epidemic of asthma failed. While emergency room visits for asthma did uptick on June 7, the uptick was not all that much greater than a similar uptick six weeks before the wind shift to which no one paid any attention. Though New York City has almost 8.8 million people, 10 percent for whom are reportedly asthmatic, only about 200 more visits than average were made to hospital ERs on June 7-8. Hardly apocalyptic. Given that asthma can be an anxiety-driven condition and that the media was bent on creating as much anxiety as possible, one might fairly wonder if many-to-all of those "extra" visits were really caused by media scare-mongering... [link omitted, bold added]Way back in my Navy days, our command was involved in a dangerous incident. News of this incident was leaked before relatives were informed that we were okay -- sending one of the officers' wives to the hospital with an asthma attack. Whatever the case, this episode is global warming hysteria in miniature: Irresponsible and unaccountable members of the press carelessly cause panic with garbage "analysis" and predictions, which can cause real harm, including bad energy policy -- while blaming energy producers for something they did not cause. Oddly enough, we are lucky to hear anything at all about how wrong (factually or morally) any of this is. -- CAVLink to Original

After reading a recent article in CapMag on the global warming myth I decided to find out some more by reading older articles. That's how I came across the petition project and the scientific research titled "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide". I also watched the video lecture by Dr Arthur Robinson and found it quite amazing. I've also come across the sepp.org website and under "the week that was dec 13th" 4. Letter on Kyoto to Russian president Vladimir Putin, there is a link about collecting signatures which is http://www.envirotruth.org/ president_putin/. I searched the site for some information regarding climate change and came to "Myths and Envirotruth Regarding Climate Change". Myth #1a: 'Computer Models Show Catastrophic Warming in the Future.' shows a graph which can also be found in the scientific research done at the Oregon Institute, but exact slopes differ somewhat. At envirotruth.org From 1979 to 2001 the graphc details the measured temperature trend from satellites and balloons, which begins in 1979 at just over 0.0 and ends in 2001 at a little under 0.2. At Oregon Institute 1979 also begins at 0.0 but ends in 1998 at just below zero. Does anyone know why the graphs differ, have I missed something?

Over the years, I've become aware that there are a number of people on this forum who are skeptical/critical of various "global warming" theories. (Significantly, I think I've noticed softwareNerd prominent among this group, who is both thoughtful and knowledgeable.) I don't tend to discuss global warming much, because while I've done some to educate myself (e.g. reading Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist), I really don't have the kind of scientific background -- or the time, or the energy -- to fully investigate the ongoing debate in all of its myriad detail. Recently, I was made aware of this comic. I find it quite striking. Though rhetorically powerful, it doesn't amount to an argument, per se, and it doesn't directly deal with any number of the arguments which normally pervade global warming discussion (like, how much observed warming is human-caused; what policies, if any, should be implemented to deal with it; etc.). So I wonder: is the information presented here genuine? Or do the current controversies over global warming extend to the data this comic represents?

Over at RealClear Markets is a review of a book I first heard about on Alex Epstein's excellent Power Hour podcast, Steve Koonan's Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters. The review is worth a full read (and the podcast a full listen), as the following six points Koonan makes should indicate. In each case, I am quoting directly from the review:Nor do we need one... (Image by Markus Spiske, via Unsplash, license.)[T]he models relied upon by the Left to predict future global warming are so poor that they cannot even reproduce the temperature changes in the 20th century.[T]he United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's own analysis indicates that any negative economic impact that global warming eventually may have will be so modest that it warrants no action.[T]he National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the UN IPPC do not claim that a link has been established between global warming and natural disasters.[A]s the earth's temperature has risen, natural disasters have become far less deadly.ome of the world's best scientists believe that global warming will be beneficial rather than harmful.[G]lobal warming saves lives.I commend the reader to the review or, better yet, the book for further elaboration on each point. Koonan worked as a physicist for the Obama Administration and, according to Amazon, "served as Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy ... from 2009 to 2011, where his portfolio included the climate research program and energy technology strategy." This is hardly a "science denier," and it is heartening that someone with his training, experience, and wide respect, has spoken up against climate catastrophism. -- CAVLink to Original

While art does impact those who experience it, Leonard Peikoff explained how a picture (or a picture show) is not an argument. (ARI Campus: Ford Hall Forum presentation, and some further commentary by James Valliant.) Global Warming has been discussed in many threads on this forum here. Please feel free to explore some of these before launching another thread. As of January 23, 2022, there are: (53 pages of "Global Warming" mentions.) (2 pages of " Global Warming" in title only.)

By David from Truth, Justice, and the American Way,cross-posted by MetaBlog The environmentalist movement believes that unless immediate and drastic measures are taken to combat global warming, “disease, desolation and famine” are “inevitable” on a scale that might spell the end of life on earth, making earth “as hot as Venus.“ Surely, such an apocalyptic threat demands immediate action. Given the resistance to curtailing industrial production (not to mention the economic destruction and mass death that such a curtailment would entail), environmentalists should eagerly supports experiments that attempt to compensate rather than eliminate the impact of industry on the environment. In fact, a number of relatively simple, low-cost measures have been proposed by scientists and entrepreneurs, one of which is documented in the June 2008 issue of Popular Science (PDF). As early as 1988, oceanographers proposed seeding the oceans with iron, which would cause an algae bloom that could rapidly compensate for the entire effect of industrial civilization for far less money that it would cost to eliminate CO2 emissions. Seeding experiments by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have demonstrated that the technique works, although further experimentation is required. A number of entrepreneurs, such as Russ George of Planktos Corp (TED video) stepped forward to carry out the required work. How would you expect environmental groups to react to such an opportunity? If you guessed outright or even cautious optimism, you would be dead wrong. “I don’t think any quick geo-engineering fixes are going to work,” said one Greenpeace scientist. “There are only two ways that we’re going to solve climate change: reduce the amount of energy that we use and dramatically change the methods we use to generate it.” According to Scientific American, environmental groups were essentially united in the belief that “if society relies on quick techno-fixes to ameliorate global warming … people will stop putting in the hard work necessary to cut carbon emissions.” Think about what that statement means. “Hard work” means government coercion to destroy the industrial production that feeds (sometimes barely) a rapidly growing human population. “Quick engineering fix” means a fast, cheap, technological solution that allows us to have our cake (the wealthy, healthy life that industry makes possible) and eat it too (literally, algae eating CO2). Notice that their objection is not that iron seeding won’t work, but that it eliminates the incentive to destroy industrial civilization. As the article make clear, environmentalists are violently opposed to even exploring any measure that attempts to neutralize the “threat” of global warming rather than deal with the cause. Lies and intimidation are integral to the movement: the terrorist group Sea Shepherd, which has sunk nine ships since 1979, threatened any future seeding experiments, their PR machine used fear of nanotechnology to claim that iron ore (plain rust) is “engineered nanoparticles,” while their political branch got the Spanish government to ban seeding on the grounds that it constitutes “toxic waste” dumping. As should be clear by now, environmentalism is not actually opposed to global warming - ending the “threat” posed by global warming is the last thing on their agenda. Their real goal is to use the global warming scare to bully the developed world into reverting into the pre-industrial, pre-civilized age. They oppose viable alternative energy sources for the same reason that they oppose viable fixes to the crises they invent – they oppose nuclear energy, hydro power, and they are organizing to oppose wind power just as it has become viable. If solar panels ever become viable, they will certainly invent reasons to oppose them too. (Note that I am not actually advocating iron ore seeding. I am not convinced that the climate is warming as rapidly as claimed, or that CO2 is the cause, and even it is, it is likely that higher CO2 levels and a warmer climate offer tremendous benefits to both plant and animal life. If anything, we should be encouraging measures that make our world greener and more comfortable.) ShareThis http://ObjectivismOnline.com/archives/003749.html

Nearly a year ago, I saw the hype machine revving up against gas stoves, per the following Tweet:I believe this screenshot from Twitter is protected as Fair Use under U.S. copyright law.Scary Mommy: Professor Rob Jackson conducted a study that found that gas stoves constantly leak a little methane, even when turned off, and pollute household air with nitrogen oxides, and other dangerous gases, which can damage lungs, especially kids' lungs. My Reply: Somehow, millions of others and I have survived entire childhoods in houses with gas stoves. But let's ignore that, drop everything, and rip them out because a bunch of ninnies are doing it. The electric oven quote is par for the course for this idiotic kind of mentality.See the screen-captured Tweet for the misquote (or slip of the tongue) regarding the fear-based throwing out of a gas oven, on the basis of one scientific study, taken out of context. Naturally (Hah!), since the right doesn't know how to do anything but ape the left, the developing story of how evil gas stoves supposedly are has turned into the latest "culture war." To hear the right, the feds are coming for your stove, maybe even before your guns, and there is no better way on Earth to cook than a gas stove. The usual next move these days is for some lefty to assume a condescending tone and debunk all the myths emanating from the right, like farts from cattle. Any legitimate worries can thus be ignored as part of a neat, hysterical package. And so we have Rebecca Leber of Vox stepping in -- for the greater "good," of course -- to snuff out all those lies and misinformation for us. And those myths are...Biden -- or Federal Regulators -- Want to Take Your Gas Stove AwayGas Stove Hazards Are "Newfound"No Type of Cooking Can Compare to the Gas StoveMost of America Uses Gas StovesAs Long as You Use Ventilation, the Risks Don't MatterWhile I don't personally believe any of the above "myths" or know anyone who has spread them, I've heard similar-enough from the right. And they do make a good caricature of the kind of scattershot arguments unprincipled people make when they share too many premises in common with someone basically coming to cash in on said premises. "Safety" for "the children" (with an undercurrent of a suspicion of capitalism) is a favorite:The study that caught national attention estimated that almost 13 percent of childhood asthma cases in the US are linked to gas stove use, similar to the level caused by secondhand smoke. That study is based on a review of the evidence from 2013, which examined 41 studies from multiple countries, dating as far back as 1977, to conclude that children living in households with gas stoves had a 42 percent higher risk of currently being diagnosed with asthma and a 24 percent higher risk of being diagnosed with asthma at some point in their life. ... Ventilating the kitchen is the only solution we have to lessening exposure to pollutants when the stove or oven is on. But in practice, some hoods don't vent the air outdoors but rather recirculate it inside, or people may be in a small space where pollution builds more quickly. Some issues are behavioral -- like people not even using the hood they have, by neglecting to turn it on. Some of the problem is that not all hoods are capable of filtering out NO2 levels. As journalist Michael Thomas explained, range hoods don't always perform well in the real world. Studies, like at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) found that code-compliant hoods in California still captured just about half of NO2 pollution. [links omitted, bold added]My takeaway from the above information? If asthma is a problem in your family, consider an electric stove, or at least make sure you have an over-the-range hood that vents to the outdoors. And use the range hood. Practically everyone else assumes that the government, as the nation's wet nurse, should be in charge of everyone's safety, including that of the incompetent and the negligent -- even if that means forcing those of us perfectly capable of using something safely for ourselves and those we care about to do without something that has been used in that manner for at least a century. Gas stoves, by the way, are much cleaner and safer than open fires and wood stoves, even with the reported problem, but our self-appointed betters either don't know that or don't care -- just like they don't know the difference between a vent (to outdoors) and a (recirculating) fan. So the best I expect conservatives to muster is a quibble about how we regulate gas stoves, rather than to push back on the whole idea of improper, preventative law, of which the proposed regulations are an example, and for which private efforts would be more effective. Mention children and rely on common, but long-discredited stereotypes of capitalism being predatory, and today's right has nothing. But demonizing a proven technology and tightening the regulatory noose are never the end game of the left, and the blind rebellion of the right -- which is correct not to put banning gas stoves or worse past the left -- bears witness to that. The tell here is that "climate change," that universal, all-causing boogieman of the left, gets mentioned here and there. Gas stoves aren't just unsafe: They leak greenhouse gases. This is worse to the left, who would rather save "the planet" from humans than improve it for humans. I have followed this story only to a limited extent after right wing hysteria about diesel exhaust fluid and then diesel shortages taught me not to panic with them. That said, the one thing that lent this story any credibility to me was that the stoves -- which are already banned in new residential construction in some locales in California -- are on the Global Warming %#!+ List. But then I remembered: Who needs to ban gas stoves when the entire left is working overtime to ban the use of fossil fuels? Look at all the places banning the sale of gasoline cars in the near future: Non-leftists are hardly idiots to think gas stoves (or anything else that burns fossil fuel) could be next. So, at best, leftists are operating on a threat premise by shouting Gas stoves are unsafe! -- because of a weird laser-focus on an easily-avoided hazard -- when they are actually quite safe, all things considered. We also have an example of the left projecting its own thought process onto dissenters. They seem to think The rabble think they're going to lose their stoves tomorrow, so let's pacify them by assurances about child safety so they'll shut up and let us protect them from themselves. For that immediate end, the Vox piece passes the test, and makes the left sound wise -- to anyone who can't hold a context and somehow forgets the "climate crisis" it's been hammering into our skulls for decades -- and couldn't keep quiet about for even one article. But for those of us who can hold a context, this is obvious: If they were to ban fossil fuels altogether, they wouldn't "need" to ban gas stoves. Reading this Vox piece is like having a beer in the presence of a Baptist preacher: He might not grab that particular drink from your hands right now, and he wouldn't be lying if he said he wouldn't. But that doesn't mean he wouldn't make it imposssible for you to have a beer at all in the future, if he could find a way to bring back Prohibition. -- CAVLink to Original

Michael Shellenberger has written a must-read essay (just north of 10,000 words) in which he starts by calling global warming/climate change/the climate crisis/whatever the left feels like calling it today our most "exaggerated" problem and asks along the way:Why kill ourselves trying to eliminate a problem that just isn't that severe?Most interestingly, after making the case that climate change is not a major problem -- but that current ideas for combating it would be -- he compares climate catastrophism to a religion:Image by Boudewijn Huysmans, via Unsplash, license.... According to their holy scripture, the industrial revolution, powered by fossil fuels, was our fall -- and the consequence is, according to the United Nations, "extinction." The only alternative is puritan: don't eat meat and don't fly. There are even indulgences, for the wealthy who feel guilty, in the form of carbon offsets sold through the airlines. This is the heart of the matter: climate alarmism is powerful because it has emerged as the alternative religion for supposedly secular people, providing many of the same psychological benefits as traditional faith. It offers a purpose -- to save the world from climate change -- and a story that casts the alarmists as heroes. And it provides a way for them to find meaning in their lives -- while retaining the illusion that they are people of science and reason, not superstition and fantasy. Naturally, as a religion, climate change has a fraudulent aspect. Some offsets pay rich landowners not to cut down trees they could not profitably cut down anyway. Exposed, the climate religion seeks to censor. The American government's Forest Service has repeatedly silenced one of California's most published and respected scientists, Malcolm North, who stressed to me and other reporters that the cause of high-intensity forest fires is not climate change, but rather wood fuel. The Center for American Progress, which raises tens of millions from natural gas, renewable energy, and financial interests, has been pressuring Facebook to censor critics of renewable energy. [bold added]This remarkable claim calls for remarkable proof -- which Shellenberger's previous material supplies in the best way possible short of a read of his excellent Apocalypse Never. What I like about the essay is that it presents solid evidence that not only is the world warming more slowly than you would think, but that the warmists would, for poor reasons, deny us the means to continue preserving our life from natural disasters or to adapt to any changes in the climate -- including, for example, the use of nuclear and hydroelectric power. In doing so, it presents a question alarmists need to be asked (and the rest of us need to be aware of): Do you value human flourishing or untouched nature more? Man must change nature to survive -- something Shellenberger embraces, while the doomsday cult of global warming rejects it. I highly recommend reading this essay and passing it along to any thoughtful, persuadable people you know. -- CAVLink to Original

Schematic of apparatus of the "cold fusion" experiments that raised Erlich's anti-human hackles over 30 years ago. But don't listen to me: I'm already dead, according to him. (Image by Pbroks13, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)With the announcement that scientists have achieved fusion ignition, I was tempted to ask Twitter something like the following rhetorical question: Which will happen sooner: Commercialization or hysterical green opposition? Figuring the question might already be rhetorical, I took a quick look around and quickly discovered that, yes, while fusion is still ages away from commercialization, none other than Paul Erlich moaned about it over thirty years ago when there were reports (that turned out to be untrue) to the effect that a lab had succeeded in "cold fusion" experiments. None other than Paul Erlich -- whose error rate in predicting catastrophe is exceeded only by his misanthropy -- rushed in to rain on any parade that might happen on his watch. Here he is in the Los Angeles Times, as quoted at Power Line: [E]ven if desktop fusion really works–a matter still very much up in the air–it is unclear that the power produced will be as cheap or clean as many have suggested it might be. And even if it were, given society’s dismal record in managing technology, the prospect of cheap, inexhaustible power from fusion is “like giving a machine gun to an idiot child,” Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich says. [bold added]Wow! This is Erlich, admitting in his own words, to a charge I have often pointed to, by Keith Lockitch of ARI:It is only on the premise that the environmentalist movement is truly driven by a concern for human well-being that its vehement attacks on carbon-based fuels (without which human life as we know it in the developed world would be impossible), its cavalier lack of any alternative plan, and its active opposition to proposed alternatives (whether real ones like nuclear or hydro, or fantasized ones like solar), make no sense. [bold added]The icing on the cake to this comes in the form of a prediction, again by Erlich, and again quoted at Power Line:Fusion proponents, [Paul Ehrlich] notes, also estimate that commercial applications of their work are at least 20 years off. And it will be 30 years beyond then before fusion power has significant impact. In this sense, says Ehrlich, fusion is irrelevant because, he asserts, the world will have long since succumbed to over-population, famine, global warming and acid rain. [bold added]These two quotes should have already ended Erlich's career as a scientist that journalists can turn to for an intelligent take on energy or environmental issues. We may not get practical fusion for a long time, or ever, but this announcement can have other benefits, namely shedding more light on the man-hating nature of environmentalism. -- CAVLink to Original

If being an (actual) racist is beyond the pale, and it is, then so is making a false accusation of racism. (Image by Alex Epstein, via Twitter. This author regards his use of the above image as fair use under U.S. copyright law.)... to Fossil Fuel Eliminators (That unjustly defaming Alex Epstein as a 'racist' won't make go away.) (Source) In keeping with my support for Alex Epstein (detailed in the link above) and with my tradition of stopping to appreciate good things near the end of the week, I present four a few -- of seventeen facts about energy Epstein shares on Twitter and that he discusses in more detail in his forthcoming book, Fossil Future. *** 1. Nuclear energy is the safest [1] and cleanest [2] form of energy ever created, and yet:Nuclear energy has become many times more expensive even though the raw material prices haven't increased and the knowledge of how to produce nuclear energy efficiently has improved.This, as I know from my own reading and from Epstein, this is in large part because environmentalist regulations and tort abuse artificially delay and increase the cost of building infrastructure, especially nuclear power plants. The only acknowledgment of any of these facts by those environmentalists Epstein calls fossil fuel eliminators is to complain that nuclear power is "too expensive" to solve the "climate crisis" ... along the way to full-throated support for multi-trillion dollar measures like the "Green New Deal" or "Build Back Better." Is their actual concern for "the environment" about as well-considered and sincere as that they profess for "cost?" 2. Alex Epstein informs us that, "Despite claims that the world is 'too hot,' cold-related deaths far exceed heat-related deaths." If I recall correctly, another energy humanist, Bjorn Lomborg, has been attacked in the past for daring to speak such climate heresy. 3. One of my favorites on the list is the following: Many leading "studies" claiming to prove climate catastrophe totally ignore human beings' incredible ability to adapt to and master negative climate changes.Whatever lowland flooding might occur due to global warming will be slow enough for humans to react, be it by moving or building dikes, for example. To listen to the fossil fuel eliminators, though, you'd think we're all cattle who will just slosh around in rising, standing water until it reaches our nostrils and we die. 4. The following I learned from The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, but it is underappreciated and bears repeating:The "greenhouse effect" is a diminishing effect: new CO2 emissions have less of a warming impact than earlier CO2 emissions.To someone concerned about rising temperatures, this should offer some comfort -- not so much for someone wanting to cause a panicked stampede among those who have political power and thus the responsibility to deliberate before using it. -- CAV Updates Today: Corrected some intro text.Link to Original

I know I am not the only pro-freedom voter who -- concerned that Biden might pack the Supreme Court -- voted for Trump. Nor am I the only such voter to have gone for a long time thinking that conservative justices generally understood individual rights and the Constitution better than leftist ones -- until the twisted reasoning of Dobbs showed me that was far from the case. But, for anyone who might be inclined to think something along the lines of Yeah, but they see the fetus as having rights or hope that conservatives might be weirdly compartmentalized about abortion, take a gander at how upset conservatives are getting about the prospect of legalized polygamy, which a court case in New York has raised. Take the following excerpt from a prominent conservative blog:Image by State Library of Queensland, Australia, via Wikimedia Commons, no known copyright restrictions.If you take biology out of the mix, "two" is an arbitrary and irrational number. And in the short time that has gone by since Obergefell [sic] [which legalized gay marriage --ed], the concept of biology itself has come under widespread attack. If things continue on their present course -- and they will, absent a vastly invigorated conservative movement -- the "right" to polygamy will soon be established. Which is to say that the rest of us will have polygamy jammed down our throats.God forbid two or more adults enter a contractual agreement by mutual consent! Yes, because leftists feel the need to rub the noses of most Americans in anything they might disapprove of or just not be all that wild about, we can expect a 24-7 surround-sound media blitz extolling all manner of group marriages as an unchallengeable virtue, especially directed towards children. I don't look forward to this, either, but that is a separate issue from whether contractual arrangements among consenting adults deserve legal protection. On that score, polygamy should certainly be legal for the same reason that men and women can get married: They are adults and want to enter a long-term contract with each other. The likes of John Hinderaker might be surprised to learn that -- yes -- even men and women often get married because they are in love. Sit down, Hindy, but many of these same people marry without any intention of producing offspring. Grab the smelling salts! As with "heartbeat" arguments against legalized abortion, this "biological" argument is a pathetic attempt -- akin to nature-worshipping totalitarians invoking The Science as reason enough to criminalize fossil fuels -- to make it look like theirs is a reasonable position. But the fact that a man and a woman are necessary to reproduce implies that the government should criminalize all marriage contracts except those sanctioned by Christianity no more than the existence of global warming means we should all be forced to quit using the fossil fuels we need, much less absent a competitive, viable replacement. I personally think group marriage is a Bad Idea for many reasons I don't care to discuss, but I think it should be legal, and this is America: Your living arrangements and sex lives neither pick my pocket nor break my leg. Have at them, but don't expect me to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about them. I, too, have a life of my own. -- CAVLink to Original

Political Commentator Ruy Teixeira, alarmed at Democrat uncompetitiveness among working-class voters, has been outlining a plan for "reform and renewal" for them. It makes for interesting reading, and could just as easily be a winning blueprint for Republicans, whose theocratic tendencies are just as unwelcome to what I think of as normal Americans (many of whom also fit within the demographic Teixeira focuses on) as the green/anti-energy tendencies of the Democrats. Two broad points really stand out. The first of these -- which will be obvious to anyone who isn't either invested in pushing the green agenda or frightened witless by the ceaseless, surround-sound propaganda of the former -- is that most voters do not place global warming above their own ability to make ends meet as a public policy priority:They could support abundance -- or keep on scolding us and making our lives harder... (Image by Jina Lee, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)Maybe the median voter isn't terribly interested in a Green New Deal, which is predicated on getting rid of fossil fuels entirely and fast and replacing them with renewables. The median voter's view is more an "all of the above" approach as captured by a recent Pew question. Pew asked the public which energy supply approach it preferred "Phase out the use of oil, coal and natural gas completely, relying instead on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power only" or "Use a mix of energy sources including oil, coal and natural gas along with renewable energy sources". The all of the above approach was favored by an overwhelming 67 percent to 31 percent margin. [links omitted, bold added]It gets even better in the next paragraph, where Teixeira manages to sound a little bit like fossil fuel proponent Alex Epstein:Maybe instead of a Green New Deal, they'd rather have abundance. It has been a huge mistake for the left to lose sight of the need for faster growth. Growth, particularly productivity growth, is what drives rising living standards over time and Democrats presumably stand for the fastest possible rise in living standards. Faster growth also makes easier the achievement of Democrats' other goals. Hard economic times typically generate pessimism about the future and fear of change, not broad support for more democracy and social justice. In contrast, when times are good, when the economy is expanding and living standards are steadily rising for most of the population, people see better opportunities for themselves and are more inclined toward social generosity, tolerance, and collective advance. [links omitted, bold added]Now, this is a Democrat, and it's a safe bet that by agenda of abundance he means ... to be achieved by central planning, but if there is one thing Democrats are often good at (and Epstein knows a thing or two about), it's framing -- or setting the terms of -- a debate. Central planning won't achieve abundance because central planning can't achieve abundance, but what a brilliant name for an agenda appealing to a healthy desire for prosperity and (actual) progress! I wish the Republicans would adopt that name -- and the pro-freedom, capitalist agenda that goes with it. And this leads me straight to my second point, which is that Teixeira knows or senses that this is a direction many would like to go, if only it were an option. Here, he quotes a British science journalist:Once upon a time, the Left ... promised more innovation, faster progress, greater abundance. One of the reasons ... that the historically fringe ideology of libertarianism is today so surprisingly popular in Silicon Valley and with tech-savvy young people more broadly ... is that libertarianism is the only extant ideology that so substantially promises a significantly materially better future. [bold added]The left has never been able to deliver on such a promise, but at least it once had enough contact with reality to know that most people want prosperity. Teixeira is correct in that he sees this as a way to appeal to voters. I agree, although I am also afraid that most voters do not have a strong-enough grasp of economics to appreciate that government cannot create or guarantee prosperity. (It can only and protect freedom and get out of the way of innovation and trade -- i.e., set the necessary conditions for the people to create their own prosperity.) And our culture is miles away from the philosophical revolution necessary to see that the pursuit of one's own happiness is morally superior to taking orders from a god or "society", or self-sacrifice to a "cause greater than oneself." So there are dangers here -- of the left once again coopting the ideal of progress (which Teixeira calls abundance), or of the right continuing to treat it as a morally neutral consideration at best. But it would give those of us who understand prosperity and fully appreciate its value much-needed time to help make that case while the politicians at least take their feet off the accelerator towards Democrat blackouts on the one hand and a Republican Dark Age on the other. -- CAVLink to Original

A short post at Big Think speculates on why we haven't found any evidence of other intelligent life in the universe, ending as follows:Image by Jacek, via Unsplash, license.These possibilities assume that the Great Filter is behind us -- that humanity is a lucky species that overcame a hurdle almost all other life fails to pass. This might not be the case, however; life might evolve to our level all the time but get wiped out by some unknowable catastrophe. Discovering nuclear power is a likely event for any advanced society, but it also has the potential to destroy such a society. Utilizing a planet's resources to build an advanced civilization also destroys the planet: the current process of climate change serves as an example. Or, it could be something entirely unknown, a major threat that we can't see and won't see until it's too late. [bold added]For most who read the article, the specter of humanity destroying its home will indeed seem like a good example of this Great Filter at work. Leave it in the ground! Now! they might even exclaim. But what if the opposite is true? Those who fear a climate change apocalypse would have us "leave it in the ground" sooner rather than later, often failing to consider (or outright wishing away) the problem of how we would survive without cheap, plentiful, and reliable energy. For example, many if not most anti-fossil fuel activists also oppose nuclear power, which is the only energy technology remotely close to being ready to replace fossil fuels as an energy source. But it's worse than that: There is bad thinking behind climate change catastrophism, and that's what is leading our headlong rush into outlawing the energy sources we currently need to survive. Energy advocate Alex Epstein wrote about this back in early 2016:Those who believe in the ideal of human nonimpact tend to endow nature with godlike status, as an entity that nurtures us if only we will live in harmony with the other species and not demand so much for ourselves. But nature gives us very few directly usable machine energy resources. Resources are not taken from nature, but created from nature. What applies to the raw materials of coal, oil and gas also applies to every raw material in nature -- they are all potential resources, with unlimited potential to be rendered valuable by the human mind. Ultimately, a resource is just matter and energy transformed via human ingenuity to meet human needs. Well, the planet we live on is 100% matter and energy, 100% potential resource for energy and anything else we would want. To say we've only scratched the surface is to significantly understate how little of this planet's potential we've unlocked. We already know that we have enough of a combination of fossil fuels and nuclear power to last thousands and thousands of years, and by then, hopefully, we'll have fusion (a potential, far superior form of nuclear power) or even some hyper-efficient form of solar power. The amount of raw matter and energy on this planet is so incomprehensibly vast that it is nonsensical to speculate about running out of it. Telling us that there is only so much matter and energy to create resources from is like telling us that there is only so much galaxy to visit for the first time. True, but irrelevant. [bold added]So much for the old, tired idea of resource depletion. As for climate change, Epstein argues elsewhere, chiefly in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels that the ill effects of climate change are wildly exaggerated and some beneficial effects are ignored altogether -- along with many compelling arguments in favor of continuing and increasing fossil fuel use, at least for the immediate future. So, returning to the idea of an intelligent species succumbing to an as yet unseen threat: It might behoove any global warming catastrophist who cherishes his own life -- and who isn't hoping, as David Graber does, "for the right virus to come along" -- to consider the following idea: Might global warming alarmism be wrong? And might implementing the policies allegedly required to save the world in fact be a "great filter?" Might our intelligent species be on the verge of snuffing itself out by acting precipitously to prevent what another author might rightly call a "fake invisible catastrophe?" -- CAVLink to Original

Many people liken global warming catastrophism to religion, and the two sound more and more alike as time goes on. Consider how some greens have spoken about the pandemic, as Brendan O'Neill of Sp!ked recently reported. It sounds no less fire-and-brimstone-y (or cynical) than any time some preacher gratuitously injects his idea of a moral message into any other calamity:And carbon offsets are the modern version of papal indulgences... (Image by Nick-philly, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)For the past 21 months of infection and lockdown, greens have been mashing together Covid with climate change. They've argued that the Covid pandemic is a deathly illustration of what happens when humankind constructs so many global, intimate connections -- trade, travel, flying, etc. And they have insisted that Covid is a stern rebuke to mankind, a call on us to rein in our energy-consuming excesses. As Inger Andersen of the UN Environment Programme put it early on in the pandemic, 'Nature is sending us a message'. This supposed 'message' doesn't even have to be spelled out anymore. The misanthropic prejudice against modernity is now so ingrained in the elites that they all instinctively know what this 'message' is -- nature telling us to 'Just stop'. [link in original, bold added]The rest of the article, in a similar vein, is worth a read. And, for anyone who hasn't noticed the similarity, or who believes that appeals to "the science" by catastrophists aren't tantamount to pleading divine revelation, let's consider a similar "lesson" drawn from another catastrophe:Reverend Franklin Graham, son of Reverend Billy Graham, suggests the city was targeted because of the city's sinful reputation. At a speech in Virginia, he said, "This is one wicked city, OK? It's known for Mardi Gras, for Satan worship. It's known for sex perversion. It's known for every type of drugs and alcohol and the orgies and all of these things that go on down there in New Orleans. Reverend Graham continued, "There's been a black spiritual cloud over New Orleans for years. They believe God is going to use that storm to bring revival. [bold added]And those universal, indefinite home detentions "proved" that "we" can limit our emissions. Blank out the fact that the cold chain those vaccines needed wouldn't have existed without fossil fuels: Earth's cleansing is at hand! In every case, the activities of men-on-the-street are to be caricatured as short-range and "unimportant" in the grand scheme of things -- and painted as offenses to an ineffable quasi-entity. In the meantime, the de facto high priests run the show and enjoy the actual excesses, as judged by their professed standards. Whatever your stand on whether climate catastrophism is a religion, it at least does an outstanding job of imitating one, as far as I'm concerned. -- CAVLink to Original

Andrew Sullivan writes one of the best assessments of Ron DeSantis as presidential material I have read so far. Regulars know that I regard him as probably the most viable Republican candidate for President in 2024, but that I have deep misgivings about him, particularly on freedom of expression and economic freedom. Sullivan would seem to agree with me overall, but is less inclined to view DeSantis as fascistic and -- although he sees DeSantis's environmental record as a virtue -- he in fact highlights another reason to be cautious about Florida's Governor. Regarding Sullivan's assessment of whether DeSantis is a "fascist," he has a more left-tinged notion of the term than I, and he is comparing DeSantis to contemporary figures, most of whom have fascist tendencies. For example:More generally, look at the broader context. The imposition of woke dogma throughout corporate America, the government, the nonprofit sector and our educational institutions has been a deeply authoritarian movement, brooking no dissent. The Democrats have embraced this putsch, with Biden among the most strident, deploying federal government power to advance far-left ideas. None of his underlings can define what a woman is. All seem to view America as a form of "white supremacy" -- and want to teach this as fact to kids. Do Democrats really believe that all this is simply government-as-usual, and any attempt to balance this out on the right is inherently some kind of authoritarianism? I don't. At some point, we really do have to fight back and defend a liberal society. The Dems are attacking it. Trump can't do it -- he merely empowers and legitimizes the woke. DeSantis has shown he can actually beat them -- at their own game. A conservative seeking some swing of the cultural pendulum back to the center is not a fascist.I don't agree with all of this, but Sullivan has a point, and I think significant numbers of people will see things this way. And here's something Sullivan likes and will make DeSantis more viable with greenish voters:This prospect bothers me, but not as much as a Green New Deal. (Image by a cartoonist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)Trump believes climate change is a Chinese hoax, and, given the chance, would cover our national parks with condos and oil rigs. DeSantis is a governor in a state where rising sea levels and floods are real, so Trumpian insanity is a non-starter. "I will fulfill promises from the campaign trail," DeSantis said shortly after taking office... This year he followed through -- with more than $400 million in funds for containing rising sea levels... So far, DeSantis is not that far from the "Teddy Roosevelt conservationist" he claimed to be. Yes, he's mainly focused on responding to, rather than preventing, climate change -- "Resilient Florida" is the slogan. And he's allergic to green uplift or catastrophism. But another Trump? Nope. This recalls a quote I recall to the effect that he planned to fight global warming without "doing any left-wing stuff." "Teddy Roosevelt" concerns me, but I will grant that he may be the best we can expect on environmental/energy issues in today's context. This is another factor about the man to consider. Sullivan also notes other things: We don't really know where DeSantis stands on abortion, Putin's War, or the January 6 riots. Sullivan calls him a coward at least on that last. I think this article is a must-read because I agree that DeSantis is the most viable alternative so far to a second term of either Joe Biden (who will beat Trump head-to-head if 2024 is a rematch) or Donald Trump (who will defeat any other Democrat as things stand now). We need better and can get different. The big question is whether DeSantis is both of these. -- CAVLink to Original

Blog Roundup 1. In a short post at New Ideal, Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute describes the ambit of Ben Bayer's recently-released Why the Right to Abortion Is Sacrosanct:Where did defenders of Roe v. Wade go wrong? Why did they lose the moral high ground? What does it take to defend abortion rights in the United States? To defend abortion as an inviolable right, it has to be understood as a claim of uncompromising justice. That's the case my colleague Ben Bayer lays out in a series of hard-hitting New Ideal articles, newly collected in a short book... [format edits, bold added]I admire Bayer's commentary on abortion and was glad to see ARI take advantage of the opportunity afforded by the recently-leaked draft Supreme Court decision to release this. And seize this opportunity they did, as I learned from a recent appearance of Bayer on Yaron Brook's podcast about the book. I haven't yet heard the entire episode (embedded below), but I learned that one of the rationales for the release of this collection in book form was to leverage the Amazon search algorithm to get the attention of as many potentially receptive readers as possible. 2. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn explains why the current fashion of ESG [Environmental, Social, and Governance -- ed] investing owns a large part of the blame for today's energy crisis -- and offers the following good news:This evidence demonstrates that the campaign for carbon neutrality is destructive -- which is the reason we should reject ESG investing. Not only do we have Alex Epstein's pro-human, fact-based moral argument for rejecting the campaign to abandon fossil fuels and the ESG investing that facilitates it -- we soon will also have an alternative to ESG investing. Vivek Ramaswany, the billionaire entrepreneur, has launched a new asset management firm, Strive Asset Management, in response to the major asset managers' push for ESG policies. Instead of the ESG criteria, Strive uses excellence as the basis of investment. With backing from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists such as PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, Strive's first investment product will be available later this year. It will offer us an opportunity to start reversing the ESG investment trend -- for the benefit of human flourishing in an improved environment.The sooner the tide turns against ESG and global warming catastrophism, the better. 3. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney considers the example of a delayed car repair to show why and how one should take negative emotions as a cue to figure out what is at stake (and how to get it) in a situation, rather than dwell on its threatening aspects:[T]his is what it means to fight reality. The car is the car, and the mechanic is the mechanic, and the car is not ready as originally foretold. Ruminating about how you wish these facts were different doesn't make it so and is not a good use of your time. The way forward is always to figure out the value that is most important to you in the circumstances. Let's stipulate that you want reliability and predictability and the freedom to think about other things rather than car repair. Now you can do some constructive thinking about the situation.The closing analysis of the nature and purpose of emotions may sound familiar to many regulars here, but it is not always obvious how to apply such knowledge. This post is helpful in that regard. 4. At Value for Value, Harry Binswanger revisits the perennial topic of gun control, which happens to be related to many other public policy debates:The principle I've come to accept is that you don't illegalize objects, you illegalize acts. If I walk a rabid pit-bull on a thin leash on the city sidewalk, I'm properly going to be stopped by the police (if it comes to their attention). But to get this result, you don't need laws against walking rabid pit bulls or regulations relating the weight of the dog walked to the strength of the leash used, you just have law about being responsible for harm caused by an animal you own.How Binswanger applies this principle to such crimes as the Uvalde Massacre, why he disagrees with the idea of banning certain types of weapons, and why he regards his solution as superior are all within, and make for a thought-provoking read. -- CAVLink to Original

The headline of a recent piece at The American Thinker echoes a thought I have had more than once since the start of the pandemic: "Covid-19 Is the New Global Warming." The piece does -- sort of -- capture this, from a harshly conservative point-of-view, taking conservative in its new, post-Trumpian, no-longer-capitalist sense. For example:Image by Bessie Pease Gutmann, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.Mask mandates. This has two distinct sides. On one side are those who believe that wearing masks is essential to protect public health and anyone who opposes that viewpoint is ignorant and a danger to society. The other side is more skeptical of masks, pointing out inconvenient little facts like that the typical mask opening is four times larger than the COVID-19 particle (500 nanometers to 125 nanometers), so wearing a mask is like trying to stop a swarm of mosquitoes with a chain-link fence, as that cliché goes. Mask mandates in the public sphere and for kids in school divide the electorate sharply along ideological lines.Count me as being on neither of these irrational, funhouse-mirror-image-of-each-other "sides." (This is a great analogy, but not my own. I'm pretty sure I got this from the philosopher Greg Salmieri.) Regulars here will know that I oppose mask mandates, but regard masks as offering some protection to wearer and others nearby alike. And don't get me started on that asinine "fence vs. mosquito" analogy, which is rehashed above. (Check the link: I'm not re-litigating that here.) Analogously to the debate over fuel rationing disguised as a "climate" debate, I oppose fuel rationing, and yet acknowledge that some "lukewarming" of the climate is happening, with good and bad effects. So am I a Green or a "denialist?" I'll be accused of either, depending on which of the former you ask. This is despite the fact that one can oppose environmental legislation without denying that some warming is occurring. (And I would oppose current political proposals even if there were a looming catastrophe.) Likewise, I oppose lockdowns and mask mandates, but think masking can be helpful and that vaccination is a good idea. The limited role of government in all of this is detailed here. So, yes. The fiercely-opposed sides that are both wrong in very important ways (and so hold self-contradictory viewpoints) make the debates over the pandemic and whatever they're calling energy rationing these days seem quite similar to each other. But the greatest similarity, shared by both sides, as this outsider to both can see, is that neither seems capable of asking itself, "How do I know this?" This scientist has been called a "science denier" simply because I oppose the Green New Deal, and has gotten nowhere with an anti-vaxxer relative despite (for example) my point-by-point rebuttal of a viral video of a quack doctor speaking to an Indiana school board. If you doubt me, try talking to someone firmly within either camp and see how little time it will take before you notice that what you are saying simply doesn't register. I have, and all I can say is that I hope these people are merely a vocal minority, for they seem unreachable by rational argument. The most disturbing thing about both of these struggles is that so many people see the issue in terms of a binary political choice between two inconsistent grab-bag sets of positions -- and not as a problem to be approached like any other in one's life, and with a suspicious eye cast on government, whose role is only how best to protect one's freedom to do so. -- CAVLink to Original