Posted on 11/27/2009 9:59:53 PM PST by The_Reader_David
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.
--Chinese proverb
While my own tradition holds that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, as regards worldly affairs there is something to be said for the Chinese view.
We have of late been treated to headlines about rallies protesting “against health care”. As I have noted in other forums, with the exception of devotees of faith healing and in certain narrow circumstances involving incurable terminal illness, no one is against health care, at least if the words are used as we speakers of English use them.
The most egregious abuse of language, of late, however, is the use of the word “denier” as a universal pejorative. To deny the truth, be it the reality of the Shoah or something unpleasant about oneself that a therapist or confessor is telling you, is either folly or a species of lying. However to deny a falsehood, to deny the folly of others misnaming things, to deny the deceits of purported authorities is a form of honesty.
The phrase “climate change denier” (It seems it can’t be “global warming denier” anymore, since mean global temperatures stopped going up.) is, of course, like “opposing health care” an absurd accusation: no one denies that the Earth’s climate changes, while a great many of us do not credit claims that recent changes in the Earth’s climate have been cause by human activity (be it burning fossil fuels or raising farting livestock). And those of us skeptical of such claims have also noticed the complete absurdity of continuing to blame “greenhouse gas emissions” for climate changes of other sorts (be they droughts or changes in frequency of storms in some region) in the absence of increasing temperatures.
Even during the 1990’s when the mean global temperature seems to have been increasing, the only support for the theory of anthropogenic causation were computer models—a pack of nerds playing an apotheosis of SimEarth on supercomputers. The entire enterprise has always been prima facia absurd: a discrete model of a continuous chaotic dynamical system with, what is worse, unmodelled and even unknown inputs, cannot possibly be useful for long-term prediction. Compound the problem by not using realistic boundary conditions for the PDE governing the greenhouse effect, and “GIGO” is the only rational response, though not one heard from self-proclaimed “climate rationalists”.
But now, thanks to some hackers whose names, when we learn them, should be enrolled with Pasteur, Edison and Turing among the great benefactors of mankind, we find out that they weren’t even playing an honest game of SimEarth, but were using the mathematical modeler’s equivalents of downloaded game cheats to get their desired anti-capitalist, anti-development, and in the final analysis, anti-human outcome.
Much has been written about the e-mails in the Hadley CRU file dump. These could be seen as merely revealing the sort of cattiness that the “big science” model of research funding has made endemic in some fields—only our theory should get funded, only our theory is worth publishing—because grant-funding is indeed a zero-sum game. Read this way, they would reveal only that some of the leading proponents of the anthropogenic theory are unpleasant people, perhaps beset by self-doubt that even tenure and a few fat grants have not assuaged.
But it was not just e-mails that have come to light. Code for “analyses” on which published papers and the IPCC report were based turn out to include explicitly identified “fudge factors” which create output showing warming when the raw data showed none.
Honest scientists, finding that a run of recent dendrochronological data did not correspond to temperatures measured in the same period and location would have rushed to publish a paper calling into question the conventional wisdom about how to model temperatures based on dendrochronology. Instead, the climate modelers at the University of East Anglia, applied a SimEarth cheat, and replaced the measured data with bogus numbers made to look like their desired outcome.
Nor is the crew in East Anglia the only ones using cheats in their SimEarth game: the New Zealand NIWA was finally obliged to provide its raw data to someone outside the cozy world of capitalism-slaying climate crusaders, and mirable dictu, the “increase” in mean temperatures in New Zealand over the past 160 years turns out to have been the result of another SimEarth cheat: the raw data shows no such increase.
Until last week I had assumed that being an “anthropogenic climate change denier” was rather like being a “phlogiston denier” or an “spontaneous generation denier”: someone who upheld scientific truth by denying a specious theory. It seems that it is more like being a “Piltdown Man denier”.
Let us start being wise, according to the Chinese proverb, and start calling things by their right names: those of us skeptical about the anthropogenic global warming theory are the climate realists and climate rationalists, and those who use fudge factors, baseless corrections, or even merely fancy that computer modeling is a substitute for empirical science are pseudoscientists, and (dare we say it?) data deniers. Any diplomat, legislator or bureaucrat who thinks he or she is benefitting mankind by hobbling the world economy to “cut carbon emissions” is a fool, and any who knows better and goes along with such schemes is a rogue and an incipient tyrant.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell
Nicely done.
I can’t believe that, in light of climategate, that Obama is still planning to go to Copenhagen and that UN meeting. I can’t believe that the meeting will still take place, in light of all this evidence coming out that it’s such a scam.
I can’t believe how stupid all the world leaders, UN officials, scientists, Obama, and everyone will look going to this meeting based on the false science.
That's why the MSM first went with the 'Ostrich in the sand' ploy - hoping as long as they didn't report on it, it would go away... Now they've gone with some 'tepid' reporting, always couched in the line that the primary crime was the 'theft' of the emails -- ignoring the conspiracy of lies to promote this massive wealth transfer through the lie of 'Global Warming' (and now 'Global Climate Change' ... aka:'Weather'...)...
This Copenhagen/UN Meeting has nothing to do with 'Climate'. Its merely a prop to push forward their 'ideal' of global God-less socialism...
Of course Obama will attend and support such folly.
Proverbs 12:22a "Lying lips are abomination to the LORD..."
Is that really a Chinese proverb?
Consider yourself *highly* commended...and I've bookmarked your blogsite as well.
Cheers!
How about “Data Fixers?”
Nicely phrased. Unfortunately, I think we have many more of rogues and incipient tyrants than fools in positions of power.
Dirt Worshipers.
For most of the world leader the climate issue was nothing more than a tool for seizing power over the citizens. There is absolute proof now.
Any leader worth their salt would flee as quickly as they could from the Copenhagen meeting. However, I am still holding out that at least one leader there will call the data deniers on this fraud at the meeting. I know there is about a 0.000000000000001 % chance that will happen.
Is that really a Chinese proverb?
Numerous online sources, including quotation sites that have some vetting of their content attest it as such.
Cold Earthers. ;^)
They’re going to try to bluff their way through this, with the help of the media. They all have the same agenda - to control and punish the consumption behaviors of Western society. They all believe that only the elite should live the lifestyle that we all enjoy here.
Actually the fear of (respect for) God is the beginning of all wisdom.
God is strictly on the side of truth. Truth is His nature, as he cannot lie or deceive.
“I came to testify to the Truth” - Jesus.
Well, thanks for that. I was asking about the Chinese proverb, though.
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names... say the Chinese. And Genesis says, "In the beginning was the word" -- a name, if you will.
Can't see a whole lot of controversy here.
I was alluding to the idea that the “Chinese proverb” was probably just the revealed wisdom of Jehovah.
Actually, it's tautological, if your premise is correct.
Did you read the essay, or just the Chinese proverb? You will note that I point to the fear of the Lord in the first sentence, then limit the utility of the Chinese proverb to this-worldly affairs.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.