I enjoy watching JEOPARDY each weeknight not only to be entertained by the quiz show that tests the general knowledge of some very smart contestants but also to be reminded about how dumb experts can really be.No doubt the contestants have a great well of knowledge, quick recall and good reflexes under pressure, but they also generally (certainly not all) suffer from a distinct lack of understanding of game theory and basic applied mathematics.
While extremely smart and capable, they are mostly stupid when it comes to betting strategically.
Many games have been lost by contestants making the wrong bet at the wrong time, something that is painfully obvious to those who watch who aren't as smart but who understand betting and strategy.
Every player who participates in the World Series of Poker has a better understanding of how betting strategies affect outcomes, compared to 75% of Jeopardy players..
My wife who admittedly doesn't answer as many questions correctly has a background in book-keeping and an uncanny ability to analyze and point out how stupidly contestants bet, with simple and devastating logic and deconstruction that is unassailable.
All to say that though experts and scientists may have an overwhelming handle on the subject that they have devoted their life to, it doesn't mean they can extrapolate their expertise into realms or fields that they have no special expertise in.
Like Jeopardy contestants, they can be brilliant, yet painfully stupid as well.
As they say ...Experts built the Titanic.
The same climate experts who cannot predict whether our Sunday picnic will be rain-free are telling us with absolute certainty that the world is on the eve of climate destruction.
Of course, the apologists will lecture us not to confuse weather with climate whenever we are hit with a particularly harsh winter (like this year,) but when a particularly hot or dry spell occurs, scream to high Heaven that it is because of climate change.
They have the distinct aura of doomsday predictors whom have plagued the Earth since the rise of mankind.
I'm reminded of those cult leaders who predict the end of the world on a certain date, only to see that date come and go. You'd think followers would leave in droves but the leader just picks a new distant date and count on the gullibility of adherents who remain faithful.
As for the media, it is complicit in fostering panic with predictions of doomsday climate scenarios, frightening us because it sells newspapers or keeps eyes on the news channel. Most reporters and pundits are lazy and stupid and editors are loathe to present arguments against the conventional wisdom.
This past summer Montreal was hit with a heat wave which of course triggered panicked reports in the media of increased of deaths caused by climate change.
“Quebec health authorities say that up to 70 deaths have been linked to the recent heat wave that gripped the province for nearly a week.” screamed the headlinesDozens of similar stories appeared across the media, but months later when the data was analyzed by Santé Quebec, the number of reported deaths during the heat wave period was the same as the year before.
Did that make headline news?
“The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat.”In other words, cold climate kills twenty times more people than hot climate.
How come the media never runs stories about deaths caused by extreme cold?
Let us examine some issues;
THE SCIENTIFIC TRACK RECORD:
Scientists and global warmers celebrities like Al Gore have been predicting all sorts of disasters since the 1990s. According to Gore, we'd all be under water by now and the world would be on the brink of disaster.
The Northwest passage was to be clear of ice and the shorelines of coastal areas like Florida flooding.
The famous 'Hockey Stick graph is an illustration of dumbing down the science in order to elicit a sympathetic public response.
“Climate scientist Stephen Schneider......let some unusual truth slip when he told Discover magazine in 1989, “To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest.”And so the great "Hockey Stick" graph (it resembles the shape of a hockey stick) of 2001 which was presented so that even idiots could see the bad situation that the Earth was in.
“The hockey stick graph is widely regarded as controversial, if not plain wrong. “The hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics,” physicist Richard Muller wrote in Technology Review in 2004. Others have described it as rubbish or even as a downright fraud.”So much for the past.
What is galling is that these same debunked scientists and promoters have never apologized for frightening us for nothing. They continue today to brush off past false predictions with new predictions.
This AP story was written by PETER JAMES SPIELMANN June 29, 1989
UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.
He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.
Ha! ha!
Has Mr. Brown apologized for his alarmism?
Nope... He soldiers on in the climate world of misinformation.
In 2003, three years after his predictions of climate doom were debunked, he was awarded an Honorary doctorate from Pace university. Hooray!!
Let me present a simple scenario to you climate-change fanatics.
You have a stockbroker who tells you that he has a stock that is set to triple in price because he has inside information.
You're excited and you throw a huge chunk of your savings into the stock.
Instead of tripling, the stock tanks and you lose most of the invested money.
Your broker never apologizes for his gaffe and instead phones you a few months later to tell you that he has another stock that will quadruple in price.
You're a sucker, so you give him a second chance and invest more, but the stock, like the first, tanks anyways.
Are you furious when he phones you a year later to announce a new sure-fire stock? (Assuming you haven't fired him yet)
If you are a climate fanatic you probably give him yet another chance because you are a sucker, the same one that PT Barnum told us is born every day.
That is why Al Gore still has a fan base.
Every ten years we are told we have only ten years to react to global warming, yet ten years have come and gone three or four times during the debate and we haven't seen the predicted collapse.
Ho-hum...
Pseudo-Scientists like Bill Nye are so dumb that his predictions can only be accepted by the most naive and stupid.
He has told an interviewer that as the world heats up food production in North America will shift north to Canada, a place according to him that doesn't have the infrastructure or technology to handle the load.
His ignorance of capitalism (and Canada) is appalling. Canada already produces and exports agricultural and meat products. Ramping up production is what capitalists love to do. Telling us that Canada can't do so is based on ignorant conjecture.
The same goes for scientists that produce maps showing the coastline of Florida disappearing under several feet of seawater created by melting ice caps.
Do you actually think that building a four, five or ten feet sand berm is beyond the capability of our society? Will we actually let our coastlines sink into the ocean when a relatively cheap sea wall can take care of the problem with relatively little expense versus climate remediation?
Ever since I can remember, scientists have told us that the population explosion will destroy Earth, because the planet cannot possibly support so many new people.
That prediction itself was false as modern technology in agriculture has done very well in meeting the needs of hungry new mouths. But there's no doubt that an increasing population does put a strain on the environment and reducing population is perhaps the greatest remedial action we can take vis a vis the environment.
Of course, nobody would dare demand families reduce the number of babies they produce, as China did with its one-baby policy.
But lo and behold the world's population is set to peak soon and then to dramatically decline.
Already in the western developed world, the birth rate has declined to the point that population levels cannot be maintained naturally. We see this in Canada as in the rest of 'richer' countries where immigrants are needed to shore up the population.
In Europe and North America we haven't seen the decline in population because we import people from the third world, but in Japan, a country that is loathe to import non-natives, the reality of population decline is already a fact, with population declining steadily over the last seven years.
As the under-developed world modernizes, so too will population levels fall in these countries as women no longer desire to pump out babies as their primary function.
China gave up its one-baby policy in 2016 because of a falling population and despite allowing families to have more children, the population is dropping precipitously.
This trend (and I'm loathe to make predictions) seems ready to sweep the undeveloped world as women become empowered and see motherhood has a part of their lives, but not the only thing in their lives..
Of course, it is a trend 'experts' could not have foreseen, a so-called 'black-swan event,' but the effect on the environment will be staggering.
Climate doomsayers cannot or will not consider the effect because it is beyond their scope. The coming population collapse is perhaps the 'deus ex machina ' of the climate debate, precluding the need for remedial action.
As for the dire predictions of catastrophe with increased temperature, the predictions are figments of imagination. Nobody really knows.
If some areas of the world become uninhabitable because of heat, other areas in Russia and Canada will become more inhabitable.
All that being said, if man-made global warming is real, and it's going to affect our lives, don't worry about it because there's nothing to be done.
Good intentions aside, mankind hasn't been able to end war and it won't be able to reduce our impact on climate. Period
Are we really going to reduce our standard of living by the required effort?
Will you get rid of your car.
Will you sell your big homes and move to a tiny apartment?
Will you become a vegetarian?
Will air travel cease?
Will your backyard BBQ be banned?
Will you tolerate $10-litre gas prices?
Will you willingly pay three times as much to heat your home with green energy?
Will commuting to work by any means be banned from the suburbs with people forced to live near their jobs?
What happens when your job is cut because of its impact on climate?
We have witnessed the collapse of the oil industry in Alberta, causing a catastrophic loss of over 100,000 jobs. What would happen if that trend was felt across the country as jobs are shed because of climate considerations?
While we accept the job losses in Alberta, will we accept the loss of a million jobs in Quebec and Ontario?
We are all heroes when it is someone else who is suffering or paying the bill. Not so much when it is us
Those of you who say you are willing to sacrifice for generations to come are liars.
In Canada, our federal government is borrowing and spending tens of billions of dollars a year to make our present lifestyle more agreeable.
This money will have to be repaid by future generations.
Where is your outrage over this theft of wealth from our children?
We say we care about the future, but we don't give a hoot, not when it will seriously cost us in the present.
I don't care about climate change because everything about it is a con.
To those of you committed to climate-change hysteria, take the first step by massively reducing your carbon footprint. Then tell us how we should do the same.
- Become a vegetarian
- Get rid of your house and move to a small apartment.
- Get rid of your car.
- Move closer to work
- Consume less manufactured goods.
- Give up air travel.
- Stop accepting government benefits that are paid for by future generations.
I've written this blog piece not to convince the climate change committed. It is as likely to succeed in that regard as trying to convince a religious zealot that God doesn't exist.
Instead, I've written this for those of you who haven't quite bought into the climate-change hype and to help reinforce your critical thinking in making your mind up.
