This old picture of myself and a fellow outlaw is given as proof of my deep anti-social propensities.
A friend of mine, long ago, would sit and listen to George Carlin’s FM & AM record album.
I could mimic Carlin’s delivery and voice, especially the radio bits. None of which is apropos of anything, except that during one joke, Carlin was teasing women who watch soap operas (do they still have them?). The ladies, he said in an exaggerated tone, called these “My stories.”
Well, this is my story. Which I’d ordinarily never bother anybody with. Except that the coronadoom panic is passing back to the lucrative global-warming-of-doom, now “climate change”, manufactured lucrative panic, which is lucrative. Many might not recall the old glorious global warming days, which lead to events which caused my expulsion from polite society, so a brief review is in order.
I was an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review (until 2011), and of course a member of the American Meteorological Society, including being on its Probability and Statistics Committee, and was in other suchlike organizations. I was, for one year, a forecaster with the National Weather Service. I spent a summer at NCAR. I was a named person. I won awards.
My BS “degree” was in meteorology and math. My MS “degree” was in atmospheric physics. I programmed my first climate-crop model in Fortran. I have had peer-reviewed papers in the Journal of Climate. Among others.
I went into weather because, while I was doing cryptography in the Air Force, the first global warming panic was underway. And I believed it. I even wrote one of the authors of the first IPCC report, and he graciously sent me a copy when I was overseas. I wanted to go into some kind of science after the service, and this field seemed especially important.
As I was doing my Masters, I realized that to understand what a forecast really was, and what distinguished good from bad ones, I had to figure out probability and statistics. So I did my PhD in those subjects. My dissertation was on model goodness—and badness.
I still believed global warming was important, like nearly every Expert, but the longer I looked at climate model performance, and especially models that are driven by climate model input, and their monumental failures and vast over-certainties, I became more and more disillusioned.
So I dropped out, so to speak, to think. Luckily, I was working outside academia and could do this. If you understand this paradox, you understand much.
Many people don’t know this, but to get a PhD in “science” (in the States), one never has to read or study any philosophy. At all.
This is not sensible, because in order to understand science, and uncertainty, one has to know philosophy. Most scientists wing it, absorbing field-dependent tidbits and myths (I use this word in its old-fashioned sense, and not as “something false”), and many even deny they have a philosophy—which is a philosophy.
After about ten years of reading—starting with Jaynes, then Jeffreys, then Stove, and then etc.—I came to realize what I didn’t know. Which was a lot. What I did know was that others must surely be as ignorant as I was about science. So I wrote Uncertainty (in 2016). Which maybe ought to be titled The Philosophy of Uncertainty. With something about Science in a subtitle. (I am a terrible title writer.)
Climate models aren’t that good. They run hot. They often don’t have skill. Persistence can beat them (persistence is saying next year will be like this year). Model hot flashes should be embarrassing. They aren’t. Why? Partly because scientists cherish models over Reality. But that’s not all.
It is a trivial truth that man influences the climate. All creatures do. And all things. It’s when you marry that triviality with something like a Gnostic or pantheistic belief that man is an evil presence that we begin to understand that many want, and even need, to believe there is a climate “crisis”.
Here’s one of several incidents that proves this.
A group of us—Christopher Monckton, Willie Soon, David Legates, and moi—wrote a paper describing a simple model of the climate. Why Models Run Hot: Results From An Irreducibly Simple Climate Model (update: link fixed). A peer-reviewed paper, and therefore above criticism. Yes? Never mind.
We said, in essence, yes, man will cause a slight warming, but it won’t be very large, and we’ll be fine.
What wonderful news! The world was not going to end in heat death. All would be well! We don’t need to panic!
What a relief.
Yes?
No.
What they call a “firestorm” erupted. My old site was hacked, Christopher was called every bad name there was. Willie and David suffered greatly. There were Congressional investigations, FOIA requests, hersteria, histeria, apoplexy, sputtering, protests, and other forms of lunacy.
It was discovered that we took no money, not a cent, not any form of compensation or consideration, to write the paper. This really rankled.
Of course, it wasn’t a surprise to us that we would be met by hostility. But because it was hostility, and not sane criticism, was all the proof we needed to understand the whole thing is not science, but something else.
Yes, our model could be wrong. Many models are wrong. I make many mistakes. But the possibility of our being in error is nothing to be angry about.
Right?
Besides, I ask you, whose model in the years since has matched Reality better?
What caused certain people to be furious was that if we were right, there was no need for them. No need for their “solutions”, or activism, or bureaucracy, or laws, or regulations, or for money or prestige or “oxygen” to be given them. That you are not needed is not a happy message. So I understand.
Along the way, I investigated many methods used to prove (P < 0.05) the sky is falling. The stuff done in the name of time series analysis, for instance, is black comedy. But there is also the deeply suspicious methods of temperature “homogenization”, falsifiability (ignore it!), the epidemiologist fallacy, how smoothing increases correlation and induces the false belief in causation, the extreme dangers of “trend analysis”, and many, many more.
You can search for those on the Classic Posts page. The search, unfortunately, is crude. One of these days, he said with something resembling a resigned sigh in his voice, I’ll clean this up.
Or maybe I won’t have to. Since all bad things come around, we’ll surely be doing all these topics again soon.
Anyway, once it became known I was a “climate denier”, I suddenly had fewer friends. I had a job lined up at Livermore lab in California, to run the stats group. When I got out there, I was met with “Briggs? Briggs who?” Seems I angered one of the true believers.
Pat Michaels, may he rest in peace, lined up a job for me at Cato. But I was fired, once again right before starting. Turns out I angered another true believer there. One of the VPs was not happy with my stance against “gay marriage”.
I had another job lined up with a prestigious consulting firm. A VP there said “I’m not going to work with a climate denier.”
Then, after connections got me back in academia part time, I was fired from Cornell. And then—
But you have the idea.
Long boring story later, and we discover that the same foundational problems in “climate change”, and the burning need to protect these problems from scrutiny, are found in every branch of science, to various extent. I don’t mean just woke and DIE, which are the most potent corrosives known to man. Woke and DIE will kill anything they touch, not just science.
The problem is deeper than woke. It’s also the Expertocracy, pervasive scientism and scidolatry, the mad expansion-team effect, peer review, the vast monies pumped into the system, and similar faults.
But the deepest problems are philosophical, and go to the misunderstandings of what science is, and what science is not, which science can do, and what it can’t. If we can’t fix these, we can’t fix anything.
Turns out there are still people who care about this—about which more shortly.
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The true scientist is always eager for proof that what he believes is wrong, and knows science never operates by consensus. The religious fanatic knows that his beliefs are infallible, and only associates with those who confirm his beliefs.
That’s some story. Strange how they feel they’re evil or created by some evil, and then use their creativity to create models that are mere images of their own ideas. We need “against the gnostics” of Plotinus again.
The provision of shedloads of public money, or the same amounts from ‘woke’ foundations but to change zealots only, should be enough to raise at least an eyebrow.
Peer review is a misnomer. It should be echo chamber, apart from grammar checking. Any new paper should have to pass hostile questioning before it’s accepted.
Crack on
William, this is a great article. I’m going to translate it into Spanish and pass it to my friends. If you want, I can send the translation to you, I can post it right here, later, today, in a while, an hour or so. It’s very important, I think that more people need to be awaken from this nightmare and this is a good call to begin that process for many of those that are so deep that the coronaBS hasn’t been enough
God bless you, Matt Briggs! You’re doing the Lord’s work!
The truth shall set us free–but it seems to be working on a different timeline than we’d prefer.
The vast PC-Prog conspiracy of witting and unwitting Willing Accomplices is working feverishly to destroy Normal America–that America where the truth was valued and sought after. Their devilish work includes destroying, by whatever means necessary, those who point out that the emperor is, in fact, stark naked. It has been clear, to those who examined the roots of the haters’ belief system, that verbal and reputational attacks would not be the final act in their barbaric quest to destroy Normals. It should be clear now, to anyone who is paying attention, that “whatever means necessary” means exactly that. Whatever means necessary begins with destroying Normals’ ability to work, live in peace, vote, participate in society. And, for those unsure, rest assured that Normals in camps, Normals in chains, Normals burning, Normals on the rack, Normals enslaved, Normals with heads severed, and worse are the end-game.
Ten or 15 years ago, no Normals wanted to hear this, they thought that just one more peer-reviewed paper demonstrating the truth would be the ticket. That a well-reasoned argument would surely lead the haters to the road to the truth. That PC was just a well-meaning, but misguided, effort to avoid causing offense.
Not sure what we can do to change the road we’re on. Maybe hunkering down in a remote northern Michigan compound is the best course.
Thanks again for all you do, and for enduring the destruction of an honorable career with courageous equanimity. You’re a shining beacon of truth and hope for Normals. Onward!
A compact and interesting biography, Briggs. I wonder what happened to your crony in the photo, the tan fellow insolently dangling a cig? Compare and contrast his trajectory in a similar compact bio: A Tale of Two Citizens.
The demonic cult devouring the West has influential sticks and carrots for tricking people into compliance. The combination of social ostracism and financial pressure often proves too much. Thank God for those who refuse to kneel to the cult, whatever the cost. And especially those who publicly expose the cult’s lies and encourage other good men to resist. Sooner or later the cult will collapse. Live in good cheer, be not afraid, and hold the line.
The truth has been the enemy of Leftism since its founding. They demand that you also bow down to their gods, and deny the truth before your eyes.
Motto of experienced intelligence agents:
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make ye fret.
What an interesting story, thank you Ssgt Briggs. God bless you.
“Not sure what we can do to change the road we’re on. ”
The “road we’re on” will change when the next devastating war hits – which is just around the corner. Wars have a tendency to do that – unfortunately there may be nothing left to change – we’re in the hands of God.
“After about ten years of reading—starting with Jaynes, then Jeffreys, then Stove, and then etc.—I came to realize what I didn’t know. Which was a lot.”
Isn’t that the true value of statistics and probability; that is: to provide the tools so that we may learn what we don’t know?
“We said, in essence, yes, man will cause a slight warming, but it won’t be very large, and we’ll be fine.”
Even this may not be measurable, as so many other (far more significant) factors are in play. Recently, for example:
“The January eruption of Hunga Tonga in the South Pacific has injected a large amount of water vapor into the stratosphere. That water vapor is now causing significant cooling of the southern stratosphere.
The NOAA mid-stratosphere temperature graph actually shows this unusual cooling. It is marked on the image below, reaching below the previous minimal temperatures in the past 40-year records.
Not only temperatures, as shown in the image below, but the pressure is also lower. You can see a belt of low-pressure anomalies in the same region as the cooling anomalies. This is an overall significant change/anomaly for the southern stratosphere.”
https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/cold-anomaly-stratosphere-polar-vortex-volcanic-cooling-winter-influence-fa/
Exertocracy?
Was this intentional?
Or a happy accident created by your enemies?
Briggs – Near the top you wrote, “And I believed it.” You should have left it there. Your belief is all that matters. The rest of the article was wasted typing. Believe … and drift off into sleep. Your pod is almost developed. Let history take its course.
Briggs – Near the top you wrote, “And I believed it.” You should have left it there. Your belief is all that matters. The rest of the article was wasted typing. Believe … and drift off into sleep. Your pod is almost developed. Let history take its course.
Hmm, I’m hearing President Eisenhower’s words … government-academia complex (now add our ‘state’ run media, via the other kind of corporation, though public-private partnerships).
by the way
Re: George Carlin’s FM & AM record album.
I was waiting for a reference to the Hippy Dippy Weatherman
Dr. Briggs:
Great essay. And listen, pal–you know how to wear a fedora. Right out of 1948.
Mr. Bagpipe:
“Sooner or later the cult will collapse.” I’m not even religious, but I pray you’re right.
I know who you’re talking about at CATO who objected to your gay marriage stance. (I don’t know him, I just remember him at CATO.) He’s long gone from CATO. Yet, libertarians have a own circular self-contradiction, an open-mindedness about liberty (non-interference), but you MUST observe their tenants about liberty, not yours.
I followed CATO about two decades ago, for their economics (Stephen Moore) and environment (Pat Michaels) perspective, but have drifted away as many other policy positions are untenable to me.
A renegade scientist is unfortunately still a scientist. My condolences on your mental condition.
Great post. TY
I think you are on to an important truth when it comes to Gnosticism.
During Vatican Two Cardinal Siri worried openly about that identifying its resurgence in such forms as opinions replacing truth
Online for free one can read Vogelin’s
Science, Politics and Gnosticism
and all can profit from reading it
Briggs, I have been reading you for years and you have helped me more than words can say
God bless you
They are angry because you point out something disturbing…
Something worse than the extinction of mankind…
The possibility that such men as they have been fooled! Hoodwinked! Charlataned! Scammed! Taken for a zero carboned ride! The embarrassment of being wrong, and having fully invested their life’s work, savings, careers, reputation and social media following on it. They went all in! The entire economy and system has been sacrificed for it! And now you think you can come in here and expose their horrible horrible mistake?
It’s too late Briggs! They can’t stop the ship! They got rid of the brakes for the sake of progress! It’s sink or swim in their mistakes now!
Firesign Theater was the best.
Is there a story behind the photo of those two cornered gentlemen with their backs against the wall?
Origin stories are always fun. Thank you!
A friend of mine has a Ph.D. in biology and works as a researcher in the drug development industry. She is a very skilled technician, but she is not a “doctor of philosophy.” I have an M.S. in psychology (yes, I am aware). I know far more about the philosophy of science, and of biology, than she ever will.
Briggs ==> Besides sharing a past in the world of Magic (stage magic) we apparently share a past in crypts. In one firm, to remain unnamed, I was fondly referred to as “Mr. Crypts”.
As many on the right have noted by now, environmentalism is a cult, a religion. To understand modern environmentalism, we would be better off studying the Bible and historical cults of gaia rather than the actual “Science”.
Many battles, many defeats. Yet the champion of Truth soldiers on.
And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star
Dr. Briggs, I would love to see a paper or book that catalogues the errors of climate scientists. Maybe a good topic list would be “The stuff done in the name of time series analysis, for instance, is black comedy. But there is also the deeply suspicious methods of temperature “homogenization”, falsifiability (ignore it!), the epidemiologist fallacy, how smoothing increases correlation and induces the false belief in causation, the extreme dangers of “trend analysis”, and many, many more.” Does such a thing exist?
A related metacomment: the internet has brought us access to many truths that were once very hard to come by, but they tend to disappear into the firehose deluge of information. There is a lack of good COMPILATIONS. Not enough people want to do the work of collecting the most important information in a concise, unified form that we can point our friends to. So I hope you will someday write a good summary of why climate science is so bad.
Well, I for one am glad of your dedication to truth.
I’m very sorry for your experience and I believe it 100 percent.
While ‘both sides’ of this debate have their bad actors and grifters, the side you are on (either denying, being skeptical of climate change or simply believing it won’t be very bad) is far more ‘sinned against’ than ‘sinners’. The sides aren’t equal in power. They aren’t equal in dishonesty. And only one side is being used by secular religionists (Greens) and politicians to seize or expand their power. And besides power there is also money and PRIDE involved. It’s no wonder they could do that to you, with all that working against you and so many now converged Institutions. I guess I had hoped our Academic Institutions and societies would be stronger. After all they existed in one of the most free societies ever over a 200 year period. Plus, they had the lessons of history: the Nazi and Soviet Academics to draw on. But never underestimate the spinelessness of an Academic “Leader” I guess. One by one the organizations and educational Institutions fell lame and limp and kissed the boots of feminism, ‘wokism’, post-modernism, and climate catastrophism. And hence where we are today.
The older I get, the more evidence I see for Thomas Kuhn’s basic premise.
Surely we are in the beginning stages of another overturning. It’s the part where things aren’t quite adding up, but the old guard refuses to let go. And I don’t just mean in climate science. There are cracks in the edifice everywhere – physics, cosmology, archeology, paleontology.
I just hope the dread “philosophy” of Lysenko hasn’t already hardened inside the West.
Yesterday, I could NOT do it (a work thing), but, today, here you go:
Cómo me convertí en un científico renegado
Briggs
Esta vieja foto mía y de un compañero fuera de la ley se da como prueba de mis profundas propensiones antisociales.
Un amigo mío, hace mucho tiempo, se sentaba a escuchar el álbum de discos de FM y AM de George Carlin.
Yo podía imitar la forma de hablar y la voz de Carlin, especialmente las partes de la radio. Nada de esto viene a cuento, salvo que durante un chiste, Carlin se burlaba de las mujeres que ven telenovelas (¿todavía las hay?). Las mujeres, dijo en un tono exagerado, las llamaban “Mis historias”.
Pues bien, esta es mi historia. Con la que normalmente no molestaría a nadie. Salvo que el pánico público que fue impulsado por el coronadoom [así llama a lo que yo llamo coronamierda, “coronaperdición”, más o menos] está volviendo al impulso del lucrativo pánico del calentamiento-global-de-la-perdición, ahora “cambio climático”, lucrativo fabricado pánico público, que es muy lucrativo [pregúntenle a Tesla y la obligación, para 2035 de que todos los carros del mundo sea eléctricos: venderán unos 2000 millones de carros en 12 años… y eso es sólo un botoncito de muestra]. Puede que muchos no recuerden los viejos y gloriosos días del calentamiento global, que condujeron a los acontecimientos que causaron mi expulsión de la sociedad educada, así que es necesario hacer un breve repaso.
Fui editor asociado de la revista Monthly Weather Review (hasta 2011); y, por supuesto, miembro de la Sociedad Meteorológica Americana, incluyendo estar en su Comité de Probabilidad y Estadística, y estuve en otras organizaciones similares. Durante un año fui pronosticador en el Servicio Meteorológico Nacional. Pasé un verano en el NCAR. Fui una persona renombrada. Gané premios.
Me licencié en meteorología y matemáticas. Mi “título” de licenciado era en física atmosférica. Programé mi primer modelo de cultivo climático en Fortran. He publicado artículos en el Journal of Climate. Entre otros.
Me dediqué a la meteorología porque, mientras hacía criptografía en la Fuerza Aérea, el primer pánico al calentamiento global estaba en marcha. Y me lo creí. Incluso escribí a uno de los autores del primer informe del IPCC [el Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, de la ONU], que amablemente me envió una copia cuando estaba en el extranjero. Quería dedicarme a algún tipo de ciencia después del servicio y este campo me parecía especialmente importante.
Mientras hacía la maestría, me di cuenta de que para entender lo que era realmente un pronóstico y lo que distinguía los buenos de los malos, tenía que entender la probabilidad y la estadística. Así que me doctoré en esas materias. Mi tesis versó sobre la validez e invalidez de los modelos.
Seguía creyendo que el calentamiento global era importante, como casi todos Experto [estop, para él, es un término técnico: los burócratas asalariados o patrocinados, que están enquistados en el aparato del poder –económico-político– diciendo sandeces que convienen a ese poder, mayormente, transmitiendo miedo o promoviendo irracionalidades como LGBT, teoría crítica, igualitarismo-equity, affirmative action, etc.], pero cuanto más observaba el funcionamiento de los modelos climáticos y, especialmente, de los modelos que se basan en la información de los modelos climáticos y sus monumentales fallos y enormes super-certidumbres, más me desilusionaba.
Así que me retiré, por así decirlo, a pensar. Por suerte, trabajaba fuera del mundo académico y podía hacerlo. Si entiendes esta paradoja, entiendes mucho.
Mucha gente no lo sabe, pero para obtener un PhD [Philosophy Doctorate] en ciencia (en Estados Unidos), no hay que leer ni estudiar nada de filosofía. En absoluto.
Esto no es sensato, porque para entender la ciencia y la incertidumbre, hay que saber filosofía. La mayoría de los científicos improvisan, absorbiendo chismes y mitos dependientes del campo (uso la palabra ‘mito’ en su sentido antiguo y no como “algo falso”); y muchos, incluso, niegan tener una filosofía, lo cual es en sí mismo una filosofía.
Después de unos diez años de lectura –empezando con Jaynes, luego con Jeffreys, luego con Stove, y después con otros– me di cuenta de lo que no sabía. Que era mucho. Lo que sí sabía era que otros debían ser seguramente tan ignorantes como yo en materia de ciencia. Así que escribí Incertidumbre (en 2016). Que quizá debería titularse La filosofía de la incertidumbre. Con algo sobre la ciencia en un subtítulo. (Soy un terrible escritor de títulos).
Los modelos climáticos no son tan buenos. Funcionan de forma exagerada. A menudo no tienen “habilidad”. La “persistencia” puede vencerlos (la persistencia, es decir, que el año que viene será como este año). Las calenturas de los modelos deberían ser vergonzosas. No lo son. ¿Por qué? En parte porque los científicos valoran más los modelos que la realidad. Pero eso no es todo.
Es una verdad trivial que el hombre influye en el clima. Todas las criaturas lo hacen. Y todas las cosas. Es cuando se une esa trivialidad con algo así como la creencia gnóstica o panteísta de que el hombre es una presencia maligna cuando empezamos a entender que muchos quieren e, incluso, necesitan creer que hay una “crisis” climática [eso, las motivaciones económicas, que son gigantes, de voluntad de poder y maltusianas, que son las más genocidas y, hoy, difícilmente se distinguen de las anteriores].
He aquí uno de los varios incidentes que lo demuestran.
Entre varios, Christopher Monckton, Willie Soon, David Legates y yo, escribimos un artículo en el que describimos un modelo sencillo del clima: Why Models Run Hot: Results From An Irreducibly Simple Climate Model (https://wmbriggs.com/public/Monckton.et.al.pdf). Un artículo juzgado por jurado y, por lo tanto, inmune a la crítica. ¿Sí? Lo que sea, no importa.
Dijimos, en esencia, que sí, que el hombre causa un ligero calentamiento, pero que no es muy grande; y que estaremos bien.
¡Qué maravillosa noticia! El mundo no iba a terminar en una muerte por calor. ¡Todo estaría bien! ¡No tenemos que entrar en pánico!
Qué alivio.
¿Sí?
No.
Se desató lo que llaman una “tormenta de fuego”. Mi antiguo sitio fue hackeado, a Christopher lo insultaron de todas las maneras posibles. Willie y David sufrieron mucho. Hubo investigaciones del Congreso, solicitudes de la FOIA, hersteria [histeria de afeminados], histeria, apoplejía, chisporroteo, protestas y otras formas de locura.
Se descubrió que no aceptamos ningún dinero, ni un céntimo ni ninguna forma de compensación o contraprestación, por escribir el artículo. Esto sí que produjo irritación.
Por supuesto, no nos sorprendió que nos recibieran con hostilidad. Pero el hecho de que fuera hostilidad –y no una crítica sensata– era toda la prueba que necesitábamos para entender que todo esto no es ciencia, sino otra cosa.
Sí, nuestro modelo puede estar equivocado. Muchos modelos se equivocan. Yo cometo muchos errores. Pero la posibilidad de que nos equivoquemos no es algo por lo que debamos enfadarnos.
¿No es así?
Además, les pregunto, ¿cuál modelo y hecho por quién, en los años posteriores, se ha ajustado mejor a la Realidad?
Lo que hizo que ciertas personas se enfadaran fue que si teníamos razón, no había necesidad de ellos. No hacen falta sus “soluciones”, ni el activismo, ni la burocracia, ni las leyes, ni los reglamentos, ni el dinero, ni el prestigio, ni el “oxígeno” que se les da. Que no te necesiten no es un mensaje feliz. Así que lo entiendo.
Por el camino, he investigado muchos métodos utilizados para demostrar (P < 0,05) que el cielo se está cayendo. Lo que se hace en nombre del análisis de series temporales, por ejemplo, es una comedia negra. Pero también están los métodos profundamente sospechosos de "homogeneización" de la temperatura, la falsabilidad (¡ignórala!), la falacia del epidemiólogo, cómo el suavizado aumenta la correlación e induce la falsa creencia en la causalidad, los peligros extremos del "análisis de tendencias" y muchos, muchos, más.
Puedes buscarlos en la página de “posts clásicos” [de el blog de Briggs: https://www.wmbriggs.com/classic-posts/%5D. La búsqueda, por desgracia, es dura. Uno de estos días, digo con algo parecido a un suspiro resignado en su voz, limpiaré esto.
O tal vez no tenga que hacerlo. Como todo lo malo vuelve, seguro que pronto vamos a tratar todos estos temas de nuevo.
De todos modos, una vez que se supo que yo era un "climate denier", de repente tuve menos amigos. Tenía un trabajo en el laboratorio Livermore, en California, para dirigir el grupo de estadísticas. Cuando llegué allí, me recibieron con un "¿Briggs? ¿Briggs qué?" Parece que enfadé a uno de los “creyentes de verdad”.
Pat Michaels, que en paz descanse, me consiguió un trabajo en Cato [CATO institute, un think tank gigante]. Pero me despidieron, una vez más, justo antes de empezar. Resulta que enfadé a otro “creyente de verdad” allí. Uno de los vicepresidentes no estaba contento con mi postura contra el "matrimonio gay".
Tenía otro trabajo en una prestigiosa empresa de consultoría. Un vicepresidente dijo: "No voy a trabajar con un climate denier".
Luego, después de que las conexiones me hicieran volver al mundo académico a tiempo parcial, me despidieron de Cornell. Y entonces…
Pero ya tienes la idea.
Una larga y aburrida historia después, descubrimos que los mismos problemas fundacionales en el "cambio climático" y la ardiente necesidad de proteger estos problemas del escrutinio, se encuentran en todas las ramas de la ciencia, en diversa medida. No me refiero sólo a Woke [los que asumen toda la ideología deconstruccionista contemporánea y se tragan todos los cuentos de los medios de comunicación] y DIE [acrónimo de Diversity-Inclusion-Equity, puro wokismo, que, puesto así, de manera jocosa, significa muerte, en inglés], que son los corrosivos más potentes conocidos por el hombre. Woke y DIE matan todo lo que tocan, no sólo la ciencia.
El problema es más profundo que Woke. También es la Expertocracia, el cientificismo y la cienciolatría [epistemolatría, para ser más correptos y saitos] omnipresentes, el efecto de equipo de expansión loco [¿?], la revisión por pares, los enormes dineros bombeados al sistema y otros defectos similares.
Pero los problemas más profundos son filosóficos y se refieren a los malentendidos sobre lo que es la ciencia y lo que no es, lo que puede hacer la ciencia y lo que no. Si no podemos arreglar esto, no podemos arreglar nada.
Resulta que todavía hay gente que se preocupa por esto –sobre lo cual habrá más información en breve [esto anuncia un nuevo post luego de éste, que no ha llegado aún]–.
As we say at 12 Step meetings, “Thanks for Sharing.” Great essay. I’ve followed a similar path. Was enthused about global warming in the 80’s, read some critical articles (primarily Richard Lindzen’s long critical essay) and was convinced that the computer stuff was faulty. Then came ClimateGate and I was aghast at the unscientific behavior of the Penn State and UK scientists involved. How they acted violated all the scientific ethics that had been drilled into me by my research director at Harvard, E.B. Wilson, Jr. What is Feynman’s quote? “The good scientist has to be the most skeptical one about his own work.” (or something like that.) Keep up the good work Matt and KTF.
Carlos,
Muchisimas gracias!
Matt
Loved reading this! Great photo!! Thank you, Matt!!
God bless, C-Marie
I took a couple of philosophy courses when I was an undergraduate Physics major. They were very interesting and rather difficult.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
-George Bernard Shaw
“Those who tell the truth should have one foot in the stirrup.”
-Armenian proverb
“The truth is something that is somehow discreditable to someone.”
-H. L. Mencken
“But, indeed, the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not supressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries. To speak only of religious opinions: the Reformation broke out at least twenty times before Luther, and was put down. Arnold of Brescia was put down. Fra Dolcino was put down. Savonarola was put down. The Albigeois were put down. The Vaudois were put down. The Lollards were put down. The Hussites were put down. Even after the era of Luther, wherever persecution was persisted in, it was successful. In Spain, Italy, Flanders, the Austrian empire, Protestantism was rooted out; and most likely would have been so in England, had Queen Mary lived, or Queen Elizabeth had died. Persecution has always succeeded, save where the heretics were too strong a party to be effectively persecuted. No reasonable person can doubt that Christianity might have been extirpated in the Roman Empire. It spread and became predominant, because the persecutions were only occasional, lasting but a short time, and separated by long intervals of almost undisturbed propagandism. It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.”
-John Stuart Mill
On Liberty
New York, 1947 (original publication, 1859)
I have this problem at work and at home. I have this problem when I walk into a BC hospital which is 95% female and everyone is wearing a mask. I have this problem when I read about the Bishops of Germany affirming sodomy is great. I have this problem when I read news article about the new leader of the Conservative Party Of Canada.
The problem is that my truth doesn’t line up with other peoples truth and if I point out the reasons I hold my truths I will be excoriated. I’m basically a malcontent at this point. I keep telling myself to hand it over to God. I guess I have to because nobody else wants to listen to me. 🙂
Perhaps discover if “your truth” is the truth. For instance, many but not all of the Bishops of Germany want sodomy legalized by the Catholic Church. This statement is true, but the desire for the legalization of sodomy, expressed within the statement, is a desire in direct opposition to God’s creation of human sexuality, and therefore the desire is calling for sin to be legalized within the Catholic Church …. plus those Bishops appear to not recognize that no one is homosexual … that every person is heterosexual whatever there feelings might be … and that LGBT etc. desires are counterfeits of God’s creation.
So, yes, many these days will not be in agreement with you, so just add them to your daily prayers that they receive the truth from the Holy Spirit.
The new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada looks to possibly be a beacon of hope for good sense leadership.
Remember that true conviction comes via God’s Holy Spirit, so rely on Him, and share when an opening is made. Agreement might not be obvious, but you might well not know what is going on in a person’s heart and mind. With Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour and God, you are on your way!!
God bless, C-Marie
My favorite piece describing the disintegration of the expertocracy is this one by Malcolm Kyeyeune – “Farewell to Bourgeois Kings.” https://tinkzorg.wordpress.com/2021/08/16/farewell-to-bourgeois-kings/
Mr. Briggs, I’m looking forward to the chance to shake your hand. As I’m sure you well know, the laughs (and the tears) are much better over here with the heretics because they’re genuine.
A bientot.
“….But the deepest problems are philosophical, and go to the misunderstandings of what science is, and what science is not, which science can do, and what it can’t. If we can’t fix these, we can’t fix anything.
Turns out there are still people who care about this—about which more shortly…..”
The problem is not deep. It is fairly shallow. And it is not a Philosophical issue – it is an issue in Social Psychology.
Our problem is that we are trying to do a task which requires unbiased minds, with a set of minds which are hopelessly corrupted by the social structures inside which they earn their daily living. Upton Sinclair made a comment about this.
All of this mess could be solved in an instant if researh scientists were not paid, and if scientific papers were published anonymously. Perhaps just the latter would be sufficient….
Pingback: The Great Global Warming—A.K.A. “Climate Change”—A.K.A. “Climate Emergency”—Post! – William M. Briggs
You left out your amazing statistics analysis of voting that you did for Sidney Kraken Powell..
Look, no one has ever claimed science gives no problems, but it is the best process we’ve got for learning about the world, certainly more reliable than stories from books.
Justin
Justin
I don’t or won’t speak for Briggs
I don’t believe Briggs doesn’t respect “science”, I believe Briggs takes issue with “THE SCIENCE TM”
Especially those “scientists” that hide behind THE SCIENCE and claim that if you attack them you attack “science”. (Fauci / Mann)
John
I’ll let Briggs argue his Powell data and conclusions
I’m sure it’s better than the data and conclusions of HockeyStick Mike