While the MIT group espouses lofty-sounding objectives to provide leadership with “independent policy analysis and public education in global environmental change,” we found their procedures inconsistent with important forecasting principles. No more than 30% of forecasting principles were properly applied by the MIT modellers and 49 principles were violated. For an important problem such as this, we do not think it is defensible to violate a single principle.
Read the rest by Kesten Green And J. Scott Armstrong. (John Stossel just wrote about this too.) This flawed MIT study, by the way, is in part the basis of a recent column by Paul Krugman in which he labels anyone who doubts the “consensus” “science” of climate change as a “denier” guilty of “treason against the planet,” whatever the hell that means.
The last time I checked “the planet” wasn’t something you could commit treason against, which just goes to show you how off the rocker persons like Krugman are, and what a bizarre cult environmentalism is. And I do mean cult. It’s brainwashed into our population, especially the young, and any deviation from their belief system is treated as heresy.
These people aren’t scientists, for they accept no debate whatsoever — see Audubon Deputy Director Eric Draper below. They’re just bullies who wish to use our legislators to jam backdoor taxes down our throats.
Here’s a little more:
The group’s objective implicitly rejects the possibility of no or unimportant change or, despite mention of uncertainties, the possibility of unpredictable change. People who do research on forecasting know that a forecast of “no change” can be hard, if not impossible, to beat in many circumstances. A forecast of no change does not mean that one should necessarily expect things not to vary. Such a forecast can be appropriate even when a great deal of change is possible but the direction, extent or duration is uncertain.
When one looks at long series of Earth’s temperatures, one finds that they have gone up and down irregularly, over long and short periods, on all time scales from years to millennia. Moreover, science has not been able to tell us why. There is much uncertainty about past climate changes and about the strength and even direction of causal relationships. To wit, do warming temperatures result in more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or is it the other way round — or maybe a bit of both? Does warming of the atmosphere result in negative or positive feedback from clouds? There are many more such questions without answers. All this strongly suggests that a no-change forecast is the appropriate benchmark long-term forecast.
Well, sure. It’s hard for university study groups, et. al., to ask for millions more in taxpayer grant money if their findings return “no change.” So, Krugman may mock “deniers” as those who “to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.” It’s akin to a reverse of the adage ‘No Bucks, No Buck Rogers’ — No certain disaster to justify the study, no more funding.
Meanwhile, Krugman and his ilk — ever the double-standard applying hypocrites they are — would have you believe that “deniers” are a cabal consisting of thousands of scientists all backed by Big Oil, or Dick Cheney, or Neocons, or Haliburton, or insert the liberal boogeyman of the month here [ _____ ] and therefore not worthy of retort. To date, this is the number of debates that Al Gore has accepted on the topic of global warming: ZERO.
Sorry for Krugman, but for every scientist he can find backing global warming one can find a scientist in doubt of that. Which brings us back to the precautionary principle — i.e., insurance. But if carbon trading schemes are the equivilant of multi-billion dollar taxs, well, the American people are better off taking their chances.