Category Archives: Philosophical and speculative

Conclusions first, rigged evidence to follow

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Not news to us, but Melanie Phillips says it so well:

It’s over – but its adherents will never admit it. Just as the exposure of the excesses of Stalinism drove many true believers into an ever more fanatical and deluded defence of Soviet communism, so the conclusive destruction of anthropogenic global warming theory is provoking ever more fantastical contortions by warmist zealots who, contrary to all reputable evidence, claim that the planet is about to turn into a furnace and (pace Bob Geldof) it’s all over for the human race.

The recent release of the IPCC’s Final Draft Report of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis revealed, beyond any measure of doubt, the intellectual vacuity, sophistry, and outright corruption of the AGW industry. Presented as an authoritative statement of the current state of climate change evidence, it was nothing of the kind. Indeed, it wasn’t even any kind of statement of evidence. It was instead a politicised draft summary of evidence that was to be amended to ‘ensure consistency between the full Report and the Summary for Policy-Makers’. As Lewis Carroll might have said: conclusions first, rigged evidence to follow.

Her conclusions are also sobering in another direction, not just the effect on the poor which have been devastating and are likely to get worse, but on the standing of science, which the AGW crowd have taken down with them:

But the implications of this epic scam are even more serious and wide-ranging. For what the warmists have done is nothing less than to undermine public confidence in science itself. Science is a synonym for truth-telling, for the exercise of reason, for open-eyed inquiry and the absolute integrity of following where the evidence leads.

But wrapping themselves in the mantle of science, the warmists have utterly corrupted it: making the evidence fit prior conclusions, suppressing inconvenient truths that blow AGW theory into the stratosphere, tampering with and distorting the facts in order to serve a political agenda, pressurising and intimidating scientists who have tried to tell the truth about nothing-out-of-the-ordinary climate change. With AGW zealots pumping out propaganda under the guise of ‘science’, how is the public to be expected to believe scientists when they do tell the truth about where the evidence leads?

For ultimately, this is not even just about science. It is about truth, evidence and rational thought. The real casualty of the AGW scam is surely reason itself.

The “science is settled” has become a laugh line for a reason.

Where’s the RSPCH?

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bear food stamps

The American system treats its people worse than it treats its animals in the woods. If by some personal disaster you become dependent on the state in the US, the odds that you will ever make it on your own thereafter become long indeed. The theory of welfare dependency is clear enough, as is the evidence, but for those who fall into the trap, their only option, they feel, is to continue to vote for a living for the rest of their lives.

Missing da Vinci shows up after 500 years

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da vinci painting

It obviously hasn’t been sitting in a bank vault for 500 years but that’s where it was found. They had always had the sketch. Now they have the painting that came with it.

After seeing the drawing he produced, the marquesa wrote to the artist, imploring him to produce a full-blown painting.

But shortly afterwards he embarked on one of his largest works, The Battle of Anghiari on the walls of Florence’s town hall, and then, in 1503, started working on the Mona Lisa.

Art historians had long believed he simply ran out of time — or lost interest — in completing the commission for Isabella d’Este.

Now it appears that he did in fact manage to finish the project — perhaps when he encountered the aristocrat, one of the most influential female figures of her day, in Rome in 1514.

Whatever, whenever, it is an amazing picture and even in profile she does have that smile.

A great dark age coming

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Andrew Bolt drew attention to an article by Keith Windschuttle that discussed the views of the historian Stuart Macintyre. In his article, Windschuttle wrote:

Macintyre also harbours a deep distaste for this country’s British heritage. In the concluding chapter of A Concise History of Australia (1999), he is comforted by the prediction that, just as the Romans were displaced in Britain, Aborigines and Asians will eventually supplant the colonisers of British descent in Australia. Just as the only remnant of the Roman empire in Britain is ‘a thin slice of the island’s multi-layered past’, so too will the British colonisation be overlaid by the culture and practices of other peoples.

The belief that Western culture, our heritage, is the great scourge of the earth, and that the planet would be a better place if we were more or less displaced by others, is a persistent meme on the left. I have heard this sentiment in various forms from a number of my leftist associates. How to deal with it, defeat it, roll it back, is the great question for which I have no answer. I fear that for all our technical sophistication, a great dark age may be coming. We have opened our borders and elect our enemies to positions of high authority. The commanding heights of elite positions in our academic, media and political worlds are filled with many who hate the West but love its benefits which they hope to continue to receive no matter what goes on below. Their aim is to remain amongst those elites even as the rest of society sinks into an abyss for which they will take no responsibility but nevertheless hope to escape the consequences which will be dire for anyone who finds they are part of the dependent classes.

My favourite baseball moment

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This is probably my favourite baseball moment of all time (except for watching my children play). It is the first game of the 1963 World Series, played astonishingly 50 years ago today. But it is the game in which Sandy Koufax struck out the first five Yankees he faced and in which he eventually struck out 15 of the 27 outs over the whole of the game to set the record. I can still remember watching it on the set. There really never has been a pitcher quite like Koufax.

How Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs

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This is such a fantastic story about that month of September 1927 in which Babe Ruth from nowhere came to hit 60 home runs in a single season. It’s titled Babe Ruth’s Summer of Records and written by Bill Bryson who makes everything come alive. Just one section as a sampler but read it all:

Pitching carefully (as you might expect), Hopkins worked the count to 3 and 2, then tried to sneak a slow curve past Ruth. It was an outstanding pitch. ‘It was so slow,’ Hopkins recalled for Sports Illustrated seventy years later at the age of ninety-four, ‘that Ruth started to swing and then hesitated, hitched on it and brought the bat back. And then he swung, breaking his wrists as he came through it. What a great eye he had! He hit it at the right second—put everything behind it. I can still hear the crack of the bat. I can still see the swing.’ It was Ruth’s 59th home run, tying a record that less than a month before had seemed hopelessly out of reach.

The ball floated over the head of the right fielder, thirty-seven-year-old Sam Rice, who is largely forgotten now but was one of the great players of his day and also one of the most mysterious, for he had come to major league baseball seemingly from out of nowhere.

Fifteen years earlier, Rice had been a promising youngster in his first season in professional baseball with a minor league team in Galesburg, Illinois. While he was away for the summer, his wife moved with their two small children onto his parents’ farm near Donovan, Indiana. In late April, a tornado struck near Donovan, killing seventy-five people. Among the victims were Rice’s wife, children, mother, and two sisters. Rice’s father, himself seriously injured, was found wandering in shock with one of the dead children in his arms; he died nine days later in the hospital. So, at a stroke, Rice lost his entire family. Dazed with grief, Rice drifted around America working at odd jobs. Eventually he enlisted in the navy. While playing for a navy team his remarkable talents became apparent. Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, somehow heard of this, invited him for a trial, and was impressed enough to sign him. Rice joined the Senators and in his thirties became one of the finest players in baseball. No one anywhere knew of his personal tragedy.

I just love baseball stories which are different from the stories associated with any other sport. But the greatest book of them all is The Glory of their Times which I read young, either showing that from the very start I had an interest in ancient times or perhaps even bringing me to my interest in them.

Betting on global warming

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A very perceptive comment about betting at the track by Armadillo who for some reason put it on a post dealing with global warming and the IPCC.

I confess to know very little about climate change science. The left keeps urging me to ‘trust the experts’ – they have reviewed all of the data and they alone are best placed to make a judgement on this very complex area. Fair enough. But I have been pondering where I have seen something very similar? When I purchased today’s Daily Telegraph, it suddenly dawned on me. It was sitting right there in the middle of the paper, staring me in the face.

I love to have a punt. Every week, there are about 5 professional tipsters willing to predict what is going to happen. They are paid full time to do it. They have all the relevant information at their finger tips. The breeding, the jockey, the trainer, the track conditions, the horse, it’s last run and even down to the break-up of what times the horse ran over a particular section of it’s last race (right down to a tenth of a second). The facts are indisputable. It’s all there in black and white.

These professional tipsters spend their entire week reviewing the data. They watch every race in minute detail, re-playing them over and over. They observe the evidence. They even load all the known information into complex computer models to assist in their analysis. These people are experts in their field. They know much more about horse racing than I ever will. They should be trusted.

Sometimes these guys disagree on their conclusions. Other times, they are in total agreement. Geez, if they are all saying that a certain horse is going to win based on the evidence, I can be 97% sure that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Surely? However, there are also ‘known unknowns’ – other information and factors that they are unaware of or don’t completely understand (such as who’s putting money in who’s hands).

Tomorrow, I shall do as I always do. I will look at todays tips and compare them to the actual results. As always, I’m likely to be disappointed and poorer for the experience. With all the available data, how could these experts get it so wrong? What will they tell their boss on Monday morning? What excuse will they offer? Never fear, they will be back in my newspaper next Saturday morning, offering the same expert analysis and still getting paid.

I wonder. What would be more difficult to predict if you had all the information in front of you? If you had the facts? If you had all the tools? If you knew there were ‘known unknowns’? Would it be predicting the outcome of a simple horse race? Or would it be predicting the climate of an entire planet?

I’m probably going to have a few bets today based on what the experts tell me. But don’t panic, I’m not going to ask everyone else to throw in a couple of hundred billion dollars just in case these guys are actually right (for a change).

Righto then, I’m off to Sportsbet. Enjoy your day.

But it’s a great game

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The Grand Final parade is just outside my door here on Swanston Street. And I may have mentioned this before but part of the way I think the Australian personality has been molded into possibly the most tolerant nation on earth is because we began with our football leagues only local. The AFL not all that long ago was the VFL. So when you went to the footy, there you were standing shoulder to shoulder with people who barracked for Collingwood or Essendon. And most of the time – not always but most of the time – people learned to be civilised in spite of all the mean things people said to each other. And the phrase I would hear time and again to cool things off would be, “but it’s a great game”. And so it is. The game is the thing and transcends all personal differences.

The Grand Final is tomorrow, Hawthorn (the first team I followed in Australia but not for very long) against the Dockers of Fremantle. For me, on this one day in September, I will revert to following the colours of my university.

White and purple colours are
Worn by all who know
Just which college is the best
Come and let us show.

But it is a great game, the best form of football found anywhere in the world, and I’ve watched them all.