May 28, 2020 at 1:47 p.m.
The models aren't the problem
The models aren't the problem
Barnes got right to the heart of the matter, and so shall we: "We are seeing many similarities between the deadly spread of COVID-19 and the growing threat of climate change," Barnes said.
Well, his statement is somewhat accurate, but let us tweak it. What we are actually seeing is a similarity between the projected deadliness of COVID-19 and the projected deadliness of human-caused, or anthropomorphic, climate change.
In both cases, the experts have told us, the world as we know it is pretty much coming to an end if we don't follow the most severe prescriptions offered up by globalist governments.
In the case of COVID-19, the prescription to save the world has been to lockdown and destroy the economy. You know, save the world by destroying it.
In the case of climate change, the prescription has been to, oh yeah, lockdown and destroy the economy. Again, save the world by destroying it.
Or, to be more accurate in both cases, save the elite by destroying everybody else.
The only difference is the way the economy is to be locked down and destroyed. With the virus, the government just orders businesses across the land closed for reasons of public health. With climate change, the goal is to choke businesses into bankruptcy using the most restrictive emission standards imaginable.
All in the name of the environment and public health, of course.
Naturally, the experts tell us, both outcomes will necessitate new ways of living, as mandated by government. In our new climate-protected life, we'll walk and bike more, and use mass transit, and get rid of cows and airplanes and human sanity. We'll all be poor - victims of energy shortages and sky-high utility prices - and there won't be any jobs outside of government, but we'll survive on the government dole.
Now, after COVID-19, there will be a similar transformation of life, a new normal, as the experts are putting it. Here's how Barnes said it: "That's why work on the Task Force on Climate Change is so important as we reshape how we live our everyday lives and rethink how our systems are working - or not working - for the communities in our state."
And how do we do all this? According to Barnes, we put "action behind science and data" to minimize the threats.
How nice. So, according to the experts, COVID-19 and climate change are a lot alike, as Barnes reminded us. By the way, if you haven't guessed it by now, the experts are all in the same ideological camp.
The problem is, the data and science the experts used to project the deadly threat of climate change and the deadly results of COVID-19 were all wrong, a fact Barnes apparently missed.
In both cases, in climate change and in COVID-19 projections, we were told by the scientists and their models, the sky was about to fall. In 2013, models predicted a summer ice-free Arctic by 2016. It didn't happen. In 2009, Al Gore said computer modeling showed that the polar ice cap would disappear by 2014. It didn't. In 2004, scientists warned that major cities would sink beneath the oceans by 2020. They haven't, and we'll make huge bets they don't. And so on.
Et tu, COVID-19 models? Unfortunately, yes. Hospitals would be overwhelmed, the models told us. One model projected 2.2 million American deaths. Not even close.
Even New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a fit of frustration, has admitted the models were all wrong: "Now, people can speculate. People can guess. I think next week, I think two weeks, I think a month. I'm out of that business (of guessing) because we all failed at that business. Right? All the early national experts. Here's my projection model. Here's my projection model. They were all wrong. They were all wrong."
Yes, they were, Andrew. They were all wrong.
He sounded much like Professor Myles Allen of Oxford University some years ago when he finally admitted the computer models on climate change were all wrong: "We haven't seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models. We haven't seen that in the observations."
No, we haven't, Myles, no we certainly haven't.
Here's the thing, though. The problem isn't the models. The problem is the cache of radicals who try to use the models to scare everyone out of their wits so they will agree to extreme measures.
Let's talk about the models. First, they most often offer a range of possible outcomes. Nothing wrong with that.
Second, models are not the real world. They are simulations that often don't account for the messiness of real life. Their intersection could be described as Star Trek's Lt. Commander Data trying to interact with his decidedly irrational human counterparts.We always end up with a plot twist.
Third, it is well known in scientific circles that different people, using the same model in the same situation, often produce different results, and that such variability is normal.
It's not that models have no value; it's that the value lies in the insight and possibilities they provide, to be used in context with human beings exchanging ideas and working together toward a solution.
They are not meant to be specific predictions upon which critical public policies should be based. Ask a real scientist and he or she will tell you that.
Unfortunately, in the pseudoscientific political world, the pseudoscientists take control. Suddenly, the worst case scenarios are plucked from the models from among a range of scenarios and presented as fact. Suddenly extreme possibilities are used to justify extreme policies.
By the time the real world proves them wrong, the damage has been done. People's lives have been ruined or altered forever.
Already climate change policies are inflicting real economic suffering on people around the globe and it looks like that will get worse. The Paris Accords, which is strangling the very life out of the developed European world, is the quintessential example of this kind of politics.
At least it was until the 2020 worldwide lockdowns of COVID-19. Now gloom and doom health predictions are producing real-world economic doom and gloom, just as the radicals predicted.
Only it wasn't the virus, or even the computer models, that brought us gloom and doom. That responsibility belongs to the politicians and experts who paved our path to hell with "data and science," not with a little common sense and logic.
One can only guess what the next problem to come along will be. One thing is for sure, though, the problem will be inflated into crisis, then computer models will show the catastrophic outcomes if we don't follow the mandates, and then the policy radicals will try to impose those mandates.
But don't blame the models. Blame the public officials who manipulate them, and enslave themselves - and us - to them.
For those radicals, the only way to save something will always be to destroy it. For such radicals, every day is doomsday, and only the government can save your life.
Comments:
You must login to comment.