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The COMMENTARY podcast on the Left’s anxiety over the effort to limit climate change models from projecting the effect of CO2 emissions 100 years out to just 40 years and the success of the pro-Brexit party in European Parliament elections.
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The Pill belongs on John’s list of things unforeseen in 1919. Should be up there with the splitting of the atom, methinks.
Generally good podcast. I found Ms. Rosen’s discussion of “far-right populism” and “xenophobia” to be tiresome. The consensus seems to be more realistic about the problems of immigration. Even Ms. Rosen seemed to recognize this, but I found it unfortunate that she uses these terms, which seem to me to be part of the standard tactic the Left consisting of applying a denigrating label to those with whom you disagree.
I do not get the impression that Ms. Rosen is a Leftist. Quite the contrary. I am troubled that she yields the linguistic ground to the Left on these points.
Predicting into the future to the year 2100 — from 1950 to 2100, the population of Africa as compared to Europe is supposed to increase by a factor of 14 or 17 by I think latest estimates.
Yeah, but many of them will move. If Niger can’t feed its people now, what will happen when their population is 10 times larger, etc.
I’m not really interested in most global warming discussions.
Man, everyone is voting green or Nazi. So, now Nazi means euroskeptic – beautiful. Or is it just that it means pro-controlled immigration.
Apparently Naziism was pretty tame. Who knew.
Great Niche Podcast
There was a certain amount of scientific ignorance displayed in the first segment – some of it expressly admitted, some of it not.
For instance, they mocked the idea of how useless a model is when it displays a range of outcomes. But that’s the whole point of having a model! If emissions stay at current levels, climate change will cause X; if emissions drop, climate change will cause Y. That’s not “not scientific” – the whole point is to determine whether the effort of lowering emissions would be worth it. After all, it would be pretty stupid to kneecap the economy if it won’t make any difference, right? That’s why you investigate what difference it will or won’t make.
This dovetails with the discussion of how quickly technology changes and the difficulty of prediction. Let’s assume that the Left stops being moronic about nuclear power and lets us actually build nuclear power plants. Greenhouse emissions will drop immensely, right? So it’s a good thing that we have models that investigate whether or not that will make a difference, and whether we should make any effort to push in that direction to help solve the problem.
None of this, of course, speaks to whether or not it’s justified to do these on the government dime; surely there are enough research institutions that could accomplish the same thing. But arbitrary political meddling in the model like the Trump administration is doing is not legitimate.