Ignoring the video - which is typical bilge - I'll move on to actual substance. Here is the crux of the current panic that is gripping the Warmies... Their empire is crumbling and they know it. Hence, they are lashing out in panic and anger. This is typical of most socialist scams when they go belly-up, as is further evidenced by the riots in Europe and elsewhere.

The Warmies have always had a particularly ugly sow’s ear they were desperately trying to turn into a silk purse. Their primary concern has never been the cliimate. Their sole objectives have always been entirely oriented around the creation of expensive programs which force human beings to accept decreased standards of living, reduced freedoms, higher taxes, less food, costly commodities, limited transportation, and onerous regulations. In exchange for all these burdens, humanity was to be provided a very nebulous ‘benefit’ (0.001% lower C02) which was by no means even guaranteed by the implementation of their draconian measures. That’s a tough bottle of snake oil to sell, even IF you have ironclad proof of your argument. And of course when it came right down do it the problem with the Warmies' argument was that they NEVER had proof of any kind beyond fabrications, exaggerations, and fevered imagination.

One of the main problems with all you Warmies is that you can't put forward a position. You talk about 'scientific proof' of 'climate change'. Pht. You don't need the rigor of scientific method to tell anyone that the climage changes. Dur dur dur. Everyone accepts the premise that Earth's climate is not static. Wow - what a keen observation.

Where the Warmies have lost the argument is thier plaintive, inaccurate, unproven position that HUMAN C02 emmissions are (A) what changes the climate and (B) the climate can be changed by reducing human C02. There was never any evidence of that position. But Warmies love to muddle terminology and pretend that just because 'scientists' agree that climate is changing (again - not much of an accomplishment) that also all those scientists agree that human activity is responsible for it (which they most decidedly do NOT).

Add on top of that the fundamental reality that many of the cornerstones of the APG Warmie movement have been proven to be complete bunk. Just this week the Polar Bear guy was proven by a federal probe to be completely full of crap. He had no data that bears were dying because of human activity as he claiimed. The hockey stick chart - falsified. East Anglia university data - the numbers are cooked. The IPCC panels - all thier data is bad and the majority of thier claims have all been debunked and failed. Time and time again when you put the Warmies under the microscope of REAL SCIENCE, the argument completely falls apart.

The video has it completely backwards. It is not FOX & conservatives who are faking thier way. The entire climate change movement and all its acolytes are the ones who are lying to accomplish a biased, incorrect, inaccurate, anti-science objective entirely for political purposes.

Lyrics:

“Fight of the Century” Lyrics.

Written by John Papola and Russ Roberts

KEYNES
Here we are… peace out! great recession
thanks to me, as you see, we’re not in a depression
Recovery, destiny if you follow my lesson
Lord Keynes, here I come, line up for the procession

HAYEK
We brought out the shovels but we’re still in a ditch…
And still digging. don’t you think that it’s time for a switch…
From that hair of the dog. Friend, the party is over.
The long run is here. It’s time to get sober!

KEYNES
Are you kidding? my cure works perfectly fine…
have a look, the great recession ended back in ’09.
I deserve credit. Things would have been worse
All the estimates prove it—I’ll quote chapter and verse

HAYEK
Econometricians, they’re ever so pious
Are they doing real science or confirming their bias?
Their “Keynesian” models are tidy and neat
But that top down approach is a fatal conceit

REFRAIN
Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
…the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round

it’s time to weigh in…
more from the top or from the ground
…lets listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwing down

KEYNES
we could have done better, had we only spent more
Too bad that only happens when there’s a World War
You can carp all you want about stats and regression
Do you deny World War II cut short the Depression?

HAYEK
Wow. One data point and you’re jumping for joy
the Last time I checked, wars only destroy
There was no multiplier, consumption just shrank
As we used scarce resources for every new tank

Pretty perverse to call that prosperity
Rationed meat, Rationed butter… a life of austerity
When that war spending ended your friends cried disaster
yet the economy thrived and grew ever faster

KEYNES
You too only see what you want to see
The spending on war clearly goosed GDP
Unemployment was over, almost down to zero
That’s why I’m the master, that’s why I’m the hero

HAYEK
Creating employment’s a straigtforward craft
When the nation’s at war, and there’s a draft
If every worker was staffed in the army and fleet
We’d be at full employment with nothing to eat

REFRAIN REPEATS

HAYEK
jobs are the means, not the ends in themselves
people work to live better, to put food on the shelves
real growth means production of what people demand
That’s entrepreneurship not your central plan

KEYNES
My solution is simple and easy to handle..
its spending that matters, why’s that such a scandal?
The money sloshes through the pipes and the sluices
revitalizing the economy’s juices

it’s just like an engine that’s stalled and gone dark
To bring it to life, we need a quick spark
Spending’s the life blood that gets the flow going
Where it goes doesn’t matter, just get spending flowing

HAYEK
You see slack in some sectors as a “general glut”
But some sectors are healthy, and some in a rut
So spending’s not free – that’s the heart of the matter
too much is wasted as cronies get fatter.

The economy’s not a car, there’s no engine to stall
no expert can fix it, there’s no “it” at all.
The economy’s us, we don’t need a mechanic
Put away the wrenches, the economy’s organic

REFRAIN REPEATS

KEYNES
so what would you do to help those unemployed?
this is the question you seem to avoid
when we’re in a mess, would you just have us wait?
Doing nothing until markets equil-i-brate?

HAYEK
I don’t want to do nothing, there’s plenty to do
The question I ponder is who plans for who?
Do I plan for myself or leave it to you?
I want plans by the many and not by the few.

We shouldn’t repeat what created our troubles
I want real growth not just a series of bubbles
Let’s stop bailing out losers and let prices work
If we don’t try to steer them they won’t go berserk

KEYNES
Come on, Are you kidding? Don’t Wall Street’s gyrations
Challenge your world view of self-regulation?
Even you must admit that the lesson we’ve learned
Is more oversight’s needed or else we’ll get burned

HAYEK
Oversight? The government’s long been in bed
With the Wall Street execs and the firms that they’ve led
Prosperity’s all about profit and loss
When you bail out the losers there’s no end to the cost

the lesson I’ve learned? It’s how little we know,
the world is complex, not some circular flow
the economy’s not a class you can master in college
to think otherwise is the pretense of knowledge

REFRAIN REPEATS

KEYNES
You get on your high horse and you’re off to the races
I look at the world on a case by case basis
When people are suffering I roll up my sleeves
And do what I can to cure our disease

The future’s uncertain, our outlooks are frail
Thats why free markets are so prone to fail
In a volatile world we need more discretion
So state intervention can counter depression

HAYEK
People aren’t chessmen you can move on a board
at your whim–their dreams and desires ignored
With political incentives, discretion’s a joke
The dials you’re twisting… are just mirrors and smoke

We need stable rules and real market prices
so prosperity emerges and cuts short the crisis
give us a chance so we can discover
the most valuable ways to serve one another

FINAL REFRAIN
Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round

it’s time to weigh in…
more from the top or from ground
…lets listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwing down

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Maybe you saw Contact when you were 14, but there's nothing juvenile about the movie. It's full of big ideas and based on Sagan's best arguments for the existence of extra-terrestrial life. It's Science Fiction at it's best - inspiring, though-provoking, and able to move people to do more real science.

>> ^Tymbrwulf:

@dag I haven't seen Knowing(Nic Cage? srsly?) or Moon, but I'll agree wholeheartedly about Dark City. Contact was cool if you're 14, but to each his own.
I'd also add:
The Thirteenth Floor
Gattaca
They both ask questions about our reality/values and reflect on them in some interesting ways.
As for this movie? Looks like your average popcorn flick hero movie that Hollywood's been trying to cash in on since Superman 2.
Also, if you liked Contact, you might enjoy Stargate

wow my first top 15!

This is the kind of thing we really need to get more kids involved with real science, real thinking. Just a drop in the bucket, but its a step in the right direction.

No, StarTrek is more real.
It has enough technobabble to be possibly real.
Homeopathy is has enough real science to know for sure to be 100% bullshit.

Wow, I smell a brewing love story here. Maddow and Beck sitting in a tree K I S S I N G.

Both sides can stick it up their fucking asses.

Real Science doesn't deal with politics it deals with measurements, observations, and hypotheses. It has no time for touching the hearts and minds of people, or creating propaganda.

Politicians, racketeers, and media perpetuate bad science. I like my science straight from the source, and not the news.

>> ^Lodurr:
You don't have to practice or believe any of these things, but just don't deny them all and claim science on your side. Real science closes very few doors. Science doesn't say "what we can't prove doesn't exist"; science says "what we can disprove doesn't exist." That's the distinction in which I find many atheists to be on the wrong side.


you're right, science can not prove or disprove the existence of a metaphysical higher being. But it can disprove various accounts depicted in the Bible (i.e. genesis), and the personal god that many theists believe in (i.e. one that answers prayers). So while we cannot invoke science to refute that Christ is our savior, we can use science to disprove many of Christianity's beliefs and dogma.

Where atheism dips into dogma isn't at its core belief, but in how atheists prejudge and reject ideas that come from religions. Just because the Christian god is a myth doesn't mean that there's no value to silent personal reflection, participating in local community events, a personal relationship to an impersonal world, and belief in extra-physical connectedness between living things.

You don't have to practice or believe any of these things, but just don't deny them all and claim science on your side. Real science closes very few doors. Science doesn't say "what we can't prove doesn't exist"; science says "what we can disprove doesn't exist." That's the distinction in which I find many atheists to be on the wrong side.

No real science involved, imo. Unless Up counts as a science documentary

*nochannel *commercial *spacy *viral

>> ^phelixian:
Like the guy. Liked his answer. Don't think it was mind blowing. Would rather have heard him talk about real science topics like quantum entanglement or something.


I don't think quantum physics is his specialty. Also you don't have to go very deep into quantum physics to step from established facts to pure speculation. It can be interesting but also very misleading to the general public. (Why I personally don't like the way Michio Kaku usually explains stuff on TV...)

Anyway, Neil's pretty good at speaking relevant (and funny) sentences without much of a pause. It often feels almost like a prepared speech.

Like the guy. Liked his answer. Don't think it was mind blowing. Would rather have heard him talk about real science topics like quantum entanglement or something.

WP is not only a preeminent sociologist, a brilliant political scientist, but also a climate expert.

Nope - just a statistician who has seen the data, viewed the methodologies, and concluded that if the entirety of the AWG movement's 'evidence' was manifested as water then it wouldn't be able to moisten the inside of a thimble.

Conspiracy

Who said it was a conspiracy? More like standard operating proceedure. Governments have been troweling out millions to scientists for a long time. It is only in the last 15 years or so that they started troweling it out for purposes of justifying 'global warming'. Left wing politicians want taxes to generate revenue to pay for social programs, as well as to 'engineer' society. This carbon credit scheme will be the biggest money sponge of all time. So government hands out the money like candy to any outfit that proposes they can find even the loosest, most distant connections imaginable between human C02 & 'warming'.

The message is crystal clear. Need a big fat grant for your research center? Have a few guys propose a 'global warming' study, and there you go. These outfits try as best they CAN to apply real science, but the fact remains that all of their conclusions rest on specious mathematical models that are absolute garbage (and that's being kind).

The only way taxes will drop C02 level is as a byproduct of punishing prosperity. The money will not go towards 'green' technology that will change the world as we know it. It will just go into government and get spent on the same stuff as always. They are relying on the stifling nature of onerous taxation to force human beings to scale back economic activity.

Pure insanity. Have they even considered what this is going to do economically? Slow down the economy, and you reduce GDP. Reduce GDP, and you reduce revenue. Reduce revenue & government must be REDUCED. But they aren't planning for that. They are thinking they are going to do this cap & trade scheme, and STILL have a steadily increasing GDP. I look at their plans, and can reach no other conclusion than that our leaders have gone completely insane.

I've already run the numbers, and the ONLY possible way to get the planet to return to 230 PPM atmospheric C02 is to reduce Earth's population by about 5 billion people. Anything short of that is window dressing.

Hi, first post, loooong time lurker. Awesome vids on here, everywhere on this site.

I thought this video was incredible. It's so obvious to me who has watched and understood the video vs someone with a closed mind to scientific experimentation in this area.

If you watched/understood the video you would see that he gave us a "laymans" description of his ideas. His theory wasn't even explained, just mentioned due to time.

What he is advocating is more credible, real, science done on a phenomenon that clearly seems to exist in many populations on the planet.

Science starts with a guess.

I have a degree in economics, and I agree with Feynman 100% (at least with regards to economics). Beyond the simple operation of supply and demand, economics is complete bullshit. It imitates the rigor of real science, with the math and everything, but it starts from fundamentally wrong assumptions about human behavior. It actually assumes away all psychology, biology, circumstance, tradition, institutions, politics, physics, sociology - until all you're left with is an optimizing machine bearing no resemblance to any human being. Economics is a branch of math - it is not a science. In fact, calling it "science" gives science a bad name.

In my opinion, psychology is the most scientific of the social sciences. Even though they cannot come up with laws of human behavior, they at least do actual experiments where they try to discover statistical regularities of human behavior. If economics were based on psychology, while incorporating insights from other disciplines, it might actually be a science.

>> ^quantumushroom:


Scientists are human, fallible, biased, cliquish, etc. Like everyone else with a job, they also have to deal with politics.
I have a job and I don’t have to deal with politics. I come in, do what is expected, and every two weeks they cut me a check. No politics, no drama. Although, I have noticed over the years very often people that are not good at their jobs blame “politics” for all their woes.

When money speaks, the truth keeps silent,

If that was true, and considering the deep pockets of big tobacco, then the health risks associated with smoking would have never seen the light of day.

and there are infinite ways to distort raw data,

Until another scientist comes along, discovers the distortion and blows the whole deal. Scientific frauds are very hard to pull off, and when a fraud is discovered, its always discovered by another scientist.

There's more junk science than real science being reported by the media charlatans.

And how’s that the scientists fault? They don’t have a say in what the talking heads report.

Lots of scary bullshit that never comes to pass, and the taxpayers always get stuck with the bill

Yea. Reagan’s SDI program comes to mind.

for the next round of tyrannical laws which do nothing except expand the size of government.

The size of the government expanded at an astronomical rate under Bush and the Republican controlled congress, a president and congress that was also somewhat less than enthused about science. If one wants an example of conservatives ignoring science while interjecting themselves in the private life of citizens, look no further than the Terri Schivo debacle.

I can think of no examples where scientists have bowed to political pressures, out side of instances like when they had to build a working a-bomb, or get a man on the moon. I can however instantly cite Copernicus and Galileo as examples of where scientists have stood their ground against political pressures.