Bob Hayes Online

I think the debate over AGW has grown confused for many reasons, but one of the important ones is that there actually two related but separate propositions being argued. For political reasons, proponents of the AGW theory have deliberately fused the two propositions, but for clarity of perception I think it important that we separate them and see them in their actual relatioship.

The first proposition is that due to the activities of mankind – eating, breathing, farming, building cities and factories, driving – the planet is getting somewhat warmer – not drastically, but measurably.

The second proposition is that these changes, combined with our species’ other environmental depredations, is going to lead to some type of Climate Armageddon, with the species’ future in doubt and our poverty all but assured. (I regularly see AGW-friendly commentators expounding this doom and gloom as a simple stated fact, something assumed as obvious, as a consequence of AGW.)

Science has largely decided that the first element – it’s getting warmer, mostly – is true. Wrangles over the CRU’s exact level of culpability aside, they don’t need to fudge the data to show some warming; the exact instances of malfeasance at CRU look at this early date to be in areas like trying to eradicate inconvenient truths like historical climate optima when things were a bit warmer than they are now. That effort, to dampen debate by trying to create a pretend consensus that something inconvenient to a simple, easily-sold narrative simply never happened – an “unevent” – is reprehensible and vile, but not central to the core of AGW proposition number one. Other data sources also show a warming trend, and while I am very willing to believe that there are corrupt scientists in the world, I do not believe that they are everywhere. Someone is always willing to be the hero by proving the truth in the face of such conspiracies of lies, and climate science is hardly Mafia-like enough to enforce complete silence.

It’s the second element where the real debate should be occurring, and mostly, it isn’t.

Could AGW lead to catastrophic scenarios? Sure. I’d wager it won’t, for complex reasons having to do with human adaptability and the survival instinct, but I’ll readily admit I could be wrong in my guess. But the burden of proof for such catastrophic possibilities is on the people proposing them; the rest of us don’t have to justify our use of energy to selfishly heat our homes and feed our families by first disproving that this is going to cause Gotterdammerung.

Society must tread warily. Advocates of the strong AGW position are fond of arguing the precautionary principle, but seem much less heedful of its guidance when it comes to social engineering. Our EPA has just declared that every human being (and other breathing life form) on the planet to be polluters, by virtue of our respiratory metabolism and its production of carbon dioxide. Global elites are meeting now in Copenhagen to throw bones to the developing world and monkey wrenches into their own economies.

I do not believe that the science justifies such strong measures. A social precautionary principle, that we should not throw away centuries of economic progress and betterment of human welfare on a whim, must guide us as we determine how best to match the needs of our species with the constraints of our planet.

Just click on it.

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has a suggestion for asthmatics: eat lots of apples, pears, grapes, garlic, and onions. He claims it greatly reduced his asthma’s severity.

I have no inherent interest in asthma, but my mother sometimes suffers and it’s easier for me to post this link and tell her “check my blog” than it is to send her the URL directly.

…Hilarity ensues.

Well, perhaps “hilarity” is stretching a point, but I smiled.

Although for some reason, Bruce never did seem to learn to echolocate.

But you can learn.

…and Michael W. Chapman certainly does like to type “Dickey-Wicker“.

Wild.

Science: it works, bitches!

H/T AoS.

The reaction in the left blogosphere to the recent study of math performance in US schools is interesting. The post at Alas seems fairly representative; boys and girls are the same at math, Larry Summers was an idjit, etc. In fairness to Jeff and others, they are probably taking their interpretations from media reports of the study, which were quite often fundamentally dishonest about one of the study’s key findings.

The study doesn’t show what Jeff Fecke, media figures, and others think that it shows. Yes, it does indicate that the overall performance of boys and girls is equivalent – the average boy and the average girl are at about the same level of mathematical ability. But Summers (and most informed observers) never claimed that “boys are better at math”. Instead, the claim has always been that the increased variability of male performance means that there will be more boys at both ends of the spectrum. The bell curve is flatter for boys, probably for genetic reasons, and there are more geniuses and more poor performers than we find among girls. That effect, in turn, means that at the extreme right-hand side of the bell curve, where (for example), math and science professors tend to come from, we’re going to see more boys as a natural consequence of the statistical reality. That was Summer’s (often-maligned, and in fact, often completely reversed and misrepresented with shocking dishonesty, point.) It would be amusing, if it weren’t so distressing, to see so many people who allegedly know how to read and think interpreting Summer’s comments, which boiled down to “there’s a difference in the number of brains that can hit the target, and there’s also discrimination against the brains that happen to belong to females”, as “there is no discrimination and girls are stupid!”

Unfortunately for egalitarians, though, the study shows that the conventional wisdom about variability is, once again, proven to be a real phenomenon. The study found consistently more variability among boys than among girls, at every grade level, in every state. (Marginal Revolution explains the findings quite coherently here.) The study findings are consistent with the bulk of previous work in the field; it is simply no longer a controversial point that there is greater variability among males than among females in mathematical ability.

But that won’t stop egalitarians from claiming the intellectual high ground, and accusing people of idiocy, for the crime of being 100% correct about a reality that egalitarians find distressing. Larry Summers may have been wrong about his weighting of the three factors he proposed for the differential numbers of men and women in math and science (female reluctance for whatever reason to engage in the horrible grind that many math and science jobs represent, ability-based differences in the population of those able to fill those jobs in the first place, and overt discrimination). He left out the fact that many women who have incredibly high math skills also have incredibly high verbal skills (in contrast to males, where my understanding is that it is more common to find men with just one or the other) and thus have access to other high-status career fields.

But he was right about the fact that at two, three, four or more standard deviations above the median, the small difference in male variability translates to large differences in the number of males with that level of performance versus the number of females. He was pilloried for it – and future scholars who stubbornly persist in recognizing the truth when they see it will no doubt be pilloried for it – but he was right. Efforts at producing a 50-50 outcome at the highest level are going to founder against this population effect. Campaigners for equality – may God bless them – should recognize this fact and move their focus towards ensuring that any woman of aptitude who seeks a career in math or science isn’t discriminated against. Open opportunities, and let outcomes fall where they may.

Caffeine. Is there anything it can’t do?

I bet you $10 nobody else in the whole world will ever have that headline. EVER.

Scientists have discovered that the ‘tree of life’ – our understanding of the evolutionary connections between species – needs a rewrite.

(H/T Evangelical Outpost.)