Wednesday 25 September 2013

Another Cox Up

I like Professor Brian Cox. Clever bloke with great passion. But his recent TV show isn't really that riveting. Worse, today we got the inevitable.

After quite a lead up, confirming how wonderful peer-review of scientific publications is, he gets someone else's point of view and then uses, surprise surprise, Global Warming as an example. Having said earlier that the scientific method was pretty much invented here and it is the fundamental of proper science, he then happily abandons it completely.

He told us the 'overwhelming consensus' of scientists support the idea, which is stunningly irrelevant even if it were true. Firstly, how many people believe a wrong idea has no bearing on making it right. Earth isn't the centre of the universe and the Sun doesn't go round the Earth, though once the overwhelming consensus believed otherwise. Cox knows this, so he is being deliberately disingenuous.

Unfortunately for Cox, most of his 'consensus' in this scientific age, are nothing more than political activists.

The other minor inconvenience for Cox is that, if the scientific method is applied to Global Warming theory it is disproved, so he doesn't bother. Sometimes it seems, ideology is way more important than truth or facts. To who, is never explained.

CO2 and Methane are doubtless greenhouse gases, but we do not understand the mechanism on a global scale, nor the concentrations that matter, nor how the Earth reacts to rising levels. But a group of anti-capitalists have convinced far too many people that they understand it all.

Do you doubt this assertion? Consider this; Methane is way, way worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2, but they cannot come up with a way of destroying Western civilisation and capitalism by demonising Methane.

These very dangerous people are free to move amongst us, because the harm they intend and do is not with a gun or a bomb, so we don't identify them for what they are. And as ever with the Left, the ability to hold two contrary positions simultaneously is in evidence with Brian Cox. He glories in the power of the scientific method and yet begs us not to apply it to a Left wing construct that means to harm us.

Monday 23 September 2013

Climate Comedy

Here is what has happened. It is a story of real science and junk science. Ignoring earlier conclusive scientific studies, a cult formed based on the idea that certain gasses stay in the atmosphere and trap heat. This leads to a 'greenhouse' effect and raises world temperatures.

Not a wild theory and it seems to be what has happened on Venus (although no-one in the nutter factory has suggested, yet, that we did that as well). What science had to do now was observe and prove the theory. To understand the mechanism at work and refine their views accordingly. Unfortunately this wasn't what happened.

A bunch of well meaning scientists found themselves to be very attractive to a certain group. These were basically people who had never grown up, the type you see in their last years of school and at university, believers in Utopia. Basically, despite their exam results, as bright in their outlook as the beauty queen's desire for World peace.

This group soon became political and appealed to the anti-capitalists. It was seen as a way to fatally undermine Western civilisation by getting the societies to devour themselves in an angst ridden orgy of self destruction, brought about by catastrophically high taxes and subsidies for crackpot schemes (like wind turbines).

The method they used was modern, empathetic to social standards and simple. They developed computer models designed to produce the results they desired. Global Warming. As stated science observes, proves and decides. They didn't have time for that and anyway it wasn't the point; what was really happening with the climate was irrelevant, it was now about Marxist politics.

Conveniently, we were at the time going through one of the periodic rises in temperature that we see throughout history and that we have no explanation for. This became, conclusively due to Man Made Global Warming and it was so bad it was going to destroy the world. The bunch of idiots we rather carelessly elected as politicians swallowed it hook, line and sinker. They so love grand projects.

But now of course we have had 17 years of no warming, which was not predicted by these flawless and super accurate computer models. Observation, a scientific method, was disproving a badly constructed scam. To give a parallel; it does look as if the Sun goes around the Earth - we talk of it crossing the sky- and yet it doesn't. When this was proven it was accepted and has remained a known fact ever since, on the basis it can be proven any time you like.

The Global Warming scammers though would just say, 'no, you are wrong because our models say otherwise. Observation and proof have no place here'. And that is the dilemma facing the IPCC as its report, its latest weighty, densely worded yet full of comedy content will say two diametrically opposed things. On the one hand they will assert that the 'science' says that the cause of Global Warming is Man with a 95% certainty, but that they also are not sure what is causing Global Warming. Whilst additionally mentioning that there isn't any Global Warming.

And that polar ice isn't disappearing. Or the glaciers on the Himalayas. Or there is increased hurricane activity. Or the sea level is rising. Even though the models say all these things are happening and catastrophes are all around us, right now, today. The Emperor really has never had any clothes.

So there it is. A simple yet effective (for a while) scam of immense proportions, only matched in scale by the stupidity and vanity of politicians. A kid writes a computer programme that predicts disaster, only he claims it is based on real science. But he has built in an assumption; that more Man made gasses like CO2 inevitably heat up the atmosphere, something he has no scientific support for, whatsoever. It can do, but you have to understand all the interactions, not just one.

All the claims that the science is settled and that there is a consensus of scientists is ridiculous and beside the point. It was never based of empirical observation and proof of theory, it was only ever a computer model. Like saying Grand Theft Auto 5 is an accurate reproduction of real life in every way. Whereas in fact it is designed for game play, with built in attributes of violence but making the figures look as lifelike as the current state of the art computing can manage. But even a little kid knows it isn't real (though maybe we should ask a politician their view)..

Tuesday 17 September 2013

Daniel Pelka And Social Work

A child is dead. Again. And as if to ram home that the authorities involved really don't care all their attention and that of the excuse-machine investigation is centred on avoiding responsibility.

We have wittering half-wits on the TV saying, in that special calm, half whisper beloved of the 'caring', that the agencies involved should be bolder in 'challenging' what they are told by parents under suspicion. That the agencies should have a mechanism for talking to each other about concerns.

All this is meant to sound reasonable, all of it addressing 'issues', but what really underlies this kind of empty cant is 'will you please go away'. But it isn't reasonable, is it? If a teacher saw a child in such distress as Daniel was clearly showing (or 'presenting' in social work case-conference speak), then he/she could approach the parents for an explanation.

But no. In today's caring, multi-agency child-protection world the teacher must cross check to see if anyone else has spotted anything. Like a policeman coming across a fight and rather than breaking it up, calls some other 'agency' to see what they think. A doctor with a patient presenting with a knife in his head, wonders if anyone else thinks this might be important.

What these people who do say anything about their failures say, and as many as possible don't pass comment, is that this should have happened and that should have happened and he slipped through the net, but mostly the nasty, lying, manipulating parent was to blame because they lied to the social workers and doctors and police.

I can't believe that people nowadays are genetically less caring as individuals, as human beings, so it must be cultural. And that culture will be provided by ideology and management. The ideology provides all the style of speech and emphasis on the importance of self and the management live in that bubble, carefully avoiding actually doing anything. It is of course, the socialist way. Marxism is the over riding concern of social workers and all their efforts must be made in the light of the ideology.

Pretty soon it becomes apparent this is poor practice, so the multi-agency network is set up to spread responsibility and more importantly, blame. No one is ever to blame it is the system. And the people at the top have the strongest motivation to make sure that system does not change.

This was put into stark daylight by the shrieking of Sharon Shoesmith who was aghast to find herself being held personally accountable. No one, herself included could possibly be responsible as all the boxes had been ticked, she said. It appeared to have slipped her attention that a child was dead. Or that the 'paperwork' referred to a real person.

In her world, passing paper around, signing this off and getting that box ticked, is their life. It is what they draw their salary for. Shoesmith's responsibility as far as she was concerned was to make sure everyone was filling in the boxes. No wonder the intrusion of teh subject of the forms and tick-boxes came as such a shock to her.

Do we need change? Yes we do. Marxism as a malign influence is infecting everything from hospitals that now kill on an epic scale, to hapless police officers stumbling from excuse for this accidental shooting to explaining expenses, to careless social workers and HR departments wrecking companies by their tick box mentality.

Some years ago a judge said that he would never find against a social worker as the presumption has to be that their intentions were good. When was that last true?