July 19, 2023
The Return of the Cargo Cults
Timothy Birdnow
Richard Feynman coined the term Cargo Cult Science in a speech he gave in 1974. The South Sea Cargo Cults were one of history's more odd events. During WWII the Americans and Japanese fought over these western Pacific islands and they often established air bases in places like New Guinea. Planes would land full of food; tinned food, coca cola, beer, cheese, etc. The air forces would hire locals to act as porters and the like. These primitive tribesmen saw this bounty and concluded that the cargo was sent by the gods and meant for their own people but the white men (and Japanese) had superior magic and confused the gods who sent it to them instead. So they tried to reproduce the white mens' superior magic, building faux landing strips complete with conning towers and "controllers" wearing coconut radio headgear and lighting them at night with torches.
Feynman's point was that there is much done (even back then) that has the superficial appearance of science but is not actual science. It starts with a predetermined result and the "research" is solely intended to prove the postulate. That describes our modern era perfectly.
Things like Climate Change are not tested in the original way, no effort is made to disprove the claims. Rather there is a fundamental postulate that is buttressed by supporting data and all contradictory data is thrown out.Anyone who argues the data does not support it are shouted down and erased. Any claim, no matter how specious, is accepted without challenge when it supports the hypothesis.
And why? Ultimately because the alarmist claims serve those in political power who control the purse strings and fund the Science Establishment. They want this because it means money (via new taxes) and power and moves our civilization along the lines they want it to move.
And the system is self-perpetuating because no young scientist will risk his career by bucking the accepted norm, while older scientists who aren't on board can be demogogued as "in the pocket of big oil" or whatnot. In the end actual science suffers.
It's not just Climate Change We are seeing this in the whole transgender debate now, overturning well-established research with novel research that purports to support the idea that "gender" is a cultural construct.
We've seen this in psychology for years, and so too in sociology, but it's creeping into the hard sciences now. We have people saying physics is racist because there is only one right answer. I would add our society is rooted in science and our mastery and acceptance of science. Cargo Cult Science is superstition and will lead to our retreat and eventual collapse.
Send in the Clouds
"The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists."
Richard Feynman coined the term Cargo Cult Science in a speech he gave in 1974. The South Sea Cargo Cults were one of history's more odd events. During WWII the Americans and Japanese fought over these western Pacific islands and they often established air bases in places like New Guinea. Planes would land full of food; tinned food, coca cola, beer, cheese, etc. The air forces would hire locals to act as porters and the like. These primitive tribesmen saw this bounty and concluded that the cargo was sent by the gods and meant for their own people but the white men (and Japanese) had superior magic and confused the gods who sent it to them instead. So they tried to reproduce the white mens' superior magic, building faux landing strips complete with conning towers and "controllers" wearing coconut radio headgear and lighting them at night with torches.
Feynman's point was that there is much done (even back then) that has the superficial appearance of science but is not actual science. It starts with a predetermined result and the "research" is solely intended to prove the postulate. That describes our modern era perfectly.
Things like Climate Change are not tested in the original way, no effort is made to disprove the claims. Rather there is a fundamental postulate that is buttressed by supporting data and all contradictory data is thrown out.Anyone who argues the data does not support it are shouted down and erased. Any claim, no matter how specious, is accepted without challenge when it supports the hypothesis.
And why? Ultimately because the alarmist claims serve those in political power who control the purse strings and fund the Science Establishment. They want this because it means money (via new taxes) and power and moves our civilization along the lines they want it to move.
And the system is self-perpetuating because no young scientist will risk his career by bucking the accepted norm, while older scientists who aren't on board can be demogogued as "in the pocket of big oil" or whatnot. In the end actual science suffers.
It's not just Climate Change We are seeing this in the whole transgender debate now, overturning well-established research with novel research that purports to support the idea that "gender" is a cultural construct.
We've seen this in psychology for years, and so too in sociology, but it's creeping into the hard sciences now. We have people saying physics is racist because there is only one right answer. I would add our society is rooted in science and our mastery and acceptance of science. Cargo Cult Science is superstition and will lead to our retreat and eventual collapse.
Send in the Clouds
"The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists."
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
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1
Good points. Of course, most of everything put forth by the Left could be labeled as "Cargo Cults." Certainly, Slow-Joe Biden's boasts about Bidenomics qualify -- don't they?
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at July 19, 2023 11:07 PM (lydPE)
2
Nice post! Climate change is a real problem and has to be researched more into. https://https://www.theleathercity.com/product/blade-runner-officer-k-2049-coat/.
Posted by: blade runner 2049 coat at July 20, 2023 05:05 AM (HjOOP)
3
There is no such thing as liberal anymore Dana; it's all left or hard left. And the left does not practice reality. You are so right; most things these days are not based on what is real but Cargo Cult Science.
We live in a world of illusion.
We live in a world of illusion.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at July 20, 2023 07:31 AM (LKupt)
4
Yes Blade Runner, climate change is real. It's been changing through all of geological history. There is nothing unusual in what is happening on Earth right now. And it most definitely is not a "planetary emergency" as the oracles of dufi try to claim.
Research a bit of the history of climate. It has been much warmer than today and much colder. In fact, it was much colder at a time when co2 was ten times what it is now.
Anthropogenc climate change is a ruese, a con, a swindle designed to drive societal change, to bring economic "equity" with the Third World, to drive the creation of a nascent world government, to implement democratic socialism across the globe. It is not about climate at all.
Google Christina Figueras. She was the U.N. official who admitted the real purpose of climate change alarmism was world socialism. Oh hell...here you go. https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
I watched them spin this thing out of nothing back in the early eighties. They needed an existential crisis to push everyone into a New World Order. In fact this was chosen as the reserve crisis at the Endangered Atmosphere's Conference in 1975 by a cabal of leftist scientists (including John Holdren, Obama's "Science Tsar"). They chose Global Cooling as their best bet and ketp Global Warming in reserve. When the twenty year cooling trend uncooperatively ended they switched immediately to global warming, now called Climate Change. Did it without missing a beat.
That was because they had to have a crisis involving energy and the atmosphere. We couldn't say it was just our business if it involved the air we all share. And energy is the stuff of wealth; wealth cometh from energy usaage. Third World countries use far less per person than First World. If they could restrict us from using so much energy they could resdistribute wealth via "climate remediation" and we'd all have "equity".
The actual science is in no way settled. In fact, climate theory is almost entirely based on computer models and not real-world observations.
But, but, but, I hear you ask, what of the many firsts? These "hottest days on record?" What of the giant storms and the like?
Most of these firsts are not firsts at all.
For starters, the record only goes back a hundred years or so. Second, many times the record was set in the 1930's, well before the high emissions era. It is only with extensive monkeying with the historical data by NOAA and NASA that we are getting these firsts. And usually these firsts are tied with several other years of firsts, or are statistically insignificant. (Tell me, how do we determine we are .01% warmer than in, say, 1936? We have absolutely no way of knowing.)
But NOAA will cool down the past records then say "hottest ever" and everyone panics.
Also, the whole "increasing unsettled weather" is nothing of the sort. What we are seeing is exactly what we have always seen. BUT it's doing more damage because people are building in places where we didn't used to build, on flood plains, on low-lying beaches, in the path of big storms and tornadoes and the like. I't s a function of more people living in places they used to avoid precisely because of the dangers of weather problems.
And many of the things we are enduring now are of our own making in an effort to stop climate change.
The forest fires in Canada are a prime example. There - and in California, and in Australia a few years ago, and in Brazil a few years ago, etc. there was a concerted effort to stop the removal of dead wwood from the forest floors. The thinking is that old growth is better than young growth, and we should leave the forests in a state of nature. But a state of nature means forest fires. That's what happens. So we stopped removing the fuel and are surprised at more forest fires. Well duh!
There is nothing that requires the explanation of carbon dioxide and the restrictions of energy usage and fossil fuels. This is a political and not a scientific crisis.
If you are worried about the Earth's climate and environment the best thing you can do is promote capitalism. That produces wealth, enough wealth where the poor countries which now emit most of the carbon dioxide (a necessary gas for life) and the pollutants will be rich enough to make cleaner industries. Pollution has dropped off in every nation that is industiralized and has a free market system. Only the old Communist countries remained dirty and the developing nations now - enamored of socialism - suffer.
BTW carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere at 0.04%. Four out of every TEN THOUSAND molecules of air is co2. Now, the theory is these molecules absorb heat and reradiate it slowly back to Earth. But they don't; these molecules will reradiate the energy in picoseconds (a very short amount of time.) and, as there are so few of them in the air, it is rather like putting chicken wire up as the roof of your house. You won't stay warm in winter that way.
AGW isn't a theory. It's barely a postulate, and one with considerable evidence against it in most cases. BUT governments love it because it means money and power, and they fund those who will say it's an existential crisis. And the media will toot the climate horn because it's big and scary and sexy. But it's not true.
Research a bit of the history of climate. It has been much warmer than today and much colder. In fact, it was much colder at a time when co2 was ten times what it is now.
Anthropogenc climate change is a ruese, a con, a swindle designed to drive societal change, to bring economic "equity" with the Third World, to drive the creation of a nascent world government, to implement democratic socialism across the globe. It is not about climate at all.
Google Christina Figueras. She was the U.N. official who admitted the real purpose of climate change alarmism was world socialism. Oh hell...here you go. https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
I watched them spin this thing out of nothing back in the early eighties. They needed an existential crisis to push everyone into a New World Order. In fact this was chosen as the reserve crisis at the Endangered Atmosphere's Conference in 1975 by a cabal of leftist scientists (including John Holdren, Obama's "Science Tsar"). They chose Global Cooling as their best bet and ketp Global Warming in reserve. When the twenty year cooling trend uncooperatively ended they switched immediately to global warming, now called Climate Change. Did it without missing a beat.
That was because they had to have a crisis involving energy and the atmosphere. We couldn't say it was just our business if it involved the air we all share. And energy is the stuff of wealth; wealth cometh from energy usaage. Third World countries use far less per person than First World. If they could restrict us from using so much energy they could resdistribute wealth via "climate remediation" and we'd all have "equity".
The actual science is in no way settled. In fact, climate theory is almost entirely based on computer models and not real-world observations.
But, but, but, I hear you ask, what of the many firsts? These "hottest days on record?" What of the giant storms and the like?
Most of these firsts are not firsts at all.
For starters, the record only goes back a hundred years or so. Second, many times the record was set in the 1930's, well before the high emissions era. It is only with extensive monkeying with the historical data by NOAA and NASA that we are getting these firsts. And usually these firsts are tied with several other years of firsts, or are statistically insignificant. (Tell me, how do we determine we are .01% warmer than in, say, 1936? We have absolutely no way of knowing.)
But NOAA will cool down the past records then say "hottest ever" and everyone panics.
Also, the whole "increasing unsettled weather" is nothing of the sort. What we are seeing is exactly what we have always seen. BUT it's doing more damage because people are building in places where we didn't used to build, on flood plains, on low-lying beaches, in the path of big storms and tornadoes and the like. I't s a function of more people living in places they used to avoid precisely because of the dangers of weather problems.
And many of the things we are enduring now are of our own making in an effort to stop climate change.
The forest fires in Canada are a prime example. There - and in California, and in Australia a few years ago, and in Brazil a few years ago, etc. there was a concerted effort to stop the removal of dead wwood from the forest floors. The thinking is that old growth is better than young growth, and we should leave the forests in a state of nature. But a state of nature means forest fires. That's what happens. So we stopped removing the fuel and are surprised at more forest fires. Well duh!
There is nothing that requires the explanation of carbon dioxide and the restrictions of energy usage and fossil fuels. This is a political and not a scientific crisis.
If you are worried about the Earth's climate and environment the best thing you can do is promote capitalism. That produces wealth, enough wealth where the poor countries which now emit most of the carbon dioxide (a necessary gas for life) and the pollutants will be rich enough to make cleaner industries. Pollution has dropped off in every nation that is industiralized and has a free market system. Only the old Communist countries remained dirty and the developing nations now - enamored of socialism - suffer.
BTW carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere at 0.04%. Four out of every TEN THOUSAND molecules of air is co2. Now, the theory is these molecules absorb heat and reradiate it slowly back to Earth. But they don't; these molecules will reradiate the energy in picoseconds (a very short amount of time.) and, as there are so few of them in the air, it is rather like putting chicken wire up as the roof of your house. You won't stay warm in winter that way.
AGW isn't a theory. It's barely a postulate, and one with considerable evidence against it in most cases. BUT governments love it because it means money and power, and they fund those who will say it's an existential crisis. And the media will toot the climate horn because it's big and scary and sexy. But it's not true.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at July 20, 2023 07:59 AM (LKupt)
5
"The Return of the Cargo Cults" explores intriguing cultural phenomena. Intriguing read.
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