God, this is brilliant! In order to maintain their power and position within society, articulate intellectuals must convince the larger population that they really do have a superior understanding of the issues they study. The do so using a parliament…

if it was open – to all epople of every expertise (and none), and if their determinations were ever-adjusting, then it would be accurate, as a marketplace is.

the “global warming consensus” is being tested in the marketplace of ideas, but not in the clubs, not in the REAL parliaments.

agw is being tested and where it is tested it fails.

clubs have narrowier interests than open markets, and that perverts the results.

Think of it this way: Two people go to a football field and start at one goal post, sight in on the other goal post, then blindfold themselves and start walking. Along the way, they periodically reach out and touch each other’s shoulders to make sure they are going in the same direction. How likely are they to make it within arms reach of the other goal post? They are both going the same direction and speed, so the have “consensus”. This would be the method of the 9 clockmakers.

Now, another person does the same thing, except that every 5 steps he pulls the blindfold down to check his direction against the actual goal. He’s referencing the real world to verify and correct his path, like the scientists who compare their clocks to other natural phenomena. He’s going to be more likely not only to reach his destination, but to deviate less from the path along the way. On top of that, an endless progression of others can follow him without ever seeing the goalpost at the other end, and STILL get there with less deviation from the path than the two with their “consensus”. (That would be the computers synchronizing with the Naval Observatory clock).

I have a Ph.D. in Linguistics and am intimately familiar with several subfields within the discipline. This is the best explanation I have ever read for the herd mentality of so many otherwise bright people. There are iconoclasts, but they are marginalized.

Someone earlier in the thread is misreading the article to imply that everyone toes the party line. The arrticle clearly says this is not so, but that there is a price to be paid for being heterodox. This conforms exactly to my experiences in linguistics.

Orrin Judd explores where honor lies in the future of journalism. Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey sounds like he agrees with my assessment of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s possibly limited future:When nationally-known columnist and blogger James Lileks revea…

I agree with the main thrust of your post but I was thinking in terms of the most fundamental aspects of the phenomenon we call time.

How do you know the super accurate clock in your computer keeps the “correct” time? Why you synchronize it with a hyper accurate clock such a that at the U.S. Naval Observatory. How does the Observatory know that its master clock keeps the “correct” time? Why they use an atomic clock that tracks the intensely periodic decay of radioactive isotopes. How do they know that the radioactive decay is highly periodic? Why they synchronize it with the predictable movements of the planets. How do they know the planet’s movements are constant as they think? Why they measure them with atomic clocks!

The basic problem is obvious (and that is before you start throwing things like Relativity and Quantum time into the mix.)

In truth, we don’t measure the “flow” of something called “time.” What we really measure is the degree of correspondence between the changes in the states of various natural phenomenon and certain technological artifacts. The true function of clocks is not to “measure time” but to under go the exact same change in state as other clocks or a natural phenomenon. They do not measure, they coordinate. We call a clock accurate if it coordinates with other clocks or periodic phenomenon within a certain degree of precision and we call it inaccurate if it does not.

As a practical matter, some clocks are more accurate than others and people who use the more accurate clocks will gain a significant real world advantage. Down at its rawest level, however, there is no such thing as absolute time.

Love the analogy of the clockmaker.

“The clockmakers destroy the nonconforming clockmaker among them because they know that as a practical matter we judge the accuracy of clocks by consensus. Absolute time does not exist. Essentially, a parliament of clocks votes on the correct time. (Even scientifically, this is true.) By fiat, we say that the clocks that deviate from the consensus time are inaccurate, but logically that need not be so. Different technologies or different levels of care in setting, winding or servicing the clocks could lead to the minority clocks being more accurate. However, if all the clocks agree, then no lay person will have grounds for suspecting that the majority clocks don’t keep accurate time.”

Allow me to add to this, for you see, “Scientifically” this is NOT true. And due to the fact that “time” is pretty much the domain for all of experimental science, the clockmaker whose clocks WERE more accurate would produce all sorts of seeming miracles to whomever was wise enough to ignore the 9 clocks that chimed in unison and purchased a clock from ONE of them and two clocks from the “accurate” fellow.

Ironically, this is something no less a icon than Issac Newton write about in his opus magnum… for were one to hear 9 chimes that all worked identically all the time, one would be able to tell one thing for certain… that those clockmakers were cheating in some fashion. Over the years, the clockmaker whose clocks operated using a more accurate mechanism would SEEM more and more “off” the others, but in fact, would not be.

NOW. Let us imagine that one of the Kings very wisest of advisors HAD secretly purchased a number of the oddball clockmakers produce PRIOR to his destruction by the Confederacy of Dunces that were the 9 others…. for this is a description Jonathan Swift would have considered apt. The King would be none the wiser, nor would any other kings or Countries anywhere else, as the fools had burned out their only master. But as this wise minister HAD in his possession ACCURATE clocks that he used for the benefit of his Kings people, ALL SORTS of things would be demonstrably superior in that Kingdom as if by magic. It’s ships would more accurately navigate. It’s calenders would require greater predictive power. It’s scientists would find that they discovered flaws in their experiments with greater consistantcy, and etc.

In fact, people would look at this as if it were magic, when really it was the work of a single wise minister who knew when to ignore his boss and when to keep a secret.

But what of the poor clockmaker who was burned out? What WAS his secret? For the secret of his clocks greater accuracy was the REAL prize. It’s doubtful that the Kings wiseman would be able to reverse engineer his excellent clocks. And as history marched on, and technology improved, without that secret the clocks would stay the same.

There is a saying in Latin, “multitudos non ratione ducitur sed impetu”, the multitudes are led not by reason, but by impetuousness… This goes for the multitudes of “intellectuals” as well as peasants… For the wise man would have been even wiser if he’d remembered that he merely BOUGHT the clocks that were more accurate, and didn’t create them. For it was the GENIUS of that one clockmaker that was the thing of beauty and value, not the produce of his genius.

Issac Newton didn’t publish his opus for 17-20 years, and when he finally did, it was estimated that less that twenty people in the entire world understood it’s value. Just as those today who read Newton’s snippits on “alchemy” pooh pooh it as ignorant mysticism typically fail to grasp that Newton APPLIED the alchemy to the Royal Mint to IMPROVE the purity of the Gold content in Englands coinage, and thus the value of the specie for the whole of the Nation. People understood THAT, even if they didn’t really understand his books on Experimental Philosophy (as he called it). So when Newton died, his funeral possession was more grand than that of the greatest monarch in Europe.

This is the difference between “Genius” and the produce of genius. The Assembly will always kill it’s Socrates in the end. The Monarch will always have St. Thomas More beheaded. And as Andrew Jackson so sagely wrote, “When you’re right, you have a majority of ONE”.

Your own statements illustrate that not everyone bought into this “across the board.”

My point was that a far higher level of consensus existed about the energy crisis than exist about global warming today. There was a far less Left/Right division then than now. Not even Reagan et al believed that the problem would simply vanish within 5 years. Rather, they believed that a free market approach would best improve the situation. Reagan could only get rid of the windfall profit tax because it had been imposed by Presidential fiat by Carter in lieu of the previous price controls. If he would had to get through congress he probably would have failed.

The best evidence however comes from the fact that the collapse of oil prices in 84 caught every one by surprise. A lot of people lost their shirts including Bush. If people hadn’t been caught up in the hysteria more people would have seen the bust coming.

Advocating an incorrect position in the past doesn’t say anything necessarily about a current position.

It does if you use the same axioms and the same intellectual methodology. The idea is the same in both crises: the unregulated economy is careening towards some disaster and the power of the state must be increase in order to head of the catastrophe. They make the same claims about consensus and they make the same accusations about the corrupt motivations of those who disagree with them. I think it is very fair to ask if the same flaws that led them to embrace the idea of the energy crisis also leads them to embrace the idea of CAGW.

Still, hubris underlies many apocalyptic visions – that and a belief that both nature and human nature would be perfect, if it just weren’t for man in the first case and society in the second. I’ve never had much patience with that way of looking at things – whether from Rousseau or Al Gore (and the hypocrisy of both doesn’t help). And how many of us feel that we are right when the people agreeing with us are people who – because of our power, our status, or that they just like us and don’t give a damn – prefer to agree with us than argue? We believe, of course, that they are agreeing with us because we are right. That is the kind of hubris you get in an organization that is corrupt or inefficient, it is one that you are likely to get when an organization is riven with nepotism or cliques. The clique of the watchmakers that agree with one another actually think they do have the right time. That is hubris.

Nature’s big, history’s long – it seems to me to be hubris that believes we can screw it up so quickly. But what do I know? It seems to me that doing some conservation isn’t a bad idea. Of course, a certain hubris also argues that America is at fault (even though our energy use has relatively stabilized) – the anti-American voices are often as hubristic as the pro-American ones. And it is hubris to deny the third world its chance to join cultures with longer & healthier life spans, shorter work weeks, more time for play & culture.

Reagan did away with the windfall profit tax and Thatcher let the price of North Sea Oil float at market price. The Left denounced it as all a plot to enrich the evil oil companies of course. By 84 oil supplies climbed to the point that the OPEC cartel collapsed and the entire episode evaporated.

This pretty clearly means that not everyone agreed with the prognosis.

The concept of the Energy Crisis as a permanent problem caused by a physical shortage of energy sources was taken with absolute seriousness across the board.

Yet somehow the prescriptions of those who advocated this never went into law? Your own statements illustrate that not everyone bought into this “across the board.”

It formed the basis of national economic and security policy.

You are probably referring to the highly contested report put out by the Carter administration. It was roundly criticized from many quarters at the time.

My point was that Gore’s age echelon had already entered their professional lives and that yes many of the same individuals who pushed the energy crises so hard then push global warming today.

I don’t believe one has two similar cohorts here, but let’s just accept that for the time being. Advocating an incorrect position in the past doesn’t say anything necessarily about a current position.

You obviously do not understand the idea of falsification. Tracking temperature changes tells us absolutely nothing about what causes those changes.

Maybe I don’t, but tell me why I am wrong in light of the following statement (I’m not into personalizing things). If the data demonstrated that we were in a cooling trend then the current claims about catastrophic anthropocentric climate change would be demonstrated to be false. Correct? After all, anthropocentric climate change of the type that is claimed to be going on predicts a warmer world (generally), right? But if it is a generally cooler world then well, you get the point. By those means it is falsifiable. Now such measurements can’t by themselves demonstrate that claims about anthropocentric climate change are right (though one can draw strong inferences from them), but they could concievably demonstrate that they are wrong or at least flawed.

The phenomenon I am describing is not group think.

Sure it is. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is a duck.

Leftism is the politics of the articulate intellectual.

As opposed to articulate intellectuals who are right-wing in prediliction?

So, what happened after 1980?

Reagan did away with the windfall profit tax and Thatcher let the price of North Sea Oil float at market price. The Left denounced it as all a plot to enrich the evil oil companies of course. By 84 oil supplies climbed to the point that the OPEC cartel collapsed and the entire episode evaporated. The concept of the Energy Crisis as a permanent problem caused by a physical shortage of energy sources was taken with absolute seriousness across the board. Even people in the oil industry believed and they should have known better. It formed the basis of national economic and security policy. Take everything you see today about global warming and increase it by an order of magnitude to get a feel for the omnipresence of this concept from roughly 74-84. The idea was taken so seriously that they formed a cabinet level Department of Energy which we still have today.

So was Al Gore big on the “resource depletion” issue in his early terms in Congress?

Not much more than anyone else. Gore was a conservative back then. My point was that Gore’s age echelon had already entered their professional lives and that yes many of the same individuals who pushed the energy crises so hard then push global warming today. All the major environmental groups did so as did nominally neutral institutions like the NSF and various UN organs.

If you are the kind of person who accepts arguments from authority then you should realize that those very same authorities got a much simpler question completely wrong only a couple of decades ago. They feel prey to a political hysteria then, why should we trust them now.

Well, it is falsifiable.

You obviously do not understand the idea of falsification. Tracking temperature changes tells us absolutely nothing about what causes those changes. We want to test whether (1) human activity is driving temperature change and (2) if the degree of human driven change warrants expanding state power and crippling the planetary economy.

The phenomenon I am describing is not group think. Rather it is the desperate need to project the illusion of veracity by presenting a unified front to all. Leftism is the politics of the articulate intellectual. Leftist define both problems and solutions such that they can only be affected by articulate intellectuals. Unfortunately, articulate intellectuals deal with types of information for which no test exists. In their world, group consensus alone determines the veracity of an idea. Mavericks cannot challenge the consensus because they cannot provide irrefutable proof that their ideas work.

So, what happened after 1980? If everyone bought into the idea and there was no debate on the matter then why were few to none of the prescriptions ever adopted? Could it be, gosh, that there were lots of folks who opposed these ideas. Hmm, might be.

Al Gore was already a member of the House. Ralph Nader, Edward Kennedy, Tom Harkin and all the rest are still alive and kicking. Paul Elrich. the grand high priest of over population and resource depletion is right out there in front hawking global warming even though he was dead wrong about everything in the 70’s. Other actors are still around as well.

So was Al Gore big on the “resource depletion” issue in his early terms in Congress?

The point is of course that these aren’t really the “same people” by any stretch of the imagination and most of the scientists involved in climate change studies probably have little to nothing to do with the past movement you refer to.

Sure, if one could find data from measurements…

Your claim was that it wasn’t falsifiable. Well, it is falsifiable.

Tyouth,

Well yes, that’s true but groupthink on the American right is far less dangerous.

Yeah, conservative groupthink only got us into this mess in Iraq.

Well yes, that’s true but groupthink on the American right is far less dangerous.

The conservative “groupthink” is much less likely to make mistakes and false, expensive, unnecessary changes simply because they don’t change as readily. Groupthink by those who look for radical change (the left, in our case) is much more dangerous because it can result in change. And, afterall, the point is that “groupthink” is not much less than the maddness of crowds, isn’t it?

There was plenty of spirited debate in 1980 over the issue amongst academics.

Not really. Everybody bought into the idea. The very name “energy crisis” stamps it as a universal phenomenon. It was at least as real to people back then as CAGW is today. Perhaps even more so since people had to confront it every time they gassed their cars or paid their utility bills.

I suspect a large proportion of the folks associated with claims of problems associated with resource or now dead. It being, you know, TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS later.

You must be young to think of 27 years as wiping out an entire generation. Someone who was 40 in 1980 would only be 67 today. Al Gore was already a member of the House. Ralph Nader, Edward Kennedy, Tom Harkin and all the rest are still alive and kicking. Paul Elrich. the grand high priest of over population and resource depletion is right out there in front hawking global warming even though he was dead wrong about everything in the 70’s. Other actors are still around as well.

Sure, if one could find data from measurements…

The question of whether the earth is warming isn’t the question. At any arbitrary point in time the earth is in a warming or cooling trend. The question is whether we are in an anthrogenic warming trend and if so the degree of that trend. At present there appears to be no way to distinguish between anthrogenic causes and something like solar forcing.

(1) Is the idea falsifiable i.e. could one make an observation here-and-now that would prove that the effect was NOT occurring.

Sure, if one could find data from measurements (the ones that they use now go back to the 19th century) as well proxies (e.g., ice cores, tree cores, certain corals, etc.) that demonstrated that were in a general cooling trend. That would falsify any and all “global warming” claims. Now that is a broader sort of falsification than you were probably looking for, but nevertheless, it does falsify the more specific “global warming” claims you directed your statement to.