Ansolute

No, in this case, not the vodka. I’m musing about all those self-assured people who know something ... beyond a shadow of a doubt. I myself slip into this category more often than I should.

This issue presented itself while listening to President Trump’s coronavirus presser last evening. The reporters there wanted absolute answers: When will we start bending down the curve? How many people will die? Why don't we have enough ventilators? Can we really restart our economy by Easter?

The answer to all these questions are equivocations ... they have to be ... because too many variables are involved. There are hundreds of pandemic models that are predicting many of these outcomes ... and none of them will likely be absolutely right ... see: Powerline Entry  Just because equations, oodles of data and super computers are involved does not assure us correct predictions ... things are too organic ... just like our climate modeling ... which too many people slavishly take as gospel ... and none of which have been right ... by quite a bit.

And the same can be said for modeling the stock market. A quirky fact ... a “black swan” ... can ... and often does beat the most sophisticated quantitive modeling.

What does the Orangeman say?

 “We’ll see.”

Settled Science

Obummer has repeatedly quoted that false narrative that 97% of scientists think that there is man-made global warming and therefore "the science is settled" ...  a quote meant to be echoed in the main-stream media in order to shut up the deniers of this clap trap. Such drivel drives true scientists up the wall because they know that there never is any science that is truly "settled." This is not the true nature of science. New information continually causes science to review previous axioms to see if they still hold up ... which often they don't.

Now 300 scientists and economists have signed a letter to NOAA, the keeper of  the primary global temperature data, demanding that it release their undoctored data. This is so other unbiased scientists can use this data use to check the results of the inner circle of those claiming that the Earth is warming ... see: Daily Caller Article.

And this is also because it has recently been revealed that this data has been corrupted by these government "scientists" who felt that they needed to "adjust" this data so that it would agree wth their foregone conclusions. These  conclusions are being refuted by actual results which are not agreeing with their computer models. In other words, if the data does not support the "science," change the data. This is a profound corruption of the scientific method and hiding the original primary data from the rest of the scientific world corrupts this corruption.

More interestingly, since 288 of these 300 letter signers are true scientists, if they perhaps were the full contingent of the 3% deniers in Obummer's oft-repeated quote, the the other 97% would represent 9,600 other scientists who unequivocally support this global warming fiction. It would be very nice and very scientific if Obummer would produce a list of these 9,600 "settled" scientists.