Dotard Is A High Level "Genius" For Disbelieving National Climate Assessment ? ROTFL!

"My gut tells me more sometimes than anyone else's brain can ever tell me"

"One of the problems of many people like myself is we have very high levels of intelligence but we're not necessarily such believers".
 
Dotard Donnie's assorted brain farts in the past week.

By now, virtually everyone not living under a rock is aware of the recently released congressionally- mandated National Climate Assessment.    The report-  compiled by 300 scientists and 13 federal agencies-  ought to make every sentient being on the planet sit up and take notice.  This is given that it forecasts "record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South," as well as the disruption of "American exports and supply chains,".  Also,  the decline of "agricultural yields" (possibly "to 1980s levels by mid-century"), and a "fire season [that] could spread to the Southeast."

All told the losses could come to "hundreds of billions of dollars"  - which is definitely lowballed given we are on track to break all existing climate warming records. Nevertheless, one finds e.g.  long time WSJ resident  climate change denier, Holman Jenkins Jr.,  all in for his latest BS contribution: 'Climate Change Is Affordable', p. A15 yesterday).  Jenkins insists the latest assessment "adopts the RCP 8.5 high emission scenario" despite which - get this:  "we still arrive at a manageable $510 billion in estimated climate-related costs by 2090".

Do not believe that jabberwocky for one microsecond. As I noted in my post of October 10th, after the original IPCC report came out:

"The cost of doing nothing until 2040 and allowing the now forecast 4C rise (more likely 6C) by 2100 will be well over $100 trillion in worldwide costs - from the mega-disasters including massive flooding, fires, to loss of jobs, homes, infrastructure - including power stations."

I still stand by that, and it doesn't matter if little Holman J. Jr. still believes his own codswallop that:

"The new U.S. report, as well as a United Nations report issued in October...aim at frightening the public - exactly the approach that so manifestly has failed to move the needle for 35 years.

Maybe it's because voters are skeptical of doom-mongering. Maybe they have grown fatalistic about climate change. Or maybe, reflecting the folly of climate campaigners, they've gotten a message that acting on greenhouse gases requires giving up prosperity."


Which may well be valid to an extent (at least for Right wing  troublemakers), especially given the riots and mayhem that's erupted in France after a relatively small fuel tax was imposed.  In that episode, French police had to fire tear gas and water cannons to "disperse violent demonstrators" (Denver Post, Nov. 25, p. 2A).   They also had to impose road blockades "as thousands gathered in the capital to vent anger against rising fuel taxes." 

One demonstrator quoted actually vowed (ibid.):

"It's going to trigger a civil war and we're going to be ready"

A civil war? Really?  Early indications are that the violent outbursts were instigated by the French far right (Marine LePen's cadre), which would put them right into Holman Jenkins' screed 'wheelhouse' or ideology. Don't give up a fucking thing, keep the planet burning on schedule, and let your kids and grandkids figure it all out or fry.

But the larger reason for inertia and even inattention cited by Holman is simply that too many of the "voters" Jenkins invokes are  inundated with too much 24/7 news from a 24/7 media. They are no longer able to sustain the information load and hence their brains can't process what's coming at them - especially after the political tumult of the past two years.  Oh,  and that in the case of making this planet less inhabitable in the near future material sacrifices will have to be made. Unless they actually want the planet to be unlivable for their kids and grandkids. 

As I wrote in that same Oct. 10 post, I have ten great nieces and nephews who will reach a youngish middle age by 2040. I am pondering now what kind of world awaits them. Will they, indeed, be able to find shelter and prosper in the world?   I don't know, but I refuse to believe the majority of our people have become so innately self-absorbed and focused on their own immediate "prosperity"  they refuse to look down the road at the welfare of their own offspring and their offspring. 

Jenkins insists that:  "the biggest holdup to direct action on climate is showing that preventing these changes would be cheaper than enduring them."

Seriously, mate? You are prepared to "endure" temperatures reaching 110- 115F  in 40-day heat waves, even as power grids crash and a/c in millions of homes ceases to function? Think Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria when thousands died because their meds couldn't be kept cool in the smoldering temperatures, and food spoiled...oh yeah, and fresh potable water ceased to be available. Many Puerto Ricans had to dredge water from chemically -fouled pools and small ponds. Think that would be sport to endure? Think again!

Speaking of a/c (which we know is one of the major contributors to global warming),  according to a WSJ Review piece ('Can India Afford to Cool Down?',  Nov. 24-25, p.C3) -   it is expected  that there'll be a global addition of:  "from 2.5 billion  to 3.7 billion air conditioning  room units by 2050".  Already, India  "is the fastest growing market for air conditioners."     

Indeed, "annual electricity consumption from air conditioning is expected to multiply 30 times, from just eight terawatt hours in 2010 to 238 terawatt hours by 2030".

Which begs the question of what all those denizens will do when climate change - approaching the runaway threshold - renders all those a/c units the equivalent of useless junk. Fortunately, I will be long gone before then.

If people were rational beings, as opposed to pawns manipulated by the media pundits and BS'ers like Jenkins and his WSJ op-ed cohort, fear would not be necessary . Able -minded citizens could examine the climate news and data dispassionately e.g.

Climate report understates threat

And arrive at the same conclusion as climate scientists like Myles Allen.  Prof. Allen,  an Oxford University climate scientist and an author of the IPCC report. was quoted in one NY  Times piece after the release of the UN report:

"It’s telling us we need to reverse emissions trends and turn the world economy on a dime,”

This instead of paying attention to dummy Dotard Trump who most recently spewed reams of fucktard baloney on climate in one unhinged, inchoate statement after the release of the National Climate Assessment, e.g.

"One of the problems of many people like myself is we have very high levels of intelligence but we're not necessarily such believers You look at our air and our water and it's right now at a record clean. But when you look at China, Russia and many other places in the world...the air is incredibly dirty. And when you're talking about an atmosphere the oceans are very small and it blows over.  I mean we take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from Asia.  It just flows right down the Pacific.  ….

Number two, if you go back and look at articles they talked about global freezing  They talked about at some point the planets could have freeze to death, then it's going to die of heat exhaustion.."  

Seriously, folks,  that is our resident's "high intelligence" on display in all its glory,  including the grammatical miscues.  Those, by the way,  pale in comparison to the sheer ignorance of what this imbecile is spouting.  When I showed it to my psychology postdoc niece (Shayle), she wondered whether an 8 -year old wrote it. (A very dumb eight year old.) I had to tell her, no, it came from the Twitter account of our so-called president. 


All Dotard's gut-spewing  ignorance aside, the National Climate Assessment - despite its economic lowballing -  represents a scientifically informed forecast of widespread environmental and economic devastation, and makes no bones about the source, i.e.:

"The evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to strengthen.  The impacts are intensifying across the country and the climate-related threats to America's physical, social and economic well-being are rising."

One doesn't know how much more clearly the risks can be stated, and yet too many appear to have adopted the pose of the classic frog left in water that's increased in temperature 1 degree at a time - so it slowly boils.

 Of course, the question many are asking is:  why would this backward administration laden with science troglodytes and knuckle draggers  agree to the Climate Assessment's unaltered release?   (Although on  Black Friday, when supposedly no one was paying attention. But alas for them, because it was a slow news day the headlines were captured big time.)

 The answer for the cynically-timed release,  reports the NY Times was because:

"White House officials made a calculation that Mr. Trump’s core base of supporters most likely would not care that its findings are so at odds with the president’s statements and policies." 

The resident could tell them the sky is green, and they'd argue in defense  of his atmospheric wisdom.  (Or he could just tell these idiots that the "planet will die of heat exhaustion.")

Dotard's climate science retardation is buoyed by the likes of the clown Steven Milloy, who oversees the junk website junkscience.com and was a member of Mr. Trump's E.P.A. transition team.  (Well, morons pick morons to do their dirty work for them, including spewing crap to other morons.)  This twit actually declared:

 "We don’t care. In our view, this is made-up hysteria anyway — part of the deep-state conspiracy to undermine Trump's spectacular agenda. We had to decide whether to stop the deep state from doing this in the first place, or trying to alter the document, and then creating a whole new narrative — it’s better to just have it come out and get it over with," 

Gee whiz, that's magnanimous of you, asshole!  Would you have preferred to have waited for release until the entire country is in the midst of a contiguous wildfire, like California suffered?  But this is the sort of dreck we have to deal with - and sadly-   one still sees it surfacing in the high IQ societies like Mensa and Intertel, e.g.

Brane Space: Skewering The Spurious Global Warming Narrative Of ...

brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/10/skewering-spurious-global-warming.html

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Why do so many 'brainiacs' subscribe to this balderdash?  My guess is the Dunning-Kruger effect is operative.  For reference and clarification, the Dunning-Kruger effect is defined by Wikipedia  as “a cognitive bias whereby unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate.” Wikipedia adds that “This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude.” 

Or, as psychologist David Dunning (the discoverer) once explained to Errol Morris, writing in an essay series, “The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is,” for the New York Times:

 “If you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent … [T]he skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.”  

Thus, bright though these Mensans and Ilians may well be, they lack the critical backgrounds in physics and basic climate science to claim any authority in validating their opinions.  All we can do is make our cases against their twaddle and hope at some point their actual intellect kicks in and can differentiate between fact and fiction. 

According to Bush I's  E.P.A. administrator, William Reilly, what we're seeing with Milloy and Dotard (and even the high IQ deniers)  is a new frontier of disavowal of science, of disdain for facts.   According to Reilly:

"But many Americans — just how many is unknown — are becoming accustomed to it, which is the objective of every authoritarian state. It keeps pumping out the ignorance and lies until public muddlement morphs into the status quo; it persists in disdaining facts until facts become mere play things "

What we have to hope is that the percipient and truly intelligent citizens - who can decipher scientific facts from fabulist nonsense - remain in the majority. If not, we are all for the high jump - which would probably make the likes of Holman Jenkins and Steve Milloy ecstatic.

See also:

CNN | Media Criticism

CNN's Anderson Cooper Cancels Segment With Climate Report Author to Give Rick Santorum More Air Time

The Dunning-Kruger Effect: The Same as False Knowledge Syndrome?

In an earlier (Aug. 19) blog post, in which I examined the disparate workings of left and right wing brains, I noted that "values voters" occupy a rung, first observed by Thomas Frank. They define pre-existing "values" on how the world ought to work and then let these trump any contradicting facts - whether scientific, historical or political.  Thus, in their fanciful worlds, human-generated CO2 cannot possibly overturn an entire planet's climate - so they disbelieve any facts trotted out that CO2 concentration is increasing and fueling the greenhouse effect. (This partly explains why James Inhofe- the incoming head of the Senate Environmental Committee, thinks global warming is a hoax - apart from the fossil fuel industry filling his campaign coffers)

In their world they also reject that humans could evolve from a common ape-human ancestor, so reject Darwinian evolution. Oh, and they are convinced that liberals have been the ones shafting this country from the year dot. They believe this without a whit of evidence, and only because some schmoe like Limbaugh or Larry Schweikart tells them so.

 But they often go much farther in asserting their lack of knowledge and information based on their values means ALL liberal values are wrong. The next cognitive step is to tie liberal values to knowledge they implicitly disdain, such as about global warming and evolution. Hence, it's easy to believe bollocks such as "liberal lies about history" or that global warming "is a hoax."  But they don't see these as emblems of ignorance but rather badges of honor.

The question arises as to whether this false knowledge syndrome is the same as the Dunning-Kruger Effect.  For reference and clarification, the Dunning-Kruger effect is defined by Wikpedepia  as “a cognitive bias whereby unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate.” Wikipedia adds that “This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude.” Or, as psychologist David Dunning (the discoverer) once explained to Errol Morris, writing in an essay series, “The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is,” for the New York Times:

 “If you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent … [T]he skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.”  

A recent article by Dunning, “We Are All Confident Idiots,” provides both humorous and serious examples showing just how pervasive the problem is and it certainly transcends all age groups as well as disciplines (i.e. I recall once being a doctoral Physics TA and an incident in which the prof tried to explain a kinematics lab procedure, but got it all wrong. When I tried to enlighten the dolt, he reacted badly and irrationally accused me of being the incompetent! In other words, this twit lacked the skills to recognize the correct process for the experiment and because he couldn't - he didn't accept mine.)

But it goes beyond even that and would also serve to explain the history trotted out by a Larry Schweikart, for example.  Because this fool doesn't know the correct history of our country, he is unable to recognize it for any event and so believes his incorrect, revisionist version is the truth. 

Thus, in at least one aspect the false knowledge syndrome dovetails with Dunning -Kruger which can be seen if one goes through the New York Times series, wherein one can make some observations based on it and conclusions.However, the paradox is the Dunning -Kruger subject will apply none of the criteria to himself, i.e. in highlighting his shortcomings. As far as he is concerned, he has none. By the same token, the false knowledge adherent can't conceive that the knowledge which he possesses is actually inferior to the knowledge of most well educated people.

Related to the preceding is what George Lakoff cites as the concept of hypocognition— i.e. that “we don’t have all the ideas we need.” One example he cited was the concept of reflexivity, “the fact that thought is part of the world. That when you’re thinking, it’s not separate from reality, it’s part of reality. And if your understanding of the world is reflected in what you do, then that thought comes into the world through your actions.”.  This is also, interestingly, not far from the Bohm- Stapp concept of quantum mechanics wherein thoughts are actually things describable, for example, by the quantum wave function. Hence, it is wrong to regard thought as some psychic epiphenomenon with no physical basis, or to commit Rene Descartes' error of dividing reality into res cogitans and res extensa.

The existence of conspiracy is a perfect example and  Lakoff’s discussion of hypocognition naturally comes to mind.  What could be a worse idea to miss than the very idea of missing ideas?  If you don’t think they’re out there, you’ll never go looking for them—never believe anyone who claims to have found one of them, either. If you honestly don't  believe there can be such things as conspiracies- then you will never ever believe anyone who claims to have uncovered one, and you yourself will never go in search of them because you don't believe they can exist in the first place.(Something akin to Leprechauns, except alas, conspiracies - as in the case of Iran-Contra and Watergate- are all too real!) 

Of course, this 'out of perception' thought dynamic will suit the conspirators' aims and objectives to a tee! It's no wonder then that the mainstream media loves the conspiracy skeptic  - because both operate in the realm of hypo-cognition when it comes to conspiracies. (Or, more technically, each conflates real conspiracies - i.e. JFK assassination - with ludicrous ones, like faked Moon landings - to justify the need to have to look for the real McCoy. And the corollary to that is a thought reaction Charles Pierce once noted: IF you do believe an actual conspiracy exists or has existed, you will be compelled to do something about it.)

The "doing" is what distinguishes right and left wing brains,  but let's also bear in mind that believing one's level of competence is higher than manifest is not necessarily the same as believing one's knowledge is much greater than it is. Is Sen. Jim Inhofe competent to judge or separate actual scientific research on global warming from the bogus version? Doubtful, because he's never taken any advanced climate change courses or even thermal physics college courses. Hence, he is lacking the skill level to distinguish the bogus from the real. Hence, by assuming the position of head of the Senate environmental committee he is actually rising to his level of incompetence. (A re-take on the well known "Peter Principle")

(Side note: Is Inhofe capable of doing a basic thermal physics experiment? Say measuring the conductivity of a material? I doubt it.)

At the same time it is clear Inhofe, from his past remarks on global warming, actually believes he knows more than he really does. Else, how could he make the determination it's a "hoax"  when 97% of climate scientists by a recent Eos (American Geophysical Union) survey concur it is real and human-caused? This is based on thousands of peer-reviewed papers in climate journals written by actual climate scientists  - not climate proxy scientists (e.g. chemists, astronauts, etc.

While Sen. Inhofe (so far as we know) exhibits this Dunning-Kruger Effect and hypocognition only in one domain, it is clear others can exhibit it in their own chosen areas of  mental overstretch.

Clearly, quantum physicist Scott Aaronson - in trying to invalidate a conspiracy in the JFK assassination,  was guilty not only of hypocognition (believing there can be no such things as conspiracies) but also over-estimating his competence to assess the validity of a conspiracy (the JFK case, specifically).  Hence, no surprise he committed more than 35 major errors in making his twenty claims to have shown conspiracy in the Kennedy case can't be valid. 

As I showed in several  October blog posts rebutting his nonsense, these ranged from the basic, i.e. not applying Newtonian dynamics to the wounds described by the Warren Commission or the motions visible in the Zapruder film, i.e. Jackie's motion over the rear of the trunk, to more subtle ones based on ignoring the autopsy photos (actual ones) and the statements of actual witnesses (i.e. to the Walker shooting).  In addition, Aaronson showed no knowledge at all concerning the Oswald CIA files - thereby interjecting false knowledge syndrome as well. Can we say "JFK conspiracy clusterfuck"? Yes, we can.

But Aaronson, like Dr. Steve Mason (a qualified psychologist) before him, was quite correct to criticize zany conspiracies such as the claim of a faked Apollo Moon landing, aliens hidden away at Area 51, or an imminent UN takeover via black helicopters. The problems only arose when they over-extended their areas of competence to contexts for which they weren't qualified. Hence, they went into these difficult areas (like the JFK conspiracy) with what were really limited  conspiracy judgment skills  - that only worked on fictitious "conspiracies'.  

But this is a natural human failing, and it can occur with any of us, at different times and in different contexts.   In my own case, it was exhibited when I criticized the work of Syun Ichi Akasofu before I'd taken my first advanced plasma physics course. Akasofu and Joseph Kan had attempted to use a "dynamo flare" model based on field –aligned potential drops and enhancing parallel current densities (e.g. Birkeland currents) to account for solar flares. 

After taking Ph.D. level plasma physics courses I arrived at a level of skill that enabled me to more deeply parse the model and offer valid criticisms. As I subsequently noted, we do not observe “neutral winds” with velocities (± V_n) at solar loop footpoints, but rather we observe the footpoints executing distinct independent displacements that enhance the loops' magnetic helicity (a phenomenon not on Akasofu or Kan's mental radar, hence another  case of hypocognition).

In addition to this,I pointed out it isn’t clear at all that a “loss cone effect" for solar coronal arches or arcades is significant enough to drive the currents needed to trigger flares. In the auroral context, of course, the loss cone concept has validity in connection with field –aligned potential drops and enhancing parallel current densities (e.g. Birkeland currents). To be specific, in the magnetospheric context only electrons of small pitch angles contribute to J .

Bottom line: I argued that the "dynamo model" of Akasofu and Kan over-extended the auroral generation mechanisms to solar flares. That assessment was based after more than 300 hours of plasma physics study as well as developing computer simulations for plasma behavior in a solar magnetic arcade. I thereby compensated for my earlier hypo-cognition (not the same as false knowledge, but rather not enough specific knowledge) .

These examples hold lessons for us all: we need to be more attuned when we're writing or criticizing anything  - especially areas of history we may not have studied as well as we'd believed, or areas of scientific research where we think we know vastly more than we do.

As far as those like Jim Inhofe, or any others who criticize global warming as human-caused or real, a good litmus test is whether or not they've even been exposed to a basic physics course. If not, it's not too likely they're competent or knowledgeable enough to comment.  In the case of Kennedy conspiracy critics like Scott Aaronson, or Marilyn Elias, the key barometer is whether they've actually accessed and read Oswald's CIA files. A further test is whether they are aware of CIA document 1035-960, and its mandate.

If any of the answers is 'No' then they simply aren't sufficiently competent or knowledgeable to be writing anything about the event or inferring there was no conspiracy. Because if they do, the conclusions emerge as gut responses not based on actual examination of evidence (or files). They are victims of the Dunning -Kruger Effect,  acting the part of unskilled individuals who suffer from an imagined superiority in perception,  thereby mistakenly rating their ability to infer a real conspiracy much higher than is accurate.

Live and learn!