Should We Be Optimistic About The Future Of The United States?

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At the Manhattan Contrarian family dinner table the other day, the subject of conversation turned to this question: Should we be optimistic about the future of the United States? Good and valid points were made on both sides of the issue. But the most important point weighed for the side of optimism. That point was that, of all the countries in the world, the United States is the place where the people — rather than the government — really run the country. Here, more than anyplace else, people can pursue their own initiatives and dreams without the government having the ability to obstruct and stymie private efforts, and force resources into pathways chosen by elite government functionaries.

Why does this matter? It’s not complicated. From the perspective of aggregate economic performance, the simple answer is that a trial-and-error process with hundreds of millions of participants will come up with much better and more numerous solutions to human problems than the small number of the very smartest people with government authority can ever come up with. From the perspective of the individual, the answer is that the only worthwhile life to lead is the life of freedom, where you make your own choices and take responsibility for your own success or failure. . . .

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The Real Data On Energy Usage

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The Real Data On Energy Usage

Undoubtedly you read at least some organs of the mainstream media. Perhaps your go-to source is the New York Times, or maybe the Washington Post, or Bloomberg News, or The Economist, or maybe Reuters. And therefore you have the strong impression that the world is well on its way to a huge energy transition, away from the dirty fossil fuels of the past, and toward the low carbon and renewable energy of the future. Or maybe you steer clear of all of those propagandists, but you still have the same impression. Perhaps you are getting this impression from the politicians running places like New York, or California, or Germany, or Denmark, or South Australia, or Spain, or any of many other holier-than-thou jurisdictions that have announced the imminent end of their fossil fuel use. Anyway, with so many people so loudly proclaiming the approaching end of fossil fuels, surely by now fossil fuel use must have begun its rapid drop toward oblivion.

But where can you get actual information on world energy consumption of each type, and of how it is changing over time? One quite comprehensive source is the Statistical Review of World Energy, put out each year by the BP oil company. The 2019 version, covering statistics through 2018, just came out on June 11. It was covered at Watts Up With That by Larry Hamlin on July 23.

The following chart, covering 2018 world energy consumption by fuel type, really tells you all you need to know: . . .

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Trump Has Some Basic Knowledge About Negotiation; Maybe Boris Johnson Does Too

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Say what you will about Donald Trump, here’s one thing you have to give him: he has some basic knowledge — or maybe it’s just instinct — of how to go about negotiating a deal. This is in great contrast to others you see on the world stage, including people in the office of U.S. President or British Prime Minister. You would think that knowing the fundamentals about how to negotiate with other world leaders would be a basic requirement for either of those jobs, but of course that is not true. The voters don’t know much about this subject, and can’t be expected to. As to the U.S. presidency, other than Trump, I can’t think of any other candidate who has even put forward high-level negotiating skills as part of the campaign pitch.

I’m not saying that I agree with every tactic that Trump has employed in his various negotiations as President, let alone with all of the goals that he has pursued. Rather, I’m talking here only about basic negotiating strategy, where at its core there is only one point that is important among all others. Here it is: If you want to get your best deal in a negotiation, you must be willing to walk away, and you must demonstrate that willingness to your negotiating counterparty. . . .

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Who Are The Racists Here?

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You can be forgiven if you have the impression that the entire argument of the Democratic party to voters at this point in time consists of yelling at the opposition, “You’re racists!” Or maybe sometimes it’s “You’re white supremacists!” But is there any substance to these charges?

The last few days have seen a near total meltdown, after President Trump tweeted (on July 14):

Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

No mention of race there, of course. Sounds to me like an invitation to the radical Congresswomen to start behaving like grown-ups and taking some responsibility for the absurd policy proposals that they throw around so recklessly. The Green New Deal for Somalia? I can only think it would take the impoverished Somalis from mere poverty to total destitution and starvation. But the “squad” thinks the Green New Deal is imperative for the U.S. Then why shouldn’t it also be the right policy path for Somalia? And if this plan is the route to a perfected world, what’s wrong with suggesting that its leading advocates bring some influence to bear on Somalia (or Palestine or Mexico) to implement their prescriptions? The backdrop of proposing Somalia for the GND seems to me like an excellent basis for an intelligent conversation about what policies might actually work in the real world.

So let’s get the reaction of Ilhan Omar . . .

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You Don't Need To Be A Scientist To Know That The Global Warming Alarm "Science" Is Fake

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If you follow the subject of global warming alarm, you will have read many times that there is a “consensus” of “97% of climate scientists” on — well, on something. I’ve actually never been able to find a precise statement of the proposition on which the 97% supposedly agree. But suppose you can find the statement. And suppose that it consists of some kind of definitive assertion that there has been significant atmospheric warming over the past century, and that most to all of such warming has been caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. Is this real science or fake science? How do you tell?

It seems that the most common approach of most people to this question is to trust the “scientists.” After all, science is complicated. You are not a scientist, so how are you ever going to understand this? And even if you are a scientist in some other field, and you have both the talent and the interest to delve into the details of how this conclusion was reached, you don’t have the time. You are told that 97% of “climate scientists” agree. Really, what choice do you have other than to trust the people who have done the work, and who call themselves the scientists and the experts on this subject? This approach apparently seems reasonable to a lot of people, including many, many seemingly intelligent people.

But not to me. The approach does not seem reasonable to me because the scientific method provides a very simple check for testing whether scientific claims are valid, and you don’t need to be a scientist to apply this check. (Another way of looking at it is that the people who apply this check are actually the real scientists, because they are the ones using the scientific method; and the people who call themselves “scientists” and work in “scientific” fields of endeavor and publish in scientific journals and wear scientist outfits, but don’t apply the actual scientific method, are not really scientists. But at this point in time the label “scientist” has been so captured by those who apply it to themselves whether or not they follow the scientific method that I think it is hopeless to get it back.)

Here is the very simple check. When confronted with a claim that a scientific proposition has been definitively proven, ask the question: What was the null hypothesis, and on what basis has it been rejected? . . .

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Things Keep Getting Worse For The Fake "Science" Of Human-Caused Global Warming

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Things Keep Getting Worse For The Fake "Science" Of Human-Caused Global Warming

If you follow closely the subject of hypothesized human-caused global warming, you probably regularly experience, as I do, a strong sense of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, you read dozens of pieces from seemingly authoritative media sources, as well as from important political officeholders, declaring that the causal relationship between human CO2 emissions and rapidly rising global temperatures is definitive; declaring that “the science is settled”; and further declaring that impending further increases in temperatures over the next decade or several decades are an “existential crisis” that must be addressed immediately through complete transformation of our economy at enormous cost.

On the other hand, you studied the scientific method back in high school, and you can’t help asking yourself the basic questions that that method entails:

  • What is the falsifiable hypothesis that is claimed to have been empirically validated? You can’t find it!

  • What was the null hypothesis, and what about the data caused the null hypothesis to be rejected? You can’t find that either!

  • Where can you get access to the methodology (computer code) and the full data set that was used in the hypothesis validation process; and are those sufficient to fully replicate the results? You can’t find these things either!

  • You learn that there have been major after-the-fact adjustments to the principal data sets that are used to claim rapidly warming global temperatures and to justify press releases claiming that a given year or month was the “hottest ever.” You look to see if you can find details supporting the data alterations, and you learn that such details are not available, as if they are some kind of top secret from the Soviet Union. (You can read my 23-part series on this subject at this link.)

What’s going on here? If this is “science,” it’s some kind of “science” that turns the scientific method that you thought you understood on its head. . . .

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