Announcing the advent of the disappeared scientific paper:
Three days later, however, the paper had vanished. And a few days after that, a completely different paper by different authors appeared at exactly the same page of the same volume (NYJM Volume 23, p 1641+) where mine had once been.
What topic is too hot to discuss? In this case, hotter than climate — variability of intelligence. Obviously, it is an irrelevant construct, so irrelevant it must be outlawed. This debate got so ugly, half the board members of the second journal threatened not just to resign but to harass their own journal til “it died”. It’s that bad.
These institutions are sitting ducks — staffed with nice busy people who avoid conflict and who are not equipped to handle the missiles coming. Empiricism and rational debate is being replaced with bullying and censorship. See his plea at the end. To fight back against the bullies, spread the word, buy Ted Hill’s book, or subscribe to Quillette.
Quillette: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole
Ted Hill is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Georgia Tech. He has just published a memoir PUSHING LIMITS: From West Point to Berkeley and Beyond.
In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women. Darwin’s research on evolution in the nineteenth century found that, although there are many exceptions for specific traits and species, there is generally more variability in males than in females of the same species throughout the animal kingdom.
Evidence for this hypothesis is fairly robust and has been reported in species ranging from adders and sockeye salmon to wasps and orangutans, as well as humans. Multiple studies have found that boys and men are over-represented at both the high and low ends of the distributions in categories ranging from birth weight and brain structures and 60-meter dash times to reading and mathematics test scores. There are significantly more men than women, for example, among Nobel laureates, music composers, and chess champions—and also among homeless people, suicide victims, and federal prison inmates.
Darwin wondered why males might have evolved to be more variable than females, but could not settle on an answer, so Ted P. Hill took up the search…
My aim was not to prove or disprove that the hypothesis applies to human intelligence or to any other specific traits or species, but simply to discover a logical reason…
I came up with a simple intuitive mathematical argument based on biological and evolutionary principles and enlisted Sergei Tabachnikov, a Professor of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University, to help me flesh out the model.
He got great feedback, the preprint was published, the paper reviewed, typeset, accepted and scheduled. But at about the same time James Damore was triggering international strife at Google for suggesting that differences in gender variability might explain gender disparities in careers in Silicon Valley.
The accepted article was published as a preprint and then the trouble began: A representative of the Women In Mathematics (WIM) chapter in his department at Penn State warned that “the paper might be damaging to the aspirations of impressionable young women.” She worried that some will see maths being used to “support a very controversial, and potentially sexist, set of ideas…”
Is the maths sexist, or is reality?
For weeks the department at Penn State was embroiled in debate and private lectures:
… the Department Head had explained that sometimes values such as academic freedom and free speech come into conflict with other values to which Penn State was committed. A female colleague had then instructed Sergei that he needed to admit and fight bias, adding that the belief that “women have a lesser chance to succeed in mathematics at the very top end is bias.” Sergei said he had spent “endless hours” talking to people who explained that the paper was “bad and harmful”…
Ted Hill wrote to the organisers at Penn State (Women in Maths) offering to go there, discuss their concerns, and even edit the paper if necessary. They didn’t reply. Instead the NSF (National Science Foundation) suddenly asked to be removed from the papers acknowledgements as a source of funding, which was unheard of. (Turns out the Women in Maths crew had been lobbying the NSF). Worse, the journals editor rescinded the offer to publish. Suddenly the accepted paper was unaccepted. Not because of scientific errors but because the bullies won:
“Several colleagues,” she wrote, had warned her that publication would provoke “extremely strong reactions” and there existed a “very real possibility that the right-wing media may pick this up and hype it internationally.””
The people warning of the strong reactions were also the ones providing the strong reactions
Amie Wilkinson, a senior professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago had become involved. Read the original longer version to find out how she used relatives, facebook, and social media in order to stop this paper being published and then punish the journal and authors.
At this point it was too much for his co-author Sergi who was facing departmental action, fury of collegues, the diversity committee as well as putting out the NSF. He asked for his name to be removed even though he’d done the simulations.
Ted Hill was the last man standing:
Fortunately for me, I am now retired and rather less easily intimidated—one of the benefits of being a Vietnam combat veteran and former U.S. Army Ranger, I guess. So, I continued to revise the paper, and finally posted it on the online mathematics archives.
The paper was quickly picked up and then published by the New York Journal of Mathematics on November 6th last year, but not for long:
Three days later, however, the paper had vanished. And a few days after that, a completely different paper by different authors appeared at exactly the same page of the same volume (NYJM Volume 23, p 1641+) where mine had once been.
The paper should be deleted said the political activist because it was “political” and the editor was a horrible man too:
As it turned out, Amie Wilkinson is married to Benson Farb, a member of the NYJM editorial board. Upon discovering that the journal had published my paper, Professor Farb had written a furious email to Steinberger [the Editor in Chief] demanding that it be deleted at once. “Rivin,” [the editor who published it] he complained, “is well-known as a person with extremist views who likes to pick fights with people via inflammatory statements.” Farb’s “father-in law…a famous statistician,” he went on, had “already poked many holes in the ridiculous paper.” My paper was “politically charged” and “pseudoscience” and “a piece of crap” and, by encouraging the NYJM to accept it, Rivin had “violat[ed] a scientific duty for purely political ends.”
Half the board of the NYJM had threatened to resign and “harrass” the journal “until it died” unless the article was deleted. So the editor in chief had capitulated lest the journal he founded 25 years before ceased to exist.
Professor Wilkinson, having “won” the day, is apparently continuing to tar and blacken the names of all people and journals involved. It’s a warning to other journals to toe the line.
Sitting ducks — How can a journal survive that?
It will end up that only retired scientists can freely speak on contentious topics, and where will they publish? Small institutions are soft targets unless they are extremely well funded. To thwart the bullies the board would need to be vetted, trained and prepared to deal with the escalation (and who needs it?) It would help if they had lucrative positions or rewards that were worth defending. But our current system relies more on a code of honour. Only an implacable belief in the importance of science, plus serious training, and funding would carry a team through.
The last word from Ted Hill — Who will be next?
… I understand the importance of the causes that equal opportunity activists and progressive academics are ostensibly championing. But pursuit of greater fairness and equality cannot be allowed to interfere with dispassionate academic study. No matter how unwelcome the implications of a logical argument may be, it must be allowed to stand or fall on its merits not its desirability or political utility. First Harvard, then Google, and now the editors-in-chief of two esteemed scientific journals, the National Science Foundation, and the international publisher Springer have all surrendered to demands from the radical academic Left to suppress a controversial idea. Who will be the next, and for what perceived transgression? If bullying and censorship are now to be re-described as ‘advocacy’ and ‘academic freedom,’ as the Chicago administrators would have it, they will simply replace empiricism and rational discourse as the academic instruments of choice.
Wrapped under all this is that politically incorrect fact about the different spreads on the bell curves…
h/t David E, Willie S.
Photo: Wikimedia commons | Centenial light bulb, Livermore, CA. | Image LPS.1
Sigh,
I wish people knew a bit about “programming a humanoid”.
All it takes is for the pre-natal testosterone
…present in males but not females,
to attenuate the “fear response” brain function a a tiny bit.
The 20 year programming programming response is
….. “take the hill” and “winning is the only thing”
versus
……”tend and befriend” and “keep the kids alive”.
(and “yes”, they are strongly overlapping bell curves)
We see this everywhere but it is ignored because the
….”laser focused, tunnel vision” folk understand
……”massive connected, massively parallel, massively connected, threshold computers,
…….the human brain,
…….evolved to optimize Maslow hierarchy of needs and have surviving offspring”
is about zero
142
Hi Susan,
You have pointed to a number of effects that seem related to the topic but where are the ideas guiding us?
KK
50
I recently retread George Orwell’s book 1984, rewriting histor was the actual job of the main character in the book. In reality that is what is happening all around us, and while it is blatantly obvious relating to climate history, it is also occurring elsewhere, including reasons children where removed from their parents and cannibalism. History provides us with lessons in relation to the past, modifying it with mistruths is the recipe for repeating it again! Anyone whom hasn’t read Geoge Orwell needs to take the time to do so, it will chance the way you perceive what you see in the media irrespective of your viewpoint.
200
I could not read it again. It is too much like the present and far to depressing because of it.
110
Ask not for whom the bell curves. It curves for thee?
420
The next thing you know they will beatify Kevin Rudd & Julia Gillard!
Their images should be on all our electricity bills. /sarc.
Scientism & goldfish psyche image bytes on Fondle Slabs RULE the world.
160
It appears that in the rush to reject this paper, the politically correct brigade have ignored one of the fundamental elements of the model presented: that the increased variability of one sex is determined by increased selectivity of the other sex.
Jordan Peterson, in his book, 12 Rules for Life, mentions that we have twice as many female ancestors as male (page 41). He discusses female sexual selection as driven by inherent behaviours based on dominance hierarchies in society. A different perspective to the mathematical model, but still founded on providing an explanation of normal human behaviour.
Yet another topic where empirical evidence is not allowed to challenge how the loony left remake society as they would like it to be.
320
TP Hill states in his conclusion:
It seems obvious that virtue signalling is an end in and of itself, though it does have a byproduct. It unfailingly reveals the pathological fragility of the Rainbow Cult.
50
I had to think about that one. Does it mean that, historically, only half as many men as opposed to women have become parents? Perhaps because of wars. Or does it mean something else?
40
It means that at certain periods of time a small number of men have monopolised reproduction. That might be political (say Ghengis Khan) or accidental, if men are killed off for some reason.
60
That’s one possibility, and it requires that at least some of the variation in traits predicts the ability to monopolise reproduction. It could also be that women were selective (the extreme version of this being lekking behaviour seen in some species) and only bred with the “best” males. I haven’t followed through in detail the argument of the paper Peterson quotes, so don’t know whether this final point is compatible with it or not, but it might be the same genetic results could arise from less extreme forms of sexual selection, heuristically, half the men sire 1 child, the other half 3 and all women have 2. In all likelihood difference in reproductive success of the sexes is probably a bit of both.
20
Ian,
I think that Jordan Peterson has failed to consider the biological effect of the cultural tradition of polyandry as a means of letting men (usually brothers) become fathers.
20
Polyandry is extremely rare in humans and usually only occurs in very harsh environments.
31
Jordan Peterson covers this in various ways talking about how the west’s crusade for monogamy helped it rise out of a prehistoric mindset. Others have looked at this and to this day a country that isn’t majority monogamous is destined for brutal and primitive results.
10
Want to see the hyperventilating mafia in action look at Jordan Peterson trying to reason with students and faculty over perceived hate crimes, oh and don’t mention global IQ test data.
180
Jordan Peterson has a lot to say about IQ tests Jordan Peterson: The Dangerous I.Q. Debate
50
Part of the problem with IQ tests is that they mainly measure how good you are at IQ tests. I say this as someone who has done fairly well at IQ tests in the past (haven’t bothered with the like in a couple decades). For example, practising IQ tests will improve scores, assuming one has the ability to learn the systems in IQ tests. One becomes used to seeing the patterns.
That said IQ tests are a decent proxy for IQ, in as much as the concept has much merit. It is one of the very few parameters that can be measured with a reasonable degree of reproducibility in the social sciences… the latter part of the term used very loosely.
Stefan Molyneux has several talks on IQ distribution differences, which are well worth listening to. It is the primary reason why the media disparages him so vociferously.
140
When I joined the Army in 1965, I was sent to Kapooka, NSW. We did these psychtests. They were the first time that I had encountered these type of tests. The NSW recruits said they often did these tests when they went to school so were quite familiar with them.
10
Seems appropriate. There are differences in male vs. female. A fight or flight response is one sidded to procreators, rather the maternalism. But, because of Gene expressions, sometimes, roles become “confused”. Does that mean, one is right, the other is wrong? The other is different. But, does that make one way right? No. The genes express to you a abnormal fear,should you fight it? No fear is a normal response to a stimuli, such as see fire, run away from it. Fear is controllable by the subject. So they may see fire, extinguish fire. That is real science. Fake science tries to hide dissenters, because it’s a final word. But, what do they have to hide? A fear they are wrong? It’s not male, female, androgenous, or highway. It’s suppressed speech.
[I’m not clear on what you mean by, “seems appropriate,” but I’ll make a good assumption and say it’s that there is extreme variability of intelligence and approve this on that basis.] AZ
50
So this
scientistreactionary is suggesting that men and women are different?How dare he?
360
You’ve captured the entirety of the stupidity in one beautiful sentence.
280
It’s important that we remember these words “Different but equal”
Men and women are NOT the same, that doesn’t mean they are unequal.
90
What’s to remember? The research suggests that men differ greatly from each other, more than men (on average) differ from women (on average).
The whole point is whether variability – difference – is greater.
50
I remember the furore when famous Professor Eysenck (1916 to 1997) visited Melbourne in the early 1970s. Uproar. Lectures shut down. His theory was that different races had different intelligence. He put Eskimos at the top then Jews and Japanese. etc. The people who insist that everyone is the same shut him down. “Eysenck was a leading spokesman for a view that has been popular in academic psychology: that Freud was not a scientist and that psychoanalysis is unscientific.”
It has always been like this. The left of politics always shut down free speech, often violently. Then they call everyone else Nazis. It is why physicist turned psychologist Eysenck fled Nazi Germany only to find similar attitudes elsewhere, the safety of the herd. Including Australia.
280
Hmm..the scientific journal equivalent of Fake News…..?
20
…hmm…what I was trying to say was the irritant journal article was sent into oblivion, but its a bit like fake news which aims to distract from whats really going on….
I suspect that the corruption in academia cant last – as the standards drop, people who graduate will be full PC but way less capable ( e.g. engineers, scientists etc ) and the whole mess will collapse in on itself.
50
To paraphrase Voltaire: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it.
It seems that the spirit of the enlightenment has died. So-called educated people have either never heard of Voltaire, or they have purposely rejected the concept of freedom of speech to further promote their progressive ideology. AGW skeptics are accused of being anti-science. Yet, it is those who insist some things should not be allowed to be said that are truly those who are anti-science!
20
We are inexorably returning to the Dark Ages, a time when the Earth was flat, the sun revolved around the Earth and witches were burned.
230
The idea of a flat Earth was a minority view (in written records) in the Dark Ages. No documents claiming it for some 800 years before Colombia set sail and that was a document not translated to Latin until the late 18thC while many arisings from the Doctors of the church claiming that the world was round were read widely.
Witches were not burnt and it was heretical to believe someone was a witch in the Dark Ages. The records also only document a few hundred (less than 300) executed for being heretics and most not burnt at the stake. The Protestants executed witches, never burning them according to the records. The claims of 100 000 (even millions) is the result of extrapolating folklore recorded in the 29th C to get the numbers up 3 orders of magnitude.
90
My points weren’t meant to be taken literally, they were analogies to what is happening today where science is being supplanted by superstition.
70
I know but the flat-earth myth is a deliberate attempt to tell a lie often and for long enough until gets taught in school despite having no place in a history lesson except for how not to do it. Same with the witches. Despite the 100 000 estimate being dodgy. Supposed academics have cited 3 million and supposedly midwives when the 200 or so documented cases of witches being executed suggests it was for drug use. One was a young man who bewitched a young women then seduced her causing her to suicide when she came around so you would have to agree that they got it right at least 0.5% of the time.
40
Wasn’t Joan of Arc burnt as a witch?
10
No. She was burnt as a heretic. The account is interesting because it highlights how inquisitions had strict rules that had been ignored to get a conviction, eventually overturned. She was described as a witch in writings at the time and afterwards by the English as propaganda.
Here is the RC Church’s stance on witchcraft. http://newadvent.org/cathen/15674a.htm
20
DEVOLUTION back to the primitive cave men……….
21
It is happening in Victoria as we speak angry – Andrews has announced more windmills and solar farms to power *cough” 650,000 homes. Victoria and South Australia are racing to establish pre-industrial societies when the working day was driven by daylight and at night the lights were out.
SA has been winning the race to the bottom but Victoria clearly hasn’t thrown in the towel just yet!
100
bemused:
It has happened before. Read about the Church and Medieval times.
Crusades were launched against peoples who didn’t accept the orthodox view.
The Inquisition went after lone ‘heritics’.
The Church had a list of banned books.
And propaganda was launched from a thousand pulpits against those who questioned the Church.
The downfall came when their money making schemes got out of hand.
41
I have read about those things and the Church of Climate Change and the Church of Social Justice are just two incarnations of the sordid past.
It’s interesting that the Left don’t believe in God (I’m more of an agnostic), yet all of their activities follow that of religious fervour. Substituting for what they lack I suppose (and they lack a lot).
110
Crusades, as most would understand it, were those launched against Muslim invaders. Little was done in the fighting back against these invaders starting centuries earlier until the end of the 11th century. What Graeme No.3 is probably referring too is the many smaller ‘crusades’ during this time targeting other groups such as the Rhineland Jews and later various pagan groups.
20
Bemused,
It is easy to say that, harder to say what causes it. Used to be a hypothesis of heavy metal poisoning as as by cadmium for one. That was debunked, I think.
We here seem worried by this trend O green lefty communist pinkies, but what happens when they grow to become the democratic majority? After that, folks like you and me will be the outliers, the ones to be sent to the asylum. There might be a reason to live a good life with a cheerful exit when the rules change. Geoff
20
If that time ever comes, I suspect that the elite will probably not worry too much about cantankerous old curs like me. But I doubt that that lot will ever become the majority.
20
“The paper can be found here (at least for now).
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf ”
Still works atm
From comment at
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/tips-notices-september-2018/#comment-100018
90
Around this area
“Gawwwd … emojis between the ‘sisterhood’ … said seriously. I keep hearing that we need women … in leadership … to provide a “balancing” and “tempering” viewpoint. If that means … emojis between the ‘sisters’ … then I’ll stick with the patriarchy. What a horrible disservice to women, this twit is”
A comment at
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2018/09/10/things-youll-never-see-on-the-cbc-5/#comments
60
Sounds like an inbuilt mechanism for species to respond quickly to a changing environment.
Successful males can have a very large impact on the gene pool. (Any bull battery will rebuild a cow herd to its own likeness in 3 generations – cattle breeding 101)
A wider spread on males covers more bases, unsuccessful males are surplus to requirement and totally disposable.
As for the political/religious censorship – shrug same old, same old.
90
Natural selection would favour humans where the men would protect the clan and women would be all for it, choosing to protect the children by running away to safety with them or leaving the men to catch the big beasts for protein.
While natural selection would favour more intelligence, you don’t get it without some traits that are not conducive to becoming an alpha male. Hence, a much bigger spread of intelligence.
While intelligence in primitive women is also beneficial (and even an idiot is much smarter than a chimp), the whole tribe benefits from exceptional smarts of one woman for generations due to passing down of customs. Similar case in hunting and defense but these are situations where thinking on your feet is a bigger advantage. Plus, women get no benefit from being the sole procreator in a clan.
60
Do you think polygamy has a future in the modern era?
20
Yeah, its a no brainer.
20
yeah
10
Sequential polygamy is common is Western countries.
Women don’t accept sub-par men, while men do (this is documented and well-known). Women just want to wait for the best match (as a geberal rule).
20
I wonder whether it is actually a response to greater specialisation amongst men?
A hunt involving say four men would perhaps benefit from two quick, strong men, a leader and an intelligent planner, whereas gathering and child-care selects for the same traits. And with farming we became more specicialised, but again mainly amongst men.
50
I was trying to figure out why there should be a spread in the other direction. Not all very intelligent men are dweebs .
10
I think the paper pointed out that this is an across species phenomenon, and its origins probably predate humans as such. When applying it to modern humans it pays to remember we are a combination of genetics and culture/upbringing, with the latter most likely playing the larger role in where we end up in society.
10
Re RB,
Who wants a peacock? Character, word’s yer bond …
hafta’ raise the chicks, and besides… it’s interestin’. )
20
If this article points to the future, the future is bleak indeed. A place where a fixated idea and an emotion is more important than a measurement or a discussion.
Truly; Plato would be shocked at what these intellectuals have brought into being.
180
Check out Plato, Volume 1 Karl Popper, ‘The Open Society
and Its Enemies,’ deeper even than George Orwell’s 1984. Plato
is the Philosopher King of the necessary ‘noble’ lie,’meta;s
in men, roots of yer authoritarian blue-print ‘I/We’ know
what’s good for you, so U.N. 🙁
30
During Hitler’s reign much of the German scientific community helped him to do well for a while using many new war machines, such as rockets that almost won him the war. Given time they would have developed the atomic bomb and completed building their supersonic stealth bombers they had on the drawing boards. Then there were the experiments they conducted on humans, which I won’t go into for obvious reasons. This proves that science has no moral compass. Certainly there were pressures, such as money and survival but they are only excuses that allowed evil to reign supreme for a short while. We are seeing it today in a different way with climate science and CAGW. Again they have lost their moral compass and are well funded. They are supporting a scam that threatens the whole world in so many different ways, such as taking away a nation’s sovereign right to govern itself, turn away from cheap energy sources and instead effectively place a sort of tax on energy to allow companies to profit more than they would otherwise, and to destabilise the grid to the point of risking an economic collapse. They are all just coincidences or part of some well organised plan that’s well funded and propagandised. It’s hard to determine which but in the end the result will be the same. The propaganda now starts in the schools and extends to the Universities and MSM. It is so widespread and persistent anyone who dare stands against it is ridiculed in public. That in itself scares politicians even those who know it’s all a scam and so we end up with weak-kneed responses. Trump is the exception and probably the only one we’ll ever see.
As George Orwell said:
“Clearly, scientific education ought to mean the implanting of a rational, sceptical, experimental habit of mind. It ought to mean acquiring a method — a method that can be used on any problem that one meets — and not simply piling up a lot of facts. Put it in those words, and the apologist of scientific education will usually agree. Press him further, ask him to particularize, and somehow it always turns out that scientific education means more attention to the sciences, in other words — more facts. The idea that science means a way of looking at the world, and not simply a body of knowledge, is in practice strongly resisted. I think sheer professional jealousy is part of the reason for this. For if science is simply a method or an attitude, so that anyone whose thought-processes are sufficiently rational can in some sense be described as a scientist — what then becomes of the enormous prestige now enjoyed by the chemist, the physicist, etc. and his claim to be somehow wiser than the rest of us?”
So, facts alone are not enough. We need scientists with a moral compass using the right method in their research. At the moment especially in climate science we have neither. Unless it stops the end result will be along the lines of what George Orwell witnessed in Hitler’s Germany except next time it will be much worse thanks to modern technology.
230
The list of good things which came out of the war are endless. Jet aircraft. Supersonic planes. Microwave (Radar). Radar itself. Television. Refrigeration. Antibiotics. Mass production. Nuclear power. Even nuclear weapons which have kept the peace. Stainless steel. Aluminum. Many existed in principle before the war but were not commercial. After the war the factories kept going and made cars and refrigerators and hot water services and vacuum cleaners and planes for everyone, perhaps none so as important as mass antibiotics as were prepared for the D Day landing where if a man survived the beach, he had a 99% chance of recovery back in England.
So you are right. War is terrible. Scientists without a conscience. But war is the great innovator and the innovations over time were more important than the war. Blood transfusions were a field experiment in WW1. Many died but the number of women whose lives were saved in childbirth vastly overwhelmed the numbers lost in battle. Similarly with antibiotics where in Victorian England 30% of women died , many a week later from infection. Children invariably grew up with the evil stepmother.
In war people do the unthinkable. Try the impossible. It created the bronze age, the iron age, the age of steel. Ploughshares into swords and then back into combine harvesters. War also created CO2 which is the most deadly gas in history, apparently.
212
Of course while nuclear weapons stopped war, the terrifying cold war gave us the space race, miniaturization of electronics, satellites, communications, computers and ultimately all the technology we now see as essential for life. None of which existed before WW2.
112
And it gave us the United Nations.
I would gladly give away all of what you mentioned if it would also gave the United Nations to the planet Jupiter. I think they could do with a change of scenery and a real challenge to face.
191
Like the League of Nations, the United Nations is an creation of the United States. As such it is dominated by the many small countries, 75% of which are military dictatorships. Some with lower populations than my suburb. The only part which matters is the Security Council which is at least a forum for the countries with nuclear weapons and who really need to keep talking.
The invention of Climate Change in 1988 though has been a total disaster for the planet. $1.5Trillion a year to create an army of people who do absolutely nothing and vast amount of money to build windmills for the richest countries which do not need them. In Australia it has become comic tragic.
The push to remove the barrier of countries as in the EU and mass invasion of countries from Hungary to America to Australia, there has to be some sense soon. People need windmills where they live, quality of life where they live, not to shift everyone around. We have run out of new land.
142
TdeF
So we can remind the detractors that, but for WW2, they wouldn’t be able to tweet
40
When I think of all the great advances of mankind in the last 200 years, twitter does not come to mind. It’s well named.
80
/s was lmplicit
50
It seems to me that our ‘Moral Compass’ is based on short-term analysis and unquestioning-adoption of Christian values. But, whether or how our ‘Moral Compass’ might be changed is another topic that probably would be shouted down in a public debate.
20
Morality determines actions, and hence has a far greater influence on outcomes, than simple investigative science.
Science can create the weapon, but morality will determine whether it is used for evil, or to keep the barbarians outside the gates.
It is not enough to say that we need “scientists with morality”. Firstly because that does not address which morality is beneficial, but mostly because scientists do not, generally, control the uses to which their work is put.
The most relevant point in this is not that some piece of research “might” be used to oppress, but that those seeking to censure it are oppressing others RIGHT NOW.
80
I agree it’s not enough to say we need scientist with morality. But at least it’s a big improvement, provided of course it’s good. That’s where your next point comes into play and is a debate that’s often conducted between those who believe in God and hence absolute morality and those who don’t and so must conclude there is no absolute morality because each one of us can define it any way we like, unless of course we designate someone to be a supreme leader of the world who has absolute authority, which means a dictator. Good luck with that one.
30
“I agree it’s not enough to say we need scientist with morality.”
Sorry, that’s no good – that’s how you end up with “de-published” papers, subjects that cannot be researched, view-points that can’t be questioned and so on.
No, morals other than the treatment of living things in the search for knowledge (IOW, you can’t do a double-blind test where someone might be injured or killed because of the test) need to be applied, but no more – that something can be used for evil does not preclude its use for good. For instance, a surgical scalpel can be used to perform life-saving surgery, but can also be used to commit the most horrendous torture and murder. Will you ban the scalpel because someone might mis-use it? Of course not! Radioactive isotopes can cause cancers and other nasty diseases, but they can also be harnessed to help cure such diseases. Will you ban all nuclear facilities regardless? This is the madness of too much political correctness, and it is toxic to people and civilisations.
Bottom line: knowledge has and requires no morals, the specific application of knowledge in specific circumstances most likely will involve a moral choice. Whether you decide to use it or not is a moral choice – the actual knowledge has no morals and cannot be considered “good” or “bad” in and of itself, any more than the scalpel above can be considered good or bad.
It’s hard.
There is no ultimate authority you can appeal to for guidance – other than your conscience.
You may be lauded as a hero or despised as a villain – but that depends on who uses your discovery and for what purpose, and also when it happened (eg, use of nuclear weapons in WWII saved millions of allied solders lives, but cost the Japanese hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, including civilians. At the time, it was lauded as a great thing to end a war quickly. Now it is seen as immoral and wrong)
10
Historic fact, many Nazis were smuggled out of Germany after 1945 to the USA, regardless of there political persuasion which was conveniently forgotten. One such Werner VonBraun (not sure of the exact date may have been before) rocket scientist and some others. This enabled USA to get ahead on rocket science and the rest is history.
50
The discussion should be why we give the people at the wrong extreme end so much influence in academia and not how many are men or women.
My postulate on why maths was something boys traditionally did better than girls (while acknowledging that plenty of girls had talent) was that girls became exposed to this sort of hen pecking at an early age. Creates the sort of perfectionist that excels at following explicit instructions and freaks if instructions are not explicit enough so that making a mistake is a real possibility.
50
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/an-honoured-ernie-winners-heartfelt-acceptance-speech/news-story/963a5c1ac02515b9f6fb8bd454e3fc3c
A little insight into what passes as evidence based research amongst feminists.
30
Its interesting as the recipients fight over the $100Bn in the Green Climate fund, that the recipients are angry that the US has withdrawn. The argument is that they are the most responsible because of historic emissions (CO2). So poor countries like China want compensation for historic emissions.
You would have to think someone might suggest even by the standards of the IPCC, all that CO2 is gone into the vast oceans by now, but in the world of Climate Change, science takes a back seat. The 50% increase in CO2 is clearly man made and the United States did it. They should be made to pay. Somehow.
80
I mean that even China has found a way in which they are the victims of historic CO2 and deserve compensation too. Behind everything is survival and wealth. The facts are irrelevant.
There are politically correct facts and reality. As with species and even gender based distribution of intelligence, there is only the Mao suit.
I think it is a corruption of the US Declaration of Independence. All men are created equal. It’s not true.
It is not a statement on genetics. They are only equal under the law. Don’t tell that to the left of politics who want affirmative action for pygmy basketballers or land rights for gay whales.
111
“All men are created equal.” as far as their human rights, but not as far as their IQ…….
50
I had to solve this riddle for myself; does the bible say “All men are created equal”?
Some research later:..
The Bible Never Says ‘All Men are Created Equal’.
Most of the famous “equality” passages use quite different language. Galatians 3:28 doesn’t say that there is no Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female because we are all equal, but because we “are all one in Christ Jesus.” Colossians 3:11 doesn’t talk about equality between barbarians and Scythians, but rather asserts that “Christ is all, and is in all.” Ephesians 3:6 doesn’t say that Gentiles are now equal with Jews, but rather that we are now “heirs together.” Ephesians 6:9 doesn’t talk about equality between slaves and masters, but rather that both have the same Master …
50
Confucius say “All men come from same mould – it’s just that some are mouldier than others”
120
Cheeses that’s good.
80
What about gay basketballers and pigmy whales? You’ll be hearing from some small brained academics soon.
20
Some scenarios fill me with fear. Science has given us really good data on toxicity of common chemicals like cyanide, with supporting info on stability, solubility, etc. The question of morality in science does not arise in these routine, early investigations of characterising what is around us. It takes but one person with morality different to the norm, for whatever reason, to dump a few cwt of cyanide into a town water supply then go elsewhere. We would label such person as criminally insane. But, where is the line no activist person should cross? Personally, I think people who make extreme activist climate statements about the end of civilization if we do not ban coal, have similar culpability to cyanide lady. People still will die, only the time frame is different, but so what?
We do need some legal formalism about where that go/nogo line is and its punishment for breach. More discussion is needed about the act of crying fire in the crowded movie theatre and analogues. Geoff
50
Geoff,
The line is usually drawn at the illegal taking of another human life: homicide. Some societies even go so far as the taking of any life, such as killing in self-defense.
10
So the world of science won’t discuss intelligence” So what? It might be different if they displayed some itelligence to begin with. But what to you expect to find on John Cook’s site? What do you expect from the likes of the ABC. Brain dead might describe them better. PC does that. It kills you from inside, slowly roasting you over the open fire of ignorance until you can no longer think for yourself for fear of censure.
I’m content to know that whatever intelligence I have is competitive with most people and that I have the luck of the draw inherent in genetics to thank for it.
When I met a fine young man named Patrick who was a Down’s Syndrome child, I treated him just as I would anyone else. And I was instantly a friend. He had a terrible handicap and I’m sure he realized he was not like others and didn’t know why. But he did his best and that’s what counts. He and I both do our best.
Patrick, you’ve outdone most of the world and now that your family moved away, I miss you. You have it better than the closed minds do and I wish I could have spent more time with you.
170
The quest for conformity, thus mediocrity, will be the end of the race, which is what many on the left think is the right thing anyway. In fact conformity is probably the main reason that species do die out as there are no great leaders, if you will, to lead them into different regimens. Men are not women, and women are not men. The day that isn’t true is the day the next species takes over.
130
Famous Australia Germaine Greer of “The Female Eunuch fame” is now not welcome at universities because having fought for womens’ rights all her working life, she said men were not women. It is now the men who think they are women who are a louder voice than women who want to have the perceived exclusive rights of men, rights which do not exist. Differences exist and they cannot be legislated away in any species.
140
All statistics are born silly, but grow moronic when used to impose mathematical precision on ill-defined or never-defined notions (like “climate change”).
IQ, for example, is a perfect measure of success in performing IQ tests on a given day. It is a rough, simplistic but possibly useful measure of certain other things. But if someone has noted clusters/group-trends in IQ (or related measurement) and been happy to speculate a little on the causes of those trends I’m happy to take those calculations and speculations on board. Just don’t clobber me with “science has shown” when it’s just opinion that’s slightly less raw than what can be gathered from looking about and using my loaf.
“…a simple intuitive mathematical argument based on biological and evolutionary principles…”? My first thought was uh-oh.
But I say publish, not because Hill’s study is a gem (my second thought was also uh-oh), but because it has set a few people thinking, as opposed to cradling pet notions. There’s some baby with this bath water. Let the study find its own way to the memory hole.
100
I have always wondered, in a world where half the population insist you are told what to think, that you do not think for yourself, who decides what to think? The recent assault on statues from London to New York to Sydney, Lord Nelson to Christoper Columbus to Robert E. Leed to Captain James Cook, who decided that? I cannot believe one side of politics woke up and decided that all heroes of Western society were appalling white male supremacists. So who does decide what to think, when you cannot think for yourself. Is there a club? Can I join?
160
So many ways to restrict free speech … censorship in academia
to support prevailing dogma, censorship of, or by the press re
above, citizen speech, gov’t diktats of gender sensitive language,
and as Robin Eubanks, researches, here’s the latest @ invisible
serf’s collar, transformational goals in education, (UN)Core
Curriculum, k-12, cognitive make over of students to fit humanity
for a sustainable global community, that which may not be said may
not even be thought.
http://invisibleserfscollar.com/healing-the-psychological-split-within-ourselves-is-the-learning-transformation-goal-few-openly-express/#respond
40
Beth,
Have a read of
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2018/09/10/the-children-are-our-future-13/#comments
and comments, particularly the one from Kenjii
20
More re the UN, particularly the last paragraph
“So looks like once again it’s Israel and the USA standing in the path of Globalist Un-elected Government. It is also quite clear that “Treaties” are the back door mechanism by which the Globalists and the UN are attempting to destroy national sovereignty and domestic rule by democratically elected governments. ALL “treaties” and any proposed treaties and agreements must be subject to a strong review looking specifically at any wording that would allow or could be stretched to allow un-elected authority over the USA, our citizens and our laws. Those that violate the sanctity of the US Constitution or home rule need to be voided.”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/bolton-unloads-on-un-icc/
71
Ian,
Yes, Kenjii makes relevant comments re economic motives in
education institutions and also mentions social justice warriors.
For the UN/Soros control of education policy I’d say that values
‘ed’ is the main game.
40
I have long thought that Liberals must have secret catechism classes where they read out loud from the New Yorker magazine and are required to memorize the latest memes and political talking points. Nothing else would seem to explain how quickly the same phraseology shows up among the general population of the Left.
30
One of the good things to come out of the Trump Period is that it has allowed outsiders to view the push and pull forces at work in modern society as a whole.
If we are smart enough we may be able to make adjustments before it gets worse than it already is. Unfortunately I not sure we are that smart.
It’s good to fight for Equality of Opportunity but when the social justice warriors fight and claw for Equality of Outcome it is clear that they fully deserve the descriptor:
The Luny Left.
KK
41
KK
Spell check questions the “luny” so I can do this:-
“The Luny Left.”
Valued in Canadian dollars?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loonie
30
Luny is more correct than loony, as it alludes to lunacy, or moon sickness as it was thought.
30
The subject of all the fury does not say anything regarding the intelligence of any particular man or woman. It is, after all, as individuals that we have rights, not as members of any particular group.
The real terror for the social justice warriors is that they wouldn’t be able to justify their “headcount” theory of equality. If the paper’s conclusions are correct, you’re always going to have more male CEO’s than female, and more female teachers, and probably eventually, doctors, than male.
50
There is only one guaranteed way to fight the war against sexism.
All male babies must be surgically turned into females, as soon as they are born.
This will completely eliminate any male superiority.
32
More likely female hubots will become fashionable, creating a dilemma, upsetting the course of nature. Darwin could never have imagined it.
10
I bet Amie Wilkinson didn’t even read the paper. The paper dictates one group makes the choice of selection over subgroups of the other group. That choice dictates the variability of the chosen group…..and the group that makes the choice is….
40
As a species, we have evolved a huge distance from when our wits dictated our chance of survival against stronger threats. Mathematics may explain a distribution but it doesn’t explain that often bazaar outcome of human relationship…the actual choices made by men and women…almost as random as the means of contact. Our society is a melting pot of random selection…of individual choices.
40
Particles-to-people evolution via natural selection acting on random mutation not only did not happen; it could not have happened. The combinatorial space is too vast and the number of functional proteins too few. Game over. So there is that.
22
Did you learn your maths at a climatology school? Go ahead and prove that the small chance of rolling a billion sixes in a row is zero. Small != 0.
If you can prove it, I guess Zeno must have been right about Achilles never getting past the tortoise.
60
1. Ad hominem–you lose.
2. You seem to have to same smug, close-minded attitude that this very article describes. Do you work at the Beeb? Did you even read the article?
3. The universe does not have the probabilistic resources for the evolution for the complexities of life we observe. Doug Axe estimates that the chance of a single protein arising by chance is 1 in 10^77. To obtain the tens of thousands of known proteins would dwarf your billion dice rolls. Here’s another article that makes a similar point about the chance of enzymes arising by chance: https://evolutionnews.org/2018/08/enzymes-are-essential-for-life-did-they-evolve/
Your simplistic analysis is simple, and wrong.
Cheers, Dean
10
1. Ad hom? I went straight to your erroneous maths. Not questioning your ethics or motivations in the slightest. In any case, some people are actually proud of going to climatology school. To be clear: you said “could not have happened”; that’s saying probability = 0; wrong.
2. Thanks. No and No. I was simply responding to your mathematical error.
3. Will you agree that some number of dice rolls is going to be even more improbable than the necessary protein conjunction? (Incidentally, the probability of rolling a billion sixes in a row is 6^-1000000000 — far lower than 10^-77). I’ll assume you will (even climatology school graduates would, I think). Ok, now roll a dice that many times and record the exact sequence of results. The odds of getting that particular sequence are identical to the odds of rolling that many sixes. Yet the universe was able to provide whatever “probabilistic resources” were necessary to roll that fantastically unlikely sequence.
After the fact, probabilities are all 1 or 0: happened, didn’t happen. Analysing it as if it wasn’t already decided might be diverting, but it’s a bit pointless. Feynman put it succincly in a talk. Something along the lines of “The most amazing thing happened to me on my way to this lecture. I saw a car with the licence plate ‘JH5139C’; what were the odds against that?”
30
Thanks for your reply. You seem to believe that any sequence of DNA would be operational, just different. Only the minutest fraction of DNA sequences, between 10^4 and 10^5, can make a functional protein. But the combinatorial space is on the order of 10^80. As a design engineer, I understand that reality, that there are a gazillion ways to engineer a system, and almost every one of them produces a failure. Feynman’s quote is interesting, but not really applicable. A functional specification does not, and cannot, happen for a highly complex system. There are not enough particles and Plank time intervals in the universe to do so.
As long as we are talking about Feynman, we can recall his warning against cargo cult science, going through the motions of science without understanding what it is about. And he also said the “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts,” meaning that observation is king. No one in the history of the universe has ever observed or demonstrated a complex functional specification produced by anything other than intelligence, a mind. To wave hands and posit impossible probabilities to prop up something that has never been observed is, as I see it, cargo cult science.
Here’s an interesting thought experiment: lay out a design of a system that can keep 5 gallons of liquid water within one degree of a set point for a 30 day period. From household materials. Without the use of tools. Where five different people choose 5 parts each without knowing what the project or goal is, and without communicating with each other. Unlimited efforts allowed. See if you can do it without any design or goal oriented thinking.
Then design it yourself using whatever you can find in your house.
The cell is a million times more complicated than this, with information processing system that incorporate multiple layers of overlapping and bidirectional coded information in the same sequence of DNA. There is even an error correcting system built in.
The only source of anything like this that has ever been observed is intelligence, a mind. To posit something else that has never been observed is cargo cult science.
10
My responses have not been about genetics, just mathematics. I only have a high-school level knowledge of genetics. In contrast, my maths is reasonably solid, if a little creaky — a few decades since I was at uni.
I have no deep knowledge of viable DNA sequences or paths from one amino acid to another, but that doesn’t go to your original claim. You said that a random path could not possibly lead to where we are. The reason you gave was that the “combinatorial space was too vast”. That is an entirely mathematical reason which cannot justify the claim of impossibility. To make my point (and hoping for clarity), I distilled out an example of rolling dice; a combinatorial space that can be as large as you like. All paths are fantastically improbable, but you have to have followed some path. Feynman’s licence plate was making the same point. I.e. that applying a probabilistic analysis to something that has already happened is foolish. The probability is always 1, it has happened.
I imagine you could take your particular DNA in combination with all the higglety-pigglety of life experiences you have had, versus all the alternatives you might have had, multiply those probabilities and be able to “prove” just as convincingly that you can’t possibly exist.
I’m afraid there are many who do cargo cult statistics. I have an appreciation for good tools: mathematical tools, hand tools. At times I have to wince when I see someone misusing a screwdriver as a chisel. Wincing is more frequent with the statistical tools.
Not eager to get into a philosophical/cosmological discussion. Wildly off topic here already.
Moral of the story: you could have avoided my criticism if you’d left out the probabilistic claim. Here’s a chance for your argument evolve a little.
20
To evolve a little…heh Argument improvement would be intelligent design 🙂
Shannon information may be complex, but so is white noise. It’s just not functional for a purpose. That’s the difference between “incredibly improbable events happen every day” and “whoa! a tornado just ripped through that junkyard and assembled a working 747 aircraft!”
Cheers, Dean
10
Evolution only requires two things. A source of variation and a consistent selection mechanism. You shouldn’t get hung up on the genetics.
Aircraft actually give a good example of how evolution works. For variation, you had the competing designs — not all intelligent — for selection there was the evaluation of what flew and what plummeted.
The early experiments were dangerous, flimsy and slow. They have evolved such that we can now routinely get 300+T payload into the air. Rather doubt we’d ever have got off the ground if we’d tried to do that in one design step. If you played back in a minute or so the 70 odd years of evolution that led to the Jumbo it might look quite like a tornado.
20
Ahmen.
Ahmen.
30
Dean,
Many subscribe to religiously based concepts and I suspect that you may be one.
Are you prevented from accepting evolution because of its clash with the Bible?
10
Keith, I oppose evolution because evolution is not true. It cannot be true because it is impossible for complex functional systems to arise randomly. It has never been observed. Ever. Hence it is not science, at least as Feynman would have us believe is true science.
The Bible is also true about evolution, namely that evolution is not true. Theistic evolutionists have only dug their holes deeper with all their efforts to integrate the two. As a systems engineer, I can recognize a failed interface when I see one.
Thanks for your question and replies though.
10
O.K.
The Key question still goes unanswered:
How did the “complex functional systems” arise then?
KK
10
“Some intelligence designed them” is the inference to the best explanation, and to the only known cause.
10
Sounds a bit circular there Dean.
Religion doesn’t need to be involved in science: it isn’t doing very well in its primary focus and could be seen as being more on the ball if it got the church agenda sorted before it starts dictating the biblical view of science.
KK
10
woah!
You misunderstand natural selection. That is really all that needs to be said. Get to grips with it and come back later.
20
I take that back… you didn’t even include natural selection in your attempt at a probablistic critique so the science is actually not even addressed. Good way to not lose an argument is to not even engage in one.
20
I have just read, that 4 times as many boys suffer from autism, as girls.
This is sexist, and unacceptable.
We need to find a way to increase the incidence of autism among girls.
This should be the top priority, of all decent humans.
120
It’s probably not true. About 10 times more boys than girls are diagnosed with Autism; but they suspect that the number of affected sexes are probably equal, because girls are a lot better at hiding their social difficulties than boys.
It works like this:
On a relative scale, boys have a natural social skill of say 5, and girls have a natural social skill of 20.
Autism takes away a large portion of those skills, so a boy ends up with a social skill of 2, which makes him stand out in the crowd. It’s very hard to hide. Girls will slide down the scale to say 8 to 10, which means that they still have more social skills than a natural boy. And it makes it difficult to identify and even diagnose the girls for this reason. They learn in school how to act and how to hide.
60
Seems very unlikely. Autism is not just social skills.
40
About 60 years ago, when I first encountered “1984” [the book, not the year], I’m sure I did not understand it.
Now I do.
90
Real time examples indeed help. I’m still amazed as to how relevant his book is to what’s happening today. He was certainly a very insightful person. It’s no surprise most schools would not allow it to be on their reading list. Imagine how much better off we all would be if it was on the list and studied in depth. It would be a very accurate and useful mirror of society, and we would avoid so many of the pitfalls we as a society keep falling into time and time again, with the pit getting bigger and bigger.
80
People are self absorbed. When they are asked to see beyond their little personal frame of reference, they do not comprehend and therefore feel threatened.
We as a society have been Dumbing down and have been driven into a consumer led economy.
All this does is reinforce the dumbing down process. .
The problem is that these people have an equal vote in a democracy and will vote whoever promises to give them something for nothing which means at someone else’s expense.
Unfortunately western society is heading into devolutionary phase and will likely be te taken over by some autocratic rule.
120
first opportunity to visit jo’s website today, but was collecting some stuff on academia this morning, including one piece on a Penn State Prof called Marc Fabbri – see Breitbart below.
was amused to find Fabbri on this page of Penn State Profs including some other familiar names, to which I’ve now added Ted Hill’s collaborator, Sergei Tabachnikov:
Penn State University Professors
includes: MARC FABBRI AND MICHAEL MANN, RICHARD ALLEY AND SERGEI TABACHNIKOV
https://www.coursicle.com/psu/professors
9 Sept: Breitbart: Penn State Math Course Focuses on Hillary Clinton’s ‘Strong Character’
by Tom Ciccotta
A new math course at Penn State University this semester has a bizarre focus on Hillary Clinton’s “strong character.”
According to a report (LINK) from Campus Reform, a new math course at Penn State University focuses on everything besides math. Professor Marc Fabbri’s “Finite Mathematics” course covers everything from Hillary Clinton’s “strong character” to the “cultural intolerance” to President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Clean Water Act.
On the Penn State website, Fabbri’s course is described as an “introduction to logic, sets, probability.” But students who took Fabbri’s new course last spring say that the course is focused on other topics.
Take for example the following excerpt from a text provided to students by Fabbri.
***“The emergence of the Tea Party played a central role in the 2008 U.S. presidential election,” the document reads. “The victor was Barack Obama who, like Bill Clinton, served as U.S. president for 8 years — the two men guided always by the strength of character and force of intellect of First Lady Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton.”
In another section of the document, Fabbri asks students to explain why the following statement is incorrect: “all those who enjoy religious freedom promote cultural toleration.” That portion of the document was accompanied by a scholarly criticism of imperialism.
A Penn State spokesperson said that they are working to ensure that Fabbri maintains his academic freedom. The spokesperson “encourage(d) any student who believes that an instructor has acted beyond the limits of academic freedom to consult the policies and procedures in place for seeking a faculty conference and mediation.”
A RateMyProfessor review of Professor Fabbri seems to suggest that he has a history of getting off topic in his math courses. “Hated his class,” one former student wrote. “He mumbled and went off on tangents to talk about things that were completely irrelevant.”
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/10/penn-state-math-course-focuses-on-hillary-clintons-strong-character/
note, Tea Party Movement didn’t exist during the 2008 US Presidential election campaign:
***Tea Party Movement: The movement began following Barack Obama’s first presidential inauguration (in January 2009)…
Following a February 19, 2009 call by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a “tea party,” over fifty conservative activists agreed by conference call to coalesce against Obama’s agenda and scheduled series of protests, including the 2009 Taxpayer March on Washington – Wikipedia
30
as Google gets a mention, might as well post this:
10 Sept: Breitbart: ‘Silent Donation’: Corporate Emails Reveal Google Executives’ Efforts to Turn Out Latino Voters Who They Thought Would Vote for Clinton
by Matthew Boyle
The critical miscalculation, Murillo wrote in a stunning admission in the email, was that Latino voters backed Trump by higher margins than any experts had forecast in the lead-up to the election. Trump’s 29 percent among Hispanics nationally blew prognosticators away, and he hit even higher numbers—about 31 percent—in the key battleground state of Florida, Murillo admitted…
The emails were first revealed on Fox News on Monday evening on Tucker Carlson Tonight by anchor Tucker Carlson in a special report. Breitbart News also obtained them, and has reached out to Google with a number of questions about the emails.
Carlson, in his exclusive report on Fox News Monday night, compared the revelations in the Google emails to the probe of Russian interference in the U.S. election to Special Counsel Robert Mueller—raising the question about how much influence tech giants like Google and Facebook have on election outcomes in the United States…
At the top of the fourth page of the email, Murillo asks her colleagues at Google to give out a “smile” to grieving leftist Latinos who work at the company.
“If you see a Latino Googler in the office (California/New York), please give them a smile,” Murillo wrote. “They are probably hurting right now.”…READ ALL
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/09/10/silent-donation-corporate-emails-reveal-google-executives-efforts-to-swing-election-to-hillary-clinton-with-latino-outreach-campaign/
10 Sept: Breitbart: Report: 90 Percent of Political Donations from Google Go to Democrats
by Charlie Nash
90 percent of political donations from Google, YouTube, and parent company Alphabet go to Democrats, according to a report…
In August, it was revealed (LINK) that over 1,000 Silicon Valley executives and employees, including Google senior executives Urs Holzle, Vinton Cerf, and Jennifer Fitzpatrick, had donated to a pro-Democrat super PAC since 2015…READ ALL
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/10/report-90-percent-of-political-donations-from-google-go-to-democrats/
2 Nov 2016: Quartz: Hacked emails show (Google’s) Eric Schmidt played a crucial role in Team Hillary’s election tech
By Tim Fernholz
“I met with Eric Schmidt tonight,” John Podesta, the longtime Hillary Clinton adviser, told campaign manager-in-waiting Robby Mook in April 2014, more than a year before Clinton announced her candidacy for president…
Schmidt’s strategy memo
Two weeks later, Schmidt sent a memo (LINK) to Clinton aide Cheryl Mills outlining his ideas for the campaign. “Lets assume a total budget of about $1.5Billion, with more than 5000 paid employees and million(s) of volunteers,” he began. “The entire startup ceases operation four days after November 8, 2016.”…READ ALL
https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-team-hillarys-election-tech/
Wikileaks Podesta emails
15 Apr 2014: from Chery Mills; To: Robbie Mook, John Podesta and David Plouffe
FORWARDED MESSAGE BELOW
15 Apr 2014: From Eric Schmidt (Google)
Subject: 2016 thoughts
To: Cheryl Mills
Cheryl, I have put together my thoughts on the campaign ideas and I have scheduled some meetings in the next few weeks for veterans of the campaign to tell me how to make these ideas better. This is simply a draft but do let me know if this is a helpful process for you all. Thanks !! Eric
Notes for a 2016 Democratic Campaign…
2. Location
The campaign headquarters will have about a thousand people, mostly young and hardworking and enthusiastic. Its important to have a very large hiring pool (such as Chicago or NYC) from which to choose enthusiastic, smart and ***low paid permanent employees. DC is a poor choice as its full of distractions and interruptions…
Employees will relocate to participate in the campaign, and will find low cost temporary housing or live with campaign supporters on a donated basis…READ ALL
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/37262
meanwhile, we’re stuck with $900,000-a-year Michelle “Google” Guthrie giving out Larry cards and Google headphones to her favourites at 1.2billion-dollar-per-year-taxpayer-funded ABC!
ABC staffers not happy as Larry – The Australian
2 days ago – ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie has gone silent after the … receive other great products such as Google headphones”…
30
I can go along with that theory, at one end I worked with an inspector that could glance through a 400 item report in under a minute and pick out the one mistake I had made, at the other end of the scale we had a worker who was nicknamed Besser Brain.
30
10 Sept: WashingtonFreeBeacon: Trump Keeps Campaign Promise to Scale Back Size of EPA
by Aryssa Damron
Records show that in the first 18 months of the Trump administration, over 1,600 workers left the EPA and less than 400 were hired. This is an 8 percent decrease in the agency’s employment size, the Washington Post reports (LINK).
Some agency employees cited Trump as a reason for their departure…
EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler said that almost half of all agency employees will be eligible for retirement in the next five years. He went on to say, “My priority is recruiting and maintaining the right staff, the right people for our mission, rather than total full-time employees.”
Before leaving the position in July 2018, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt anticipated that by not replacing officials retiring by 2021, the size of the agency would be reduced by 47 percent, down to 8,000 jobs from 15,000…
The Office of Enforcement and Compliance, the law enforcement arm of the EPA, has shrunk 15.7 percent under Trump, according to data provided by the EPA. Regional offices have seen an employment decrease of 10 percent.
In January, an agency administrator told the Washington Examiner, “We’re happy to be at Reagan-level employment numbers and the future retirements shows a preview of how low we could get during this administration. It would be fair to say anywhere from 25 to 47 percent of EPA could retire during this administration.”
Back in February, the administration fought to reduce the overall budget of the agency by 25 percent. The current budget is currently around $8 million(sic) (SHOULD BE $8 BILLION).
The EPA is not the only department that has seen staff cuts under Trump. The State Department’s permanent employee numbers fell by nearly 6.5 percent in the first 14 months of the administration. The Education Department’s numbers fell by nearly 9.5 percent in the same period.
https://freebeacon.com/politics/trump-keeps-campaign-promise-scale-back-size-epa/
20
5 Sept: NoTricksZone: Science Nepotism Racket …Small, Closed Group Of Climate Scientists Caught Awarding Themselves Prizes And Money!
By P Gosselin
http://notrickszone.com/2018/09/05/science-nepotism-small-closed-group-of-climate-scientists-caught-awarding-themselves-prizes-and-money/
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This is what the Left have always done. Politicise science.
You can see the logical outcome of this in Soviet times with Lysenko and the Gulags.
Thank God for President Trump.
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They continued the fine work that John Howard started..
Howard started the whole ball rolling by agreeing to the RET via The UN cool memes floating around..
And Abbott has admitted that at the time they signed the documents neither had much of an idea what they meant.
But %$#@ it..then signed it anyway..what could go wrong..
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While we are at it, it is good to remember that John Howard persuaded Malcolm Turnbull to stay in politics after the first time he got the boot.
If Howard had kept his mouth shut, Australia would have been spared a whole lot of misery and despair. Thanks John.
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From the paper:
No conclusion! If he was hoping to get published, surely this avoidance of drawing any conclusions about reality was not going to help his chances? By the same token, if it really doesn’t apply to real men and women then what were the PC brigade getting upset about?
So what happened during the last ice age when hominid populations decreased due to global cooling? Similarly, due to human population projected to peak mid-century and decrease afterwards, does a different female planned fertility rate lead to: different female mate selection strategy, and less variance among males? (That’s not a rhetorical question, but I can’t be bothered to try answering it as it requires getting my head around differential equation 3 in his paper.)
Hill actually cites papers (eg Feingold 1992) that found that male/female differences had decreased during the 1970s and 80s, which supports the view that some significant fraction of the difference is socially constructed because the underlying biological reality did not change in less than 20 years. But as I understand it his model posits a selection probability function (P₁) without assuming whether that selection criteria arises through genetic inheritance or social transmission. I don’t think he is implying any specific amount of inevitable biological determinism.
The paper could easily be interpreted to mean more than it does, but that would be the fault of the mistaken. It’s not up to academics to be gatekeepers and second guess the public by shutting down new ideas pre-emptively.
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Correction to the above, and apology to the geologically trained.
When I said “during the last ice age”, I really meant it was during the last glaciation, as we are technically still in an ice Age today. The brain cells responsible for that error have been taken out and shot. (Aaand probably many more innocents besides.)
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Organisations packed full of lefies from the start academics of arts and abstract sciences. When they were excluded from the mainstream they were forced to be a bit liberal but consumed into a corrupt mainstream they are really giving in their true natures.Most of what was published premodern was basically purely academic interest read by very few. They arent really giving to extreme left but following their true natures.
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If the politically correct movement is to do away with talk of differences between genders, they need to be aware of how much fun they will spoil.
There is no need for me to have a written backup of the following snippets, because they were such fun at the time that they remain unforgotten. Part of this is because they were so good that you could not forget them. English expression with accuracy, brevity and clarity.
Things like “If little girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice, how come they smell like anchovies?”
The morning after a heavy night at a hot, remote bush camp, sitting down to face up to a warm, oily mass of bacon and eggs, when the female cook appears, sits on the table opposite, wearing no underwear, holding a large carving knife. She says “My gynaecologist tells me there is something wrong with my thing. You look like an educated gent, would you like to give me a second opinion?”
The informal end to a Board meeting when my female secretary fronts the very conservative, reserved Chief and several others and says “My doctor examined me this morning and he said that the muscles around my vagina were like the rings around a cannon.”
Another female secretary, out of the blue one morning. “What’s that going on in your trousers? Looks like a penis, only smaller.”
I could go on for hours, but the essential point is that if you are going to ban open discourse between the genders, however many there are, you are going to kill a lot of levity and many much-needed sex education practicals.
Can’t agree with that. Sorry. I don’t like a monotonous, grey world of uniform Mao suits. Geoff.
p.s. Long ago I decided to keep these examples and more in mind when needed to shock those opposite who seek to silence, the types who were indignant about cartoonist Mark Knight depicting Serena Williams’ hissy fit at tennis. They are mere words, not physical bullets, so without physical harm. If you do not like them, do not read them.
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Geoff,
I have developed a hypothesis about human libidos that explains a lot of our common vocabulary. To whit, the probability distribution function of male libidos has a higher mean, and a smaller variance than females. Females have a PDF that has a much larger variance, but lower mean. Those distributions explain such behaviors as “frigid,” “slow to arouse,” and “nymphomaniac” among females, and the ever common complaint “always thinking about sex” for men. Whether cultural or genetic, societies have long recognized differences in human libidos. Those who think that men and women are alike are androgynous fish swimming against the current.
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this is what led me to check out some pieces on academia today. I feel too many people are already going to Uni, and expecting – but often failing – to find jobs commensurate with their “education”. as for Labor, they see the Unis as little more than grooming schools for Labor voters. in the US, meanwhile, there have been a few Dems calling for voting age to be 16, for much the same reason.
4 Sept: news.com.au: Labor pledges $174m to boost uni access
Federal Labor has pledged $174 million over a decade to universities, aiming to reduce the opportunity gap in regional areas and increase student numbers.
by Matt Coughlan and Rebecca Gredley
Labor’s education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek says a young person in Moreton Bay in Queensland is about five times less likely to get a degree than someone on Sydney’s north shore.
“We know that the capacity for hard work, we know that brains, are spread evenly right across our country” Ms Plibersek told reporters in Caboolture on Tuesday…
Labor is also promising $10 billion over a decade to abolish the cap on university places, which it says will boost student numbers by 200,000 over 12 years…
In welcoming the pledge, the Group of Eight elite universities said poverty and disadvantage should not be a barrier for Australians to attend university.
The Group of Eight, including ANU, Monash University and the universities of Sydney, NSW, Melbourne, Queensland, Western Australia and Adelaide, praised the promise of funding being available for universities to partner with not-for-profit community groups to target students most in need.
Universities Australia has also given Labor’s announcement a nod of approval for seeking to reduce the opportunity gap.
https://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/labor-to-unveil-university-funding-package/news-story/6474a956331aa5e43f14d0a6183b300a
Unis also seem to be grooming grounds for CAGW belief:
Feb 2016: Public awareness and perception of climate change: a quantitative cross-national study
by Kyle W. Knight
(Kyle W. Knight is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville; Funding: This work was supported by an Individual Investigator Distinguished Research Award from the University of Alabama in Huntsville)
This study builds on the relatively small body of existing research on this topic by investigating several cross-national predictors of public awareness and perception of climate change with ordinary least squares (OLS) and robust regression models using national-level data from the 2007–2008 and 2010 Gallup World Polls, which provide the largest available international datasets on climate change public opinion. The following results were most consistent across the surveys and models: 1) awareness of climate change is greater in countries that are wealthier and more highly educated, and is not influenced by political orientation or vulnerability; 2) perceived risk is greater in countries that are wealthier, left-leaning, and more vulnerable to climate change, and not affected by unemployment; 3) perceived human cause is greater in countries that are wealthier, left-leaning, more vulnerable, and more highly educated…
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23251042.2015.1128055?src=recsys&journalCode=rens20
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nothing new about higher education institutions leaning left, but the influx of students from communist countries such as China and Vietnam might explain why they appear to have veered further left in recent years:
18 Apr: ABC: Australia hosting unprecedented numbers of international students
By Natasha Robinson
The number of international students in Australia has increased by 12 per cent this year as enrolment numbers continue to rise exponentially.
Department of Education figures show that in February, Australian universities, private colleges, English language courses, and schools registered a combined 542,054 enrolments.
That compares with 305,534 total enrolments five years ago.
Students from China make up the largest proportion of students at 31 per cent, followed by India, Nepal, Malaysia and Vietnam…
The value of the international student market has increased 22 per cent since 2016 and is now worth $32.2 billion a year…
(Former) Universities Australia’s chief executive Belinda Robinson: “These half a million international students will become tomorrow’s global leaders, returning home as informal ambassadors for Australia and extending our nation’s worldwide networks in business, diplomacy and politics.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-18/australia-hosting-unprecedented-numbers-international-students/9669030
***Fairfax’s Koziol suggests an alignment with Liberals?
9 Sept: SMH: Chinese international students take on major parties at universities
By Michael Koziol
Organised factions of Chinese international students are dominating elections at Australia’s major universities, beating the established political parties at the same time as national authorities warn about foreign influence.
The phenomenon is most pronounced at Sydney University, the country’s oldest, where two of this year’s four candidates for president of the Students’ Representative Council are mainly backed by international students
Earlier this year, Chinese international students scooped elections for the university’s postgraduate body, SUPRA, leading to its first executive consisting entirely of international students, according to student newspaper Honi Soit.
They have also dominated elections for the board of the University of Sydney Union, a separate student organisation, polling in first place for three years in a row.
And at the University of Melbourne, a recent postgraduate election ended up before a tribunal after international students sought to have the results nullified, according to student paper Farrago.
The rise of Chinese international students as a potent political force has weakened the established factions such as young Labor, which ran the Sydney University SRC for 14 straight years until 2015. The change has been noticed – and welcomed – at the highest levels of university administration.
“I would point out that engaging in student elections isn’t exactly covert, nor is it unwelcome at the University of Sydney,” vice-chancellor Michael Spence told Fairfax Media. “[We] welcome any attempt to ensure that representative bodies are as diverse as our student population.”…
This year Jacky He, a second-year engineering student who moved to Australia as a child and is now a permanent resident, is contesting the SRC presidency with backing from a growing faction called Panda, which chiefly represents Chinese international students. The group won a quarter of the vote last year, securing more seats on council than any other faction.
Mr He said he had been asked by several people, including student newspaper editors, whether he had links to the Chinese Communist Party – questions he found unfair…
But there are growing links between Chinese students and the established factions.
***For example, Mr He and his Panda Warriors, as they are known, have close ties with students in the Liberal Party…
According to government figures, a record 160,000 Chinese international students were in Australia in February this year – 31 per cent of the total…
Earlier this year, Dr Spence angered Mr Turnbull when he condemned the government for what he called “Sinophobic blatherings” that threatened the country’s third largest export market…
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/chinese-international-students-take-on-major-parties-at-universities-20180905-p50222.html
4 July: AFR: Universities reject claims Confucius Institutes are Beijing agents
by Robert Bolton
The Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington and the National Association of Scholars in New York have warned that the Confucius Institutes – which are branded as cultural and language organisations – are agents of Beijing’s soft power and compromise academic freedom…
In Australia the Group of Eight says the Confucius Institute has legitimate reasons for taking a role in the higher education sector.
There are 13 Confucius Institutes in Australian, five of them on G8 campuses…
The University of Sydney, which hosts a Confucius Institute, said it had no further comment on the issue…
Critics said Sydney University was on awkward ground if it rejected the Ramsay offer while hosting a Confucius Institute.
One of the world’s leading exponents of Chinese culture and language, Professor Perry Link at the University of California, Riverside, said Confucius Institutes did not allow certain subjects to be discussed…
Professor Link said Confucius Institutes were extending their programs into high schools through “Chinese classrooms”.
https://www.afr.com/news/policy/education/universities-reject-claims-confucius-institutes-are-beijing-agents-20180704-h128vi
Chinese Studies in Australia (including Confucius Institute)
http://www.csaa.org.au/chinese-studies-in-australia/
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15 Aug: Reuters: Florida university latest to cut ties with China’s Confucius Institute
The University of North Florida will close a campus branch of a Chinese-run cultural institute, the latest U.S. college to do so amid criticism from U.S. legislators that China uses the institute to influence American higher education…
Other major U.S. colleges, including Pennsylvania State University and the University of Chicago, have cut ties with the institute after professors complained its programs were Chinese propaganda wrapped in culture and language education.
29 Apr: Washington Examiner: How China’s regime is meddling in American higher education
by Frank Wolf & Rachelle Peterson
But a piece of Xi-like censorship has crept into more than 100 American colleges and universities in the form of Chinese government-funded Confucius Institutes…
In addition to the 100-plus Confucius Institutes in the U.S., China runs about 500 “Confucius Classrooms” at American K-12 schools. The U.S. is home to more Confucius Institutes and Classrooms than any other country (about 40 percent of the total), but China funds another 1,000 Confucius Institutes and Classrooms in other countries…
One of us (Rachelle Peterson) spent a year and a half studying Confucius Institutes, finding that the Chinese government’s fingerprints are everywhere. China hires, trains, and pays the teachers. It chooses and buys the textbooks. It provides most of the funding. It requires host universities to clear all programming and course materials with the Hanban, the Chinese government agency tasked with overseeing all Confucius Institutes.
The Hanban itself is overseen by a governing council comprising representatives of twelve ministries of the Chinese government — including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Press and Publications Department, which handles propaganda.
The Hanban asks colleges and universities to sign agreements that frequently contain troubling clauses, such as requirements to “ not contravene concerning the laws and regulations of China.”…
The result is that American students get a remarkably one-sided view of China…
At this time, six universities (the University of Chicago, Penn State University, the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, the University of West Florida, Texas A&M University, and Prairie View A&M University) have closed or are in the process of closing their Confucius Institutes…
Frank Wolf, former U.S. congressman for Virginia’s 10th District, is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative. Rachelle Peterson is policy director at the National Association of Scholars and author of Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/confucius-institutes-how-chinas-regime-is-meddling-in-american-higher-education
Oct 2016: Emory Uni, Atlanta, Georgia: Emory hosts China-focused events throughout October
By Shannan Palma
Throughout October, Emory’s Halle Institute for Global Learning and Confucius Institute in Atlanta will co-host a series of China-focused events with The Carter Center China Program…
Also this month, the Halle Institute hosts the Emory-Nanjing Research Symposium on climate change and air pollution.
The U.S. and China, the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, face similar trials around climate change that require innovative solutions. By working together to respond and adapt to climate change, the two countries have the potential not only to advance toward their greenhouse-gas reduction goals, but also to improve their relations and mutual understanding…
Chinese students make up eight percent of Emory’s overall student body and are the university’s largest international student population. In addition, Emory has more than 100 faculty conducting China-related research and scholarship, and China is the second-most common destination for Emory faculty traveling abroad.
Since designating China a priority location, Emory has deepened its ties with Nanjing University, primarily in the area of research collaboration and conference presentations. This month’s symposium on climate change is an example of the possibilities in this partnership…
http://news.emory.edu/stories/2016/10/er_china_focused_events/campus.html
11 Nov 2015: Cardiff Uni: International symposium on climate change hosted by Cardiff’s Confucius Institute
Confucius Institute together with the university’s School of Planning and Geography hosted the 2015 International Symposium on Climate Change and Adapted Sustainable Planning and Development (CPLAN) this October…
Subsequently the event, which was hosted across two days from 8 October, attracted very many delegates and speakers from China who wished to contribute to the debate.
The aim of this event was to bring together academic experts and practitioners from China but also the UK and Europe and provide them with an opportunity to share recent learning and developments. A wide range of international academics and experts shared their knowledge on topics such as China’s urbanization plans, urban planning and design andclimate injustice. Senior UK delegates at the symposium included Janet Askew, President of the Royal Town Planning Institute, Professor Greg Lloyd, Emeritus Professor in Planning at the University of Ulster and Professor Charles Choguill of Habitat International.
This was not the first time that the Confucius Institute has worked together with CPLAN after hosting last year’s successful Low-Carbon Eco-Cities event which allowed experts in the field to share research and practices of low carbon and eco-cities planning and development…
https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/178571-international-symposium-on-climate-change-hosted-by-cardiffs-confucius-institute
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From the article, on of the oppressors was:
And the Climaterati Fascists march onwards.
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9 Sept: San Diego Union Tribune: How California and China are collaborating to fight climate change
by Orville Schell, David Hochschild
(Orville Schell is director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and the author of “Brown.” David Hochschild is a commissioner with the California Energy Commission. They helped organize Coal + Ice, a documentary photography exhibition that will be on view at the Global Climate Action Summit)
Overwhelmed with global evidence of melting glaciers and polar ice, rising seas and ever more extreme floods, hurricanes, fires and drought, officials in Beijing have become convinced that global warming poses as much a threat to their country as it does to the rest of the world. China has also developed a genuine interest in energy independence…
Fortunately, some local and state governments in the United States are stepping up. In these efforts to battle emissions, California has emerged as a global force.
California’s leadership role will be on display this week as Gov. Jerry Brown hosts thousands of international delegates at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco…
By making China a key partner in the summit — Beijing has organized a “China pavilion” at the summit, and China’s former chief climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua is one of five co-chairs — Brown will also signal that, whatever one may think of the Chinese Communist Party, it will have to play a critical role in any successful effort to curb global warming…
During Brown’s second stint as governor, China has shown real interest in California’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and other forms of air pollution. Indeed, in 2015, California became the first state government to sign a memorandum of understanding with China’s government on the regulation of such emissions.
In 2017, as the Trump administration moved to reverse U.S. policies on global warming, Brown traveled to China to meet with climate leaders there. “California’s leading, China’s leading,” Brown said at a news conference after meeting with President Xi Jinping. “It’s true I didn’t come to Washington, I came to Beijing.”…
By working directly with China, Brown has developed a form of state-to-nation relations unencumbered by the baggage that usually comes with U.S.-China diplomacy: the South China Sea, nuclear proliferation, Taiwan, trade wars.
With our national leaders unable to recognize, much less address, the most pressing issue of our time, state and local leaders would benefit greatly from following Brown’s example and engaging global stakeholders, including China, to curb emissions. It may be an imperfect consortium, but it’s our best hope.
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/la-oe-schell-hochschild-climate-summit-brown-china-20180909-story.html
10 Sept: Brookings Institution: Around the halls: Climate experts explain what to watch at this week’s Global Climate Action Summit
by Todd Stern, David G. Victor, Samantha Gross, Jeffrey Ball, Ye Qi, Nathan Hultman, and Timmons Roberts
In our effort to contain climate change, we are in a race against time to shift from high to low- and then no-carbon economies fast enough to prevent out-of-control damage. We have seen stunning progress in last five to 10 years on clean technology, way beyond what any modelers predicted. But the dangerous impacts of climate change are also happening even faster than scientists expected. Moving in the right direction on the low-carbon transformation isn’t good enough; we need to move at speed and scale. The good news is that we can do this from the perspective of innovation, policy, and finance…
David Victor, Co-Chair of the Cross-Brookings Initiative on Energy and Climate:
There’s no shortage of climate summits these days—in September alone, depending on how you count, four major summits will be hosted on the need for more action to stop dangerous warming of the planet.
The Global Climate Action Summit, Governor Jerry Brown’s event this week in California, could be different because it is a summit focused on the believers—especially the politicians, corporate leaders, and NGO leaders who say they are doing the most to cut emissions…
Jeffrey Ball, Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Cross-Brookings Initiative on Energy and Climate:
Politicians will talk, and talk, and talk, this week at California’s big climate confab. So will activists, and lobbyists, and all manner of advocates. But the talk to listen for—the talk that most matters in the global fight against climate change—is the talk about money…
Governments have pledged what sound like big sums to accelerate the shift to cleaner energy sources—particularly to accelerate that shift in developing countries, where the bulk of emissions growth is occurring and where, as a result, the climate fight will be won or lost.
But that government money is a tiny fraction of what’s widely estimated to be needed to shift the global economy onto a lower-carbon path. The public money matters mostly to the extent that it primes the pump of private investment — the flow of dollars from institutional investors and corporate coffers that, if properly mobilized, really could shift the economy onto a lower-carbon path.
This week in San Francisco, don’t follow the rhetoric. Follow the money…
Qi Ye, Director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center:
In November 2014, the heads of state of China and the United States issued their Joint Announcement on Climate Change, setting their respective targets for climate actions and establishing the foundation for the Paris Agreement, to which nearly all countries on Earth ultimately agreed. Under the Joint Announcement and the 2015 Paris Agreement, China committed to reaching peak carbon emissions around 2030 and to increasing the non-fossil share of its primary energy to 20 percent.
Our recent study by an international team of experts found that China’s emissions entered a decade-long plateau starting in 2014, with minor fluctuations for the coming years, and could eventually enter a phase of steady decline as early as 2025. In other words, in line with its track record of achievement in climate policy, China’s emissions are likely to have effectively peaked already, much earlier than anticipated.
A number of deliberate policies are driving this encouraging trend—domestic air pollution control, clean energy transition, and changes in the economy. Economic deceleration or the economic “new normal” focuses on the quality of economic structure instead of the quantity of economic output. Additionally, a structural shift to sectors with lower energy intensity enables faster substitution of coal-fired power generation by non-carbon sources of energy…
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/planetpolicy/2018/09/10/around-the-halls-climate-experts-explain-what-to-watch-at-this-weeks-global-climate-action-summit/
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not partisan political!
11 Sept: Sacramento Bee: California preps for climate change summit + Brown signs clean energy bill
By Bryan Anderson
CLIMATE CHANGE WEEK
This is a big week for California, as it looks to assert itself on the world stage as a top environmental leader. The three-day Global Climate Action Summit starting Wednesday at the Moscone Center in San Francisco comes as California continues to resist the Trump administration’s environmental actions…
Some of the more high-profile speakers will include actor Alec Baldwin, musician Dave Matthews, former vice president Al Gore, Need to Impeach founder Tom Steyer, American Progress founder John Podesta, former Secretary of State John Kerry and NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell…
PRE-SUMMIT FESTIVITIES
Before the Global Climate Action Summit begins Wednesday, a couple events are being held today in San Francisco to outline the state’s efforts to combat climate pollution and promote sustainability.
State Sen. Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, will join environmental advocates to explain how the state has sought to exceed the previous U.S. commitments made under the Paris Agreement. The event will be held at 5:30 p.m. today at the Google Community Space.
Steyer, the man behind the movement to impeach Trump, will participate in a discussion with five others at 6:30 p.m. at the Commonwealth Club…
FULL-COURT PRESS
The week got off to a quick start on Monday, as Brown signed Senate Bill 100, which sets a goal for 100 percent renewable energy by 2045…
Meg Caldwell, deputy director for oceans at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, is sounding the alarm for California to immediately address rising ocean water temperatures.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article218126735.html
9 Sept: PacificStandardMag: At GCAS, Jerry Brown Says ‘The Future Is Us.’ Unfortunately, He’s Right.
This week, local leaders from around the world convene at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco. After the past year’s wildfires and floods, the sense of urgency among Californians is palpable.
by Lucia Graves
And Wednesday’s kick-off will feature such international climate stars as Christiana Figueres and Laurence Tubiana, executive secretary and special envoy for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Paris talks, respectively, as well as former Vice President Al Gore…
On Friday, Obama’s speech at the University of Illinois highlighted how radically fringe Trump’s Paris withdrawal is to the rest of the world. “The only nation on Earth to pull out of the global climate agreement—it’s not North Korea, it’s not Syria, it’s not Russia or Saudi Arabia—it’s us,” Obama said. “We know that climate change isn’t just coming; it’s here.”…
That was the rallying cry of the hundreds of advocacy groups that joined forces over the weekend in the “Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice” mobilization, holding demonstrations in dozens of cities across the world, including the flagship march in San Francisco…
https://psmag.com/environment/gcas-in-california-the-climate-crisis-is-already-here
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10 Sept: Daily Democrat: Climate summit goal: To get around Trump
By Paul Rogers
The event’s top names include Brown, United Nations dignitaries, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Vice President Al Gore, English primatologist Jane Goodall and others…
“We’re not where we need to be,” (Gov) Brown said in an interview. “With the climate changing, crops will fail, certain parts of the world will become unlivable, migrations will increase by the millions. We are looking at something that is quite catastrophic.”
President Donald Trump has rejected the scientific consensus on climate change and worked to increase oil drilling and coal production during his 20 months in office…
“The Republicans, the deniers in Washington, the president, they are really deviant to the international norm,” Brown said. “It’s important that America maintain its climate actions through the states and the cities, private organizations and nonprofits. We can’t just let Trump undermine and sabotage America’s part. We’re facing a truly devastating challenge. Climate change, although it comes on gradually, has an irreversible quality.”
Critics say that for all the fanfare, climate summits can be long on symbolism and short on measurable results.
“It’s a nice going-away party for Jerry Brown,” said Frank Maisano, a senior principal at Bracewell LLP, a Houston-based law firm that lobbies for oil companies and other energy interests.
“It’s OK to put your heads together and have idealistic goals,” he said. “California thinks they are their own country, and Jerry Brown thinks he can conduct his own foreign policy. But he really can’t, because California is part of the United States, and the Constitution gives power to the president, whether you like him or not.”…
Summit supporters disagree.
“That’s B.S.,” said Kathryn Phillips, executive director of Sierra Club California. “Those are the kinds of things the oil industry says because they know they are wrong. Things start in California and are carried to the rest of the world.”
Phillips noted that delegations of leaders, engineers and business executives regularly come to California from places such as India and China to learn about new clean technologies and laws, from reducing diesel bus pollution to increasing renewable energy…
“From a technological point of view, I’m really very optimistic,” said Sally Benson, a professor of energy engineering at Stanford University. “Wind power is cheap. Solar power is cheap. Electric car prices are coming down. Batteries are getting better. And natural gas, compared to coal, is beneficial. But the sense of urgency and importance around these issues is not anywhere near where it needs to be.”
The state keeps setting the bar higher…
“Climate change is happening now,” said Dan Kammen, a professor of energy at UC Berkeley and director of the university’s renewable energy lab. “We’re observing it. We’re seeing fires, droughts, species loss, changes in agricultural productivity, extended heat waves. These are immediate issues for Californians.”
The Earth’s climate continues to warm — up 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century and on track to go up 9 degrees by the end of this century. The 10 hottest years since modern temperature records began in 1880 all have occurred since 1998, according to NASA.
The sea level in the San Francisco Bay has risen by about 8 inches over roughly the same period. Forest fires are more severe, and Arctic sea ice has shrunk 13 percent per decade since the late 1970s…
California’s industrial electricity rates are 86 percent higher than the national average. And although the state has grown manufacturing jobs such as food processing and oil refining in recent years, it has done so only half as fast as the rest of the nation, said Michael Shaw, vice president of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, an industry group…
http://www.dailydemocrat.com/article/NI/20180910/NEWS/180919990
10 Sept: China Daily: ExxonMobil invests in Guangdong petro projects
By Yu Xiaoming
ExxonMobil, the largest oil and gas company in the United States, plans to invest $10 billion in South China’s Guangdong province.
Premier Li Keqiang met with ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Darren Woods on Friday afternoon, and welcomed the company to invest in large petrochemical projects. Li said it will better promote the two sides to realize a win-win result.
Woods said ExxonMobil has prepared funds and technologies to enter the Chinese market. He also expressed optimism about the projects, and hoped to build long-term cooperation…
In May, the German chemical company BASF signed a deal with China to build a solely owned petrochemical factory with investment of $10 billion in Zhanjiang, Guangdong.
China will stick to the reform and opening-up policy and provide more investment facilitation for foreign enterprises, Li said…
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201809/10/WS5b95fed4a31033b4f46552c2.html
10 Sept: Seattle Times: AP: Alaska natural gas line project, ExxonMobil agree on terms
by Dan Joling
A second major oil company has agreed to key terms for the sale of Alaska North Slope natural gas to a state-sanctioned corporation that seeks to build a $34 billion liquefied natural gas project, including an 800-mile (1,287-kilometer) pipeline to move gas to an ocean port…
The development corporation reached a parallel agreement with BP in May. Negotiations continue with ConocoPhillips. All three producers are envisioned to be part of the project.
Andy Mack, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, said the commitment of gas is a milestone but just one of many steps necessary in the undertaking of such a huge project…
Prudhoe Bay and Point Thompson are anchor fields for the project and hold 30 trillion cubic feet of gas. Asia is the target market for most sales. The state has been looking at advancing the proposed pipeline with financial interests in China…
The project is going through the federal regulatory process with a final environmental review expected in November 2019 and a record of decision in February 2020. While that wraps up, the development corporation will be working out final details of the agreements with BP and ExxonMobil and seeking LNG purchasers in China, Japan and Vietnam…
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Of all the predictions of Climate Change, this is the most illogical, the most absurd, the most contradictory.
“(Gov) Brown said in an interview. “With the climate changing, crops will fail”.
Why?
Plants colonized the planet billions of years before humans. These gene bearing organisms are powered by photosynthesis which requires two ingredients from the air, carbon dioxide and water.
Carbon dioxide has increased by 50% but crops are going to fail?
Logic, maybe male logic, would dictate that crops would increase by 50%. This seems to be the case with record crops recorded across the planet.
How a tiny 0.5C increase in air temperature is supposed to wipe out crops is beyond logic but a massive 50% increase in CO2 will undoubtedly Green the planet.
Incidentally this increase is only possible because CO2 levels are at a record low.
Only a Green politician would find a Greener planet offensive and dangerous. The people against everything, as usual.
On the other hand, if Governor Brown seriously wants to reduce CO2 levels or temperature, by his own logic he would devastate the planet and cause the greatest catastrophe in human history, global cooling, failing crops, less rain. Logically we should be desperately trying to increase CO2 levels to cope with a booming population, which is the real reason there is mass migration.
Either Governor Brown has a more female brain or he is cunningly appealing to scared female voters and is simply being very manipulative. Typical.
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Also Darwin and all other studies have pointed to higher variability in males of all traits, not just intelligence. Many things Darwin noticed were as right today as then, but there was no rule against stating the obvious then, unless it involved contradicting religion.
That hasn’t changed except the in a pseudo science world, male female equality is being dictated by a new religion of the politically correct. Jordan Petersen made the same point that women and men had identical intelligence but that women were not prepared to sacrifice everything for success and had better balance. Again, against the prevailing wisdom that everyone is the same. Or as was written earlier, same mould but perhaps some mouldier.
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You have to say the same in the current cause celebre, womens’ tennis. Accusations of racism and sexism in a tennis match. Women being paid less too, but no one seems to mind that they only play three sets. That’s not mentioned as sexist or even relevant to wages or say television rights?
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To thwart the bullies the board would need to be vetted, trained and prepared to deal with the escalation…
I do not think that would be enough. The escalation can, and will, go to extreme lengths. There will be violence with the police unwilling to provide protection. Local politicians will make life impossible. Shops serving you and your family will be attacked. Boycotts of all aspects of your private life will be arranged. The response will be out of all proportion to the original cause, as, indeed, it was in this case.
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I am also amazed that there are claims of racism and sexism at the US women’s open. A final between two black women for a $3.8Million first prize, the exact same amount for 3 sets as the men get for 5 sets.
That’s past equality of gender and race, it’s amazing and discrimination against the men. Still it’s a media circus with claims of racial and sexual discrimination against black women. Ridiculous. Serena received 50% of that amount at $1.85Million and is still complaining. Martin Luther King would be amazed.
We in a world where logic has been thrown out the window and the facts ignored. It’s all about victimhood.
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The Streisand Effect seems to be working perfectly.
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The difference between sex intelligence has been know for decades as has the cause.
All eggs are female when fertilised the embryo is female, at six weeks the hormones determine the sex of the fetus. At this point the female fetus continues to develop and the male fetus begins to undo female features and rewire as male. This is why female children develop faster than males, they had a six week head start and by adulthood females are many years in front of males which is why they see men as being immature, and why the best relationship age gap is when the male is eight years older.
A side effect of the male rewiring is that like anything you take apart it doesn’t always go back together exactly the same. In the case of the male brain some of them don’t work as well and some are improved. This results in more dumb men and more smart men than women. So when you get to the upper levels of any field the top few percent, politics, business, science, maths, very capable men will out number very capable women 2~3:1.
It’s not sexism, it’s science.
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Thanks.
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you are thanking him for junk information.
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I didn’t make it up, I read it on the MENSA website, a few years ago.
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Neil, I had heard about this before, in the sense of us all beginning life as female.
There are a number of transition points during pregnancy and if for some reason they are interfered with there may be irregularities.
The phoetus is extremely vulnerable and pregnant women need to avoid alcohol and stress.
KK
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Put this one on a list for referral to higher authority.
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I’m not an attorney but I believe Amie Wilkinson has committed “tortious interference with business.” We must start fighting this bullying in court. Ted Hill needs to sue Ami Wilkinson for damages.
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