Rain.

After the nice sunny day of yesterday (where I made a great porkloin on the grill).

The grey and rain of today feels a bit muted.

But hey, I've still got meat!

Well... this sounds familiar...

Strategypage talks about a coming pension crisis.

You might wonder why such a topic warrants the attention of a site dedicated to military foreign  policy...

Time is not on China’s side. There are numerous examples of this. One of the more obvious is the shrinking Chinese work force. While overall population increased 7.1 million in 2014 (to 1.37 billion) but the working age population declined 3.7 million (to 915 million). The number of Chinese over 60 increased 10 million to 212 million. All this began in 2014 and will continue for decades. The biggest problem, though, is the growing shortage of workers. As the population ages, all those one child families means there will be more elderly than the economy (and the shrinking workforce) can effectively support. Currently there are 11 working age Chinese for every retiree. By 2050, there will only be two for each retiree. At that point, retirees will comprise 30 percent of the population (versus 13 percent now.) 

Oh.   Well...  ironic that.

Amusement at a communist police state facing a crisis you'd expect in Illinois (Or to be honest the US as a whole.  As a nation the USA is basically a pension system with an army).

But this is a serious case... given things could go squirrely with China.  Especially if you add in their looming gender imbalance.

Science? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.

Brad Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz of Slate have a doozey of magical thinking and cargo cult thinking.  Seriously this is an article entitled "What The Wizard of Oz TellsUs About Climate Change"

Buckle up folks.

Because their idea of "Climate Denial" is about to get... weird.

The essence of the Anthropocene is not really about humanity’s planetary-scale impact, but about the beginnings of a radical destabilization of the core human ideas and institutions that made this impact possible.
...
No better example of the existence and consequences of this collective denial can be found than the ongoing debate over climate change, in which public discourse has plunged to levels of name-calling and character assassination that would humble a nursery school class.
...
At the core of this debate is an idea that has been central to the development of our identity as humans for the past 400 years: that the key to solving the problem is rational action dictated by scientific knowledge.
Give it up, folks.

That's right,  they come off the bat telling you to give up the idea that "rational action dictated by scientific knowledge" is key to solving problems.

Let's read on"

First: Science ain’t what it used to be. Our ideal of science is of a highly structured activity for establishing cause-and-effect relationships that can be tested in the field and the laboratory. Now the focus is increasingly on computational models and scenarios aimed at exploring complex phenomena (such as climate change) that unfold on scales from the global to the molecular.

Erm...   are the writers even aware that eventually molecular scientists have to actually, you know,  built those molecules...  and test them.

That there's still... laboratory work.  I mean the whole point of the computer models is to guide the actual real world application.  Otherwise it's just a video game.

Oh but it continues:

The process of observation, hypothesis development, and testing has come to seem like the embodiment of rationality itself. At the core of this first phase of scientific culture was reductionism—understanding things by studying their component parts—controlled experimentation, and confirmation and replication of results. If I didn’t believe your story that fish died in water with high lead content, I could repeat the experiment, changing nothing but the lead concentration in the water. Despite how complex the water and fish physiology and my conditions were, I could change that one variable, and over time achieve a clear pattern of increasing lead, increasing mortality.

Yup... basic science there.  The whole, let's acutally test what you're saying instead of taking it on faith.

But wait!  They claim there's a New Science!

But this method works only for simple, controlled, and closed systems, in which pulling out one variable to experiment with is possible. It does not apply to complex adaptive systems, in which the very process of separating out a single variable changes the underlying system unpredictably. Such systems cannot be replicated, and therefore cannot be subject to standard scientific processes of confirmation. No one can replicate global environmental conditions in such a way as to experimentally test climate change. For such complex systems, the best we can do is create complicated computer models.

(Emphasis added)
No...  the best you can do is run repeated and careful trials, attempting to untangle things as best you can.   And then you create a computer model, and then you actually test it.

And you know who else says their  ideas "cannot be subject standard scientific processes of confirmation"  con artists hawking  perpetuate motion machines and ESP.

But creating a model necessarily involves generating a set of rules that determines what we include in the model and what we exclude. And any set of rules that enables us to model a complex system that is coherent necessarily gives us a model that is partial and arbitrary—hence the common refrain that “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” We can use the model to generate multiple scenarios of the future that are consistent with scientific understanding, but we cannot have the underlying system itself. The complexity of the Anthropocene—in which, for example, climate change is an emergent phenomenon of 300 years of industrialism—is not subject to the sort of verifiable and predictive understanding that characterized science of the sort that Copernicus, Newton, or even Einstein practiced.

(Emphasis added)

Uh...  if your model cannot be verified in the traditional way then how exactly do you know how useful it is?  That is the entire point of verification, to see if the model can accuratly predict phenomena.

I mean the entire idea of Anthropocentric Global Warming is that given Global Climate X  a certain mean temperature behavior (T1) will be seen with a gas generation G1.  However,  if one were to go with a lesser gas generation (G2)  then there would be some new temperature behavior T2.

Again, this is something where the refrain has been "The science is settled"  and challenges to it are "Denier!"

And now these guys are going on with "Naw,  Science doesn't need to predict things or be verified"

Also note the implicit condescension. 'Old' Experiments are things like "Copernicus, Newton, or even Einstein"  but modern stuff is far too complicated and sophisticated for those old expeirmental methods.

Never-mind that quite modern things like quantum computing, genetics,  fusion, all eventually have to go from computer model to experiment.  Do note that the  Large Hadron Collider isn't a computer model, its a giant experiment.


Oh!  But this paper gets better.   Sure they admit that Global Warming isn't "normal" science.

In this way the politics of fighting climate change share some similarities with those of fighting terrorism. Both have involved campaigns that use apocalyptic and extreme language in an attempt to create fear and insecurity among the public. Both seek to re-engineer society: In the case of global warming, for example, an important goal is to force broad changes in consumption and production patterns in the name of such meaningless goals as “saving the planet.” We should recall, though, that the threat of terrorism—a very real threat, as events in Paris remind us, and indeed in many ways much more tangible than climate change—was used to justify a radical erosion of the privacy of Americans, and to rationalize the invasion of Iraq, an action meant to stabilize conditions but whose destabilizing consequences continue to disastrously unfold.

(Emphasis added)
Yes... they went there.  So...  Global Warming is like the War on Terror...  including the erosion of liberties due to fear-mongering  and may cause "mishaps" like the Invasion of Iraq.

Uh...  is this a troll paper?  I mean is the whole Wizard of Oz thing a red flag that this is satire? Or is a genuine admiration of magical thinking?

 Our computer models can give us a thousand scenarios of how the climate may change. But remember that global warming is an unintended consequence of 300 years of industrialism—why would we think that equally momentous unintended consequences would not accompany the enormous social changes pursued in our effort to control the future behavior of the climate?

Well, given you've abandoned all pretense that these models are actually predicting things.  Then yes,  flailing about with massive unintended consequences does seem inevitable.

There is indeed a cruel dilemma here: In order for the science to matter, it must be heard; in order to be heard, it must be translated into catastrophic visions and simplistic policy formulations that are literally absurd abstractions of the complexity that we inhabit. 

*Facepalms*  So... it's not enough to advocate that science abandon the whole  "let's see if our predictions are right"  it also has to become even more of a fear-mongering Sideshow?

The necessary oversimplification, urgent appeal to fear and insecurity, insistence on predictive certainty, and direct linkage to an explicit social agenda that would create huge new groups of winners and losers (and is thus inherently divisive) obliterate the boundary between science and politics.

Oh bless their hearts.  See  it's not their fault that they have to lie and cheat to push for their economic agenda...  it's just too important!

Everything really is connected to everything else now, and the biggest mistake we can make is to focus too narrowly on one thing or one way of doing things. That’s the most important lesson of the abject failure of climate change policy and politics, and it’s one that we must learn if we are to effectively confront the new world that we have and will continue to create. 

See!  That's the reason climate change policy is failing!   The declarations aren't dire enough!

Oh and since you asked.  Yes...  both Allenby and Sarewitz are professors, in scientific fields.

Thinking on it... I really can't tell if this is an apologia to Global Warming advocates "grow[ing] increasingly loud, scary, and simplistic"  or if it is a satire against them.

Honestly, people who are worried about Climate Change should, frankly, find this article really, really offensive.

Is Shannon Watts a plant?

Sooo....   remember how we were called paranoid for thinking that that universal background checks would be used as firearms registration?

Well guess who also thinks UBCs = Registration?

A couple good discussions on Gun Rights Advocacy Strategy.

First we have Sebastian wondering   Is Losing Big Better Than Losing Small?

And then we have Joe Huffman on Carrots versus Sticks?

Both give a lot to think about.

Remember her organization only wants background checks and training!

Welp....  Shannon Watts decided to endorse vigilantism today.

Man arrested for tackling man with gun at Walmart. Because America. http://t.co/reEtSGvKr3 #gunsense
— Shannon (@shannonrwatts) January 21, 2015

What she left out was...  well just read the excerpt in the link to her own tweet:  the man with the gun had a carry permit, moreso it was holstered and out of sight.

Seeing the man slip on the holstered gun in the parking lot, the tackler followed the victim, an older African American man, right into the store. Remember having a permit means, per Florida law, the gentleman had gone through training and a background check.... the very things Watts supposedly "Demands"

Video of the attack here.

There you go,  the head of a major gun control organization is miffed that a white man can't stalk, ambush, knock to the ground, and choke an elderly black man...  without being arrested.  I guess she supports the notion that vigilantes should assume a minority with a gun is automatically up to no good.


Also... one can see that situation awareness is an evergreen lesson learnt.  Not just for the man who got jumped,  but also for others in the store.

Look at  the video again.   Older black man gets jumped by a  white guy who is shouting about a gun... and people don't react.  At all.

You are on your own.

Update:  Looks like someone's doubling down

Trolls-Point is gun violence so prevalent we assume everyone is gunman. No opposition to concealed carry. Get a grip! http://t.co/reEtSGvKr3
— Shannon (@shannonrwatts) January 21, 2015

Trolls-Point is gun violence so prevalent we assume everyone is gunman. No opposition to concealed carry. Get a grip! http://t.co/reEtSGvKr3
— Shannon (@shannonrwatts) January 21, 2015

Yup.... it's our fault some nut went off half-cocked and decided to attack an elderly man simply because he was a minority with a gun.  And nevermind the actual reality of crime stats...

Gotta love the "Get a grip!" at the end.


Via Linoge  who quips "Oh, she doesn't oppose CCW (yeah right).  She just wants CCWers tackled."

Blood Dancin'? Why they haven't even cleared the scene yet.

Not that that will stop these ghouls.

What makes this school shooting interesting is that it's happening in a state that has a Private Sale Ban on the ballot.

And thus we have  DR710's comment (at noon) within hours of the shooting.

let's guess he got the guns from his gun loving parents like the majority of school shooters. one less gun nut. too bad for the innocent victims. YES ON I594 NO ON 591

Wilson172 the majority of schools where shootings happened already had armed guards you moron. read the news instead of the NRA propaganda. wrap that tin foil hat a little tighter and get back in the basement loser. 

So...  a few things.    The grand hate and dehumanization is pretty standard.  And  his (paranoid) ire is at Wilson's suggestion that faculty or guards should be armed.  And is worried that this tragedy will be used to exploit for further gun control.  (Note that).

Now if one presumes DR710's comment that "majority of schools where shootings happened already had armed guard" is right that means DR wants to... what?  Disarm them?  Is he against guards that have had training, background checks and uniforms?  Why?  Why did DR go on about guards and not say that Wilson also wanted faculty armed.

I'd wonder if DR even has a source for this and if so does it have the casualties of when there was on-site armed response versus no on-site armed response?

But the main thing to note is this:   DR is presuming that the attacker in this case got his weapons from his parents.   And *yet* he is demanding that a bill be passed which would do nothing about that.  Even DR's  idealized assumption is that I549 would do nothing but he'll push for it anyway.

And then he dares to call Wilson paranoid for worrying about exactly what he is doing.