“They somehow managed to persuade themselves that computer models constitute data.
“That very complicated guesses become facts. They made themselves believe they had the power to accurately model…something as inconceivable complex as…a national economy, a weather system.
Ever since I was young, I have enjoyed reading science fiction. Some of its attraction is the escapism it offers, but also the artistry of those who can envision a world where some things are very different but which seem to make enough internal sense to suspend disbelief and care about the characters. It also sometimes connects to or echoes recent “real world” circumstances (see my “The Road Back from Interstellar Serfdom,” for example). Another example involves the novel Variable Star (2006) by Robert Heinlein and Spider Robinson.
After previous enjoyment of Robert Heinlein’s work, another work—compiled after Heinlein was dead—caught my attention. It had come from incomplete notes for a book that were found in Heinlein’s papers, which his estate commissioned Spider Robinson to complete and turn into a book. A certain passage (pp. 194-195) seems to describe a good deal of the green movement in recent years. And, just as in the situation in the book, it can lead to results far better to avoid than to experience:
The characteristic flaw…[was] the assumption of vastly more knowledge than they actually possessed… Over and over…they developed the imbecilic idea that they understood nearly everything.
[Unfortunately] the explanations kept falling apart at the first hard-data-push…yet they were solemnly convinced they basically understood the universe, except for some details out in the tenth decimal place.
They somehow managed to persuade themselves that computer models constitute data.
That very complicated guesses become facts. They made themselves believe they had the power to accurately model…something as inconceivable complex as…a national economy, a weather system.
They made solemn announcements…on the basis of computer models which they had produced…[but] they had no faintest clue how ignorant they were. (emphasis added)
Scientists were claiming godlike knowledge and couldn’t deliver. The disaster those errors led to in the book reminded me of the importance of correcting such missteps before disasters strike. It also reminded me of the extensive work The Heartland Institute has done in rebutting many fallacies, flaws, and misinterpretations that have been visited on the public by those promoting the green agenda.
Heartland’s contributions to straightening out the many things that have been twisted in environmental discussions are far beyond the scope of this short article, but one can get a very good idea of their extent from merely scanning the titles of their Climate Change Weekly (CCW) articles. It is worth reading the articles because, as in Variable Star, being wrong in this area can have very severe consequences. To avoid such harms, we must remember the well-worn adage that in making policy, “good intentions do not guarantee good results,” because false premises and faulty logic can often undermine—and even override—desired results.
Consider just the following titles from some CCW articles from roughly a year. It is far from complete, but it strongly reflects Variable Star’s conclusion that “they had no faintest clue how ignorant they were”:
Be seeing you
MCViewPoint 