70 Comments
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Tuco's Child's avatar

Great article and classic song Das Model by Kraftwerk 🎶!

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Irina Slav's avatar

A true classic, indeed!

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Trudy Anrep's avatar

The Criminocracy dont care they will keep making their Money

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Irina Slav's avatar

This is a very fitting name.

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Daniel Kish's avatar

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

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José Luis de la Fuente's avatar

Brilliant, brilliant!!

Thank you.

Said by one who has been using models all the time and still believes in them for certain purposes...

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Irina Slav's avatar

Thank you! I'm quite sure modelling is a very useful tool, when you base the models on factual data and do your best to reduce bias, which is what scientists are, I expect, trained to do. But as with other things, the climate change movement has ruined its reputation.

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José Luis de la Fuente's avatar

Thank you for your response. I'm an engineer and teacher devoted mainly to research, planning, and optimization of electric systems, where models do follow physical laws strictly most of the time. Nonetheless, as far as renewables and non-flexible technologies are concerned, models lead with them via probability, and that is why simulations have to take into consideration huge amounts of data to try to figure out a wide range of possible situations and outcomes.

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BritishBiker Philippines's avatar

I only learned quite recently that computer modelling was the stuff of fantasists and propagandist. This was after Prof. Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London released his 'absolute and iron-clad' predictions at the beginning of the Covid issue. His numbers had many hiding in terror during lockdowns waiting for their imminent suffocation, all while he was having his married lover ferried across town to suffer his own peculiar injections. Hogwash all of it, the stuff of blaggards.

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Bob Fately's avatar

Perhaps we can think of thees modelers as extensions of Mark Twain's famous quite - "There are lairs, damned liars, statisticians and computer modelers"

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Irina Slav's avatar

Yes!

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Irina Slav's avatar

A lot of people were very categorical in their predictions at the time, even when these predictions were at odds with each other. I remember one medical doctor going against the grain and saying there was nothing to freak out about and the majority of his fellow doctors calling for him to be censored because he was not singing in the panic chorus. He was among those blamed for the low vaccination rates in Bulgaria. Meanwhile, we got our daily dose of virus predictions from a mathematician who... modelled the spread and helped keep the panic good and going by predicting peaks and troughs and thousands dead. Now all this is conveniently forgotten. What a time...

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BritishBiker Philippines's avatar

We cannot let it lie dear Slav. Fight, Fight, Fight !

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les's avatar

Isn't it amazing that all the people who told us to vaccinate were not medically trained people. Wasn't Neil Ferguson the same person who said in thw 1990s that "Mad Cow disease" would kill upwards of 250k people - when only 175 died!

In fact I was dissuaded by reading an article from Dr. Dolores Cahill regarding the damage done to test animals by mRNA vaccines - they ALL died when injected with them. At that point I decided that not having the vaccine was a good move.

I am now glad I did this as 3 years ago I had quadruple bypass operation. I was in a coma for about 6 weeks because the medical team found out, after my heart operation I had a perforated bowel. This had to be removed to save my life. If I had had the Covid jab I really believe I would not be here now as my immune system would have been compromised..

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HS's avatar

Club of Rome were some of the first, along with Paul Ehrlich... and to think I bought into that narrative at one time as a grad student. That was back in the day when I was a little less skeptical of model outcomes because computer modelling was relatively new and sexy.

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les's avatar

I remember when I worked for a UK Bank and had to go to "sanctions training" - I realised very quickly that what the west was doing with these sanctions was no better than a "Mafiosi protection racket". Legalised theft by any other name.

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Mark's avatar

Someone should calculate the reward that should be paid to the oil industry for its contribution to the global economy. Said economy would be more or less nowhere were it not for fossil fuels… No one will do it, because it’s incalculable.

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Karloff's avatar

BRAVO! from a retired O&G guy

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Steve Elliott's avatar

My thoughts too.

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Irina Slav's avatar

This should have been the obvious counter-idea to what those two authors have in mind. I'm sure it can be calculated. It will just be a really huge number.

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Frank Frtr's avatar

The idea that it makes any sense whatsoever to calculate the “damage” “caused” by fossil fuels without accounting for the fact that there would be almost literally nothing to “damage” without said fuels is inane.

A fourth-grader could figure this out, but apparently the WaPo cannot.

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les's avatar

Thanks for giving me another dose of reality on Friday. I particularly love the "peer review" analogy you provide. You are right not one friend would have the temerity to tell you that what you are saying is bulls**t. As I have said before reality really is a b**ch. Once again thanks for the humour.

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Irina Slav's avatar

My pleasure!

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John Bowman's avatar

It explains why our ancestors in the 19th Century were living in the lap of luxury with all those $trillions sloshing around prior to the oily businesses ruining everything. I did wonder.

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Irina Slav's avatar

Ah, yes, winter newborns very environmentally placed in the cowshed where it's warmer than in the pre-oil era house so they'll survive, daily full-body workout at the fields and all that great stuff. Those were the times.

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John Bowman's avatar

Fresh air, fresh, organic, local, seasonal food - no additives, no plastic… Utopia

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Roger Caiazza's avatar

Thank you for a great post

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Waspi, Kevin G's avatar

Millenia ago, yours truly used close-coupled, open source, nonlinear, non-stochastic, chaotic, exponential extrapolation random sequencing SWAG* methodology to determine the color of each fairly dancing on the pinheads of climate charlatans. The results were published in the Book of Numbers, but the “unique data set” was lost in a devastating flood, unfortunately.

*SWAG = scientific wild-ass guess

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Karloff's avatar

Kevin, your post should have come with a "Hot Beverage Warning"...🤣😂🤣

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Waspi, Kevin G's avatar

My apologies, you are correct. I get absent minded in my old age!

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Irina Slav's avatar

This is a massive loss for modern science. Now we shall never know. But you do bring up an important point I plan to address in another Substack -- the use of language to obfuscate and mislead. Thanks for highlighting this nefarious function of our unique system of communication.

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Waspi, Kevin G's avatar

How right you are! Based on only the quantity of word salad spread across the globe daily, one could argue that all living beings on the planet have become herbivores with insatiable appetite! Associated with this phenomenon are digestive health issues that make the effluent a poisonous polyamine formed from the amino acid arginine during putrefaction.

Climaticians are especially prolific in the production of this putrizene

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Irina Slav's avatar

I'd like to say I'm really happy you play for team Reality and not team Transition! You'd be a nuclear-grade asset if you did.😁

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Waspi, Kevin G's avatar

Oh, you’re too kind! The last time someone called me an asset, they had too much to drink and slurred their words, mistakenly adding the’et’

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Peter Ballerstedt's avatar

I prefer the phrase "pal review"

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Steve Elliott's avatar

It comes back to that quote by the statistician George Box - "All models are wrong, but some are useful" (1976)

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Karloff's avatar

The bobblehead climate models have been a scam from day one. When any serious scientist takes a look they usually find yet another example of, "GIGO." There are so many possible comments one could make about the clowns Irina mentioned in this most excellent post. We thank her as always for reading the shenanigans papers, so that we don't have to. My comment pertains to taxpayer funding of the so called institutions of higher learning. The feds created the university system, but it evidently requires tremendous amounts of taxpayer funds to survive. Time to turn off the money spigot. These clowns have shown the taxpayers what they are getting for their investment. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Keep 'em coming. 🤘😎🤘

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Lee's avatar

Wait! They’d probably have to fire thousands of DEI coordinators. Where would those people get jobs? How about their student loans? Can’t have this, sorry.

I’m pretending to be a Democrat. How am I doing?

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Karloff's avatar

Not bad, but you need to be much louder. Use all CAPS next time. 😂

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Lee's avatar

Good feedback. Thanks! Good feedback. Thanks!

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Daniel Ziegler's avatar

With stats, anything is "provable". Now the idiot climate alarmists believe they have they have another "proof" and another arrow in their quiver. I read once that only one climate model accurately predicted global temps and it was Russian. And we all thought all Russian work was disinformation. The joke is on the West!!🤣

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Irina Slav's avatar

That's what we were told to think. In reality, I think Russian scientific institutions have retained the conservative approach to, well, science, that was typical of 50 years ago, which suggests greater impartiality, sans the ideological element present 50 years ago. Also, there are no corporate interests to influence their work although I recently learned Rosneft wants to build wind turbines here and there and was very disappointed in Darth Vader Sechin. Still, I'd take any model trying to predict global temperature with a pinch of salt in view of the nature of our climate as a chaotic system.

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TMacro06's avatar

I can't help to say again without apology - that all things C-lie-mate is really another attempt the Malthusian Marxist Death Cult to enslave and then eliminate all we free thinkers. Thank you again Irina for exposing them and their real intent, T

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Meredith Trimble's avatar

Now we understand the rapid growth of AI and why Virginia has the most data centers. Here's a crazy stat to start your day: In northern Virginia, which is home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world, the square footage of server-filled warehouses is now about equal to the floor space of eight Empire State Buildings, according to a new International Monetary Fund study.

Near to our nation’s capital. The day of battling models will overtake the legal system!

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Irina Slav's avatar

These are some stunning numbers, Meredith.

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