
The computer model is not God. After I got my MS in Statistical Analysis and Research Methodology, I was involved with all manner of “modeling” for a number of years. I can tell you, computer models are nothing more than a “black box” containing somebody’s theories and (and this is not an unimportant consideration) future career prospects. That black box has crank on it. When the crank is turned, a set of data (which in itself might have been collected in a biased way) is ground through an analytical process according to that somebody’s understanding of the universe.
Computer models, in short, are made by people and they can only magnify the good or bad in the people that make them. Meteorologists, for instance, used to be called “weathermen” back in the days before their predictions reached a level of accuracy that inspired any confidence at all. Now, after developing their information gathering equipment and fine tuning their understanding of actual weather conditions, they are somewhere close to correct most of the time. Most of their biggest mistakes nowadays grow out of what is sometimes referred to as the “abundance of caution”. That is to say, if there is a possibility of extreme and dangerous weather, no matter how small, the weight given to that possibility in their predictions is subject to magnification for reasons other than “science”. Of course, that does not stop those predictions from being pumped up with more urgency. Media hysteria and governmental edicts often ensue.
So, if extremely accurate information about how present conditions, analyzed in the light of long term, meticulously collected and curated knowledge about those conditions, might effect the next 18 to 48 hours of local weather sometimes fail, how much faith should we put in predictions that stretch far into future weeks, months, years and decades. This is especially true if those predictions are made by models that are built on poorly collected data and run through a black box of assumptions that are no more than guesses and opinions. Even more so, when those predictions are mixed with social opinion and political priorities why would we have any trust in them at all?
We should not trust them. The track record of all of the most notable computer models used by politicians (mostly on the left) to make changes in our government and our lives have all proved out to be complete failures. Of the 50 reliably predicted catastrophes generated by “scientific” modeling since 1967, not a single one has actually happened. In the sixties it was world wide famine by 1970. In the seventies it was the “coming ice age”. In the eighties it was “Peak Oil”. Now, Global warming has drifted into climate change.
It is an evil racket of politicians (who are only interested in getting reelected year after year) leveraging the avarice and self-interest of corrupted scientists (who live from government grant to government grant) that gives fodder to the elitist and biased media (who survive the collapse of real information by pimping bad information in exchange for “access”, punditry positions and more bad information).
This is what you get when there is more in it for everyone to “scratch each other’s backs” than to stand up for some form of integrity or truth. Panic and fear are being used to reinforce the authority of entirely self-interested charlatans who pose as concerned saviors and (where have we heard this before) public servants.
Just consider the naked hypocrisy of a Barak Obama buying a multi-million dollar waterfront home a scant few yards above sea level. He made that kind of money, in large part, by sounding the alarm for years about the rise of sea levels predicted by computer models, that in turn were based on computer models of “global warming”.
It’s not just a political game they are playing because they believe in socialism. These are hypocrites and fools of the first degree. It is careerism and greed in a very short-sighted and destructive form. They are constantly pushing narratives that are harmful to the nation and to the people who live here for their own purposes.
Two days ago, we saw the computer models stripped entirely of their scientific divinity. The pollsters failed utterly. The blue wave turned into a purple trickle. The defeat of Republican senators predicted by vast margins was actually truer in the reverse. Most of the contests were not even close. Far from increasing their hold on the House of Representatives, as so confidently predicted, the Democrats lost two seats. While the presidential election is still contested, the huge margins of defeat predicted for president Trump on a state by state basis were shown to be lies and now seem only to be supported at all by wholesale voter fraud.
It used to be true that “figures don’t lie”. That was in a time when the figures were as honest as possible and you could see whether numbers were collected honestly and then put into simple, forms like lists and cross-tabulations. Now there is an entire industry based on collecting biased data and grinding it through advanced statistical models that are too complicated to understand and where one assumption builds on the next. A single tiny shift in basic assumptions can twist the theoretical model until it represents a universe of apocalyptic dangers where none exist. This is the time when liars figure and the figures lie.