By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: How to deal with risks dominates our headlines, usually driven by single-interest groups that see only their favorite threat. Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s latest work offers a way to identify the most serious threats facing us, and determine how much we should spend to fight each of them. It has received much attention. Is it useful?
A series of papers by Nassim Nicholas Taleb et al made a large contribution to our understanding of risk: The Precautionary Principle within the statistical and probabilistic structure of “ruin” problems. The main paper is “The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms)“, well-worth reading for anyone interested in GMOs or risk analysis. I will not attempt to summarize it here; it deserves to be read in full. I will point out one aspect of relevance to many of the key challenges of our time: how should policy-makers allocate funds to prevent or mitigate shockwave threats — potentially disastrous but of low or certain probabilities?
Excerpt: What is a “ruin” scenario, and how should we respond to them?
“We believe that the PP should be evoked only in extreme situations: when the potential harm is systemic (rather than localized) and the consequences can involve total irreversible ruin, such as the extinction of human beings or all life on the planet.
“A ruin problem is one where outcomes of risks have a non-zero probability of resulting in unrecoverable losses. …In biology, an example would be a species that has gone extinct. For nature, ‘ruin’ is ecocide: an irreversible termination of life at some scale, which could be planetwide.
“…Our concern is with public policy. …Policy makers have a responsibility to avoid catastrophic harm for society as a whole; the focus is on the aggregate, not at the level of single individuals, and on global-systemic, not idiosyncratic, harm. This is the domain of collective ‘ruin’ problems.
“…For example, for humanity global devastation cannot be measured on a scale in which harm is proportional to level of devastation. The harm due to complete destruction is not the same as 10 times the destruction of 1/10 of the system. As the percentage of destruction approaches 100%, the assessment of harm diverges to infinity (instead of converging to a particular number) due to the value placed on a future that ceases to exist.
“Because the ‘cost’ of ruin is effectively infinite, cost-benefit analysis (in which the potential harm and potential gain are multiplied by their probabilities and weighed against each other) is no longer a useful paradigm. Even if probabilities are expected to be zero but have a non-zero uncertainty, then a sensitivity analysis that considers the impact of that uncertainty results in infinities as well. The potential harm is so substantial that everything else in the equation ceases to matter. In this case, we must do everything we can to avoid the catastrophe.
“…If the consequences are systemic, the associated uncertainty of risks must be treated differently than if it is not. In such cases, precautionary action is not based on direct empirical evidence but on analytical approaches based upon the theoretical understanding of the nature of harm. It relies on probability theory without computing probabilities. The essential question is whether or not global harm is possible or not.”
———————— End Excerpt. ————————
Public policy implications of “ruin” scenarios
Taleb explains that “ruin” events must be defended against “at all costs …Because the ‘cost’ of ruin is effectively infinite …we must do everything we can to avoid the catastrophe.” This is operationally useless since there are many shockwave scenarios with ruinous outcomes.
By his theory, the relevant expenditure required is that required to “defend against” all of them. I will mention just two threats to illustrate this. First, the oceans are dying, with potentially ruinous consequences for humanity. See the Ocean Health Index; see the jellyfish warnings; see some of the many warnings about this problem.
Second, the Earth has been hit by asteroids and comets in the past, with ruinous consequences — sometimes exterminating the world’s major lifeforms. It will happen again. For details see these posts. Oddly, Taleb mentions the history of extinction-level events from asteroid and comet impacts, but does not mention why this kind of ruin event should not become a major public policy concern. It exactly meets his formal definition. (Similarly he writes about the odds of a Third World War, but does not discuss the “ruin” scenario of global nuclear war.)
After we’ve funded every ruin scenario “at all costs”, we have to spend more to prepare for the merely awful scenarios, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, pandemics (like the flu), and famines. Then there are more exotic threats, such as a reversal of Earth’s magnetic field, eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano, continental destruction from other volcanoes, peak fresh water, and other shockwave events. We cannot fund vast sums on all of them.
How can policy-makers allocate resources across such a broad spectrum of threats? The recommendations of Taleb’s methodology provide less help than the simple and objective — albeit imperfect — the usual comparisons of probability, cost, and risk.
Tomorrow: Taleb warns us about climate change.
A super-volcano will erupt again, eventually.
Another perspective on risk
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life …which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? …seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness …Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
— Matthew 6:25-34.
For More Information
The photo of Nassim Nicholas Taleb is posted from his website with permission.
For more of Taleb’s work see his website, especially papers in the Doing Statistics Under Fat Tails Program. Also see his entry on wikipedia.
Please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information see The keys to understanding climate change, My posts about climate change, all posts about shockwaves (high impact, low probability scenarios), and especially these …
- We are so vulnerable to so many things. What is the best response?
- Preparing for the future: should we be precautionary or proactionary?
- The first step to protecting the world from its many dangers.
See Taleb’s books, especially The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2010) and Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012).
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If you spend all your money chasing “ruin” problems, you won’t have anything left over for more mundane but important issues such as taking care of the sick and elderly.
And some ruin problems are impossible to evaluate. For example, what are the odds of an alien invasion? How would you prepare for such an eventuality? Humanity could take steps, for example, we could shut down all broadcast radio systems which might be revealing our presence, radar, TV, GPS, mobile phones, this would certainly reduce the odds of an alien civilisation detecting our presence, and forming invasion plans if they were so inclined. But the cost would be vast – a huge surge in air travel danger, no more satnav in cars, no more mobile call convenience.
Even though the impact of an alien invasion would likely be catastrophic, even though the risk might be high (though we have no way at present of evaluating this), it is simply not worth taking the affordable but deeply inconvenient steps which would be required to reduce that risk.
I don’t know, Eric, This ‘blue’ planet with swirls of white is a dead giveaway compared to the others, I’m thinking … but your points are well taken.
Lets hope the Chinese build those extra coal plants, and turn the clouds yellow… 🙂
Nothing the least bit improbable about a black swan. I’ve seen plenty of them.
I imagine they are all over the place in Australia.
Essay sounds like a bunch of drivel to me.
If you send five ships to sea to be sure that one gets through, what is your plan B if ALL of them arrive safely.
G
Don’t ya think one look at earth, they’re sayin’, “whoa, alien boys! Looks like 1 to 2 degrees of global warming”?
+100
george e. smith! Though my thoughts were not as polite as yours.
Precautionary principle aversion scenarios based purely on speculation rank right up there with Ouija boards and séances for reality.
There are hazards, events or processes than can cause harm, and there is risk, the probability of specific hazard eventuating within a specific time frame. Then there is the actual nature of the “hazard” – alien contact is regarded as a hazard by many, but the nature of the hazard identified ranges from extinction level risk to cultural collapse in the face of a more technologically advanced society. Likewise, what is the real hazard of increasing CO2? Geologically there appears to be none. Biologically, there may well be a problem with decreased carbon availability, but increased CO2? Not really – increased carbon will lead to increased energy capture by green plants (including our crops). How is that a hazard?
In fact, a good deal of this work by Taleb resonates to the Song of Tom of Bedlam:
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney,
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end –
Methinks it is no journey.
Too many “hazards” are but “ghosts and shadows,” and to shift the metaphor, persuing means to mitigate such threats is tilting at windmills.
Human made ideas like religion and ideology comes high on the list? Today ecomarxism is the number one [threat] facing mankind.
United Nations seems to be a mingling place for powerful, unelected bureaucrats endorsing inductivism and totalitarian ideas. That’s what I call a risk for mankind.
“Even though the impact of an alien invasion would likely be catastrophic, even though the risk might be high (though we have no way at present of evaluating this), it is simply not worth taking the affordable but deeply inconvenient steps which would be required to reduce that risk.”
Earth is probably worse place to be in regards to alien invasion, we have to get beyond just living on Earth. And we can do this by exploration of space for resources. Starting with Moon to determine if there is minable lunar water. If there is water which cheap enough, we make lunar rocket fuel.
NASA should explore the Moon and then the private sector can decide if there is minable water.
Next NASA should explore Mars to determine if and how anyone could live and work there.
With industry on the Moon and towns on Mars. Something possibly within 50 years, an alien invasion would a lot different then compared to basically being stuck on Earth and trying at hopeless rate to get more access to space. Or we have much greater access to the space environment. And with such access things like global warming would be easy to solve and stopping an impactor from hitting Earth would or easily done. We would be mining asteroids, and tracking everything out to Jupiter.
In case no one noticed, Obama plan to go to rock is not going anywhere. But it wasn’t suppose to, rather
it stop the plan to go the Moon and then go to Mars, a plan Congress approved to which Obama said, we already gone to the Moon.
Indeed. Instead of scaring a credulous population senseless with disaster-movie apocalyptic scenarios, maybe we all ought to get on with solving the REAL problems of everyday life in the here and now, and get on with living it!
Eric,
Exactly my point! All these single-issue fanatics — spend everything necessary to fight the One True Threat — ignore how their logic applies to the full space of “ruin” threats.
Taleb gives an especially extreme version of this: he explicitly ignores the probability of the threat. He ignores the implications of this. How does he prioritize funding of Fighting Climate Change vs. Preventing Impact by a Comet or Asteroid?
from what i’ve seen, the two biggest risks humanity faces are stupid individuals, and the groups they form, which turn their individual idiocies into mass hysteria and unreasoning, counter-productive actions.
JMHO/YMMV
+97
Stupid, yes, but also often mendacious malfeasance.
Mendacious malfeasance by leaders and politicians. Ignorance by their followers. Neither excusable in this new internet age. The former can easily be caught out (e.g. weakened MSM ‘protection’), the latter easily remedied. Look how fast the RICO 20 gambit has fallen apart. Look how Brexit is playing out.
Which hand was tied behind your back while you stymied those assaults, ristvan?
If Mr. Obama wanted, say, Mr. Watts, to be secretly imprisoned indefinably, or to be . . swimming with the fishes tomorrow, it would be perfectly legal for him to make it happen, right? And we would never know what happened, right?
Redc1c4: respectfully, the biggest detriment to achieving constructive solutions to challenges confronting global humanity — regardless of the nature of such challenges — is centralized command-and-control government; that is, any such governmental system, e.g., socialistic, authoritarian, communist, etc, which does not employ as its primary mandate the protection of the unalienable rights of individual citizens, fairly and equally for all.
The reason for this is both simple and basic: the PRIMARY motivation of command and control govt is the self-preservation of the “anointed elites” … through whatever means necessary. Witness: for the sake of holding power, such govts, time and time again, have wrecked environments, economies, educational systems, the media and the human spirit in general.
Conversely, societies which promote freedom of the individual with truly free and competitive markets supported by truly liberal education and media — where the govt actually applies its energies on protecting such conditions as defined rule of law promoted fairly and equally — have shown to be, warts and all, the best environmental stewards while being the best at promoting human development in ways positive.
Again, there is a simple and basic reason for this: the PRIMARY motivation of freeborn citizens is to pursue their dreams primarily through the positive development of their families and communities … where good environmental stewardship — clean air, water, wildlife, etc. — is part and parcel of such motivations.
Where such societies exist, the properly educated citizenry tend to be able to recognize and reject “stupid and greedy” people … to the point that their “stupid and greedy” ideologies are nipped in the bud.
Note: such free societies, which, through my vote, I prefer, are not perfect. Humans, in whatever culture or location, are not perfect; nor were they intended to be … as we are all flawed tragically.
As an aside: me, being a citizen of the USA, where, certainly and obviously, we have our critical challenges, are failing in that we, collectively, appear to be willing to elect way too many “command and control”-type governmental officials … and we have paid already a huge price … and we, though our apparent willingness, continue to pay that price.
None of us can predict the future, but, in the event that we continue down this path, permitting ourselves to be duped by certifiable “stupid and greedy” people — largely because we have surrendered our desire and demand for truly liberal education and media … and a rule of law — I cannot see a happy ending in any of our efforts — whether in the USA or globally — to even identify, let alone solve, any of our pressing problems.
In our current state, as I see it, we are challenged to interpret correctly our collective societal and material uncertainties — witness our perceived environmental challenges “recognized” by many — and, as such, I for one, do not understand how we will then be able to address the risks respective to any proposed solution.
Nonetheless, hope springs eternal … and therefore we must continue the fight against the dark forces.
So, we need to improve our efforts to “educate ourselves, our entire societies, in a truly liberal manner”, or, chances are, we will find ourselves duped on a regular and painful basis by these truly stupid and greedy people … who apparently are smart enough — and have enough hutzpah — to know that they can fool a lot of us a lot of the time.
Johnny- +10 Not recognizing the most important resource we have is PEOPLE is problem #1. While the real trick has always been how to organize society, wasting our biggest resource through bad policies and practices is the biggest FU there is.
I take the view that we are all basically stupid, and couldn’t run a piss up in a brewery. What saves us is when we let lots of people try lots of things. Then there’s a decent chance that one or two of us will get it right, and we can then all copy that.
That’s why markets and freedom work so much better than central planning and state-funded research.
Taleb seems to be falling into the trap of thinking he’s a genius and always right, rather than somebody who had a couple of great insights once.
Tim H: not to get long-winded about it — which, i tend to do [haha!] — i agree with your response comment … for the most part.
that is part of the beauty of the free society/free market: one has the opportunity to try, and, to fail, and to try again … and one’s customers get to pick and choose the ones which they prefer; whereas, with command and control there are no such options, as, by definition, there is very limited, or no, such freedom.
the part about which i do not agree — actually, it is because of my ignorance — is the part regarding Taleb … because, frankly, i am not familiar with him, other than reputation, so, although i will mentally register your comment, i, personally, cannot comment meaningfully … in agreement or otherwise.
Yes, and why is this juvenile junk of a post getting exposure on WUWT. I hope it is editorial irony and we a meant to pick the flaws in it. But this dross is pure “argument framing”, nothing more. It is a moronically stupid narrative for anybody with half a brain. Us, who the is that. Policy makers!! Talk about manufacturing consent FFS! The very definition of reality for living organism is risk minimisation. The idea that any living being would need some late 21st century ideologue to explain survival is beyond patronising it is violent indifference to reality!
So he is the father of the “precautionary principle” that is screwing up so-called “leaders” who do not know haw to think for themselves. A clever device to short-circuit critical thinking. Dump it as fast as you can.
The precautionary principle causes one to waste resources looking out for something that isn’t ever going to happen. It also seems to be the motivation behind most religious beliefs. It’s the ultimate form of selfishness; doing something just because you hope to benefit in the afterlife.
Whatever happened to helping the disadvantaged, just because you can, and they could have been you ??
G
The offending part of his idea is that total ruin overrides minuscule probabilities, and therefore must be acted upon. There are too many such scenarios and limited resources, so there really is no choice… at least one of his infinitely damaging scenarios will not get the required resources, so the idea “In this case, we must do everything we can to avoid the catastrophe” is false. Below a certain probability, say E-06/yr or lower, even complete planetary destruction should not have resources wasted on those ideas. We need to just eat the risk and thank God for another year the Sweet Meteor of Death did not hit us.
george,
What’s with the “just because” sort of reasoning? If one believes in an afterlife that doesn’t (it seems to me anyway) short-circuit all other concern/motivations, such that generous acts are inevitably rendered purely selfish . . reality remains complex . .
“Whatever happened to helping the disadvantaged, just because you can, and they could have been you ??”
Are you lamenting the passing of some good old days, before there was belief in an afterlife, when much “pure” selfless help was flowing to the disadvantaged?
It seems to me there is a risk of . . pride, which is itself . . complicating, in these virtuous behavior realms.
~ But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. ~
Things are complicated, in any case, it seems to this worm, of no account or wisdom of his own.
“””””….. JohnKnight
July 12, 2016 at 3:07 pm
george,
What’s with the “just because” sort of reasoning? …..”””””
Translation (into ordinary English):
” IF ” …. YOU can’t help somebody (else), then YOU can’t help somebody else !
BUT ! (alternativisation) , IF …. you CAN help somebody (else) , then you CAN do it, so why not do it (for NO reason at all); other than you CAN do it ??
Corollary : IF ….. circumstances could have been different, …. YOU …. might have been in need of help ….. from somebody (else) .
G
PS The rest of your essay is well beyond my understanding or my pay grade, so cannot comment on that.
Above your pay grade? What is this then?
“It also seems to be the motivation behind most religious beliefs.”
??? . .
It appeared to me you were saying/implying that believing there will be an afterlife sullied or tainted in some way, helping disadvantaged people . . and I was trying to get you to think the matter through a bit more, so to speak.
“BUT ! (alternativisation) , IF …. you CAN help somebody (else) , then you CAN do it, so why not do it (for NO reason at all); other than you CAN do it ??”
Sure sounds simple . . I mean given that (many) humans are capable of compassion, but I see no reason to think that IF one’s concern is actually JUST getting help to such people, one would not see belief in an afterlife as a good thing.
Arno,
Taleb does not claim to be the father oft he precautionary principle. which goes back at least to the 1980s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Origins_and_theory
He applies advanced statistics and a Wall Street risk manager’s perspective to this. Some of his insights about this are interesting. A few are useful, imo. His conclusion is daft, imo.
I have have seen, listened and heard many leaders of other planets and they tell me the biggest risk to humanity is humanity itself.
Boring…
And prolix with it.
Scenario: key man insurance ‘in case you die, the company will survive’
Cost of insurance ruins the company anyway.
precautionary principle: useless
die without insurance: ruin
live with insurance: ruin
die with insurance: ruin anyway
live without insurance. All OK!
climate change is normal risk. If ice age happens *shrug* move to sahara
Yes indeed. The response to a ruin scenario needs to be evaluated as a ruin scenario in itself.
well done!
the precautionary principle can absolutely protect you from assault, too.
http://cdn.freakoutnation.com/uploads/2016/02/Gun-backwards.jpg
If your Company depends on a key man; you are all ready in trouble. And quite unlikely to survive.
Back in the day when components of logic circuits (gates for example) were somewhat unreliable, the precautionary principle believed in backup duplication. A diode in a gate could fail open, causing the gate to fail, so you put two diodes in parallel so that one of them might remain functional if the other failed open. Well they also failed short, so you also should put two in series so it still functioned like a diode, if one shorted out.
The end result was the diode quad of a series pair of parallel diodes or a parallel pair of two series diodes. This of course doubled the diode voltage in normal functioning, so the result was that the fan out or fan in was reduced by the need for a greater logic swing.
The reduced fan out then required more logic gates to achieve a given function.
So the net result was a massive increase in the component count, which raised the failure rate unless your improved the reliability of the components themselves.
Fairhchild actually built 256 bit bipolar memory chips which had a couple of extra rows and extra columns so when you tested them, you could determine which complete rows and columns were good, and they had a connecting fuse that welded two crossed wires together just by probing the crossing junction with a probe. That cracked the oxide between the wires and extruded the metal through the cracks, and evidently made a quite reliable connection. But rather a Rube Goldberg way of using redundancy to improve yields.
There was a lot of money went down the drain developing discretionary wiring integrated circuits, where functional interconnects could be made between tested good sub-circuits.
Today’s 50 Mpx camera chips and the huge 4k UHD LCD TV sets simply wouldn’t be available if discretionary redundancy had remained as a means to achieve reliability.
It took a lot of hard work by some damn clever people, squeezing the bugs out of today’s processes.
NO I didn’t have anything to do with that. Just marvel at the wizards who did those things.
G
“Today’s 50 Mpx camera chips and the huge 4k UHD LCD TV sets simply wouldn’t be available if discretionary redundancy had remained as a means to achieve reliability.”
Today’s urban-industrial civilization would not be possible if Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s form of the precautionary principle had been taken seriously by inventors, developers and promoters.
Mr Taleb applied his ‘Black Swan’ theory to reassessing the thickness of the tails of the normal distribution.
But we need to ask the question: In assessing disaster risks, are we concerned with normal distributions?
Should we ignore the Poisson distribution? In my opinion, Extreme weather events are more like the record of kicks in the Prussian Army than to normal weather. The same is probably true of extreme volcanic eruptions, and the arrival on Earth of devastating bolides from space.
Should we ignore what we have learned from Harold Hurst?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurst_exponent
I first studied Mr Taleb’s theories as applied to financial markets. The idea is that trading profits can be gained by assuming that extreme events are more frequent than the markets expect.
To extrapolate the theory to a general theory of risk of ruin seems to me to be over-ambitious. Most distributions generated by mankind and in nature are not normal distributions. Besides, so many phenomena scale fractally.
Thank God!
e.g.; The ‘climate team’ and their methods would never have advanced technology. Instead we’d hear all about the silicon chip tipping point into ruin.
The technology has improved a lot.
The MTBF of an individual transistor is approaching infinity (poetic license invoked). If that were not the case, modern electronics would be impossible.
george e. smith July 11, 2016 at 7:34 pm
“If your Company depends on a key man; you are all ready in trouble. And quite unlikely to survive.”
Not quite sure you fully understand key man insurance. It mostly applies to small companies with one to three owners who depend on each other for the success of the business. If one should become terminally ill or die the others can continue on with the business until a suitable replacement can be found.
Wow Commie, I want one of those 22 core chips. I’ve got 4 in several of my machines and my expensive software somehow thinks there are actually eight there; in any case it is using eight of the four I have. I could use some more though. The software could use 16 unless they upgraded that too (doing billion ray tracing of non imaging optical systems for solid state lighting photon herding (actually photon stampeding; we already got them corralled)).
G
I wonder if the software might not be recruiting your GPU for some of the work. General-purpose computing on graphics processing units
WRT photon stampeding. My experience with that has often been accompanied with a loud bang. (eg. Darn, I think that capacitor was marked wrong.)
As to “key” man insurance (T I F), of course I understand key man insurance. It’s a way of spending precious needed investor’s money on something those investors never intended to invest in (big insurance companies), instead of using it to work on the task that you sought their financial help for.
For a small fraction of the cost (of the big insurance company), you can hire a bright hard working employee, with some of the needed basics, and have your key man bring him(er) up to speed on the key ingredients for which you engaged your key man in the first place.
I have been through (several times) the start in the garage / kitchen table thing, and never has any VC would be investor, been interested in paying for KMI. Seems like VCists understand that big Casinos do not lose money, and big insurance companies do not lose money either.
On the other hand, they may pick a question about “key” man insurance, as the principal reason they don’t want to invest in your business idea.
On the other hand, if YOU and a couple of buddies(esses) are contemplating going into business, and you worry about one of you crashing his(er) Ferrari or Aston Martin, then I would scrap the business idea, and go on a world tour, before the feared funeral happens.
Business is risky: live with it.
G
Mental masturbation.
Operations Research and Management Science is like that … boring until absolutely needed, like in wartime, or solving sticky production problems …
http://prf.osu.eu/kma/index.php?kategorie=34857&id=7978
Probably obeys the Military principle that battle plans work very well, right up to the point at which you engage the enemy.
g
A major systemic risk is systematic corruption of civil servants (and quasi-civil servants), wide spread lies, and systematic (and systemic) disinfo propagated by same-minded individuals, often ostensibly for a “cause”.
The danger isn’t just complete annihilation, but total enslavement.
The two go hand in hand. c.f. 20th century socalism, and now Venezuela.
simple , this is from from the article: “…Our concern is with public policy. …Policy makers have a responsibility to avoid catastrophic harm for society as a whole.
They just use a “nicer, smoother” way of saying what you said.
Model inputs are still open to manipulation.
Statistical analysis with subjective input data … so we can add another category:
Lies
Damn Lies
Statistics
Subjective statistics for promoting the common good.
…
“probabilities” about the universe, aka plausibilities. Probabilities about where you stand in the multiverse, if you will. (The description sounds crazy… for a good reason.)
Nope! Same as damn lies.
open door for government overreach
..How about we think in the short term ! If Hillary is elected president, then there is a 97% chance that the civilized world as we know it, will come to an end ! Now that is something we can protect ourselves from…by voting TRUMP ! ( while strenuously holding nose closed ! )
Taleb was ok concerning Black Swan financial derivatives events. Subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. Fat tails exist. Benoit Mandelbot was talking about them in financial futures markets decades before Taleb appeared on the popular radar. Power laws, and all that.
Taleb has gone since ever more off the rails. Embracing the precautionary principle universally leads to certain economic ruin–Billions on asteroid defense, Trillions on alien invasion defense.
His most recent rant on GMO exhibits an additional and orthogonal negative tendancy–abject ignorance of the underlying biological science at work. Do we know everything about genetics, DNA, and RNA? No. Do we know enough to know what we are presently doing? Yes. Taleb discounts the thousands of lab and field tests before any new GMO organism is released. He has descended into anti-science based on ignorant closet monster speculations.
Linus Pauling was a good enough structural chemist to win the Nobel prize. He was dead wrong on vitamin C. The analogy is apt. Fish out of water soon smell bad. Taleb is now a fish out of water.
Hear! Hear!
Izzat an alternative form of ” Here here ! ”
g
For people who are hard of hereing?
ges, it’s the only correct form. Originated in the British House, short for “Hear the man!”.
And hear I thought it stood for ” Bring it on ! ”
G
Istvan, after watching how agw scientists have bungled the job, i find no reason to trust gmo science either. We are talking about the food we eat here for god’s sake. And once the genie is out of the bottle, it can never be put back in…
Afonzarelli. Yes, I know. My farm grows it for you. Now read up on the thousands of lab and field studies before any GMO is approved.
So make your own food out of rocks and water like mother nature does. If you don’t shop for food in grocery stores you won’t have to worry much about the food you eat.
Do you have any idea what happens to the food a farmer produces for you, once the packaging people get a hold of it.
A typical $5 box of corn flakes probably grossed $0.02 to the farmer who grew the grain.
Some people would be happy to drink the water you used to wash your agricultural food products to be sure they didn’t have any chemicals on them.
So stop eating or make your own food.
G
Absurd alarmist twaddle totally devoid of real meaning.
Though you did make it absolutely clear that you do not understand farming, growing or raising crops.
Otherwise you’d know that most domestic crops are unable to survive without man’s total care and maintenance. If man doesn’t plant them, care and cultivate them, they’re gone within a couple of years.
So you eat it? So what? Are you ware of what your body does to food when it digests it? We eat cereals and we eat squid and we eat cows and we eat flower buds -sometimes in the same dish at the same time. We can cope with food that’s a mixture of all of those – why would we not be able to?
All of the food that most of us eat has been genetically modified. Wheat has been genetically modified for at least 6000 years. Paddy rice, maize-corn and potatoes also, for thousands of years. As well as farm animals.
The scrawny chickens that run free in every village in SE Asia (its place of origin) are nothing like the genetically modified US chickens sold in Jakarta supermarkets and the eggs of the village hens are unlike Grade A Large eggs sold in the same supermarkets.
Farmers in developing countries will plant whichever GM plants they can afford just as they plant whichever hybridized plants they can afford.
Ask yourself, would you eat a beefalo steak if you knew it was a healthier alternative to beefsteak? Hybridizing beef cattle with buffalo was a minor triumph for GM.
Or is genetic engineering in laboratories the real target? If so, why so? Is the opposition science-based? Or Philosophical? Or religious?
ristvan
“Linus Pauling was a good enough structural chemist to win the Nobel prize. He was dead wrong on vitamin C.”
WOW! A few references for this please.
Based upon my own and my families personal experiences, I am of the absolutely opposite opinion re: Dr Pauling and Vitamin C.
J
Google is your friend. Do your own homework.
Correct. He was referring to injected C., not oral (the only form “tested”)
ristvan,
I am not the one that made the claim that Linus Pauling…”was dead wrong on vitamin C.” You did. It seems reasonable that you should be the one to demonstrate the validity of said claim.
My research brings me to this web page that lists more than 50 on-line articles written by Dr Pauling.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/pauling.html
Here is a list of Megavitamin and Nutrition Publications by Dr Pauling. This list contains more than 200 papers spanning from 1968 to1995.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/biblio_pauling_ortho.html
Are you saying that in almost 30 years of scientific research into human health that Dr Pauling “was dead wrong”? That assertion, even if done by someone as intelligent and generally well informed as yourself, requires a better answer than…google is your friend…
J
So, you cite Pauling to approve Pauling. Try rest of the medical literature.
JW,
I am reminded of Carl Sagan’s remark, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” If ristvan had said, “In my opinion,…” then that could be accepted that at face value. However, to suggest that you search on Google implies that there are definitive studies that refute Pauling’s claims. Therefore he might then have simply said, “According to Tweedledum et al. (2016), Pauling was wrong about Vitamin C.” Then you could have taken it up Tweedledum and ristvan would have been off the hook.
” Try rest of the medical literature.”
OK, so it is up to me to prove your assertion wrong, you sound like a CAGW type.
Here are a few sources that agree with Dr Pauling, seems like your job now is to demonstrate that these folks are also “dead wrong”
1. Dr Fredrick Klenner MD used theraputic dosages of Vit C in his medical practice for more than 30 years, this book is a compilation of his medical journal papers.
Clinical Guide to the Use of Vitamin C. A complete on-line book.
http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/198x/smith-lh-clinical_guide_1988.htm
2. Hickey S and Roberts H. Ascorbate: The science of vitamin C.
https://www.amazon.com/Ascorbate-Science-Vitamin-Steve-Hickey/dp/1411607244/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468292955&sr=1-1
3. Curing the Incurable: Vitamin C, Infectious Diseases, and Toxins
by MD JD Thomas E Levy
https://www.amazon.com/Curing-Incurable-Vitamin-Infectious-Diseases/dp/0977952029/ref=pd_sim_14_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=51kF8Ox1nNL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL320_SR206%2C320_&psc=1&refRID=ZK7FH2XQBEHCM736ETSZ
4. Putting It All Together: The New Orthomolecular Nutrition by MD PhD Abram Hoffer
https://www.amazon.com/Putting-All-Together-Orthomolecular-Nutrition/dp/0879836334/ref=pd_sim_14_6?ie=UTF8&dpID=51OxE52XMEL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR106%2C160_&psc=1&refRID=XFZWEVX1Q9ATGBCJ094K
BTW These are not just listings I found on Amazon, these are books on my bookshelf at my elbow. I have read them. Also, do not try to dismiss these as “just books”, these include hundreds of medical journal references. Dr Levy’s book alone has more than 1200 referenced articles.
I did ” Try rest of the medical literature.”
I think it is now time for you to admit the possibility that Dr Pauling was not “dead wrong”, and also to admit the possibility that you have been misinformed.
J
Clyde Spencer
Well put. I expected no less than that from ristvan. Instead I got..google..
Thanks
J
J Wurts,
As a chemist I happen to think that Pauling’s work on Vitamin C was largely erroneous. My main argument is that our society lacks evidence of a widespread medical condition that can be attributed to a lack of Vitamin C. Further, there is often good sense in study of the conditions in which people evolved, to ask questions about what they are suffering today by not using what they evolved with. Or over-using what they did not evolve with.
There is a strange gullibility in society today. I could list about 2 dozen ways that people commonly are duped, from off the top of the head and without resort to any Google or equivalent. Here are two, as examples:
1. Current, widespread marketing of foods and medications that are “rich in anti-oxidants”.
2.The continuing presence of homeopathy, when all credible evidence shows its efficacy to be no better than placebo response.
Huge sums are being wasted on cult diets, cult foods, cult ‘medicines’ while proficient scientists sit back timidly and avoid their issues instead of speaking out against them. It is not hard to tell it as you see it.
Geoff
Geoff
Thanks for your response.
You said…” My main argument is that our society lacks evidence of a widespread medical condition that can be attributed to a lack of Vitamin C.”
Didn’t someone once say something to the effect…”absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”
And, BTW, there is lots of that evidence, see my references above. I do not have the skills to make the arguments here, I will let Drs Klenner, Hickey, Levy and Hoffer speak for themselves.
Therapeutic (i.e. very large) dosages of Vit C actually do work. This is an excerpt from Dr Andrew Saul’s website.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/vitaminc.html
“…VITAMIN C HAS BEEN KNOWN TO CURE OVER 30 MAJOR DISEASES FOR OVER 50 YEARS
If so, why haven’t you heard more about it? Why haven’t more doctors used Vitamin C as medicine?
Progress takes time, unfortunately. Fresh fruit was known to cure scurvy by 1753, yet governments ignored the fact for nearly 100 years. Countless thousands died in the meantime. The 19th century doctor who first advocated washing one’s hands between patients died ignored and in disgrace with the medical profession. Toxic mercury was used as medicine into the twentieth century. And so it has been.
The first physician to aggressively use vitamin C to cure diseases was Frederick R. Klenner, M.D. beginning back in the early 1940’s. Dr. Klenner consistently cured chicken pox, measles, mumps, tetanus and polio with huge doses of the vitamin. While vaccines are now available for these illnesses, please remember this was not the case in the 1940’s.
The following is a list of the conditions that Dr. Klenner successfully treated with aggressive vitamin C therapy:
Pneumonia
Encephalitis
Herpes Zoster (shingles)
Herpes Simplex
Mononucleosis
Pancreatitis
Hepatitis
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
Bladder Infection
Alcoholism
Arthritis
Some Cancers
Leukemia
Atherosclerosis
Ruptured Intervertebral Disc
High Cholesterol
Corneal Ulcer
Diabetes
Glaucoma
Schizophrenia
Burns and secondary infections
Heat Stroke
Radiation Burns
Heavy Metal Poisoning (Mercury, Lead)
Venomous Bites (insects, snakes)
Multiple Sclerosis
Chronic Fatigue
Complications of Surgery
This seems like an impossible list of vitamin C cures. At this point, you can either dismiss the subject or investigate further….”
Geoff….your choice
J
Clyde,
“I am reminded of Carl Sagan’s remark, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
This insight is by Marcello Truzzi, from a 1987 article that is well worth reading. It has many lessons for public policy to cope with climate change.
Ristvan simply made a crass generalization in claiming that Linus Pauling ”was dead wrong on vitamin C.” At face value the assertion can be dismissed as nonsense, simply because Pauling said a great deal on the subject of vitamin C and made a long list of claims regarding its efficacy, and any reasonable observer today would accept that he was right on some things, wrong on others, and that the jury is still out on yet other things he said about the vitamin. Ristvan’s “dead wrong on vitamin C” claim is too general and too absolute to be worth the bother of refuting.
Google is not necessarily your friend here. SInce googling your way to somebody else’s dogmatic judgment on matters you have not sufficiently investigated and don’t have a sufficiently strong interest in verifying for yourself can be counterproductive, leaving you feeling smug and superior but no less ignorant than before you started typing into the search box.
Vitamin/supplement advocates get about as much respect from the orthodox medical establishment as CAGW skeptics get from the grant-funded climate science establishment. The putdowns and abuse come with the territory. Over in Alarmistan, for instance, Anthony and Willis get routinely accused of being dead wrong on just about anything by people who are too sloppy to specify precisely what they are dead wrong about and how. The mere mention of their names is enough to get the Climate Jihadis blood pressure up. And people who make these sweeping assertions seldom back down when called out. They usually insist on upping the ante and digging themselves deeper into the hole they’ve made, because the same nagging ego that forced them to make the sweeping assertion in the first place will not countenance an admission of error. One of the sadder things about online communication is how easily things can degenerate to the level of of junior high school playground.
Linus Pauling may or may not have been wrong on vitamin C. He was definitely, and persistently, wrong on quasicrystals.
‘From the day Shechtman published his findings on quasicrystals in 1984 to the day Linus Pauling died (1994), Shechtman experienced hostility from him toward the non-periodic interpretation. “For a long time it was me against the world,” he said. “I was a subject of ridicule and lectures about the basics of crystallography. The leader of the opposition to my findings was the two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, the idol of the American Chemical Society and one of the most famous scientists in the world. For years, ’til his last day, he fought against quasi-periodicity in crystals. He was wrong, and after a while, I enjoyed every moment of this scientific battle, knowing that he was wrong.
Linus Pauling is noted saying “There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.”
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Shechtman
Um ; Er ! is Scurvy extincticated; eliminating any need for vitamin C ??
Just asking: What schooner did Dr. Klenner sail on ??
g
Pauling was right on Vitamin C – for me. I have used it as an antibiotic numerous times. It works. Against the common cold? Never tried it. I keep my Cs up and don’t get colds.
The biggest risks facing the world are fear mongering politicians, “running out ” chicken littles, and NGO Driven faux fears.
What is the cost of a “ruin event” like the hoax of CAGW?
And what about follow-on prescriptive costs, such as the prescriptions to build large wind farms (to pick just one area) and other necessary supporting infrastructure costs?
The cost is TBD. The effort for global government in conjunction with the large financial cost of wasted resources and very expensive energy could easily result in economic collapse and war.
If a nations energy capcity is sufficiently impaired by CAGW policy, then this could result in said nation/nations losing in that war.
An additional factor which should be considered is: How to ‘handle’ the analysis of a process which may impact something else [think of emissions to the air] but for which there is currently no known effect, good or bad. Is it ALWAYS necessary to assume it is negative? In any case, how does one describe the parameters? Later work MAY be able to quantify some of the effects – good and bad – but it is not certain that work will ever occur. It is very difficult to assign meaningful probabilities in any non subjective way.
Larry
“This is operationally useless since there are many shockwave scenarios with ruinous outcomes.”
I took a look at your shockwave scenarios,
Many dont fit the ruin criteria (( hint earth quakes in the US are local)
If you are going to rest your argument ( its useless) because there are too many shockwave scenarios
Then
1. You best get the definition correct. You didnt
2. You had better explain why X number of scenarios ( as opposed to Y) makes it Useless. In short
your argument that there are too many… is subjective unless you can demonstrate how many would make it useful. That is, if there were only 4 scenarios it would be useful? but at 5 it becomes useless?
Here is a hint. It is hard to show that something is useless.
I predict you wont actually address these two issues. I numbered them to keep it easy.
Another clue is this. Arguments that “A” is meaningless or “A” is useless are almost always wrong or filled with rhetorical lapses. Avoid these types of arguments. you are better than that
Plus 100 Steve!
Steven,
(1) “took a look at your shockwave scenarios, Many dont fit the ruin criteria (( hint earth quakes in the US are local)”
I said “there are many shockwave scenarios with ruinous outcomes.” You incorreclty interpreted this to mean “all shockwave scenarios have ruinous outcomes.”
(2) “The rest of your reasoning is almost as falacious.
“You best get the definition correct. You didnt.”
No, just a reading FAIL by you.
(3) “You had better explain why X number of scenarios ( as opposed to Y) makes it Useless.”
It’s not the number of scenarios but their aggregate cost that makes this concept useless. Public policy is a process of allocating scarce resources across far greater needs. Hence a useful process must provide some mechanism to do so.
(4) “I predict you wont actually address these two issues.”
Wrong again.
” I numbered them to keep it easy.”
It did seem to help, thanks, Steven ; )
Mosher,
Just to spell this out for you, to reduce the odds of you making another reading FAIL.
“You had better explain why X number of scenarios ( as opposed to Y) makes it Useless.”
Taleb explicitly recommends against a public policy mechanism to allocate resources between ruin events, destructive non-ruin events, and regular life. That crashes immediately.
We face climate change from anthropgenic warming, asteroid or comet impact, nearby supernovas — plus however many other ruin events we can imagine. Taleb gives no way to policy makers to either fund “everything we can to avoid” all these catastrophes (“at all costs”) or to allocate funds among them.
This was explained quite clearly in this post, which you ignored.
Why am I not the least bit surprised that Larry Kummer subscribes to the fallacious Precautionary Principle?
Tell me again how it’s reasonable to worry about the precise and selective editing of genes in modern agriculture, but the trillions of random mutations and recombinations due to sexual reproduction are no cause for concern because they are ‘natural.’
Taleb jumped the shark a long time ago and has been seriously refuted more than once.
You didn’t read far enough, maybe?
Mr Kummer did a very nice job of reducing it to absurdity, i thought.
I hit his “Stay tuned tomorrow” notice and decided it was no longer worth trying to understand.
ATheoK,
“I hit his “Stay tuned tomorrow” notice and decided it was no longer worth trying to understand.”
That’s got to be the weirdest comment here, for three reasons.
(1) It was the end of the post (only a Bible quote followed, plus links to more info).
(2) I feel sorry for you if you found this too difficult to understand. Whatever his faults, Taleb is widely considered a clear writer.
(3) The next post discusses another paper by Taleb. Weird that you consider that a problem.
Tsk Tsk,
“Why am I not the least bit surprised that Larry Kummer subscribes to the fallacious Precautionary Principle?”
Why am I not surprised at your gross misinterpretation of this post? There is nothing in this even remotely supporting that conclusion.
See the posts listed in the For More Info section for my views on the P.P.
In the event that your house catches fire over the next hundred years, you need to station a fire brigade in the front room. You should also have a policeman living in the spare room in case you get burgled, and a medical clinic out back in case any of the family fall ill. In case you suddenly need to learn something over the next decade you must install a fully equipped school in the front yard. Every house in the street needs to duplicate these services, so that life is never ruined by unexpected disasters. You have to always be prepared for the worst.
I was always told anything is “possible”, only what is “probable” matters. Forget the precautionary principle. Is the event likely or not? Was the government involved in this analysis—if so, decrease probabililty by at least half, if not more. If the only solution is more money and more government, decrease probability by at least 75%, if not 95%. Virtually no science problems are solvable only by taxation and government.
Reality check
As put so beautifully in “Yes, Minister”, “Anything is possible, Minister, but never for the first time”.
If relatively minor or simple precautions make the crisis significantly less likely, use them. Otherwise, watch for significant increases above the insignificant likelihood level.
Ruinously expensive means are pointless against known “highly improbables”.
I truly do not get why people listen to this guy. “The Black Swan” was a laughable book.
http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1634/Black%20Swan.htm
“At all costs” is a terrible measure. For an example, it’s widely known (and Taleb agrees) that the bigger a socialist government, the worse it gets, to the point of total ruin (See: Venezuela, 100M+ killed in the 20th century, etc). So if the answer to C02 rising due to man is a global bureaucracy , then the cure is worse than the disease.
Unfortunately a lot of alleged cures for global systemic ruin involve just that: some global unaccountable bureaucracy. “At all costs” cannot include a solution that has its own systemic catastrophic failure modes. Especially one with KNOWN failures trying to take on some unknown but possible failure.
Mankind, for better or for worse, keeps increasing the capability of a single individual or a small group to unleash large destructive forces. Alas, aside from MAD we haven’t really come up with solutions that are worse than the problem.
Peter
I agree, the only way to overcome “at all costs” is to form a “colective” that does not need to answer to laws or the will of the people. For example, if there is a pandemic and the only option is to nuke a population to kill the virus before it spreads, who and how could a call like this be made without ultimate power. Smells of socializm.
I am puzzled by the Precautionary Principle. Given a ‘ruin’ threat everything possible must be done. But what if that threat assessment is incorrect and the ‘everything possible’ cure is worse than the disease? Surely the precautionary principle would then apply and everything possible should be done to prevent an action that leads to ruin with the intention of preventing the initial possibly wrong threat assessment.
For example – the ruin scenario from the warmists is runaway global warming leading to extinction so they prevent the use of fossil fuels. However what if they are incorrect and there is actually runaway global cooling to an ice age and equal ruin unless energy from fossil fuels is available.?
The precautionary principle would appear to lead naturally to stasis – a frozen indecision with two or more competing ‘ruin’ scenarios.
It is not logical.
Your conclusion of stasis is entirely logical. “do nothing” is what the Brits call “muddling through”, and is very often the correct answer to issues with complex systems.
Logic isn’t Boolean. In this case it’s at least Ternary.
If ruin is sure taking the precautions, but very improbable without doing so …
The “Precautionary Principle” used to be known as Pascal’s Wager in Philosophy. Pascal wrote in the 1600s and his wager was “the argument that it is in one’s own best interest to behave as if God exists, since the possibility of eternal punishment in hell outweighs any advantage in believing otherwise.” https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Pascal&oq=Pascal&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.812j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=Pascal%27s+wager
It is quite unsustainable logically because it makes too many unproven assumptions such as “god will reward you for believing and punish you for disbelieving”, whereas it may be that god will reward someone who takes full responsibility for his/her own actions instead of just following orders.
Who is of a higher morality – the one who follows orders through fear of punishment or the one who acts morally through personal commitment to moral behaviour? Or one who simply cares about others?
It is also unsound because it assumes that Pascal (or whoever) knows god’s nature, yet we don’t even know which god is there if any. Might not Zeus get pissed off with all these Christians?
Or what if god has a really unfortunate sense of humour and rewards/punishes at random?
97% of Theologians might believe any these possibilities but who can prove any of them?
It is quite similar to the ACGW religion of course, no wonder they cite it as a reason to inflict massive pain on the innocent.
To follow his logic further, deal with the question “Should we believe God is good or evil?” If god is good s/he will forgive us our errors in not believing, but if god is evil there is no forgiveness so the Precautionary Principle says believe the latter. Then apply it to that settled upon status of god and ask is god MORE evil than this? If so s/he is even less likely to forgive so following the principle etc etc
You end up believing that god is a psychopathic mass murdering sadist who delights in torturing the innocent but you’d better worship him/her just in case.
As with ACGW the logical conclusions are so extremely anti-human that to apply it ourself, and others, is itself immoral. That is, if you’re a morally autonomous being of course. I’m sure the bureaucrats and politicians would have no trouble with it (SARC – maybe).
Concerning Pascals wager, roughly speaking,
It seems to me that many otherwise intelligent people fall into a logical/presumptive “trap” that they are actually quite capable of avoiding . . having to do with the existence of more than one concept/belief about God(s). The underlying (to my mind somewhat illogical) presumption seems to go something like this;
If there is an actual God, that God would see to it that only True concepts/beliefs about “It” would be thinkable/utterable/writable by we humans. ~ Therefore no concept/belief in God(s) can be valid/true, and no God(s) exist.
Why exactly would a God wish to preserve humans that He provided with relatively good intelligence, that can’t get past such a simple mindtrap?
Mr. Pascal was under NO moral obligation or logical constraint to speak in terms of what he was convinced were false concepts/ideas about God(s) which could not (even ostensibly) preserve (save) you, in trying to offer some logical basis for not turning your back completely on the God he thought could preserve you (forever).
In fact, accommodating concepts/beliefs that didn’t even involve eternal salvation (out of some PC puritanism concern or whatever) would be self contradictory on both the moral and logical levels, it seems to me . . YOU may believe there is no God, but you are not a God, so your belief is not the correct/logical belief by default. It might be illogical for YOU to offer the argument Mr. Pascal did, but not illogical for HIM to . . as well as immoral (obviously I say) for him not to offer it once he considered the matter carefully . . in hopes that you would too, and would grasp that he WAS being logically and morally consistent.
I saw the matter that way as a non-believing philosophy major long ago . . so I don’t believe it’s anything all that difficult. People must be self consistent to be logical/moral, don’t they?
PS, This is the “law” Mr. Pascal was speaking of it being logical to at least attempt to adopt/conform to, just in case, by the way;
“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
sometimes paranoia is the product of someone with way too much time on their hands…….
From the Fabius Maximus link: https://fabiusmaximus.com/2015/07/23/planetary-risk-management-dooms-87563/
Why oh why this eternal faith in the magic of bureaucracy? They do NOT magically “liberate us from the narrow perspectives of special interest activists”. They make us MORE susceptible to special interests when those interests capture the bureaucracy.
Ugh, so tired of people believing in magic. There is no magic. There is only fallible humans.
Peter
Right on–nonsense so blatant that only an intellectual would fall for it.
In the financial markets there is no such thing as a “Black Swan” event. Severe collapses have always been preceded by a speculative boom. Then the change in the yield curve and credit spreads push off the contraction.
Bob
Once people are amply funded, they cease to have any interest in the project for which they sought the funding. preservation of the funding becomes paramount.
G
@ur momisugly george . smith, + many!
I read Taleb’s paper and what I see is a Climate Faithful who has finally woken up to the fact that his prophets have a terrible track record and all their scary scenarios have an almost zero percent chance of coming true.
But of course, that’s no reason to change their crazy demands that we abolish capitalism and democracy, and hand them absolute power. No, the answer is apparently to double down on the precautionary principle by taking it to infinity.
Every day the Climate Faithful prove that they are nothing more then an apocalyptic cult. The more it becomes apparent that their dooms day isn’t coming, the crazier and more shrill they will become.