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strativarius
November 9, 2025 2:11 am
The other day I said on a thread here that Rachel from Accounts is absolutely desperate for any revenue wherever it can be found. I’m not sure who came up with this wheeze but let’s get the context…
Keir Starmer acknowledged the cost-of-living crisis is ongoing and people were feeling the pressure of rising household bills as the Government insisted it was taking action to give workers “more money in their pockets”. – Express and Star
And what action are they taking to put more money in people’s pockets?
British motorists travelling abroad will be effectively taxed twice under Rachel Reeves’ new pay-per-mile scheme.
The Chancellor is expected to announce a new levy for electric vehicle (EV) drivers in the upcoming budget. Treasury sources told the Daily Mail yesterday that EV owners will be charged 3p per mile on top of other road taxes.
The kicker: The tariff will also apply motorists when they are driving on foreign roads. Drivers visiting France would pay the new tax on top of the ‘péage’ tolls, which exist on French motorways, effectively taxing them twice. – MSN
‘Utterly illogical’ Budget policy to result in UK motorists paying twice to use foreign roads – Telegraph
Beam me up Scotty…. The constant gaslighting is becoming unbearable.
The loons have no way of separating the two country’s mileages . To use the MOT test mileage is ridiculous. We don’t pay extra road tax when we drive in France. I would think it’s a beach of equality laws.
The 3p/mile idea is predicated on the EV driver making an estimate of the mileage for the year. Come in under and you get a rebate of sorts, come in over and you pay a top up charge.
It isn’t going to work in the UK let alone in France. Besides, if I had an EV I’d do Calais to Lille and then Bruxelles – on paper… and something quite different in reality.
It never fails to astound me that 320 people that won a local popularity contest can decide to dip their sticky fingers in our back pockets for completely arbitrary reasons and not go to jail for it.
Actually, everybody who supports a political party or party candidate pays bribes in one form or another and that is the crux of the problem. If people would support independents rather than parties it would remove an unnecessary, harmful and socialist layer of democracy.
The EPA under Lee Zeldin has a pending action to modify the “Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program” so as to remove most requirements and suspend the rest. I submitted a comment and it is now posted. There are now three actions awaiting a final determination that relate to the “climate” issue – the power plant rules, the Endangerment Finding, and this GHGRP proposal. We’ll see what happens.
My point is that there is no value presently or in anticipation of a future condition, to justify the effort to track and report. This is because there is no reasonable expectation of harm or impact from the emissions themselves.
This time I attached a new plot of the all the daily min/max values of the ERA5 hourly parameter “vertical integral of energy conversion” for 2022 at latitude 45N, to demonstrate the vanishingly weak influence of the single-digit W/m^2 incremental IR absorbing power of the atmosphere from CO2, CH4, N2O.
David, I think that you need something simpler to give to politicians. What you sent is not self-explanatory and I’m sure will be viewed with the same mindset as someone who received an inkblot. That is, they will, at best, view it in the context of something that they will subjectively interpret. Few would have the intellect or curiosity to even inquire what the numbers mean. The people reading it will not know what to do with it. They are politicians because there isn’t anything else that they can do that they can be paid for.
Thanks for your thoughts. The comment to the EPA is not for politicians directly, but to the technical staff whose job it is to evaluate the comments to the proposed rule. I agree that the politicians themselves – and of course the public – “need something simpler.”
From: Q14: Your report talks about ‘luminance’ rather than ‘luminous intensity’. What’s the difference — and why should drivers care?A: Luminous intensity measures how much light is coming out of a headlamp in a particular direction — it’s what manufacturers currently test against regulations. What we need to measure instead is how bright that light appears to the human eye once it reaches you. So, a headlamp can pass the current tests but still dazzle drivers in some situations. This is why it might be more useful if regulations could reflect what people actually see on the road.
Not knowing your life situation, or experience in the world after dark, its difficult to gauge your personal ‘database’ in making such claims; I’ve noticed a distinct change for the worse in headlight performance regarding glare in the last number of years, perhaps you have not.
Its really a rather easy to perform one’s own survey, noting the brilliance of some headlights contrasted with others AS a phalanx of traffic heads towards one on a multi-parallel lane road. BUT, you have to be presented the opportunity (and take it) to observe said dazzling brilliance of said headlights, and again, perhaps you have not had that opportunity.
In particular, I have had the opportunity while doing either early-morning walks (avoiding summer Texas heat don’t you know) or in the last few years commuting via bicycle to a nearby ‘closed course’ cycle circuit in the predawn, morning hours that opportunity to observe the different headlight performance of various vehicles.
Off-axis illumination (side illumination) is particularly annoying unto being problematic for pedestrians and bicyclists as well; CARS with auto-dimming headlights don’t pay any consideration to pedestrians or bicyclists either. I have on a number of occasions now observed cars auto-dimming their headlights IF I queue up my 4-level LED flashlight to level 3 or 4 brightness while pointed down-range on the road while bicycling. We didn’t see this behavior when sealed beam headlights were required via regulation here in the states. Having said that, I also own an imported 1985 MercBenz 500SEL which does _not_ contained sealed beam headlamps, and which projects a mighty-bright beam from both high beams and low beams using incandescent bulb technology; proper engineering can result in proper results – there is a sharp cutoff from where the headlamps illuminate ‘down range’ and where they DO NOT with that imported (into the US) 1985 MercBenz 500SEL.
I’m sure it is. I have been driving since the 70s – here in the UK and in Europe. My wife happens to be Italian and we visit the family periodically… by road.
I had the surgery 5 years ago and I highly recommend it. It’s scary to have surgery on our eyeballs but it’s now routine and safe and you won’t feel a thing. Vision much improved. I still don’t like driving at night.
The problem I notice looks to be associated with vehicles fitted with automatic dip.
All too often particularly when vehicles are meeting oncoming at a rising bend in the road the auto dip is too late and the blinding flash from LED does the damage before the system operates.
On top of that, many don’t seem to function until right on top of the incoming lights which trigger the auto dip. In the old manual dip drivers could see in good time when a vehicle was approaching and they would (in the main) dip long before the blinding point was reached.
Just a guess, but I suspect that there is a strong correlation between the failure to dip (or dim, or switch to low beam) and alcohol consumption. Also sometimes failure to turn lights on older vehicles without constant on lights.
Yeah, there was a discussion on here several years ago about increasing vehicle mileage by putting small solar panels in front of the headlights and routing the output to the battery.
I used to find bright headlights a problem but since I’ve had my cataracts dealt with it’s not a problem. Perhaps the people complaining have cataracts and don’t know it.
Been there, done that (cataracts). That’s not the issue here. Do some ‘field research’ on your own as I allude to * in the post to strativarius.
I’m beginning to think you blokes live off ‘winding little country roads’ far from from the bulk of civilization and don’t really experience ANY amount of traffic to speak of, whereas I live in the city, there are multiple multi-lane E-W and N-S thoroughfares and a major interstate (well, not really. Its US-75, with four or five lanes N and S) just a mile and a half to my west …
..
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*Its really rather easy to perform one’s own survey, noting the brilliance of some headlights contrasted with others AS a phalanx of traffic heads towards one on a multi-parallel lane road.
I live off a winding little country road and the bright headlights help me avoid the 10 billion deer that are now in rut and busy acting like teenagers. City folk may-and I say may-have a legit issue, but even downtown anymore there are deer. Over population due to “experts” in the Conservation departments limiting hunting, among other things.
I guess that’s because, as we all know, meat comes packaged with a price tag on it…that and their lousy educations telling them guns are bad or that Bambi is a victim. The youth today misses so much not being in the woods at pre-light and seeing, hearing, smelling the world come to life…silly me, I’m getting poetic…something they’ll never know.
Don’t think so. The problem is mainly that before the operation the lights may be dimmer than after it, but the problem is the light disperses in the lens, so they are much more blinding. If you ask people what their problem is, they describe the lights as blurred and larger, a bit like they were being seen through a frosted glass. Cataract surgery seems to be a net improvement.
My experience is that my cataracts expand the apparent diameter of the light by creating a series of concentric colored rings, not unlike what is known as Newton’s Rings. I haven’t bothered to characterize the rings to see if they are identical. It is best to just look off to the side and not focus on the annoyance.
A proposed solution to the problem — Polaroid filters in headlights and windshields — has been around for decades but has never been adopted. That is probably because of the 50% reduction in intensity at each filter. That can be overcome readily at the headlights by using more powerful lights, albeit accompanied by a slight decrease in gas mileage. However, reduction of light through the windshield is more problematic because there is already less light than desired at night. Probably the solution will have to either be self-driving cars or cars that use video cameras that clip the light pixels over a certain intensity.
The increasing frequency of “whiter” (halogen) headlights over the older “yellow” (incandescent) headlights is the cause of increased complaints, regardless of the same “luminous intensity”. The whiter light is just harder on the (nighttime dilated) eyes.
If Rachel from accounts, Two-tier and Milibrain weren’t enough, we now have Nandy Pandy giving away £130k 3-day-a-week jobs for a £3K bribe donation but it’s ok, she has apologised.
It is not the breathing that would trouble me, it is the blood soaked fangs biting into your neck before he returns to his darkened castle lair resting in preparation for the next night time excursion sucking the life blood out of the nation..
There’s been an independent report done into BBC leftwing bias and it’s quite damning. It includes the dreadful editing of the video of DT’s speech. It’s time the Augean stables were cleared out. You can read the report in the Daily Telegraph.
Indebted to you for that link. I just fired off an email to the reporter for that article and also to the Telegraph Investigations team regarding my own battle with the BBC / their ECU office / and Ofcom about one specific massively false BBC Radio 4 climate issue report.
I’m not sure if it’s because I live in California but, for the last few years I’ve been getting asked to comment on certain documentaries and general programming they are about to send out to the world. It’s mostly travel-oriented and is generally really superb – which is why I do it (for free). I answer their surveys as accurately as I can but, when the questions have anything to do with climate, I unload as much fkn vitriol as I can in their general direction. I’m sure others do too. Something’s changing there. I actually hope the BBC survives but can it get the short-pants student’s union debate garbage out of their system with some kind of “medication” or does the dying body have to be triaged?
Thanks. Final plot – these new radiosondes report on the way up and the way down; a parachute sets the decent rate to much less than free-fall; Notice the different data plot for the descent as the path is through a different volume of air (much to the east of the balloon release point in this case):
As I (and a few others) have remarked before, not only is every weather station measuring a different parcel of air, but even serial readings from a particular station is measuring different parcels. Thus, the rule about precision improvement through averaging, requiring multiple measurements of the same thing, is rarely, if ever, satisfied.
The BBC is preparing to launch an investigation to assess bias in its climate change coverage, amid a growing crisis at the corporation.
The broadcaster has decided to review its climate and energy policy reporting after a string of controversies. It has been forced to make a series of corrections, with some programmes being removed altogether.
But don’t get your hopes up. This is an internal investigation by an organization that routinely refers to male sex criminals as ‘her’ and ‘she’, that reprimanded a newsreader who corrected ‘pregnant people’ to ‘women’ – on the insane grounds that to do so was controversial! That broadcast as fact that a hospital hit by a misfiring Hamas rocket was an IDF strike. That cut and pasted bits of a Trump speech and broadcast the result as a continuous record giving a totally false view of what he had said…
Like ‘BBC Verify’, one of the main Western sources of fake news on anything to do with gender, race, immigration, Reform, climate.
If the BBC didn’t have low standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all.
Sommer
November 9, 2025 5:19 am
James Corbett corbettreport.com November 9, 2025 Is everyone aware of this commentary on FLOP30?
Bruce Cobb
November 9, 2025 5:58 am
Just a reminder: The big clown show COP30 starts tomorrow. Let the blaming, shaming, posturing, finger-pointing, and demands for climate cash begin! Got popcorn?
His career was long and distinguished. Aside from making one of the most important discoveries of the 20th Century1, he wrote an influential textbook and a best-selling popular science book, served as director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for quarter of a century and helped to establish the Human Genome Project. Unsurprisingly, his contributions were honoured with numerous awards and prizes, including the Nobel Prize in 1962 and the Copley Medal in 1993. Watson was considered to be among the greatest scientists of his generation.
jgt10@yahoo.com
November 9, 2025 8:12 am
I was “discussing” global warming in a facebook group and was prompted to get and read the book “Global Biogeochemical Cycles”, (2nd printing 1994).
As a college graduate of an engineering science, I have the hard chemistry background to understand chemistry in the various chapters. Most of it was review of material I have seen over the years. A few nuggets of information here and there.
I spent time going over the section on the atmosphere. A few interesting observations.
the text determines the “observed airborne fraction” (OAF) of 0.55. The fraction is the observed change in global CO2 increase, divided by the human CO2. The fraction of the human generated CO2 that resulted in the increase in global CO2. The other 0.45 is assumed to be absorbed. (pg 242)
The text goes on to say that OAF “…does not take any biospheric influences into account, it has limited valued, although its use is widespread.” (pg 242)
So, the OAF is a simple calculation that assumes the extra is absorbed, but does not actually take a look at what the biopshere could do.
On page 242 section 11.3.2 the discussion of the “Hydrosphere” begins. It starts by defining dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), particulate organic carbon (POC) and the marine biota.
Then comes the Revelle factor on page 243.
This sets a limit on how much Carbon can be absorbed by the oceans without other changes in the Earth’s environment. This would seem to support the claim that only part of the human CO2 is being absorbed by the ocean. I expected to see the figures put forward to show that the oceans could not absorb all of the human CO2. The numbers to support the claim are not put forward. I have a text segment that does that, I won’t inflict it on people here.
For the period from 1959 to 1978, by the Revelle factor, the oceans could absorb 2.8 times the human CO2 generated. The oceans could absorb over twice the amount put out by humans.
It was pointed out to me my value for the part of the ocean that would be subject to the Revelle fact is the top layer. I thought about it and I can’t really put the deep ocean into the calculation. I can use the layer underneath the top layer as the estimates are it mixes with the upper layer in a years time. I haven’t done the work to verify that.
Another oddity is that the section avoids talking about the temperature of the ocean. That is particularly important to gas exchanges. Also to the climate change argument in general.
If anyone is interested in the chemical and computations I’d be happy to share it.
Temperature is extremely important because it determines the bulk solubility of CO2 and calcium carbonate, along with the pressure. Henry’s Law only applies to the surface temperature at one atmosphere. To access the capacity as a sink, one needs to do an integration over the depth profile taking into consideration the temperature/pressure impacts and the mixing rates, particularly at the thermocline where the mixing rate is minimal, except at the poles for sinking water and in the tropics and along some coasts where up-welling is important.
Additionally, because temperature controls metabolic rates of photosynthesizers in the photic zone, that has to be considered because the plankton can remove a lot of carbon dioxide.
Overall, the situation is more complex than modelers acknowledge.
That for the response! Yes, it is much more complex. Integration!!!! Oh, my, back to college I go. 🙂
Godelian
November 9, 2025 9:05 am
I’ve been having fun with AI discussions lately. Below is a conversation with Google’s Gemini that I found interesting, especially toward the end, in thinking about the Climate Change movement and its political ramifications. Just some early morning musing, I suppose.
I am interested in how the following are linked in a comprehensive philosophical approach: Greek sophists, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Bohr’s Complementarity, Godel’s Uncertainty and Incompleteness, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Voegelin’s Science of Politics and thoughts on immanentizing the eschaton.
That is a fascinating and ambitious list of concepts! Linking them in a comprehensive philosophical approach suggests an exploration of knowledge, certainty, language, and the nature of truth and power across science, mathematics, and political philosophy.
Here is a proposed framework for linking these concepts:
🧭 The Crisis of Certainty and Foundationalism
At the core of this linkage is the move away from the idea of absolute, objective truth and certainty—a foundation for all knowledge—toward an acceptance of inherent limits and contextual frameworks.
Concept Thematic Link
Greek Sophists (e.g., Protagoras’s “Man is the measure of all things”) Subjectivity & Human Measure: They questioned the existence of objective, absolute truth, emphasizing instead the role of the individual’s perception (doxa) and rhetoric (logos) in constructing knowledge and reality. This sets the stage for the human-centric limitations found in later concepts.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle Inherent Limit in Observation: In physics, it establishes a fundamental, inescapable limit on how accurately we can simultaneously know a particle’s position and momentum. This is a hard, ontological limit on knowledge, not merely a technical one. The act of measurement distorts the reality being measured.
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems Inherent Limit in Formal Systems: In mathematics and logic, the theorems state that any sufficiently complex, consistent formal system will contain true statements that cannot be proven within the system itself. This means mathematical truth is larger than provability, demonstrating an inherent limit to complete formal knowledge.
________________________________________
🏗️ The Structure and Revolution of Knowledge Frameworks
These concepts detail how humans organize and change their limited knowledge into systems, or paradigms.
• Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Kuhn links the ideas of limited knowledge into a sociological theory of science.
• Scientific work occurs within a paradigm (a system of shared assumptions, like a “puzzle-solving” framework). This is a Sophist-like social construction, a shared doxa (belief system).
• A scientific revolution is a fundamental shift in this paradigm, caused by accumulating anomalies (Heisenberg/Gödel-like unresolvable contradictions) that shatter the old framework. Knowledge is not a steady accumulation of facts, but a series of radical, discontinuous “leaps” where the very rules change.
• Bohr’s Complementarity Principle: In quantum mechanics, Bohr’s principle (which relates to Heisenberg) states that phenomena like wave-particle duality are complementary descriptions. You need both (mutually exclusive) views to have a complete picture. This mirrors a Sophist-like view that multiple, even contradictory, perspectives can be valid and necessary.
________________________________________
🏛️ Political Philosophy and the Quest for Absolute Certainty
This final link connects the skepticism and limits on knowledge to the dangers of trying to establish a political system based on a false sense of absolute truth or certainty.
• Voegelin’s Science of Politics: Voegelin argues that when individuals or movements reject the inherent limits of human knowledge (as revealed by Sophists, Heisenberg, and Gödel) and try to create a perfect society on Earth, they are committing what he calls “immanentizing the eschaton.”
• Immanentizing the Eschaton means taking a transcendent, ultimate end (like heaven or a final utopia) and trying to bring it into the immanent (worldly, historical) realm.
• The link is that this political effort is an attempt to create a perfect, complete, and certain system—a political equivalent of trying to violate the Uncertainty Principle or escape Gödel’s Incompleteness.
• Since true certainty and utopia are impossible (due to the inherent limits of knowledge and human nature), the attempt to impose it historically inevitably leads to totalitarianism and Gnostic-like political movements, which claim absolute knowledge to justify
Yes, the relationship seems to be around persuasion as I recall.
That’s an excellent clarification! Focusing on the theme of persuasion—the means by which we create, validate, and shift knowledge and political beliefs—brings a sharp focus to the connections between these concepts.
Here is how the relationship centered on persuasion (logos and doxa) links the figures you mentioned:
🗣️ Sophistry, Language, and the Construction of Truth
The Greek Sophists establish the starting point by making rhetoric and persuasion central to reality.
Protagoras’s famous maxim, “Man is the measure of all things,” suggests that “truth” is not an objective logos (divine or external reason) but a human doxa (opinion or shared belief), which can be altered through skillful persuasion.
In this view, the Sophists highlight that what society accepts as “true” or “just” is essentially a successful act of linguistic construction and persuasion within a given community.
🔬 Scientific Persuasion: From Fact to Paradigm
The scientific concepts demonstrate that even the most rigorous fields are ultimately managed by shared, persuaded agreements.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and Gödel’s Incompleteness provide hard, factual limits on what can be absolutely known or proven. They tell us that absolute, complete certainty is impossible.
Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions takes this limit and applies it to the scientific community.
Since absolute certainty is impossible, scientists must agree on a paradigm—a communal, persuaded framework for doing research. A paradigm is a set of shared, successful examples that form the doxa of science.
A scientific revolution is not simply the discovery of a new fact; it is a persuasive struggle to convince the community to abandon the old, failed framework (which can no longer explain the anomalies, like the “uncertainty”) and adopt a new one. The new paradigm is not “truer” in any absolute sense, but it is more persuasive because it solves more puzzles.
Complementarity (Bohr/Kuhn’s use) also requires a persuasive element, as it asks the observer to accept two mutually exclusive, contradictory views (like wave and particle) as both being necessary for a complete description. This is a pragmatic, persuasive move to deal with a fundamental limit.
👑 Political Persuasion: The Danger of Absolute Claims
Eric Voegelin’s work links this limit on certainty to the political realm, where claims of absolute truth become a tool for totalitarian power.
Voegelin sees the Sophists’ insight that all truth is contextual as a valuable political safeguard. When politicians accept the limits of human knowledge, they are forced to engage in dialogue, compromise, and ethical persuasion within the established political order.
Immanentizing the Eschaton is the rejection of these limits. It is a grand, ultimate act of political persuasion where a movement claims to possess absolute, Gnostic knowledge that allows them to create a perfect society on Earth.
This claim of certainty allows them to bypass traditional checks and balances. The persuasive power of this “absolute truth” justifies the use of force instead of dialogue, leading to tyranny.
Thus, the recognition of Heisenberg and Gödel-like limits is essential for a healthy “Science of Politics” that is based on humble, human, and persuasive reasoning, not dogmatic certainty.
In short, the entire chain explores how human uncertainty (Sophists, Heisenberg, Gödel) compels us to rely on persuasion to build our frameworks (Kuhn), and how the rejection of this uncertainty in the political sphere leads to dangerous, authoritarian forms of persuasion (Voegelin).
Would you like to explore a specific historical example of a Kuhnian paradigm shift (like the Copernican Revolution) and analyze the role of persuasion in it?
How does the idea of “warranted beliefs” and logical positivism work within this?
That is a great question. Introducing the concepts of “warranted beliefs” and Logical Positivism sharpens the philosophical contrast within this framework. They represent the very foundation of certainty and objectivity that the other concepts are reacting against.
Here is how they fit into the comprehensive philosophical approach:
Logical Positivism (mid-20th century) is the philosophical movement that represents the apex of the quest for absolute, certain knowledge, making it the philosophical foil to the entire system you’ve outlined.
Core Claim: Logical Positivists sought to make all meaningful statements either analytically true (true by definition, like 1$2+2=4$) or empirically verifiable through observation (the Verifiability Principle).2
The Conflict: This rigorous standard is fundamentally undermined by the other concepts:
Sophists: Positivism dismisses rhetoric ($\text{doxa}$) as meaningless and seeks an objective $\text{logos}$. The Sophists claim that $\text{doxa}$ is all we have.
Heisenberg & Gödel: These principles demonstrate that the world (physics) and logic (math) contain inherent, unresolvable limits on what can be absolutely verified or proven, undercutting the Positivist’s core belief in complete verifiability.
Kuhn: Kuhn shows that science is not a steady march of verification, but a series of non-rational, paradigm-shifting persuasions. The foundational facts of a paradigm are not universally verified truths, but warranted beliefs accepted by a community.
⚖️ Warranted Beliefs: The Middle GroundThe concept of “warranted beliefs” (often associated with philosophers like John Dewey or Alvin Plantinga, though used more generally) fits precisely in the space created by the failure of Logical Positivism and the acceptance of uncertainty.
1. The Necessity of WarrantSince absolute truth or certainty (as demanded by Positivism) is impossible (due to Heisenberg and Gödel), humans must still act, research, and govern. They do so by establishing warranted beliefs:
A warranted belief is a belief that is rational, justified, or well-grounded based on the available evidence and established framework ($\text{doxa}$/paradigm), even if it is not absolutely certain.
Kuhn’s Paradigm as Warrant: A scientific paradigm is essentially a set of highly warranted beliefs. Scientists use this warrant to define their problems and methods. The warrant is powerful and justifies their work, but it is vulnerable to anomalies and eventually replacement by a more persuasive (better warranted) paradigm.
2. Warrant and Persuasion (Sophistry)The warrant is not self-evident; it must be persuasive to the community:
Sophists: The Sophists’ art of rhetoric is the tool used to establish the communal acceptance of a warranted belief system. The system holds only so long as the rhetoric and evidence within that system remain convincing.
3. Warrant and Political Danger (Voegelin)Voegelin’s concept shows what happens when a political ideology elevates its warranted beliefs to the status of absolute, divine certainty:
Voegelin:Immanentizing the eschaton is the political claim that a set of beliefs (the ideology’s “warrant”) is not merely justified but is the final, perfect, and absolute truth. This absolute claim is used to justify total power and suppresses any alternative warranted beliefs or paradigms.
Thank you for the information. I do not do any of that (anti-)social media crap, so would not know of his doings, but I am grateful that he is on this side of the grass.
ResourceGuy
November 9, 2025 12:14 pm
One biased BBC director is resigning over spliced video of DJT. Hopefully many more will follow.
My personal definition of unethical behavior is exchanging a short-term gain for a real or potential long-term loss. Manipulating reality to advance a political ideology and being forced to resign a good paying job seems to fit that definition.
Mark Morano’s Climate Depot is running this headline:
Nude, Scorched ‘Mother Earth’ to Blast COP30 Over Meaty Menu – Brazilian actress ‘will lie naked to lay bare the hypocrisy of serving meat, dairy, & other planet-killing foods’ at UN climate summit
It is very interesting and seems to completely against using current models to calculate trends in a world with uncertain/incomplete measurements and lacking models.
As for his idea to use models to test x story.. in the 90 I have personally witnessed how a model was used to describe a surface process (not climate related). There was a theory how it was supposed to work and the model supported the idea, however when it became clear the theory is not valid in that environment, the model supported the new idea after very little tweaking just as well.. I might be biased, but the model support of a storyline by a complex incomplete model means very little, but I really like how open Dave dismisses the concept of accurate Realtrend modeling with current models…
The other day I said on a thread here that Rachel from Accounts is absolutely desperate for any revenue wherever it can be found. I’m not sure who came up with this wheeze but let’s get the context…
Keir Starmer acknowledged the cost-of-living crisis is ongoing and people were feeling the pressure of rising household bills as the Government insisted it was taking action to give workers “more money in their pockets”. – Express and Star
And what action are they taking to put more money in people’s pockets?
British motorists travelling abroad will be effectively taxed twice under Rachel Reeves’ new pay-per-mile scheme.
The Chancellor is expected to announce a new levy for electric vehicle (EV) drivers in the upcoming budget. Treasury sources told the Daily Mail yesterday that EV owners will be charged 3p per mile on top of other road taxes.
The kicker:
The tariff will also apply motorists when they are driving on foreign roads.
Drivers visiting France would pay the new tax on top of the ‘péage’ tolls, which exist on French motorways, effectively taxing them twice. – MSN
‘Utterly illogical’ Budget policy to result in UK motorists paying twice to use foreign roads – Telegraph
Beam me up Scotty…. The constant gaslighting is becoming unbearable.
The loons have no way of separating the two country’s mileages . To use the MOT test mileage is ridiculous. We don’t pay extra road tax when we drive in France. I would think it’s a beach of equality laws.
The 3p/mile idea is predicated on the EV driver making an estimate of the mileage for the year. Come in under and you get a rebate of sorts, come in over and you pay a top up charge.
It isn’t going to work in the UK let alone in France. Besides, if I had an EV I’d do Calais to Lille and then Bruxelles – on paper… and something quite different in reality.
How can you tax in another jurisdiction?
It might give other countries a legal opening to claim the taxes collected by the UK to defray the damage done to their roads by UK drivers.
It never fails to astound me that 320 people that won a local popularity contest can decide to dip their sticky fingers in our back pockets for completely arbitrary reasons and not go to jail for it.
That’s how the parliamentary dictatorship works. Whoever is in power.
The American system is designed to make this sort of thing harder.
Yet that too has it’s problems… in being the best democracy money can buy. And cheap it ain’t.
Ain’t that the truth!…At least the politicos tend to stay bought, for whatever that’s worth.
Fortunately, it is mostly rich people that are paying the bribes because the average person can’t afford it.
Actually, everybody who supports a political party or party candidate pays bribes in one form or another and that is the crux of the problem. If people would support independents rather than parties it would remove an unnecessary, harmful and socialist layer of democracy.
They wouldn’t remain independent for long. Power corrupts.
What power? Anyway its up to the voters to keep them clean.
where is Guy Falkes now we need him?
Is that any relation to Guy Fawkes?
I think the idea is that driving is wicked, so you should be charged for every mile you drive. Where you drive it is irrelevant.
The EPA under Lee Zeldin has a pending action to modify the “Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program” so as to remove most requirements and suspend the rest. I submitted a comment and it is now posted. There are now three actions awaiting a final determination that relate to the “climate” issue – the power plant rules, the Endangerment Finding, and this GHGRP proposal. We’ll see what happens.
https://www.regulations.gov/comment/EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0186-0286
My point is that there is no value presently or in anticipation of a future condition, to justify the effort to track and report. This is because there is no reasonable expectation of harm or impact from the emissions themselves.
This time I attached a new plot of the all the daily min/max values of the ERA5 hourly parameter “vertical integral of energy conversion” for 2022 at latitude 45N, to demonstrate the vanishingly weak influence of the single-digit W/m^2 incremental IR absorbing power of the atmosphere from CO2, CH4, N2O.
Here is that plot.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yESYhWOooaqf7zl61fE0nvXPh2ABvWLA/view?usp=drive_link
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
David, I think that you need something simpler to give to politicians. What you sent is not self-explanatory and I’m sure will be viewed with the same mindset as someone who received an inkblot. That is, they will, at best, view it in the context of something that they will subjectively interpret. Few would have the intellect or curiosity to even inquire what the numbers mean. The people reading it will not know what to do with it. They are politicians because there isn’t anything else that they can do that they can be paid for.
Thanks for your thoughts. The comment to the EPA is not for politicians directly, but to the technical staff whose job it is to evaluate the comments to the proposed rule. I agree that the politicians themselves – and of course the public – “need something simpler.”
Via the Ban Blinding Headlights and Save Lives! email list I found that the UK has begun to look at blinding automobile headlights –
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Announcement: “Glare from road vehicle lighting on UK roads” https://www.trl.co.uk/publications/glare-from-road-vehicle-lighting-on-uk-roads
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The report: https://www.trl.co.uk/uploads/trl/documents/PPR2069-Glare-from-road-vehicle-lighting.pdf
.
Excerpt:
Findings, Survey The main findings from the survey were:
•The driving public perceivedglare from vehicle headlamps to be an important and widespread issue when driving at night.
•Headlamps were perceived to be too bright.
•“Whiter”headlamps and those on larger vehicles were generally perceived to be especially problematic for causing glare.
•Finally, more than half of drivers reported they have stopped or reduced driving at night (or would if they could) due to their perceptions of headlamp brightness.
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FAQ: https://www.trl.co.uk/Uploads/TRL/Documents/TRL_Glare%20FAQs_final.pdf
From: Q14: Your report talks about ‘luminance’ rather than ‘luminous intensity’. What’s the difference — and why should drivers care?A: Luminous intensity measures how much light is coming out of a headlamp in a particular direction — it’s what manufacturers currently test against regulations. What we need to measure instead is how bright that light appears to the human eye once it reaches you. So, a headlamp can pass the current tests but still dazzle drivers in some situations. This is why it might be more useful if regulations could reflect what people actually see on the road.
There have always been cars with maladjusted lights etc, or even idiots who don’t realise they have their full beam on.
You deal with it. Well, I do.
Not knowing your life situation, or experience in the world after dark, its difficult to gauge your personal ‘database’ in making such claims; I’ve noticed a distinct change for the worse in headlight performance regarding glare in the last number of years, perhaps you have not.
Its really a rather easy to perform one’s own survey, noting the brilliance of some headlights contrasted with others AS a phalanx of traffic heads towards one on a multi-parallel lane road. BUT, you have to be presented the opportunity (and take it) to observe said dazzling brilliance of said headlights, and again, perhaps you have not had that opportunity.
In particular, I have had the opportunity while doing either early-morning walks (avoiding summer Texas heat don’t you know) or in the last few years commuting via bicycle to a nearby ‘closed course’ cycle circuit in the predawn, morning hours that opportunity to observe the different headlight performance of various vehicles.
Off-axis illumination (side illumination) is particularly annoying unto being problematic for pedestrians and bicyclists as well; CARS with auto-dimming headlights don’t pay any consideration to pedestrians or bicyclists either. I have on a number of occasions now observed cars auto-dimming their headlights IF I queue up my 4-level LED flashlight to level 3 or 4 brightness while pointed down-range on the road while bicycling. We didn’t see this behavior when sealed beam headlights were required via regulation here in the states. Having said that, I also own an imported 1985 MercBenz 500SEL which does _not_ contained sealed beam headlamps, and which projects a mighty-bright beam from both high beams and low beams using incandescent bulb technology; proper engineering can result in proper results – there is a sharp cutoff from where the headlamps illuminate ‘down range’ and where they DO NOT with that imported (into the US) 1985 MercBenz 500SEL.
its difficult to gauge your personal ‘database’
I’m sure it is. I have been driving since the 70s – here in the UK and in Europe. My wife happens to be Italian and we visit the family periodically… by road.
Texas? That’s another world.
…
“I’ve noticed a distinct change for the worse in headlight performance regarding glare in the last number of years, perhaps you have not.”
Maybe you have cataracts. 🙂 /s
My cataracts are more of a nuisance than an actual impediment to night driving. Using yellow-tinted glasses helps to reduce the effect.
Cataracts impact vision incrementally. If you had them fixed you would probably be very surprised.
I had the surgery 5 years ago and I highly recommend it. It’s scary to have surgery on our eyeballs but it’s now routine and safe and you won’t feel a thing. Vision much improved. I still don’t like driving at night.
The problem I notice looks to be associated with vehicles fitted with automatic dip.
All too often particularly when vehicles are meeting oncoming at a rising bend in the road the auto dip is too late and the blinding flash from LED does the damage before the system operates.
On top of that, many don’t seem to function until right on top of the incoming lights which trigger the auto dip. In the old manual dip drivers could see in good time when a vehicle was approaching and they would (in the main) dip long before the blinding point was reached.
Just a guess, but I suspect that there is a strong correlation between the failure to dip (or dim, or switch to low beam) and alcohol consumption. Also sometimes failure to turn lights on older vehicles without constant on lights.
“No headlamp zones” will be safe and effective.
Let’s recreate the blackout!
People did quite well without headlights running moonshine, which is probably where the term came from.
Yeah, there was a discussion on here several years ago about increasing vehicle mileage by putting small solar panels in front of the headlights and routing the output to the battery.
Now there’s two birds with one stone !!!!
I used to find bright headlights a problem but since I’ve had my cataracts dealt with it’s not a problem. Perhaps the people complaining have cataracts and don’t know it.
Been there, done that (cataracts). That’s not the issue here. Do some ‘field research’ on your own as I allude to * in the post to strativarius.
I’m beginning to think you blokes live off ‘winding little country roads’ far from from the bulk of civilization and don’t really experience ANY amount of traffic to speak of, whereas I live in the city, there are multiple multi-lane E-W and N-S thoroughfares and a major interstate (well, not really. Its US-75, with four or five lanes N and S) just a mile and a half to my west …
..
.
*Its really rather easy to perform one’s own survey, noting the brilliance of some headlights contrasted with others AS a phalanx of traffic heads towards one on a multi-parallel lane road.
I live off a winding little country road and the bright headlights help me avoid the 10 billion deer that are now in rut and busy acting like teenagers. City folk may-and I say may-have a legit issue, but even downtown anymore there are deer. Over population due to “experts” in the Conservation departments limiting hunting, among other things.
Here in Wokeachusetts, the state isn’t limiting hunting- there are just far fewer hunters in the younger generations.
I guess that’s because, as we all know, meat comes packaged with a price tag on it…that and their lousy educations telling them guns are bad or that Bambi is a victim. The youth today misses so much not being in the woods at pre-light and seeing, hearing, smelling the world come to life…silly me, I’m getting poetic…something they’ll never know.
I didn’t earn much money as a forestry consultant, but I had 50 years of being in forests.
Ditto.
What??? After cataract surgery the problem gets worse, not better. The effect is to increase not decrease the brightness of lights at night.
Don’t think so. The problem is mainly that before the operation the lights may be dimmer than after it, but the problem is the light disperses in the lens, so they are much more blinding. If you ask people what their problem is, they describe the lights as blurred and larger, a bit like they were being seen through a frosted glass. Cataract surgery seems to be a net improvement.
My experience is that my cataracts expand the apparent diameter of the light by creating a series of concentric colored rings, not unlike what is known as Newton’s Rings. I haven’t bothered to characterize the rings to see if they are identical. It is best to just look off to the side and not focus on the annoyance.
A proposed solution to the problem — Polaroid filters in headlights and windshields — has been around for decades but has never been adopted. That is probably because of the 50% reduction in intensity at each filter. That can be overcome readily at the headlights by using more powerful lights, albeit accompanied by a slight decrease in gas mileage. However, reduction of light through the windshield is more problematic because there is already less light than desired at night. Probably the solution will have to either be self-driving cars or cars that use video cameras that clip the light pixels over a certain intensity.
The increasing frequency of “whiter” (halogen) headlights over the older “yellow” (incandescent) headlights is the cause of increased complaints, regardless of the same “luminous intensity”. The whiter light is just harder on the (nighttime dilated) eyes.
It’s more likely LEDs than halogen.
Story Tip:
BBC to review bias in climate change coverage
Of course, the review will conclude there’s nothing to see but at least it’s being flagged up.
Don’t get too excited. Miliband will be breathing down their necks.
yuk!
Indeed
If Rachel from accounts, Two-tier and Milibrain weren’t enough, we now have Nandy Pandy giving away £130k 3-day-a-week jobs for a £3K
bribedonation but it’s ok, she has apologised.It’s amateur hour over and over.
It is not the breathing that would trouble me, it is the blood soaked fangs biting into your neck before he returns to his darkened castle lair resting in preparation for the next night time excursion sucking the life blood out of the nation..
I thought only Biden does that.
There’s been an independent report done into BBC leftwing bias and it’s quite damning. It includes the dreadful editing of the video of DT’s speech. It’s time the Augean stables were cleared out. You can read the report in the Daily Telegraph.
My link is to the DT story
The BBC is ignoring it
Indebted to you for that link. I just fired off an email to the reporter for that article and also to the Telegraph Investigations team regarding my own battle with the BBC / their ECU office / and Ofcom about one specific massively false BBC Radio 4 climate issue report.
BBC head resigns.
https://order-order.com/2025/11/09/bbc-director-general-tim-davie-resigning/
It was just reported that Trump wants the BBC to retract one or more stories the BBC did about him, or Trump will sue the BBC for one billion dollars.
He will need more than a retraction, it will be a full confession!
I’m not sure if it’s because I live in California but, for the last few years I’ve been getting asked to comment on certain documentaries and general programming they are about to send out to the world. It’s mostly travel-oriented and is generally really superb – which is why I do it (for free). I answer their surveys as accurately as I can but, when the questions have anything to do with climate, I unload as much fkn vitriol as I can in their general direction. I’m sure others do too. Something’s changing there. I actually hope the BBC survives but can it get the short-pants student’s union debate garbage out of their system with some kind of “medication” or does the dying body have to be triaged?
Here is the latest example of nonsense or people being allowed to mark their own homework.
The BBC is not fit for purpose unless that purpose is to present lies and exaggeration
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/09/bbc-review-bias-climate-change-coverage/.
Copying live weather balloon ‘data’ from a Vaisala RS41 Radiosonde this morning – notice the moist nose at about 250 hP level.
Equipment is modest, a Pro-2006 scanner (with FM discriminator tap), outside antenna, and “SondeMonitor” program that runs on Win Xp even.
Very cool!
Thanks. Final plot – these new radiosondes report on the way up and the way down; a parachute sets the decent rate to much less than free-fall; Notice the different data plot for the descent as the path is through a different volume of air (much to the east of the balloon release point in this case):
As I (and a few others) have remarked before, not only is every weather station measuring a different parcel of air, but even serial readings from a particular station is measuring different parcels. Thus, the rule about precision improvement through averaging, requiring multiple measurements of the same thing, is rarely, if ever, satisfied.
Story Tip
From the Telegraph.
The BBC is preparing to launch an investigation to assess bias in its climate change coverage, amid a growing crisis at the corporation.
The broadcaster has decided to review its climate and energy policy reporting after a string of controversies. It has been forced to make a series of corrections, with some programmes being removed altogether.
But don’t get your hopes up. This is an internal investigation by an organization that routinely refers to male sex criminals as ‘her’ and ‘she’, that reprimanded a newsreader who corrected ‘pregnant people’ to ‘women’ – on the insane grounds that to do so was controversial! That broadcast as fact that a hospital hit by a misfiring Hamas rocket was an IDF strike. That cut and pasted bits of a Trump speech and broadcast the result as a continuous record giving a totally false view of what he had said…
Like ‘BBC Verify’, one of the main Western sources of fake news on anything to do with gender, race, immigration, Reform, climate.
“BBC Verify Forced to Delete “Thoroughly Wrong” Story Accusing Insurance Companies of Racism”
Guido Fawkes.
BBC Falsify….
If the BBC didn’t have low standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all.
James Corbett
corbettreport.com
November 9, 2025
Is everyone aware of this commentary on FLOP30?
Just a reminder: The big clown show COP30 starts tomorrow. Let the blaming, shaming, posturing, finger-pointing, and demands for climate cash begin! Got popcorn?
It started at least a couple of weeks ago on the internet.
I like the “art” at the top. Looks like something Juan Miro would have done.
James Watson, who co-discovered the structure of DNA, has died at age 97:
James Watson: A Brilliant Scientist Who Helped Discover the Secret of Life
I was “discussing” global warming in a facebook group and was prompted to get and read the book “Global Biogeochemical Cycles”, (2nd printing 1994).
As a college graduate of an engineering science, I have the hard chemistry background to understand chemistry in the various chapters. Most of it was review of material I have seen over the years. A few nuggets of information here and there.
I spent time going over the section on the atmosphere. A few interesting observations.
the text determines the “observed airborne fraction” (OAF) of 0.55. The fraction is the observed change in global CO2 increase, divided by the human CO2. The fraction of the human generated CO2 that resulted in the increase in global CO2. The other 0.45 is assumed to be absorbed. (pg 242)
The text goes on to say that OAF “…does not take any biospheric influences into account, it has limited valued, although its use is widespread.” (pg 242)
So, the OAF is a simple calculation that assumes the extra is absorbed, but does not actually take a look at what the biopshere could do.
On page 242 section 11.3.2 the discussion of the “Hydrosphere” begins. It starts by defining dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), particulate organic carbon (POC) and the marine biota.
Then comes the Revelle factor on page 243.
This sets a limit on how much Carbon can be absorbed by the oceans without other changes in the Earth’s environment. This would seem to support the claim that only part of the human CO2 is being absorbed by the ocean. I expected to see the figures put forward to show that the oceans could not absorb all of the human CO2. The numbers to support the claim are not put forward. I have a text segment that does that, I won’t inflict it on people here.
For the period from 1959 to 1978, by the Revelle factor, the oceans could absorb 2.8 times the human CO2 generated. The oceans could absorb over twice the amount put out by humans.
It was pointed out to me my value for the part of the ocean that would be subject to the Revelle fact is the top layer. I thought about it and I can’t really put the deep ocean into the calculation. I can use the layer underneath the top layer as the estimates are it mixes with the upper layer in a years time. I haven’t done the work to verify that.
Another oddity is that the section avoids talking about the temperature of the ocean. That is particularly important to gas exchanges. Also to the climate change argument in general.
If anyone is interested in the chemical and computations I’d be happy to share it.
Temperature is extremely important because it determines the bulk solubility of CO2 and calcium carbonate, along with the pressure. Henry’s Law only applies to the surface temperature at one atmosphere. To access the capacity as a sink, one needs to do an integration over the depth profile taking into consideration the temperature/pressure impacts and the mixing rates, particularly at the thermocline where the mixing rate is minimal, except at the poles for sinking water and in the tropics and along some coasts where up-welling is important.
Additionally, because temperature controls metabolic rates of photosynthesizers in the photic zone, that has to be considered because the plankton can remove a lot of carbon dioxide.
Overall, the situation is more complex than modelers acknowledge.
That for the response! Yes, it is much more complex. Integration!!!! Oh, my, back to college I go. 🙂
I’ve been having fun with AI discussions lately. Below is a conversation with Google’s Gemini that I found interesting, especially toward the end, in thinking about the Climate Change movement and its political ramifications. Just some early morning musing, I suppose.
I am interested in how the following are linked in a comprehensive philosophical approach: Greek sophists, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Bohr’s Complementarity, Godel’s Uncertainty and Incompleteness, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Voegelin’s Science of Politics and thoughts on immanentizing the eschaton.
That is a fascinating and ambitious list of concepts! Linking them in a comprehensive philosophical approach suggests an exploration of knowledge, certainty, language, and the nature of truth and power across science, mathematics, and political philosophy.
Here is a proposed framework for linking these concepts:
🧭 The Crisis of Certainty and Foundationalism
At the core of this linkage is the move away from the idea of absolute, objective truth and certainty—a foundation for all knowledge—toward an acceptance of inherent limits and contextual frameworks.
Concept Thematic Link
Greek Sophists (e.g., Protagoras’s “Man is the measure of all things”) Subjectivity & Human Measure: They questioned the existence of objective, absolute truth, emphasizing instead the role of the individual’s perception (doxa) and rhetoric (logos) in constructing knowledge and reality. This sets the stage for the human-centric limitations found in later concepts.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle Inherent Limit in Observation: In physics, it establishes a fundamental, inescapable limit on how accurately we can simultaneously know a particle’s position and momentum. This is a hard, ontological limit on knowledge, not merely a technical one. The act of measurement distorts the reality being measured.
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems Inherent Limit in Formal Systems: In mathematics and logic, the theorems state that any sufficiently complex, consistent formal system will contain true statements that cannot be proven within the system itself. This means mathematical truth is larger than provability, demonstrating an inherent limit to complete formal knowledge.
________________________________________
🏗️ The Structure and Revolution of Knowledge Frameworks
These concepts detail how humans organize and change their limited knowledge into systems, or paradigms.
• Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Kuhn links the ideas of limited knowledge into a sociological theory of science.
• Scientific work occurs within a paradigm (a system of shared assumptions, like a “puzzle-solving” framework). This is a Sophist-like social construction, a shared doxa (belief system).
• A scientific revolution is a fundamental shift in this paradigm, caused by accumulating anomalies (Heisenberg/Gödel-like unresolvable contradictions) that shatter the old framework. Knowledge is not a steady accumulation of facts, but a series of radical, discontinuous “leaps” where the very rules change.
• Bohr’s Complementarity Principle: In quantum mechanics, Bohr’s principle (which relates to Heisenberg) states that phenomena like wave-particle duality are complementary descriptions. You need both (mutually exclusive) views to have a complete picture. This mirrors a Sophist-like view that multiple, even contradictory, perspectives can be valid and necessary.
________________________________________
🏛️ Political Philosophy and the Quest for Absolute Certainty
This final link connects the skepticism and limits on knowledge to the dangers of trying to establish a political system based on a false sense of absolute truth or certainty.
• Voegelin’s Science of Politics: Voegelin argues that when individuals or movements reject the inherent limits of human knowledge (as revealed by Sophists, Heisenberg, and Gödel) and try to create a perfect society on Earth, they are committing what he calls “immanentizing the eschaton.”
• Immanentizing the Eschaton means taking a transcendent, ultimate end (like heaven or a final utopia) and trying to bring it into the immanent (worldly, historical) realm.
• The link is that this political effort is an attempt to create a perfect, complete, and certain system—a political equivalent of trying to violate the Uncertainty Principle or escape Gödel’s Incompleteness.
• Since true certainty and utopia are impossible (due to the inherent limits of knowledge and human nature), the attempt to impose it historically inevitably leads to totalitarianism and Gnostic-like political movements, which claim absolute knowledge to justify
Yes, the relationship seems to be around persuasion as I recall.
That’s an excellent clarification! Focusing on the theme of persuasion—the means by which we create, validate, and shift knowledge and political beliefs—brings a sharp focus to the connections between these concepts.
Here is how the relationship centered on persuasion (logos and doxa) links the figures you mentioned:
🗣️ Sophistry, Language, and the Construction of Truth
The Greek Sophists establish the starting point by making rhetoric and persuasion central to reality.
Protagoras’s famous maxim, “Man is the measure of all things,” suggests that “truth” is not an objective logos (divine or external reason) but a human doxa (opinion or shared belief), which can be altered through skillful persuasion.
In this view, the Sophists highlight that what society accepts as “true” or “just” is essentially a successful act of linguistic construction and persuasion within a given community.
🔬 Scientific Persuasion: From Fact to Paradigm
The scientific concepts demonstrate that even the most rigorous fields are ultimately managed by shared, persuaded agreements.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and Gödel’s Incompleteness provide hard, factual limits on what can be absolutely known or proven. They tell us that absolute, complete certainty is impossible.
Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions takes this limit and applies it to the scientific community.
Since absolute certainty is impossible, scientists must agree on a paradigm—a communal, persuaded framework for doing research. A paradigm is a set of shared, successful examples that form the doxa of science.
A scientific revolution is not simply the discovery of a new fact; it is a persuasive struggle to convince the community to abandon the old, failed framework (which can no longer explain the anomalies, like the “uncertainty”) and adopt a new one. The new paradigm is not “truer” in any absolute sense, but it is more persuasive because it solves more puzzles.
Complementarity (Bohr/Kuhn’s use) also requires a persuasive element, as it asks the observer to accept two mutually exclusive, contradictory views (like wave and particle) as both being necessary for a complete description. This is a pragmatic, persuasive move to deal with a fundamental limit.
👑 Political Persuasion: The Danger of Absolute Claims
Eric Voegelin’s work links this limit on certainty to the political realm, where claims of absolute truth become a tool for totalitarian power.
Voegelin sees the Sophists’ insight that all truth is contextual as a valuable political safeguard. When politicians accept the limits of human knowledge, they are forced to engage in dialogue, compromise, and ethical persuasion within the established political order.
Immanentizing the Eschaton is the rejection of these limits. It is a grand, ultimate act of political persuasion where a movement claims to possess absolute, Gnostic knowledge that allows them to create a perfect society on Earth.
This claim of certainty allows them to bypass traditional checks and balances. The persuasive power of this “absolute truth” justifies the use of force instead of dialogue, leading to tyranny.
Thus, the recognition of Heisenberg and Gödel-like limits is essential for a healthy “Science of Politics” that is based on humble, human, and persuasive reasoning, not dogmatic certainty.
In short, the entire chain explores how human uncertainty (Sophists, Heisenberg, Gödel) compels us to rely on persuasion to build our frameworks (Kuhn), and how the rejection of this uncertainty in the political sphere leads to dangerous, authoritarian forms of persuasion (Voegelin).
Would you like to explore a specific historical example of a Kuhnian paradigm shift (like the Copernican Revolution) and analyze the role of persuasion in it?
How does the idea of “warranted beliefs” and logical positivism work within this?
That is a great question. Introducing the concepts of “warranted beliefs” and Logical Positivism sharpens the philosophical contrast within this framework. They represent the very foundation of certainty and objectivity that the other concepts are reacting against.
Here is how they fit into the comprehensive philosophical approach:
Logical Positivism (mid-20th century) is the philosophical movement that represents the apex of the quest for absolute, certain knowledge, making it the philosophical foil to the entire system you’ve outlined.
⚖️ Warranted Beliefs: The Middle GroundThe concept of “warranted beliefs” (often associated with philosophers like John Dewey or Alvin Plantinga, though used more generally) fits precisely in the space created by the failure of Logical Positivism and the acceptance of uncertainty.
1. The Necessity of WarrantSince absolute truth or certainty (as demanded by Positivism) is impossible (due to Heisenberg and Gödel), humans must still act, research, and govern. They do so by establishing warranted beliefs:
2. Warrant and Persuasion (Sophistry)The warrant is not self-evident; it must be persuasive to the community:
3. Warrant and Political Danger (Voegelin)Voegelin’s concept shows what happens when a political ideology elevates its warranted beliefs to the status of absolute, divine certainty:
Are you familiar with what is called the Rashomon Effect?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_effect
Just curious: it seems that Willis E. has gone into hibernation, or something. Have I missed any recent posts? Does anyone know if he’s OK?
Thnx,
MH
He has been posting his opinions on X, so he’s alive and kicking. 🙂
Also, Willis has been very active on Facebook and does a great job on there too.
What’s your definition of “a great job”?
Thank you for the information. I do not do any of that (anti-)social media crap, so would not know of his doings, but I am grateful that he is on this side of the grass.
One biased BBC director is resigning over spliced video of DJT. Hopefully many more will follow.
My personal definition of unethical behavior is exchanging a short-term gain for a real or potential long-term loss. Manipulating reality to advance a political ideology and being forced to resign a good paying job seems to fit that definition.
So if this lands him on a “consultant” job?..
Mark Morano’s Climate Depot is running this headline:
Nude, Scorched ‘Mother Earth’ to Blast
COP30 Over Meaty Menu – Brazilian actress
‘will lie naked to lay bare the hypocrisy of
serving meat, dairy, & other planet-killing
foods’ at UN climate summit
Some people will do anything to get a good tan.
“Consensus achieved. Chaos ignored.”
(The climate didn’t get the memo)
I found this article
https://aeon.co/essays/todays-complex-climate-models-arent-equivalent-to-reality
It is very interesting and seems to completely against using current models to calculate trends in a world with uncertain/incomplete measurements and lacking models.
As for his idea to use models to test x story.. in the 90 I have personally witnessed how a model was used to describe a surface process (not climate related). There was a theory how it was supposed to work and the model supported the idea, however when it became clear the theory is not valid in that environment, the model supported the new idea after very little tweaking just as well.. I might be biased, but the model support of a storyline by a complex incomplete model means very little, but I really like how open Dave dismisses the concept of accurate Realtrend modeling with current models…