Summary Of Patrick J Michaels Terence Kealey S Scientocracy

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The priestly class in classical Greece was not as powerful as the scientists who emerged in medieval Europe, and so the writings of Francis Bacon still have the power to startle. Bacon was the first great philosopher of science, and he wrote that science was a gateway to the sublime. #2 While science has flourished in the modern era, it has lately come to be captured by the state. Scientists have long sought state funding, and as a result, they have long aligned themselves with state doctrines. #3 The argument that science is a public good is false because it ignores the principle of opportunity benefit, which is the converse of opportunity cost. If there is a choice between doing A or B, and if A is chosen over B, the opportunity cost is the forgone benefit from B. But if A is more valuable than B, it is rational to choose A for its additional or opportunity benefit. #4 The linear model, which looks like this: was proposed by Bacon, and it was believed that academic research was the source of industrial technology. But modern scholarship shows that it is advances in industrial technology that stimulate academic research.

Science can be a force for good, and it has enhanced our lives in countless ways, but even a cursory look at the last century shows that what passes for "science" can be detrimental. This book documents only some of the more recent abuses of science that informed members of the public should be aware of.

Volume compiles studies of the production and reproduction of market-supporting social infrastructures through the prism of knowledge commons.

Why do scientists so often offer dire predictions about the future of the environment? In Meltdown, climatologist Patrick Michaels argues that the way we do science today creates a culture of exaggeration and a political comunity that then takes credit for having saved us from certain doom.

In Lukewarming, two environmental scientists explain the science and spin behind the headlines and come to a provocative conclusion: climate change is real, and partially man-made, but it is becoming obvious that far more warming has been forecast than will occur, with some of the catastrophic impacts implausible or impossible. Global warming is more lukewarm than hot. This fresh analysis is an invaluable source for those looking to be more informed about global warming and the data behind it.

Michaels shows that the slight warming over the last century has been far less than the prophets of the apocalypse would expect - throwing the reliability of their computer climate models into doubt - that most of it happened before industry's massive carbon dioxide emissions began, and that most of the warming is at night, when it produces benign effects such as longer growing seasons. In other words, the warming that has resulted from natural climatic processes is good. Among other points brought out in this pathbreaking book: for most of the last billion years, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was greater than it is today. Carbon dioxide, far from being a pollutant, makes plants grow. Research shows that enhanced CO[subscript 2] concentrations make plants grow better. The result: cheaper, more plentiful food.

From random security checks at airports to the use of risk assessment in sentencing, actuarial methods are being used more than ever to determine whom law enforcement officials target and punish. And with the exception of racial profiling on our highways and streets, most people favor these methods because they believe they’re a more cost-effective way to fight crime. In Against Prediction, Bernard E. Harcourt challenges this growing reliance on actuarial methods. These prediction tools, he demonstrates, may in fact increase the overall amount of crime in society, depending on the relative responsiveness of the profiled populations to heightened security. They may also aggravate the difficulties that minorities already have obtaining work, education, and a better quality of life—thus perpetuating the pattern of criminal behavior. Ultimately, Harcourt shows how the perceived success of actuarial methods has begun to distort our very conception of just punishment and to obscure alternate visions of social order. In place of the actuarial, he proposes instead a turn to randomization in punishment and policing. The presumption, Harcourt concludes, should be against prediction.

You have been inundated with reports from media, governments, think tanks and "experts" saying that our climate is changing for the worse and it is our fault. Increases in draughts, heat waves, tornadoes and poison ivy-to name a few-are all blamed on our "sins of emission" from burning fossil fuels and increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Yet, you don't quite buy into this human-caused climate apocalypse. You aren't sure about the details because you don't have all the facts and likely aren't a scientist. Inconvenient Facts was specifically created for you. Writing in plain English and providing easily understood charts and figures, Gregory Wrightstone presents the science to assess the basis of the threatened Thermageddon. The book's 60 "inconvenient facts" come from government sources, peer-reviewed literature or scholarly works, set forth in a way that is lucid and entertaining. The information likely will challenge your current understanding of many apocalyptic predictions about our ever dynamic climate. You will learn that the planet is improving, not in spite of increasing CO2 and rising temperature, but because of it. The very framework of the climate-catastrophe argument will be confronted with scientific fact. Book jacket.