Polar Bear Watch: Time To Look Away
POLAR Bear Watch – Anorak’s look at polar bears in the news
THE US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has been looking at the Arctic ice. And polar bears.
The report notes the work of J. Scott Armstrong, of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Armstrong, the editor of a standard text, “Principles of Forecasting”.
He is the originator of what the Seer-Sucker Theory: “No matter how much evidence exists that seers do not exist, seers will find suckers.”
Dr. Armstrong and his coauthors, Kesten C. Green of Monash University and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, conclude that the most influential forecasts of polar-bear populations violate at least 73 of the 90 relevant principles of scientific forecasting. They criticize the forecasters for making large extrapolations based on sparse data and questionable models, relying too heavily on a single expert, ignoring contradictory data and tailoring conclusions to fit a political goal (listing the polar bear as a “threatened” species).
So the polar bears are not dying out? We can stop watching the polar bears. And start looking at a new dying breed, something that will perish when global warming kicks in, like the man who turns the light on and off in your fridge, Santa Claus Australians…
Posted: 1st, February 2008 | In: Reviews Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
