Ted Turner -- A Big Chicken Little

Whatever happened to the Scientific Method? When it comes to Globa Warming, it seems that a lot people think method of developing and validating scientific hypotheses is just hot air.

In short, Global Warming is a conclusion based on hypothesis that has never been tested. It's too complex to test. It's so complex we cannot identify and factor in all the components that are supposed to bring us to the Global Warming conclusion. In other words, the conclusion that Global Warming will destroy life on Earth is a guess. A wild one. And it's as valid as the recent Doomsday Rapture prediction. Or Y2K. Silliness. Utter silliness.

When it comes to predictions of mass death and global catastrophe, the predictors have a bad record. They're 0 for, well, you pick the number of predicted Doomsdays. I suppose the Global Warmists remind themselves that even a broken watch is right twice a day. But even that old bit of sophistry has failed them.

The Global Warming believer, Ted Turner, thinks the reason people fail to grasp the issue is due to its complexity. He's got it backwards. To validate a hypothesis predicting Global Warming means that scientists would have to correctly predict the outcome of every action -- every change -- occurring on Planet Earth for decades to come. It's impossible. We are incapable of such a feat. The Environment is too complex.

Ted Turner: Climate Change ‘Most Serious ... Problem Humanity Has Ever Faced’

June 24, 2011

Ted Turner and members of the board of UN Foundation. (Photo: UN Foundation)
(CNSNews.com) – Media mogul Ted Turner says climate change is “probably the most serious--and, in all fairness, the most complex--problem that humanity has ever faced.”

He added: “It is really easy to understand how some people don’t get it, because it’s so complex and complicated.”

Turner took part in a telephone news conference on Thursday, held by his United Nations Foundation on the island of Svalbard, one of the northernmost regions of Norway.

His comments came in response to a question posed by reporter Sunny Lewis of the Environment News Service about how to change the minds of climate change skeptics.

“A few climate skeptics and deniers seem to be holding up action to curb climate change,” Lewis said. “What can be done to convince and persuade these holdouts as to actually realize what so many scientists know and are telling us in urgent terms?”

Turner applauded the question.

“That’s a very good question," he said, "and if we knew the answer to it, we’d already have an energy policy in the United States. You know, my good friend Boone Piockens points out, and absolutely correctly, that the United States, in its history, has never had an energy policy including during the Arab oil shocks of the ‘70s, and we still don’t have (one), and we need to.

“The only thing I can think of, is we just have to keep working, just like we are doing now, and get as much publicity as we possible can for the issue, and increase the amount of the debate, and persuade people with both the evidence, which is overwhelmingly in favor of climate change being a serious problem, probably the most serious--and in all fairness--the most complex problem that humanity has ever faced,” Turner said.

Referring to climate change skeptics, Turner added: “It's really easy to understand how some people don’t get it because it’s so complex and complicated. But that doesn’t mean we have to do, all of us, do what we can to try to convince people to do the right thing and then motivate them to take the action.”

Turner is the founder and chairman of the United Nations Foundation, and presided over the organization’s semi-annual meeting, which took place June 19-25 in Oslo.

Y2K + X

Heckuva decade. It began with a nervous expectation of a worldwide computer collapse. Y2K -- The Fall of the Machines. But, despite a buildup of angst in the last years of the 1990s, the appearance of thousands of articles, hundreds of books and the media appearances of pundits from every field who predicted catastrophe -- Nothing Happened.

We had been advised to store food and water. To buy generators for electricity. To prepare to defend ourselves against roving bands of desperate people searching for supplies. To buy gold. To sell our homes. To take our money out of banks that would erase the records of our deposits after the computers failed. We were warned to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

The clocked ticked. New Year's Day 2000 began. It began like virtually every other day that had preceded it for 10,000 years. The Sun came up and the people of the world went about their daily business without a worry in the world. Planes flew, traffic lights changed, ships sailed, elevators went up and down, and computers computed. It was just another day on Planet Earth.

However, unknown to a nation focused on the preposterous non-event of Y2K, trouble was on the way. The DotCom Bubble was inflating to epic proportions. Housing prices were climbing and lending standards were dropping.

The presidential election of 2000 was probably the most controversial election of the preceding century. By the time Gore conceded and Bush was named the winner, the country had divided itself over the outcome, proving that most Americans were intensely and deeply concerned with the election of their president. Claims that Americans were apathetic about politics did not square with the reality of the 2000 election. It was the new Civil War. Brother against brother, family against family.

Then we were hit with a true tragedy, and the madness of Islam was magnified by the madness of some people pointing the fingers of blame.

Shortly after 9/11 the nation was dealing with the appeance of conspiracy theories. The White House Let It Happen. The White House Made It Happen. Vocal nitwits claiming Bush and Cheney and their associates were responsible for 9/11 got attention. Lots of it. The 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists said the attack was perpetrated by Bush and Cheney because they were able to profit from it. They were said to have made money from the collapse of the World Trade Center and from the impact of the attack on world oil prices.

Every event, every transaction following 9/11 was said to have been a source of personal profit for Bush and Cheney and their army of traitors.

To the Conspiracy Theorists, it was irrelevant that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda had claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attack. It was irrelevant that all 19 hijackers who commandeered the four planes that were converted into weapons of mass destruction were identified. The information was said to be false. Planted by the nefarious agents operating on behalf of Bush and Cheney.

US troops went hunting for offending members of al-Qaeda, They went to Afghanistan where many of the top 50 al-Qaeda leaders were killed. Then our troops went to Iraq to remove a dictator and plant Democracy in the middle of the middle east. Why? To change the culture of the region. Shake it free of its devotion to backwardness and turn it into a forward-looking place where peace are prosperity were given a chance.

Our forces went in and the military and government of Saddam Hussein was smashed in a few weeks during 2003. Since then it has been tought, but the new Iraq is getting closer to the ideal of a muslim democracy. Bush stands a chance of becoming the president who started the process of turning around the middle east.

But domestic problems surfaced. As a result of federal laws relaxing credit standards, real estate prices and home buying went into overdrive. It became possible for almost anyone to buy $500,000 with no money down, no job and no proof of assets. What a country! Who would dare predict that issuing lottery tickets in the form of houses would nearly bankrupt the country?

All a buyer had to do was promise to maintain his loan payments and he could move into the house of his dreams, just like a hermit crab. But for those who made no downpayment, had no skin in the game, what might happen if that owner chose to stop sending in his monthly payments to the bank? The answer -- NOTHING. Okay. Maybe he would lose his house and find himself evicted. But so what?

The owner who made a string of monthly payments was merely paying rent -- with an option to profit if the price of his house were to rise.

When housing prices began to drop, buyers began to get the feeling they had overpaid for their dream homes. If prices were falling, they reasoned, why continue to pay the mortgage? After all, what good is a house worth less than the mortgage behind it? Underwater is no place to be when you own a home.

Despite knowing that high water is a threat, most people in New Orleans decided to stay home when Hurricane Katrina hit. Little did we know how the image of the Lower Ninth Ward -- partially submerged -- was foreshadowing the mortgage crisis threatening the most populated states in the country. When the Credit Crisis hit, suddenly homeowners in the desert of Nevada were financially underwater, with debt far greater than the market value of their houses.

General Motors became Government Motors. When car-buyers spending home-equity money stopped shopping for cars Detroit became the Automakers Graveyard. Taxpayers were tapped to replace car-buyers. Taxpayers were handed the bills for the pensions and medical coverage of GM employees and GM retirees.

But the most striking development of the decade occurred in 2008. After eight years of an administration that aimed to wipe out muslim terrorism -- a huge job -- the nation acknowledged it was weary of this strategy.

Instead, voters chose a former muslim to lead the country, believing the promises of the former muslim who said he knew how to talk to the muslims of the middle east and he assured us they would respect his leadership and the goals he represented. He promised to appease muslim terrorists, and he has been true to his word.

As someone asked, "would anyone in 1999 have believed that by the end of 2009 no one running Iraq would have the name of Hussein, but the man in the White House would"?

Unfortunately for us, the former muslim in the White House is showing the usual signs of muslim incompetence. Someone might believe he has accomplished something with Healthcare Legislation. However, it is already painfully obvious that healthcare legislation will create big cost increases in our national healthcare. Big cost increases. No cost savings, and NO improvement in health.

Moreover, when it comes to managing Homeland Security, the administration of the former muslim has proven it is inept. When Homeland Security cannot respond to a 911 call from the father of a terrorist who has a bomb in his pants and is ready to board a plane heading for the US, the department is guilty of depraved incompetence.

Fortunately, given the low base from which the former muslim's administration has started, there is lots of room for improvement. On the other hand, the administration and the country are also positioned for another devastating drop. Which way will things go? No one knows. But based on the accuracy of predictions ahead of Y2K, it is hard to imagine anyone in the government getting it right.