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December 5, 2007
Nobel Prize for Explaining Global Warming Hoax
Posted by Dave Blount at December 5, 2007 12:42 PM
The Wall Street Journal reveals that a Nobel Prize has been awarded for the science behind the global warming hoax.
Obviously this does not refer to the Goracle's bogus Peace Prize, which has everything to do with leftist politics and nothing to do with science. Nor has a prize been awarded to the scientists who have shown the independence and integrity to discredit the hoax. But Daniel Kahneman did get a Nobel in 2002 for research that explains how the hoax works.
Kahneman studied "availability bias" — our tendency to judge the validity of a proposition by its familiarity. Arising from this research are the terms "availability cascade" (describing how a proposition becomes accepted if the media repeats it), "informational cascade" (our tendency to throw out our beliefs in favor of everyone else's), and "reputational cascade" (the rational incentive to make our beliefs conform to the herd).
Availability cascades pose a problem for scientists:
What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged "consensus" arrived at their positions by counting heads?
That is, scientists are like everyone else in that they buy into the global warming hoax only because they've been convinced everyone else is.
This is no problem for the Goracle, who stands to get very rich off the hoax, despite a lifestyle that strongly suggests he doesn't believe in it himself.
On tips from Varla and Bergbikr.
