Surprise! The models were off

As anyone who has been paying attention knew, the AGW/CC models were incorrect:

A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science.

He has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly. He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.

It turns out the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has over-estimated future global warming by as much as 10 times, he says.

“Yes, CO2 has an effect, but it’s about a fifth or tenth of what the IPCC says it is. CO2 is not driving the climate; it caused less than 20 per cent of the global warming in the last few decades”.

Dr Evans says his discovery “ought to change the world”.

“But the political obstacles are massive,” he said.

His discovery explains why none of the climate models used by the IPCC reflect the evidence of recorded temperatures. The models have failed to predict the pause in global warming which has been going on for 18 years and counting.

“The model architecture was wrong,” he says. “Carbon dioxide causes only minor warming. The climate is largely driven by factors outside our control.”

The fact that the models were wrong has been totally freaking obvious for years because they completely failed as predictive models. That is supposed to be the sign to throw them out, or at the very least, try to fix them. But since “the science is settled”, tens of thousands of credulous buffoons who blindly accept any pig-in-a-poke that is marketed as “science” are still insisting that if you don’t take these inept and incorrect models seriously, you are an uneducated climaphobic Nazi denialist.

Or, as I prefer to pronounce it, “science-literate”.

Multicultural success in Sweden

Given that this is what “success” looks like in a multicultural society, imagine what “failure” will amount to:

It is supposed to be the model multicultural state. But Sweden is facing problems of its own after gangs of immigrants spent a fifth consecutive night rioting  in Stockholm.

Officers are battling to keep the  capital under control after hundreds of cars were torched, a police station set alight and fire services kept from  a major blaze by a stone-throwing mob of youths.

To make matters worse, rioting has now spread to Sweden’s two other major cities, Gothenburg and Malmo. The disturbances, which have lasted longer than the riots in England in the summer of 2011, started last week after police shot dead a foreign-born pensioner who threatened to attack them with a machete. Left-wing activists came forward to accuse police of racism – a charge strongly denied by the Stockholm force.

Growing unrest turned to violence last Sunday in a north-western suburb called Husby – where more than 80  per cent of the residents are from overseas, mostly Turkey, Somalia and the Middle East. Trouble then spread to some of the city’s most deprived areas, shattering the country’s proud claim that it is a template for a successful and ethnically diverse society.

It looks like Europe is rapidly approaching the “no more” point, which will be soon followed by “kick them out”, then “kill them all”, if history is any guide.

There is no diversity crisis in tech

Repeat it, understand it, grok it, live it. There is no diversity crisis in tech.

Repeat after me: there is no “diversity crisis” in Silicon Valley.
None. In fact, there is no crisis at all in Silicon Valley. Silicon
Valley is doing absolutely gangbusters. Apple has $200 billion in cash reserves and equivalents — and a market valuation of about $630 billion. Amazing. Facebook now garners a billion daily users. This is a nearly unfathomable number. Google is worth nearly $450 billion and has $70 billion in cash on hand.

This is not a crisis. Silicon Valley is swimming in money and in
success. Uber is valued at around $50 billion. Companies like Airbnb are
remaking travel and lodging. Intel is moving forward into the global
Internet of Things market. South Korea’s Samsung just opened a giant
R&D facility in the heart of Silicon Valley. Google and Facebook are
working to connect the entire world. Netflix is re-making how we
consume entertainment.

Silicon Valley is home to the next phase of the global auto industry.
Fintech and biotech are transforming banking and medicine. The success
of Silicon Valley is not due to diversity — or to any bias. Rather, to
brilliance, hard work, risk taking, big ideas and money.

Want to be part of this? Great! Follow the example of the millions
who came before you. Their parents made school a priority. They took
math and science classes, and did their homework every night. They
practiced ACT tests over and over. They enrolled in good schools and
focused on English, Political Science and Humanities.

Okay, that last bit is not true. They took computer programming,
engineering, chemistry — hard subjects that demand hard work. They then
left their home, their family, their community, and moved to Silicon
Valley. They worked hard, staying late night after night. They didn’t
blog, they didn’t let their skills go stale, they didn’t blame others
when not everything worked out exactly as hoped.
Are you doing all of these? Are you doing any of these? Do them!

The “diversity crisis” is a fake crisis manufactured by SJW parasites who want to leech off the success of others. Tech doesn’t need more women. Tech doesn’t need more blacks, American Indians, Eskimos, walruses, penguins, or meerkats.

And, as the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence predicts, as the observation of previous diversity crises will demonstrate, the continued success of tech actually depends upon IGNORING those who are attempting to sell the diversity crisis scam and actively RESISTING all of their “solutions”.

The collapse of Star Citizen

Derek Smart contemplates the inevitable end game of a project that appears to be in severe distress:

Last week, The Escapist magazine wrote a scathing investigative report (follow-up podcast) into this project. Something that no other media outlet had done before regarding this project. As they have said, I was not
their source. In fact, only an incompetent media person would use me as
a source. Given how close I am to all of this, the fact that I could
not be regarded as an unbiased source even if I swore on a stack of
Bibles to be unbiased etc.

For the purposes of full disclosure: What I did do, as I’ve been doing since July, was made contact with some mainstream (names withheld as per legal) media sources, trying to get them to investigate this project. This was as per my July 10th blog, Interstellar Discourse
in which, right at the top, I had called for the investigation of this
project and all its creators. This was because I had already been made
aware of most of what is now coming to light as portrayed in The
Escapist article.

As part of that effort, I gave them some of my credible sources,
along with an overview of what I had uncovered and why I simply wasn’t
the one to investigate this any further, due in part by information that
I had access to and which was better off being in the hands of those
same people (the media) who helped hype this project to what it is
today.

I was wrong in making this decision and thinking that anything would come from it. They all chose to bury the story….

My question is that, with all the numerous articles out there,
interviews, visits, face time etc. Why is it that nobody wants to ask
the tough questions about this project? Primary question being, where
did ALL this money go? We have pretty much nothing to show for it – four years later.

In response to the article, Chris Roberts, in continuing the downward trend to disaster, wrote a scathing diatribe
that, on the face of it, looks like you’d have to be high to unleash
that sort of tirade into the public domain. From the CEO of a $90m+
company no less. And clearly it wasn’t vetted by legal (LOL!! that would
be Ortwin). It’s a Gold mine of actionable legal liability. And all it
did was lend credence to some of the things being said behind closed
doors about him, and which were now coming to light via these sources
talking to the media.

The gist of it was that “Derek Smart is bad, this was all his fault, and he was the puppet master”.
Oh, and GamerGate. He mentions me a total of 20 times. The author of
the article got a single mention. And I didn’t even write the damn thing.

Sound familiar? Yes, that’s the blame game.

I was concerned about Star Citizen about a year ago, but I wasn’t half as convinced that the project was on the verge of collapse by Derek Smart as I was by Chris Roberts’s disastrous and very poorly considered response to Derek’s questions. What Chris should have done, what I advise him to do, is to invite Derek to visit and see how development is going for himself. Give him a personal tour. Explain to him how well things are going and how good the game is going to be. Then do the same thing with Lizzy and anyone else The Escapist is willing to send.

This is a GOLDEN opportunity to show off and sell Star Citizen. Instead, Chris and his team have reacted if they have something radioactive to hide. They have reacted as if they are on the verge of being caught red-handed. There is absolutely no reason to react with anger, lengthy diatribes, and legal threats to someone who has doubts about how your project is going.

Whoever is advising Chris is going about it the completely wrong way. I know both Chris and David, and when I get the time I’m going to give them a call and urge them to rethink RSI’s response to critics and doubters, because this simply is not the way to reassure anyone, not even the most sincere Star Citizen supporters and true believers.

And #GamerGate? Seriously? Derek Smart isn’t #GamerGate. I am #GamerGate as are many others who wish both Chris and Star Citizen well. I don’t know what that is supposed to be, other than an ill-advised attempt to dog-whistle corrupt game journos who didn’t do their job covering Star Citizen in the first place.

Derek is correct. None of this has ANYTHING to do with him. Like him or loathe him, his opinions and his history are irrelevant. All that matters is the very relevant observations he has made and the very pertinent questions he has raised. And for RSI to engage in argumentum ad impertinens hominem is not merely self-defeating bad public relations, it tends to call their own credibility, as well as the future of Star Citizen, into serious question.

Ultimately, Star Citizen may well prove to be another painful lesson in “Beware the Awesome” ala Homefront:

Dave Schulman was a really good salesman at telling THQ what we could
deliver, and turning back to us to say, ‘Hey, sky’s the limit. Just pack
more features in. Make it great. Put as many bullet points as you can
on the back of the box.’ When Kaos turned that into a demo to show THQ, the ideas
practically sold themselves. THQ executives loved it, and gave Kaos a
green light to complete the game. “Now beyond that initial preproduction phase,” said one producer,
“then you actually have to pay your dues. You have to actually make the
thing you’ve been promising. I think that’s where Dave Schulman’s
expertise fell short. He had promised so much that there was absolutely
no way we could deliver.”

The damning phrase: “We spent about a total of eight months of our production time making a
five minute demo that was … not an actual game. It was a very nice demo.
But it was all smoke and mirrors.”

The birth of anti-SJW advertising

Direct 2 Drive shoots directly at the SJWs:

Direct 2 Drive, an online games retailer, has adopted the PR strategy of the moment: relentless mockery of hand-wringing social justice warriors on the web.

D2D recently launched a tongue-in-cheek “Trigger Warning Week,” a limited offer of 50 – 80% discounts off gaming’s “most inclusive, diverse, and empowering titles.”

They were, of course, being ironic. Among the “empowering titles” on sale is Hitman: Absolution, a title which was once angrily accused by feminist critic Brendan Keogh of epitomising the “rape culture problem” in gaming. Tomb Raider: Underworld, one of the last Tomb Raider titles before her de-sexualised 2013 reboot, is also on sale. The icing on the cake is the latest instalment of Duke Nukem, a series famous for explosions, breasts, and foul language. (Anita Sarkeesian might call it “toxic masculinity.”)

D2D followed up their sale with some triggering posts on social media. They mocked the concept of “cyberviolence,” a term recently coined by a widely-mocked report from the United Nations women’s group. They also gave a nod to GamerGate, attacking SJW blogger Leigh Alexander’s notorious “Gamers are over” article, a left-wing critique of the gamer identity which became a catalyst for the movement in 2014.

Someone was telling me I should market myself as an anti-SJW consultant. My initial thought was that he was joking. But it might actually make a good deal of sense. After all, few things destroy an organization’s raison d’etre more completely than social justice convergence.

30,000 infiltrators

Both the math and the social mood is less than promising:

Hungary and Slovakia have been vilified by many for rebelling against
taking in thousands of refugees. Not only have they rejected European
Union-imposed quotas, but both countries have made it clear that a mass
Muslim migration would pose unacceptable demographic and cultural
challenges. Their concerns are well founded, not only over integration
but especially from a security perspective.

Lebanon’s education
minister, Elias Bousaab, warned recently that two in every 100 Syrian
migrants arriving in Europe are Islamic State fighters, sent to
infiltrate a continent distracted by sympathy. If Bousaab’s conservative
calculation proves accurate, it would mean that among the 10,000 Syrian
refugees that Secretary of State John F. Kerry has pledged to allow
into the United States in 2016, there could be 200 committed terrorists.

Germany is now expecting 1.5 million migrants. If the Lebanese estimate holds, that means there will be 30,000 Islamic State fighters resident in Germany by the end of the year. Now, granted, most of the “Syrian refugees” are not even Syrian, but then, we have no assurance that the Pakistani, Afghani, and Yemeni migrants are any less likely to sympathize with ISIS than their Syrian cohorts.

There is nothing any of us can do about any of this except watch, wait, and understand that when the native populations begin taking measures that go well beyond the infiltrators, they are not the parties responsible for the inevitable tragedies. The responsible parties are those who made the invasions possible in the first place.

I can’t possibly do justice to how angry people are here. I mean, I quite literally can’t post what I am hearing people of all ages, of all political identities, saying about the invaders and their own politicians, or as doing so would be in violation of numerous speech laws, including those of the USA.

Linux SJW assault turned back

Led by the meritocratic example of Linus Torvalds, the Linux development community successfully defeated an attempt by an SJW entryst to impose “civility and professionalism” i.e. a weaponized code of conduct, on the community:

A prominent Linux kernel developer announced today in a blog post that she would step down from her direct work in the kernel community, saying that the community values blunt honesty, often containing profane and personal attacks above “basic human decency.”

Sarah Sharp, an Intel employee who until recently was the maintainer of the USB 3.0 host controller driver, wrote that she could no longer work within a developer culture that required overworked maintainers to be rude and brusque in order to get the job done. She continues to work on other open-source software projects, but says that she has begun to dread even minor interaction with the kernel community….

Sharp has publicly locked horns with senior Linux kernel developers including Torvalds in the past over issues of civility and professionalism, and has, arguably, been more responsible than anyone else for pressing the community to consider those issues more critically in recent years.

But even relatively minor moves to curb bad behavior have met with angry resistance from some kernel devs – a meekly worded “please be respectful” policy adopted as a kernel patch earlier this year provoked furious commentary on mailing lists and Reddit discussions, even if Torvalds himself lent the policy some cursory support.

Good riddance. That is exactly what a successful anti-SJW defense looks like. If the entryist is whining and crying and angrily decrying the mean antediluvian neanderthals who won’t cater to her feelings, you can be sure that the community she is attacking – and which she only cared about insofar as she could attempt to control it – did the right thing by refusing to give in to her.

This is good news for Linux, as the flipside of the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence suggests that those organizations that resist social justice incursions will be considerably more likely to remain focused on their primary functions.

Fair play for FATCA

It looks like the Law of Unintended Consequences is about to strike the US federal government again:

This week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will announce its final package of measures under its Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project that would enable foreign governments to tax overseas earnings of American companies. If the United States fails to make changes of our own before that plan begins being enacted next year, this effort, which The Wall Street Journal called “a global revenue grab,” will ensure much of these American earnings stay overseas permanently.

Considering that the US government claims the right to force foreign banks to track and report its citizens, it’s not going to have much of a leg to stand on when foreign governments start claiming the right to tax the earnings of US corporations with bank accounts in their countries.

This is why it is so reprehensibly stupid for the US to insist on intervening in sovereign lands; by doing so it sacrifices its own claims to sovereignty. It is unlikely that Putin would have intervened in Syria if the US had not intervened in Ukraine and Syria. This foreign cash grab probably would not have been successful without FATCA.

Battle under the sea

Still think they’re not invaders?

Invading migrants who stormed the Channel Tunnel in a desperate bid to break into Britain by force managed to get ten miles before they were caught, it has emerged.

A group of around 110 migrants, thought to be from Sudan and Eritrea, broke down security fences, pelted police with stones then made a dash for the tunnel in the early hours of Saturday morning.

They were eventually stopped by French gendarmes, who were able to stop the group by force in a battle some 250ft below the sea.

Let’s see. They broke through the border defenses, attacked the border guards with weapons, then were stopped by violence. Sounds like an invasion to me. Sure, they’re not wearing uniforms; does that mean the Zulu War and the Boer War weren’t wars either?

Meanwhile, in Germany, the government has admitted that they are expecting 1.5 million migrants this year, nearly twice as many as they previously reported. They seem surprisingly unconcerned, perhaps because past German governments have demonstrated their ability to deal with four times that number.