If you are familiar with systematic literature reviews, you will find the above unusual. Researchers don’t generally ask whether a procedure works or not in such a vague a manner, then tally up the results. To usefully gauge the level of evidence, a review has to carefully define its research questions, and factor in the potential biases of the existing studies. The Cornell project does none of this.
I emailed Gordon Guyatt, one of the godfathers of the so-called evidence-based medicine movement, to ask him whether he thought the Cornell project qualified as a systematic literature review. His response was: “It meets criteria for a profoundly flawed systematic review!” When we later spoke, he explained why he didn’t trust it. “Presumably, they are trying to make a causal connection between what the patients received and their outcomes,” he said. “That is not possible unless one has a comparator.” In other words, if you’re only tracking people who received a treatment, and don’t compare their outcomes to another group not receiving the treatment, you simply can’t learn that much. Guyatt offers the example of someone taking hormones and saying afterwards that they feel better. “That does not mean that the hormones have anything to do with your feeling good.”
This is a very basic, very well-understood problem in both medical and social-scientific research. If all you have is before-and-after measurements of how someone who received a treatment changed over time, there are all sorts of potential confounds, from the placebo effect to regression towards the mean to the possibility that receiving the treatment coincided with some other salutary intervention, such as therapy, that wasn’t accounted for.
Because the Cornell team made no effort to even evaluate the risk of bias in the individual studies it evaluated, the final product tells us very little. It’s roughly analogous to coming upon a pile of coins and trying to determine its worth simply by counting how many coins there are, rather than sorting the pile by denomination. When I raised this with Nathaniel Frank, the head of the Cornell project, he said via email that “we don’t publish traditional systematic reviews”, but rather web summaries of important research questions. So the first words of its overview might confuse readers: “We conducted a systematic literature review.”
If Bowers had wanted to cite a carefully conducted, peer-reviewed systematic review of the gender medicine literature, she actually had one at her fingertips: her own organisation, WPATH, funded one a few years ago. The results, published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society in 2021, revealed that there is almost no high-quality evidence in this field of medicine. After they summarised every study they could find that met certain quality criteria, and applied Cochrane guidelines to evaluate their quality, the authors could find only low-strength evidence to support the idea that hormones improve quality of life, depression, and anxiety for trans people. Low means, here, that the authors “have limited confidence that the estimate of effect lies close to the true effect for this outcome. The body of evidence has major or numerous deficiencies (or both).” Meanwhile, there wasn’t enough evidence to render any verdict on the quality of the evidence supporting the idea that hormones reduce the risk of death by suicide, which is an exceptionally common claim.
Oddly, though, the authors of this systematic review conclude by writing that the benefits of these treatments “make hormone therapy an essential component of care that promotes the health and well-being of transgender people”. That claim completely clashes with their substantive findings about the quality of the evidence. So, when Bowers cited the Cornell project, she was citing a review that is of very limited evidentiary value — while also ignoring a much more professionally conducted, and much more pessimistic, though strangely concluded, review that her own organisation paid for.
But what about the study which, she claims, “found that fewer than 1% of those who have received gender-affirming surgery say they regret their decision to do so”? Here’s where things get downright weird.
The study in question, published in 2021 in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open, has dozens of errors that its nine authors and editors have refused to correct. Indeed, it appears to have been executed and published to such an unprofessional standard that one might ask why it hasn’t been retracted entirely.
Before we get into all that, though, it’s worth pointing out that even if it had been competently conducted, the review could not have provided us with a reliable estimate of the regret rate following gender-affirming surgery: the studies it meta-analyses are just too weak. Many of those included did not actually contact people who had undergone surgery to ask them if they regretted it; rather, the authors searched medical records for mentions of regret and/or for other evidence of surgical reversals. Yet this method is inevitably going to underestimate the number of regretters, because plenty of people regret a procedure without going through the trouble of either reversing it or informing the doctor who performed it. In one study of detransitioners — albeit one focusing on a fairly small and non-random online sample — three quarters of them said they did not inform their clinicians that they had detransitioned.
The studies included in this review also failed to follow up with a very large number of patients. The meta-analysis had a total sample size of about 5,600; the largest study, with a sample size of 2,627 — so a little under half the entire sample — had a loss-to-follow-up rate of 36%. If you’re losing track of a third of your patients, you obviously don’t really know how they’re doing and can’t make any strong claims about their regret rates. And yet, the authors don’t mention the loss-to-follow-up issue anywhere in their paper. No version of this meta-analysis, then, was likely to provide a reliable estimate of the regret rate for gender-affirming surgery.
Even so, the version that was published was particularly disastrous. Independent researcher J.L. Cederblom summed it up: “What are these numbers? These are all wrong… And these weren’t even simple one-off errors — instead different tables disagreed with each other. The metaphor that comes to mind is drunk driving.”
To take one example, the authors initially reported that the aforementioned largest paper in their meta-analysis had a sample size of 4,863. But they misread it — the true figure was actually only 2,627. They also misstated other aspects of that report, such as how regret was investigated (they said it was via questionnaire but it was via medical records search) and the age of the sample (they said it included some juveniles, but it did not).
Not all the errors were significant, but they were remarkably numerous. And because of the abundance of issues, the paper attracted the attention of other researchers. “In light of these numerous issues affecting study quality and data analysis, [the authors’] conclusion that ‘our study has shown a very low percentage of regret in TGNB population after GAS’ is, in our opinion, unsupported and potentially inaccurate,” wrote two critics, Pablo Expósito-Campos and Roberto D’Angelo, in a letter to the editor that the journal subsequently published. In her own letter, the researcher Susan Bewley highlighted what appears to be an absence of vital information about the authors’ method of putting together the meta-analysis.
The authors and the editors decided to simply not correct any of this. They did publish an erratum, in which they republished seven tables that still contained errors, while maintaining that all those errors had no impact on the paper’s takeaway findings. But the paper itself remains published, in its original form, complete with those 2,200 ghost-patients inflating the sample size.
Bewley and Cederblom have continued to ask the journal to reveal the process that led to the paper getting published, and to address why so many of the errors remain uncorrected. In an email in January to Bewley, Aaron Weinstein, its editorial director, claimed that because critical letters to the editor had been published, and because the corrected data was reanalysed by a statistical expert, “the Publisher and the ASPS [American Society of Plastic Surgeons] feel that PRS Global Open has done due diligence on this article and this case is closed”. He also claimed, curiously, that he had no power to force the authors to address the many serious remaining questions raised by the paper’s critics, saying “there is no precedent for an editorial office to do so”. Neither Weinstein nor the paper’s corresponding author, Oscar Manrique, responded to my emailed requests for comments.
Finally, there is Bowers’s claim that “a separate analysis of a survey of more than 27,000 transgender and gender-diverse adults found that the vast majority of those who detransition from medical affirming treatment said they did so because of external factors”. This is technically true, but is also rather misleading because the survey in question — the 2015 United States Transgender Survey (which has profound sampling issues) — was of currently transgender people. It says so in the first sentence of the executive summary. Research based on this survey obviously can’t provide us with any reliable information about why people detransition, because it is not a survey of detransitioners. If you want to know how often people detransition, you need to follow large groups of trans people over time and check in to see if they still identify that way later on — and we don’t have high-quality research on that front.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that the vast majority of studies being discussed here concern adults, while the legislative discussion mostly centres on adolescents. The most recent version of WPATH’s Standards of Care is very open about the lack of evidence when it comes to the latter: “Despite the slowly growing body of evidence supporting the effectiveness of early medical intervention, the number of studies is still low, and there are few outcome studies that follow youth into adulthood. Therefore, a systematic review regarding outcomes of treatment in adolescents is not possible.” Again, WPATH is Bowers’s own organisation — surely she is familiar with its output?
Despite the backbreaking errors of that nine-authored paper, the severe limitations of the Cornell review, and the near-utter-irrelevance of the United States Transgender Survey, all three are chronically trotted out as evidence that we know transgender medicine is profoundly helpful, or that detransition or regret are rare — or both. It’s frustrating enough that these lacklustre arguments are constantly made on social media, where all too many people get their scientific information. But what’s worse is that many journalists have perpetuated this sad state of affairs. A cursory Google search will reveal that these three works have been treated as solid evidence by the Associated Press, Slate, Slate again, The Daily Beast, Scientific American and other outlets. The NYT, meanwhile, further publicised Cornell’s half-baked systematic review by giving Nathaniel Frank a whole column to tout its misleading findings back in 2018.
Why does such low-quality work slip through? The answer is straightforward: because it appears, if you don’t read it too closely, or if you are unfamiliar with the basic concepts of evidence-based medicine, to support the liberal view that these treatments are wonderful and shouldn’t be questioned, let alone banned. That’s enough for most people, who are less concerned with whether what they are sharing is accurate than whether it can help with ongoing, high-stakes political fights.
But you’re not being a good ally to trans people if you disseminate shoddy evidence about medicine they might seek. Whatever happens in the red states seeking to ban these treatments, transgender people need to make difficult healthcare choices, many of which can be ruinously expensive. And yet, if you call for the same standards to be applied to gender medicine that are applied to antidepressants, you’ll likely be told you don’t care about trans people.
As Gordon Guyatt, who has done an enormous amount to increase the evidentiary standards of the medical establishment, told me: “You’re doing harm to transgender people if you don’t question the evidence. I believe that people making any health decisions should know about what the best evidence is, and what the quality of evidence is. So by pretending things are not the way they are — I don’t see how you’re not harming people.”
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SubscribeIf you take a few steps back and survey the broader society in which we’re living, you’ll see sustained, terminal declines of public trust in institutions – government, business, media, and civic organisations. Accompanied, as always, by endless bien pensants chatter about how this spells calamity for society – instability, extremism, violence.
Yet despite all the hand-wringing, the people in charge just keep on engaging in the exact same behaviours that lead to public trust falling off a cliff. They’re incapable of putting two and two together and realising that it is their actions that are driving people to ‘extreme political views’. Indeed, the conclusion of all their ‘analysis’ and ‘thinking’ and ‘reflecting’ is that–paraphrasing Principal Skinner–it is the people who are wrong. And to address this, the institutional leaders must double down on everything, no matter how controversial, counterproductive, or incoherent their approach has become.
Now, let’s step back to the transgender issue – what do we see? Influential and powerful institutional leaders taking a radical, evidence-free approach to transgender health, with scientific integrity completely undermined in favour of incoherent, dangerous and cult-like ideology. And when large swathes of the community object to the changes, the response is not to reflect and improve, but to double down. PR–sorry, ‘better education’–in support of radical change is intensified, science is degraded and abused even further to push dubious (sometimes outright fraudulent) supporting narratives, while the tables get turned on critics, who become the ones labelled as the dangerous, ideological extremists out to harm society.
As with the issue of public trust, I want the battlefield for transgender issues to course-correct to a moderate, evidence-based approach. One where differing views are considered, and if needed, change made in a slower, incremental fashion to bring the community along. Or not done at all, if that’s the best answer at the time. That would be the sensible solution.
But we don’t live in a sensible world – we live in a world full of apathy, which has allowed extremists to seize power and dominate the rest of us. Consequently, I only see two outcomes for western society:
1) Democracy eroded in favour of ‘enlightened despotism’, with all meaningful decision-making power consolidated into the hands of a privileged class of neo-aristocrats, self-described as the only ‘qualified’ people to make decisions on behalf of the populace, or
2) A reactionary backlash, with zealous extremists from the other size seizing back control of institutions and purging them of anything resembling progressive thought. Followed by complete instability, even violence – just as the bien pensants feared.
But it’s not their fault, right? It’s all those people who don’t run the institutions that caused this, not those actually wielding the power? Right?
Transgenderism is a Trojan horse for the legalization of p**dophilia. Its adherents use the age-old excuse of claiming it’s ‘what the children want’ so there’s nothing wrong with it.
I disagree – this isn’t the aim of trans activists. If there are p**dos in the midst, they’re on the fringes and rightly so. The same thing happened in the 70s during the sexual liberation movement: there was ‘child love’ advocacy on the margins, but that was repulsive to almost all other activists, whose goals were for women’s rights, gay rights, etc.
I’m highly critical of gender ideology and the ramification it has on society, science, democracy, etc., but it’s not a conspiracy to allow adults and children to have sexual relationships.
But there are certainly queer theorists who didn’t condemn paedophilia; and some who implicitly condoned it.
The problem is the ‘Q’ in the LGBTQ+ because hiding within that are the MAPs ( ‘minor attracted persons’ as well as the guys who like to wear nappies. And if you look at the documentation produced by WPATH ( Trans health organisation) you will notice that last year they introdiced another gender identity – that of ‘eunuch’ – and if you follow the links from that document it will take you to a site called ‘The Eunuch Archive’ in which grown men with a penchant for castration elaborate detailed fantasies about castrating young boys. WPATH tells us that children as young as 3 or 4 can develop a ‘eunuch identity’.
I do think all the kinky stuff is in the minority.
Quite a large minority…..Queer is predicated on ‘kink’.
Paedophilia, though, is not a kink
The availability of extreme fringe stuff is more widespread now, but extreme porn and fetish identities are not new. I think there’s a built-in limit to the number of people who are truly sexually deviant or interested in child porn. Most people aren’t going to remain interested in pursuing sadomasochism or wearing an animal costume or whatever once the novelty wears off.
Huh?
The availability of extreme fringe stuff is more widespread now, but extreme porn and fetish identities are not new. I think there’s a built-in limit to the number of people who are truly sexually deviant or interested in child porn. Most people aren’t going to remain interested in pursuing sadomasochism or wearing an animal costume or whatever once the novelty wears off.
Huh?
I don’t call that kink, more perversion.
It’s definitely bigger than the set of people with genuine gender dysphoria, although possibly smaller than the set of teenage girls with body dysmorphia.
As is ‘transgender identity’ itself ‘in the minority’. So which minority are parents, teachers and children going to be exposed to: only the ‘nice’ ones?
Every other profession, movement and ideology in which adults have the opportunity to interact with children (including parenthood itself) has recently been made to reckon with the infiltration of bad actors obtaining positions of power and influence in order to abuse children. How does the ‘trans’ sector and its apologists imagine it is exempt?
Quite a large minority…..Queer is predicated on ‘kink’.
Paedophilia, though, is not a kink
I don’t call that kink, more perversion.
It’s definitely bigger than the set of people with genuine gender dysphoria, although possibly smaller than the set of teenage girls with body dysmorphia.
As is ‘transgender identity’ itself ‘in the minority’. So which minority are parents, teachers and children going to be exposed to: only the ‘nice’ ones?
Every other profession, movement and ideology in which adults have the opportunity to interact with children (including parenthood itself) has recently been made to reckon with the infiltration of bad actors obtaining positions of power and influence in order to abuse children. How does the ‘trans’ sector and its apologists imagine it is exempt?
I think the kinky lot are in the minority.
Minority of what?
Minority of what?
Ugh!
They’re not just fantasies though. The man in charge of this group has produced lots of videos of ACTUAL children and adults undergoing this “procedure “. He has also had it done plus a leg amputation. This extreme fetish is so disturbing and dangerous people just don’t want to know. He was also a leading alphabet soup activist.
Thanks for a really informative post – I suspect most women rely on instinct in this argument, as I currently do, and such insights are valuable.
I do think all the kinky stuff is in the minority.
I think the kinky lot are in the minority.
Ugh!
They’re not just fantasies though. The man in charge of this group has produced lots of videos of ACTUAL children and adults undergoing this “procedure “. He has also had it done plus a leg amputation. This extreme fetish is so disturbing and dangerous people just don’t want to know. He was also a leading alphabet soup activist.
Thanks for a really informative post – I suspect most women rely on instinct in this argument, as I currently do, and such insights are valuable.
Right on!!
What transgenderism? I wouldn’t like it in my family. I’d be horrified.
What transgenderism? I wouldn’t like it in my family. I’d be horrified.
Um, it’s not “fringe.’ Autogynephilia is transgressive–the point is to coerce females, including young ones, to watch the exhibitionism of a misogynistic porn-addled paraphiliac performing his introjected notion of the objectified female.
This is psychologically much more coercive and transgressive than a lot of the “sexual revolution,” though that certainly included a lot of new pressures on females to have unwanted casual sex.
Of all the problems we face, the exhibitionism of autogynephiles is the least troublesome to me. I’m not sure I even really see it as a problem. Children don’t care: it’s the adults who are all freaked out about wee tots seeing ugly men in drag. I see drag as causing mostly aesthetic harm, and there’s so much aesthetic trauma in the modern world I can’t see Drag Queen library hours as all that terrible. The buildings they perform in are as likely cause to cause aesthetic harm, and they don’t end after an hour.
Of all the problems we face, the exhibitionism of autogynephiles is the least troublesome to me. I’m not sure I even really see it as a problem. Children don’t care: it’s the adults who are all freaked out about wee tots seeing ugly men in drag. I see drag as causing mostly aesthetic harm, and there’s so much aesthetic trauma in the modern world I can’t see Drag Queen library hours as all that terrible. The buildings they perform in are as likely cause to cause aesthetic harm, and they don’t end after an hour.
I cannot believe what you have just said. It is not a conspiracy to allow adults and children to have sexual relationships. I am horrified if I have read you right. I was abused for a year by a housefather in an orphanage. Paedophiles are gross.
As we’re discussing ‘evidence-based research, where is it for both sides on the matter of p**do influence/infiltration? It seems obvious to me personally that the trans movement, now increasingly ‘weaponised’ in the hands of some policymakers/educational institutions, shoddy and dangerous research papers, is a perfect vehicle for those with certain predilections or obsessions.
But there are certainly queer theorists who didn’t condemn paedophilia; and some who implicitly condoned it.
The problem is the ‘Q’ in the LGBTQ+ because hiding within that are the MAPs ( ‘minor attracted persons’ as well as the guys who like to wear nappies. And if you look at the documentation produced by WPATH ( Trans health organisation) you will notice that last year they introdiced another gender identity – that of ‘eunuch’ – and if you follow the links from that document it will take you to a site called ‘The Eunuch Archive’ in which grown men with a penchant for castration elaborate detailed fantasies about castrating young boys. WPATH tells us that children as young as 3 or 4 can develop a ‘eunuch identity’.
Right on!!
Um, it’s not “fringe.’ Autogynephilia is transgressive–the point is to coerce females, including young ones, to watch the exhibitionism of a misogynistic porn-addled paraphiliac performing his introjected notion of the objectified female.
This is psychologically much more coercive and transgressive than a lot of the “sexual revolution,” though that certainly included a lot of new pressures on females to have unwanted casual sex.
I cannot believe what you have just said. It is not a conspiracy to allow adults and children to have sexual relationships. I am horrified if I have read you right. I was abused for a year by a housefather in an orphanage. Paedophiles are gross.
As we’re discussing ‘evidence-based research, where is it for both sides on the matter of p**do influence/infiltration? It seems obvious to me personally that the trans movement, now increasingly ‘weaponised’ in the hands of some policymakers/educational institutions, shoddy and dangerous research papers, is a perfect vehicle for those with certain predilections or obsessions.
Agreed. This is now obvious. Leigh is giving the benefit of the doubt to people who do not deserve it. They have demonstrated a willingness to destroy every institution they can in support of their agenda, and that agenda appears very much to include sexual access to children. While Leigh is correct that the ground level people may mean well, at an organizational level (NGOs/ UN) the whole “kids understand their sexual identity” was clearly just a smokescreen for “kids can consent to sexual behavior”.
Throughout the world and throughout history, the wealthy and powerful have always prized access to the young and pretty. Why should our elites be immune? Have we forgotten that Jeffrey Epstein was very popular with the private jet class?
It’s vile to cast whole groups of people as wicked without evidence. Leave that filth in The Guardian.
With the exception of the group of people who want to influence children with this cult of transexualism. There is no other word for it throughout human history.
Absolutely. But I see no evidence that this is solely the wealthy and powerful that have committed crimes against the “young and pretty”. Considering most child abuse happens in the home that would include poorer people too.
Of course it’s not, but I point out the “wealthy and powerful” because their reach and potential damage they can do is so great.
If some yokel in a holler in NC rapes a kid, it’s a tragedy. If a politician enacts a policy that broadly allows raping children, that’s an evil of a whole different scale.
Noooo, it was the standard rallying cry to blame this easily blameable group for loads of likes.
I think you’re getting yourself a bit muddled here, Paul. The ‘easily blameable group’ being blamed is paedophiles, not transgender people. The point being made is that activism ‘on behalf of’ transgender people is a convenient route for paedophiles to change the legal and ‘moral’ framework.
I think you’re getting yourself a bit muddled here, Paul. The ‘easily blameable group’ being blamed is paedophiles, not transgender people. The point being made is that activism ‘on behalf of’ transgender people is a convenient route for paedophiles to change the legal and ‘moral’ framework.
Noooo, it was the standard rallying cry to blame this easily blameable group for loads of likes.
Whatever. Whoever does it is a gross pervert. We can not allow children to be molested
Or as the late great Leonard Cohen had it:
Now, you can say that I’ve grown bitter but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there’s a mighty judgment coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices in the Tower of Song
Of course it’s not, but I point out the “wealthy and powerful” because their reach and potential damage they can do is so great.
If some yokel in a holler in NC rapes a kid, it’s a tragedy. If a politician enacts a policy that broadly allows raping children, that’s an evil of a whole different scale.
Whatever. Whoever does it is a gross pervert. We can not allow children to be molested
Or as the late great Leonard Cohen had it:
Now, you can say that I’ve grown bitter but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there’s a mighty judgment coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices in the Tower of Song
Absolutely. But I see no evidence that this is solely the wealthy and powerful that have committed crimes against the “young and pretty”. Considering most child abuse happens in the home that would include poorer people too.
We are talking about the act. Where is the safe place for children these days?
With the exception of the group of people who want to influence children with this cult of transexualism. There is no other word for it throughout human history.
We are talking about the act. Where is the safe place for children these days?
Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t into “children” he was into teenagers. Virginia Guiffre seemed quite willing to participate in the jet set life, and even gleefully shared the photo of herself and prince Andrew with her mother. She made millions out of her “victimiization”.
Teenagers under the age of 18 are children – both by law and in terms of their development.
Often people don’t fully experience the impact of abuse until after the situation, when they are older and it all hits home, and how they have been exploited becomes clear. During the abuse survival mechanisms, dissociation and denial are often at play. At later points the impacts can be devastating, as a Clinical Psychologist I have come across this in many people.
Victims who come forward face so much opprobrium and blame from society – like your comment – it comes at huge cost to them.
‘It’s very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing… the victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering’ Judith Herman
You are right Elly. I was unable to resist my sexual abuse by a homosexual housefather. I realise now the horror of it. I was confused. In hindsight I am horrified. I was not old enough to consent.
You are right Elly. I was unable to resist my sexual abuse by a homosexual housefather. I realise now the horror of it. I was confused. In hindsight I am horrified. I was not old enough to consent.
neither I nor the law differenties between these categories of “children” or “teenagers” when it comes to sexual activity. Nor shold it.
The Law says, in the UK, the age of consent is 16. It does differentiate between children and teenagers.
As do some states in the US. Some have 18 as age of consent, others 17, or most commonly by state the same as in the UK, 16. Many have “Romeo and Juilette clauses” to avoid the absurdity of two 14 or 15 year olds “raping” each other by engaging in what they, if not the law, regarded as consensual sex. Our Federal government in statutes about interstate solicitation of sex uses 18 (leading the the absurdity of a legally married pair of 16 year olds not being legally able to plan a tryst by phone or text message if they are in different states).
As do some states in the US. Some have 18 as age of consent, others 17, or most commonly by state the same as in the UK, 16. Many have “Romeo and Juilette clauses” to avoid the absurdity of two 14 or 15 year olds “raping” each other by engaging in what they, if not the law, regarded as consensual sex. Our Federal government in statutes about interstate solicitation of sex uses 18 (leading the the absurdity of a legally married pair of 16 year olds not being legally able to plan a tryst by phone or text message if they are in different states).
The Law says, in the UK, the age of consent is 16. It does differentiate between children and teenagers.
It doesn’t make it right just because she made money out of it.
She (VG) also recruited young women for Epstein to rape and exploit. As she was in his `employment’ until the age of 19, will she be charged? Will the other women be able to sue her for damages?
She (VG) also recruited young women for Epstein to rape and exploit. As she was in his `employment’ until the age of 19, will she be charged? Will the other women be able to sue her for damages?
Teenagers under the age of 18 are children – both by law and in terms of their development.
Often people don’t fully experience the impact of abuse until after the situation, when they are older and it all hits home, and how they have been exploited becomes clear. During the abuse survival mechanisms, dissociation and denial are often at play. At later points the impacts can be devastating, as a Clinical Psychologist I have come across this in many people.
Victims who come forward face so much opprobrium and blame from society – like your comment – it comes at huge cost to them.
‘It’s very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing… the victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering’ Judith Herman
neither I nor the law differenties between these categories of “children” or “teenagers” when it comes to sexual activity. Nor shold it.
It doesn’t make it right just because she made money out of it.
It’s vile to cast whole groups of people as wicked without evidence. Leave that filth in The Guardian.
Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t into “children” he was into teenagers. Virginia Guiffre seemed quite willing to participate in the jet set life, and even gleefully shared the photo of herself and prince Andrew with her mother. She made millions out of her “victimiization”.
Form what I have read over the last few days, particularly about the UN there increasingly seems to be an element of truth in this
The UN are bad news as is the WHO.
The UN are bad news as is the WHO.
Hear Hear!
They are sexual perverts parading their corruption right in fron of us. We have a weak mixed up government to deal with it.
There is a difference between saying acceptance of trans ideology is a gateway to pedophilia (which I would agree with) and saying the intention of trans people or trans advocacy is intentionally ordered toward enabling pedophilia (which I would disagree with).
In my experience most trans people are just unhappy people with unfortunate desires and aren’t looking at the ramifications which social enablization of their wants will produce.
I disagree – this isn’t the aim of trans activists. If there are p**dos in the midst, they’re on the fringes and rightly so. The same thing happened in the 70s during the sexual liberation movement: there was ‘child love’ advocacy on the margins, but that was repulsive to almost all other activists, whose goals were for women’s rights, gay rights, etc.
I’m highly critical of gender ideology and the ramification it has on society, science, democracy, etc., but it’s not a conspiracy to allow adults and children to have sexual relationships.
Agreed. This is now obvious. Leigh is giving the benefit of the doubt to people who do not deserve it. They have demonstrated a willingness to destroy every institution they can in support of their agenda, and that agenda appears very much to include sexual access to children. While Leigh is correct that the ground level people may mean well, at an organizational level (NGOs/ UN) the whole “kids understand their sexual identity” was clearly just a smokescreen for “kids can consent to sexual behavior”.
Throughout the world and throughout history, the wealthy and powerful have always prized access to the young and pretty. Why should our elites be immune? Have we forgotten that Jeffrey Epstein was very popular with the private jet class?
Form what I have read over the last few days, particularly about the UN there increasingly seems to be an element of truth in this
Hear Hear!
They are sexual perverts parading their corruption right in fron of us. We have a weak mixed up government to deal with it.
There is a difference between saying acceptance of trans ideology is a gateway to pedophilia (which I would agree with) and saying the intention of trans people or trans advocacy is intentionally ordered toward enabling pedophilia (which I would disagree with).
In my experience most trans people are just unhappy people with unfortunate desires and aren’t looking at the ramifications which social enablization of their wants will produce.
We need a new term to describe what these elites are doing. How about ‘masslighting’?
Isn’t this a symptom of a cultish Marxist-inspired attack on the ‘enlightenment’ and the scientific method? It’s an attempt to bolster identity politics and the condemnation of objectivity and rationalism as being oppressive. It’s all utter nonsense, but the worry is it has gained credence and the power to de-platform those who stand up for sanity.
Yes it is Charlie.
The biggest downer is that it has invaded government thinking making them unfit to rule in this area.
Yes it is Charlie.
The biggest downer is that it has invaded government thinking making them unfit to rule in this area.
Isn’t this a symptom of a cultish Marxist-inspired attack on the ‘enlightenment’ and the scientific method? It’s an attempt to bolster identity politics and the condemnation of objectivity and rationalism as being oppressive. It’s all utter nonsense, but the worry is it has gained credence and the power to de-platform those who stand up for sanity.
They are not “foolish or ignorant” but fully intend to create and spread confusion and destabilisation.
Their folly lies in believing that they can stand in the winds that will then blow. Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov describe them in the USSR, crying their devotion to the Party amid the squalor and starvation of the camps in which the Party have cast them, their turn served.
Pretty much. When any revolution is over, the new leaders point their fingers at the ones who committed the atrocities needed to get them into power and have them killed off. Why keep the deranged lunatics around once they’ve served their purpose?
Pretty much. When any revolution is over, the new leaders point their fingers at the ones who committed the atrocities needed to get them into power and have them killed off. Why keep the deranged lunatics around once they’ve served their purpose?
Robert Michels said all organisations become a bureaucratic oligarchy run for the benefit of those who control them. A Toynbee said civilisations start to decline when those who have had the creative energy to drive development lose this and they become a rigid . He likens then to climbers who are on a ledge and can go no further and therefore prevent others joining them as they do not want competition. Another analogy is the family run firm where by the third generation there are more members taking out money and than generating it.
The West is now in the third to fifth generation at least ( Britain is more likely tenth generation ) and there are vast number of effete affluent impractical unimaginative and therefore ineffectual middle and upper class people who are desperate to justify themslves and so develop more and more absurd positions in life.
If we look at the people who run institutions and compare them with those created the Renaissance say Brunelleschi or the Industrial Revolution say Newcomen, A Darby III, Boulton, Watt, Arkwright, Wedgewood, Faraday,Brindley or G Stephenson, etc and military leaders such as Nelson compare, we can perceive how ineffectual they are. Most of the people who run institutions would be incapable of creating them as thet lack imagination, initiative, ingenuity and drive.
The British aristocrats up to the mid 19th century were very good at talent spotting such as The Duke of Bridgewater choosing Brindley to build his canals when everyone though they were absurd and the D of Wellington taking Telford’s advice. The British aristocracy was different to the Continental as it married and supported talent.
Too many people have gone to university, and there is not enough meaningful employment for them, so they have meaningless employment instead. Woke functions as a white midwit benefit system.
“Newcomen, A Darby III, Boulton, Watt, Arkwright, Wedgewood, Faraday,Brindley or G Stephenson.”
None of these had the ‘benefit’ of University education!
Thank God!
Samuel Smiles biography of G Stephenson is very revealing. Stephenson is man born into poverty who is illiterate until the age of 18 years, teaches himself to read and develops the Rocket locomotive and modern railways and in raises vast numbers out of poverty.
Samuel Smiles biography of G Stephenson is very revealing. Stephenson is man born into poverty who is illiterate until the age of 18 years, teaches himself to read and develops the Rocket locomotive and modern railways and in raises vast numbers out of poverty.
“with those created the Renaissance”? WHO or BY?
Duke of Devonshire and Joseph Paxton.
Too many people have gone to university, and there is not enough meaningful employment for them, so they have meaningless employment instead. Woke functions as a white midwit benefit system.
“Newcomen, A Darby III, Boulton, Watt, Arkwright, Wedgewood, Faraday,Brindley or G Stephenson.”
None of these had the ‘benefit’ of University education!
Thank God!
“with those created the Renaissance”? WHO or BY?
Duke of Devonshire and Joseph Paxton.
A couple of small changes
Now, let’s step back to the
transgenderclimate issue – what do we see? Influential and powerful institutional leaders taking a radical, evidence-free approach totransgender healthclimate matters, with scientific integrity completely undermined in favour of incoherent, dangerous and cult-like ideology. And when large swathes of the community object to the changes, the response is not to reflect and improve, but to double down. PR–sorry, ‘better education’–in support of radical change is intensified, science is degraded and abused even further to push dubious (sometimes outright fraudulent) supporting narratives, while the tables get turned on critics, who become the ones labelled as the dangerous, ideological extremists out to harm society.So many parallels to climate change. Sterilizing children is like net zero. Let’s treat the problem with a solution that is infinitely more damaging. Shouldn’t come as a surprise though because it’s the same progressive, technocratic class pushing both agendas.
Absolutely untrue. On the climate front, glaciers *are* melting, extreme weather events *are* becoming more common, and human actions (increasing CO2 emissions) *have* happened, and *do* form a plausible cause for these changes. The predictions may be uncertain – how could you ever be certain about predicting an event that has never happened before in something as complicated as the climate? But – unlike the transsexual case – what evidence we do have is scientifically serious and of decent quality. Whether it is enough to take such far-reaching actions (in order to avoid such major risks) is another discussion. Another big difference is that for the transsexual case the question is about individuals taking decisions that make a difference only for themselves. In the climate case the consequences are for everybody on the planet.
There are arguments on both sides in either case. Of course. But the main thing the two cases have in common is that you feel strongly about them, not anything about the available evidence. Which is not a good basis for convincing anyone else.
I think you are wrong about almost everything you say about the climate. Like everything else, it is a matter of opinion. If you have the facts and you are right, it makes UnHerd pointless.
I am surprised. Which of the four points in my first sentence do you deny? And based on what? Note I am not saying it is *proved* that these changes are caused by human actions, just that CO2 has definitely increased a lot lately, and there is a *plausible* claim that this *could* be having that kind of effect.
You always fail to acknowledge that radical climate change has been taking place for the entirety of earth’s existence, which is 4.5 Billion years. We have been measuring the atmosphere for about 100 of those. That’s 0.00000002% of the time. Do you think it is plausible to determine future outcomes based on that sample size?
Depends on how good your theoretical understanding is. If we are looking at stock prices, no amount of past data can predict the future. If we are looking at the whole economy we are still imprecise, but we do know enough to say what kind of things will happen to a known situation if we pump a few trillion dollars into the money suply, or finance a huge budget deficit by printing money. We do not tell our economic modellers that until they can reproduce the exact development of the world economy from the ancient Greeks onwards till today everything they say is worthless.
For the climate, the physics part is perfectly understood – heat transfer through a gas, OK ? So we can say what will happen if we put a lot of CO2 into a known atmospheric situation. The secondary and knock-on effects are less well understood, because the system is so complex. Still, we have a wealth of theoretical understanding that does a lot of the heavy lifting and makes the result much, much better than just extrapolating from the past.
Hve you read Freeman Dyson or Richard Lindzen ?
You provided a more detailed answer than that deserved.
Hve you read Freeman Dyson or Richard Lindzen ?
You provided a more detailed answer than that deserved.
Oh, please: enough.
Depends on how good your theoretical understanding is. If we are looking at stock prices, no amount of past data can predict the future. If we are looking at the whole economy we are still imprecise, but we do know enough to say what kind of things will happen to a known situation if we pump a few trillion dollars into the money suply, or finance a huge budget deficit by printing money. We do not tell our economic modellers that until they can reproduce the exact development of the world economy from the ancient Greeks onwards till today everything they say is worthless.
For the climate, the physics part is perfectly understood – heat transfer through a gas, OK ? So we can say what will happen if we put a lot of CO2 into a known atmospheric situation. The secondary and knock-on effects are less well understood, because the system is so complex. Still, we have a wealth of theoretical understanding that does a lot of the heavy lifting and makes the result much, much better than just extrapolating from the past.
Oh, please: enough.
I read about 20 years ago that some atmospheric scientists said that the heat trapping effects of CO2 would not increase at a linear rate with the increase of CO2 in the air, but that the rate of heat trapping effect would tail off to nothing. The mechanism by which this would happen was not clear to me at the time.
Over the years I never saw this theory debated. Not supported nor yet condemned.
But in recent months the hypothesis has had more publicity.And a clear mechanism has been put forward. Heat has a spectrum of wavelengths. CO2 blocks only some of these. Present day levels of CO2 have already blocked almost all the heat that CO2 can effect.
And so, as per the hypothesis, the spike in temperature caused by CO2 has run its course. As suggested by the plateauing of temperature records in the last decade.
As for methane (or water vapour for that matter) there is , for now, less hullabaloo.
Has this hypothesis got legs? What are the detailed arguments for or against it?
In advance I must say that crying ‘DENIAL’ is a tactic of bad faith and by now only increases distrust in the crier.
I am no expert. Those who *are* experts seem to have no truck with the idea that the CO2 effect has maxed out, and if it was true it should be an easy argument to win. The passage of radiation though a gas is straightforward physics, after all. If only the rabid activists believe in something, that something is unlikely to be true.
I can try to give an (inexpert) explanation. CO2 does not act like a mirror, blocking all or nothing. The atmosphere is a deep multiple-layer cake. When heat radiation moves upwards, CO2 (and other things) absorb it. That stops the radiation, and heats the air. The air being hotter, then *re-emits* thermal radiation at the same mixture of wavelengths, which moves up until some of it is again absorbed by the atmosphere higher up. Where it heats the air etc. etc. The more CO2, the shorter the passage of heat radiation before it gets reabsorbed, the more times it is reabsorbed, and the slower the heat moves out. And just like water in a bathtub if the heat (water) moves in at the same rate, but moves out at a slower rate, the temperature (water level) rises until there is a new equilibrium. Or, if you prefer: If you insulate a house the heat still moves out, but it moves more slowly. If you keep the furnace running at the same rate while you insulate the house, the house gets hotter until the heat moves out at the same rate as it is produced.
My upvote went to zero. Jeez, why can’t they just have a simple up and down vote system
My upvote went to zero. Jeez, why can’t they just have a simple up and down vote system
You guys have sure gotten off topic!
I am no expert. Those who *are* experts seem to have no truck with the idea that the CO2 effect has maxed out, and if it was true it should be an easy argument to win. The passage of radiation though a gas is straightforward physics, after all. If only the rabid activists believe in something, that something is unlikely to be true.
I can try to give an (inexpert) explanation. CO2 does not act like a mirror, blocking all or nothing. The atmosphere is a deep multiple-layer cake. When heat radiation moves upwards, CO2 (and other things) absorb it. That stops the radiation, and heats the air. The air being hotter, then *re-emits* thermal radiation at the same mixture of wavelengths, which moves up until some of it is again absorbed by the atmosphere higher up. Where it heats the air etc. etc. The more CO2, the shorter the passage of heat radiation before it gets reabsorbed, the more times it is reabsorbed, and the slower the heat moves out. And just like water in a bathtub if the heat (water) moves in at the same rate, but moves out at a slower rate, the temperature (water level) rises until there is a new equilibrium. Or, if you prefer: If you insulate a house the heat still moves out, but it moves more slowly. If you keep the furnace running at the same rate while you insulate the house, the house gets hotter until the heat moves out at the same rate as it is produced.
You guys have sure gotten off topic!
My up vote didn’t register again.
Refresh
Refresh
How about the dangerous increase in “global temperature”? For the vast majority of places on this planet no one has ever recorded the temperature. Not even once. Even where there are records they seldom go back past 1900; most are post 1945. And the majority of those were hand-written and have not been included in the computer models.
So that number, “average global temperature” is cobbled together out of smoke, mirrors and the heavily biased assumptions of people who are invested, professionally and in many cases emotionally, in a grim story of disaster.
And yet every year there are “warnings” in all the media: “…the hottest year…our last chance…”
Ask me and I’ll tell you about the rising sea level fable.
You always fail to acknowledge that radical climate change has been taking place for the entirety of earth’s existence, which is 4.5 Billion years. We have been measuring the atmosphere for about 100 of those. That’s 0.00000002% of the time. Do you think it is plausible to determine future outcomes based on that sample size?
I read about 20 years ago that some atmospheric scientists said that the heat trapping effects of CO2 would not increase at a linear rate with the increase of CO2 in the air, but that the rate of heat trapping effect would tail off to nothing. The mechanism by which this would happen was not clear to me at the time.
Over the years I never saw this theory debated. Not supported nor yet condemned.
But in recent months the hypothesis has had more publicity.And a clear mechanism has been put forward. Heat has a spectrum of wavelengths. CO2 blocks only some of these. Present day levels of CO2 have already blocked almost all the heat that CO2 can effect.
And so, as per the hypothesis, the spike in temperature caused by CO2 has run its course. As suggested by the plateauing of temperature records in the last decade.
As for methane (or water vapour for that matter) there is , for now, less hullabaloo.
Has this hypothesis got legs? What are the detailed arguments for or against it?
In advance I must say that crying ‘DENIAL’ is a tactic of bad faith and by now only increases distrust in the crier.
My up vote didn’t register again.
How about the dangerous increase in “global temperature”? For the vast majority of places on this planet no one has ever recorded the temperature. Not even once. Even where there are records they seldom go back past 1900; most are post 1945. And the majority of those were hand-written and have not been included in the computer models.
So that number, “average global temperature” is cobbled together out of smoke, mirrors and the heavily biased assumptions of people who are invested, professionally and in many cases emotionally, in a grim story of disaster.
And yet every year there are “warnings” in all the media: “…the hottest year…our last chance…”
Ask me and I’ll tell you about the rising sea level fable.
Climate science can be considered opinion only in the most basic sense: the opinions of scientists who’ve spent years measuring, revising, warning us; measuring, revising, warning us; lather, rinse repeat. I think you are either playing at being a troll, or you are experiencing dementia.
No, I’m afraid it’s opinion not merely in the basic sense, but verging on the pejorative sense.
Unfortunately, scientists are given to herd behavior. I work in an area of mathematics adjacent to fundamental physics, and watched with bemusement as the physicists all were convinced for decades that string theory would solve all the open problems in theoretical physics wrote papers on string theory to fill a small library, when, in fact, it never made a testable prediction. They’ve now moved on and are doing interesting work again.
Climate science as used to influence energy policy is likewise a herd phenomenon: it is all build on the *assumption* that warming since the end of the Little Ice Age has been driven principally by human greenhouse gas emissions (rather than natural phenomena, or aggregate urban heat island effects, or ‘black carbon’ — deposition of soot, tyre dust,… on the cryosphere changing albedo). It makes testable predictions — by modeling, rather than positing a properly falsifiable explanatory theory — then ignores the falsification of those predictions when global temperatures undershoot the models’ predictions. But everyone “knows” that the explanation is greenhouse gas emissions, just like everyone “knew” that string theory was the panacea for all of the open problems in fundamental physics.
It would be genuinely interesting to start from scratch and build a climate model that properly took into account black carbon and aggregate urban heat island effect as well as greenhouse gas emissions. The problem is black carbon provides an argument for China, India, Russia and Poland adopting analogues of the American Clean Air Act, but not for Brussels, Whitehall and Washington taking over the energy economy to enforce the fool’s errand of trying to run a modern economy on “renewable” (properly direct and indirect solar) energy by diktat.
No, I’m afraid it’s opinion not merely in the basic sense, but verging on the pejorative sense.
Unfortunately, scientists are given to herd behavior. I work in an area of mathematics adjacent to fundamental physics, and watched with bemusement as the physicists all were convinced for decades that string theory would solve all the open problems in theoretical physics wrote papers on string theory to fill a small library, when, in fact, it never made a testable prediction. They’ve now moved on and are doing interesting work again.
Climate science as used to influence energy policy is likewise a herd phenomenon: it is all build on the *assumption* that warming since the end of the Little Ice Age has been driven principally by human greenhouse gas emissions (rather than natural phenomena, or aggregate urban heat island effects, or ‘black carbon’ — deposition of soot, tyre dust,… on the cryosphere changing albedo). It makes testable predictions — by modeling, rather than positing a properly falsifiable explanatory theory — then ignores the falsification of those predictions when global temperatures undershoot the models’ predictions. But everyone “knows” that the explanation is greenhouse gas emissions, just like everyone “knew” that string theory was the panacea for all of the open problems in fundamental physics.
It would be genuinely interesting to start from scratch and build a climate model that properly took into account black carbon and aggregate urban heat island effect as well as greenhouse gas emissions. The problem is black carbon provides an argument for China, India, Russia and Poland adopting analogues of the American Clean Air Act, but not for Brussels, Whitehall and Washington taking over the energy economy to enforce the fool’s errand of trying to run a modern economy on “renewable” (properly direct and indirect solar) energy by diktat.
I am surprised. Which of the four points in my first sentence do you deny? And based on what? Note I am not saying it is *proved* that these changes are caused by human actions, just that CO2 has definitely increased a lot lately, and there is a *plausible* claim that this *could* be having that kind of effect.
Climate science can be considered opinion only in the most basic sense: the opinions of scientists who’ve spent years measuring, revising, warning us; measuring, revising, warning us; lather, rinse repeat. I think you are either playing at being a troll, or you are experiencing dementia.
Some glaciers are melting and some arent. The Montana glaciers that were due to have melted completely by 2020 are still there. Extreme weather events have not increased; there is a big literature on this. We do not know why temperature/weather/ climate change has happened even since the end of the last Ice Age, leading to the odd belief that the temperature/ weather climate has been unchanged in the last 12000 years . Forecasters are unable to reverse engineer any of their forecasts in the last thirty years. Etc.
CO2 levels *have* increased. Apart from that – are you saying that the climate of the world is exactly identical to what it was 300 years ago, no glaciers melting, no reduction in ice cover, no change in temperatures anywhere? I’d like a reference to some authoritative reference from that big literature.
Upvote didn’t register.
Upvote didn’t register.
CO2 levels *have* increased. Apart from that – are you saying that the climate of the world is exactly identical to what it was 300 years ago, no glaciers melting, no reduction in ice cover, no change in temperatures anywhere? I’d like a reference to some authoritative reference from that big literature.
Severe weather is not increasing. This comes from the IPCC. Hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones are not increasing. Sure, glaciers are melting. What else would you expect when the temp has increased 1.2C since 1850? It’s also true that when some of these glaciers retreat, they discover tree stumps and human artifacts.
Well, if you agree that the temperature is increasing, I do not need to invoke glaciers to prove it. I thought that many people denied even the temperature increase, but at least you do not. That makes it the easier to argue that odds are the temperature increase will continue, with consequent wide-ranging effects, and that we ought to consider doing something about it.
I await with interest which solution you are proposing that is less damaging than letting the earth’s temperature keep increasing.
Here’s what I believe, and what many serious thinkers agree with. CO2 is increasing, it’s a greenhouse gas and is at least partially responsible for the 1.2C temp increase. I don’t buy into runaway, catastrophic warming. What happens in the next 50 years is largely guess work IMO. Models are useful, but compromising the economy based on them is folly IMO. Having said that, I have no issue with emission free energy – as long as it works. Solar and wind don’t work. That leaves nuclear. I’m 100% on board with nuclear, but the people driving net zero really have no interest in this. See Germany and shutting down existing nuclear plants.
My downvote made the upvote go up!
That’s what happens when you have truth on your sign Clare. Lol. Surprised to get downvote though. Think my position is reasonable.
Exactly I did have truth on my sign and my side.
Exactly I did have truth on my sign and my side.
That’s what happens when you have truth on your sign Clare. Lol. Surprised to get downvote though. Think my position is reasonable.
The situation is indeed uncertain, which makes it hard to decide. But on the information that we know, I’d say there is a non-neglibile probability that we might get some very bad consequences indeed. So what should we do? As I understand your position, you are saying that an economy based on abundant, easy energy is a non-negotiable demand. And if that means that we get runaway climate change, huge increases in sea levels or mass famine, that is just too bad, because because you are not giving up your abundant energy just to avoid that. In fact, if you ‘don’t buy into runaway, catastrophic warming‘ I strongly suspect you are adjusting the facts to the policy. As in “If the risks are so bad we will have to do something about them; I refuse to do anything about the risks; therefore the risks cannot be that bad”. But OK, if you can give some evidence-based estimate of how (im)probable the worst-case risks are, I shall listen with interest.
Yes, abundant, reliable and inexpensive energy is non-negotiable. Take a look at the world. Any country without abundant energy is living in abject poverty. Energy brings freedom and prosperity. It liberates people. Take away energy and you are condemning people to misery.
I can’t give you evidence-based estimate of how (im)probable the worst-case risks are, but what I can tell you is predictions of doom are now 35 years old. I can’t think of a single one that has actually occurred.
You mention famine and flooding. Global crop yields have been going up consistently and steadily for every major crop. Sea level rise was supposed to wipe out coral islands in the Pacific, yet they have actually grown in size over the last 50 years. This stuff was supposed to happen already, yet it keeps getting pushed further into the future, and no one is held accountable for their failed predictions.
Ask yourself this. If western govts and the technocratic elite are so convinced about the impending catastrophe, why is no one building nuclear power? It would literally solve the CO2 problem and provide cheap, abundant energy. At some point you have to question how serious they are about solving the issue.
Yes, abundant, reliable and inexpensive energy is non-negotiable. Take a look at the world. Any country without abundant energy is living in abject poverty. Energy brings freedom and prosperity. It liberates people. Take away energy and you are condemning people to misery.
I can’t give you evidence-based estimate of how (im)probable the worst-case risks are, but what I can tell you is predictions of doom are now 35 years old. I can’t think of a single one that has actually occurred.
You mention famine and flooding. Global crop yields have been going up consistently and steadily for every major crop. Sea level rise was supposed to wipe out coral islands in the Pacific, yet they have actually grown in size over the last 50 years. This stuff was supposed to happen already, yet it keeps getting pushed further into the future, and no one is held accountable for their failed predictions.
Ask yourself this. If western govts and the technocratic elite are so convinced about the impending catastrophe, why is no one building nuclear power? It would literally solve the CO2 problem and provide cheap, abundant energy. At some point you have to question how serious they are about solving the issue.
My downvote made the upvote go up!
The situation is indeed uncertain, which makes it hard to decide. But on the information that we know, I’d say there is a non-neglibile probability that we might get some very bad consequences indeed. So what should we do? As I understand your position, you are saying that an economy based on abundant, easy energy is a non-negotiable demand. And if that means that we get runaway climate change, huge increases in sea levels or mass famine, that is just too bad, because because you are not giving up your abundant energy just to avoid that. In fact, if you ‘don’t buy into runaway, catastrophic warming‘ I strongly suspect you are adjusting the facts to the policy. As in “If the risks are so bad we will have to do something about them; I refuse to do anything about the risks; therefore the risks cannot be that bad”. But OK, if you can give some evidence-based estimate of how (im)probable the worst-case risks are, I shall listen with interest.
Here’s what I believe, and what many serious thinkers agree with. CO2 is increasing, it’s a greenhouse gas and is at least partially responsible for the 1.2C temp increase. I don’t buy into runaway, catastrophic warming. What happens in the next 50 years is largely guess work IMO. Models are useful, but compromising the economy based on them is folly IMO. Having said that, I have no issue with emission free energy – as long as it works. Solar and wind don’t work. That leaves nuclear. I’m 100% on board with nuclear, but the people driving net zero really have no interest in this. See Germany and shutting down existing nuclear plants.
We were simply in an interglacial period where warming was expected, then `climate change’ happened and became big business
Well, if you agree that the temperature is increasing, I do not need to invoke glaciers to prove it. I thought that many people denied even the temperature increase, but at least you do not. That makes it the easier to argue that odds are the temperature increase will continue, with consequent wide-ranging effects, and that we ought to consider doing something about it.
I await with interest which solution you are proposing that is less damaging than letting the earth’s temperature keep increasing.
We were simply in an interglacial period where warming was expected, then `climate change’ happened and became big business
If trans’ persons decisions only affected them, we wouldn’t be discussing the matter that much their actions are such that imprisoned women are being raped. Elderly women cannot refuse intimate care from a man who IDs as a woman. Public school
Girls are being filmed and accosted by boys in bathrooms. Girls and women with a lifetime of training lose sports’ scholarships, awards, and even – now – endorsement deals to men. Etc etc etc
I actually agree with you. The way we decide to treat trans people is a matter of how we organise society and how everybody has to behave, will be treated, etc. That, as you say, affects everybody – and so I am against self-ID, ‘trans-women’ in woman-only spaces etc. But on the strictly limited issue of the medical consequences of gender reassignment (surgery, hormones etc.) it is true that the consequences fall only on those whose bodies are modified, whereas the consequences of climate change fall on everybody.
I actually agree with you. The way we decide to treat trans people is a matter of how we organise society and how everybody has to behave, will be treated, etc. That, as you say, affects everybody – and so I am against self-ID, ‘trans-women’ in woman-only spaces etc. But on the strictly limited issue of the medical consequences of gender reassignment (surgery, hormones etc.) it is true that the consequences fall only on those whose bodies are modified, whereas the consequences of climate change fall on everybody.
I agree with you, Rasmus, but my upvote didn’t register.
Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid
With you entirely up to your final two sentences, which are aimed at the previous poster and not at the evidence, putting you on equally shaky, emotive ground.
I think you are wrong about almost everything you say about the climate. Like everything else, it is a matter of opinion. If you have the facts and you are right, it makes UnHerd pointless.
Some glaciers are melting and some arent. The Montana glaciers that were due to have melted completely by 2020 are still there. Extreme weather events have not increased; there is a big literature on this. We do not know why temperature/weather/ climate change has happened even since the end of the last Ice Age, leading to the odd belief that the temperature/ weather climate has been unchanged in the last 12000 years . Forecasters are unable to reverse engineer any of their forecasts in the last thirty years. Etc.
Severe weather is not increasing. This comes from the IPCC. Hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones are not increasing. Sure, glaciers are melting. What else would you expect when the temp has increased 1.2C since 1850? It’s also true that when some of these glaciers retreat, they discover tree stumps and human artifacts.
If trans’ persons decisions only affected them, we wouldn’t be discussing the matter that much their actions are such that imprisoned women are being raped. Elderly women cannot refuse intimate care from a man who IDs as a woman. Public school
Girls are being filmed and accosted by boys in bathrooms. Girls and women with a lifetime of training lose sports’ scholarships, awards, and even – now – endorsement deals to men. Etc etc etc
I agree with you, Rasmus, but my upvote didn’t register.
Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid
With you entirely up to your final two sentences, which are aimed at the previous poster and not at the evidence, putting you on equally shaky, emotive ground.
You could do that with anything you dislike.
So many parallels to climate change. Sterilizing children is like net zero. Let’s treat the problem with a solution that is infinitely more damaging. Shouldn’t come as a surprise though because it’s the same progressive, technocratic class pushing both agendas.
Absolutely untrue. On the climate front, glaciers *are* melting, extreme weather events *are* becoming more common, and human actions (increasing CO2 emissions) *have* happened, and *do* form a plausible cause for these changes. The predictions may be uncertain – how could you ever be certain about predicting an event that has never happened before in something as complicated as the climate? But – unlike the transsexual case – what evidence we do have is scientifically serious and of decent quality. Whether it is enough to take such far-reaching actions (in order to avoid such major risks) is another discussion. Another big difference is that for the transsexual case the question is about individuals taking decisions that make a difference only for themselves. In the climate case the consequences are for everybody on the planet.
There are arguments on both sides in either case. Of course. But the main thing the two cases have in common is that you feel strongly about them, not anything about the available evidence. Which is not a good basis for convincing anyone else.
You could do that with anything you dislike.
My preference would be for a moderate and restrained version of (2).
A very interesting comment. Perhaps it boils down to a fundamental flaw in Democracy: that political leaders are selected for their ability to persuade people to vote from them – and nothing else! Of course, their track record forms part of their persuasiveness, but all their attributes and advertising end in one final common pathway at the ballot box.
It’s an odd basis to select our rulers. Churchill thought it was the worst form of government (“except all the others”).
But when a political leader’s continued power depends on making himself popular (ie persuading people to vote for him) there’s no guarantee he (or she) has any ability, experience or qualification to govern. That person will wish to avoid offending people, particularly if those are shouty and unpleasant; they will not take risks that might not diminish their popularity and chances at the next election.
So we get the government we selected. And they shy away from upsetting the Trans activists because they fear their very public vitriol. Likewise leaders of industry, publishers, writers, editors: their wealth and worldly success depends, to some extent, on the popularity of their product. They will shy away from anything that threatens adverse publicity and, again: the Trans lobby is VERY good at making adverse publicity.
That’s how a tiny handful of mostly mentally-disturbed men have our cowardly politicians eating out of their hands.
Cowardice, selfish ambition and greed are the root causes of this malaise.
True.
True.
Its grounded in the removal of sexual acts from their natural consequent, human life and the committed relationships of men and women families require. We are in an anti-human cult. Nobody ever references that sodomy has killed over a million young men.
Liberals are terrified to research their ideological foundations and they are not liberals at all, but doormen absolutely chained to appearing “progressive”. I am an actual liberal incidentally.
What is your definition of liberal? My downvote didn’t register.
What is your definition of liberal? My downvote didn’t register.
I will now think twice about listening to a medic after reading all the bribes given by Big Pharma to pervert the real medical science. It’s been hijacked by money as is mass media, Big Tech and even the government.
Excellent comments. Ironically, while the main article was about the US scene, the comment applies equally well to UK in terms of the two outcomes – 1 and 2.
Transgenderism is a Trojan horse for the legalization of p**dophilia. Its adherents use the age-old excuse of claiming it’s ‘what the children want’ so there’s nothing wrong with it.
We need a new term to describe what these elites are doing. How about ‘masslighting’?
They are not “foolish or ignorant” but fully intend to create and spread confusion and destabilisation.
Their folly lies in believing that they can stand in the winds that will then blow. Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov describe them in the USSR, crying their devotion to the Party amid the squalor and starvation of the camps in which the Party have cast them, their turn served.
Robert Michels said all organisations become a bureaucratic oligarchy run for the benefit of those who control them. A Toynbee said civilisations start to decline when those who have had the creative energy to drive development lose this and they become a rigid . He likens then to climbers who are on a ledge and can go no further and therefore prevent others joining them as they do not want competition. Another analogy is the family run firm where by the third generation there are more members taking out money and than generating it.
The West is now in the third to fifth generation at least ( Britain is more likely tenth generation ) and there are vast number of effete affluent impractical unimaginative and therefore ineffectual middle and upper class people who are desperate to justify themslves and so develop more and more absurd positions in life.
If we look at the people who run institutions and compare them with those created the Renaissance say Brunelleschi or the Industrial Revolution say Newcomen, A Darby III, Boulton, Watt, Arkwright, Wedgewood, Faraday,Brindley or G Stephenson, etc and military leaders such as Nelson compare, we can perceive how ineffectual they are. Most of the people who run institutions would be incapable of creating them as thet lack imagination, initiative, ingenuity and drive.
The British aristocrats up to the mid 19th century were very good at talent spotting such as The Duke of Bridgewater choosing Brindley to build his canals when everyone though they were absurd and the D of Wellington taking Telford’s advice. The British aristocracy was different to the Continental as it married and supported talent.
A couple of small changes
Now, let’s step back to the
transgenderclimate issue – what do we see? Influential and powerful institutional leaders taking a radical, evidence-free approach totransgender healthclimate matters, with scientific integrity completely undermined in favour of incoherent, dangerous and cult-like ideology. And when large swathes of the community object to the changes, the response is not to reflect and improve, but to double down. PR–sorry, ‘better education’–in support of radical change is intensified, science is degraded and abused even further to push dubious (sometimes outright fraudulent) supporting narratives, while the tables get turned on critics, who become the ones labelled as the dangerous, ideological extremists out to harm society.My preference would be for a moderate and restrained version of (2).
A very interesting comment. Perhaps it boils down to a fundamental flaw in Democracy: that political leaders are selected for their ability to persuade people to vote from them – and nothing else! Of course, their track record forms part of their persuasiveness, but all their attributes and advertising end in one final common pathway at the ballot box.
It’s an odd basis to select our rulers. Churchill thought it was the worst form of government (“except all the others”).
But when a political leader’s continued power depends on making himself popular (ie persuading people to vote for him) there’s no guarantee he (or she) has any ability, experience or qualification to govern. That person will wish to avoid offending people, particularly if those are shouty and unpleasant; they will not take risks that might not diminish their popularity and chances at the next election.
So we get the government we selected. And they shy away from upsetting the Trans activists because they fear their very public vitriol. Likewise leaders of industry, publishers, writers, editors: their wealth and worldly success depends, to some extent, on the popularity of their product. They will shy away from anything that threatens adverse publicity and, again: the Trans lobby is VERY good at making adverse publicity.
That’s how a tiny handful of mostly mentally-disturbed men have our cowardly politicians eating out of their hands.
Cowardice, selfish ambition and greed are the root causes of this malaise.
Its grounded in the removal of sexual acts from their natural consequent, human life and the committed relationships of men and women families require. We are in an anti-human cult. Nobody ever references that sodomy has killed over a million young men.
Liberals are terrified to research their ideological foundations and they are not liberals at all, but doormen absolutely chained to appearing “progressive”. I am an actual liberal incidentally.
I will now think twice about listening to a medic after reading all the bribes given by Big Pharma to pervert the real medical science. It’s been hijacked by money as is mass media, Big Tech and even the government.
Excellent comments. Ironically, while the main article was about the US scene, the comment applies equally well to UK in terms of the two outcomes – 1 and 2.
If you take a few steps back and survey the broader society in which we’re living, you’ll see sustained, terminal declines of public trust in institutions – government, business, media, and civic organisations. Accompanied, as always, by endless bien pensants chatter about how this spells calamity for society – instability, extremism, violence.
Yet despite all the hand-wringing, the people in charge just keep on engaging in the exact same behaviours that lead to public trust falling off a cliff. They’re incapable of putting two and two together and realising that it is their actions that are driving people to ‘extreme political views’. Indeed, the conclusion of all their ‘analysis’ and ‘thinking’ and ‘reflecting’ is that–paraphrasing Principal Skinner–it is the people who are wrong. And to address this, the institutional leaders must double down on everything, no matter how controversial, counterproductive, or incoherent their approach has become.
Now, let’s step back to the transgender issue – what do we see? Influential and powerful institutional leaders taking a radical, evidence-free approach to transgender health, with scientific integrity completely undermined in favour of incoherent, dangerous and cult-like ideology. And when large swathes of the community object to the changes, the response is not to reflect and improve, but to double down. PR–sorry, ‘better education’–in support of radical change is intensified, science is degraded and abused even further to push dubious (sometimes outright fraudulent) supporting narratives, while the tables get turned on critics, who become the ones labelled as the dangerous, ideological extremists out to harm society.
As with the issue of public trust, I want the battlefield for transgender issues to course-correct to a moderate, evidence-based approach. One where differing views are considered, and if needed, change made in a slower, incremental fashion to bring the community along. Or not done at all, if that’s the best answer at the time. That would be the sensible solution.
But we don’t live in a sensible world – we live in a world full of apathy, which has allowed extremists to seize power and dominate the rest of us. Consequently, I only see two outcomes for western society:
1) Democracy eroded in favour of ‘enlightened despotism’, with all meaningful decision-making power consolidated into the hands of a privileged class of neo-aristocrats, self-described as the only ‘qualified’ people to make decisions on behalf of the populace, or
2) A reactionary backlash, with zealous extremists from the other size seizing back control of institutions and purging them of anything resembling progressive thought. Followed by complete instability, even violence – just as the bien pensants feared.
But it’s not their fault, right? It’s all those people who don’t run the institutions that caused this, not those actually wielding the power? Right?
We’ve totally lost the plot. Do we actually need studies to show that sterilizing children and performing life-altering surgery on them is a problem? Adults can do whatever they want.
Quite right.
If you are 16 and you are unhappy with the size of your breasts and want them enlarged with hormones and surgery to make you feel more like a woman, you should not get priority treatment simply because you are a boy.
Adults can do whatever they want – but notat taxpayers’ expense.
But at what magic point does ‘adult’ happen? The human pre-frontal cortex – the bit responsible for risk evaluation, considered decision-making, acting generally more like a grown up – isn’t mature in most until around 25. We are adolescent until then. Yet our legal artifice says 18.
Young people on the autism spectrum are hugely disproportionately drawn toward the gender cult for many reasons, as are those with other mental health problems, those who fell down internet holes (Tumblr, porn, trans ‘influencers’ on Reddit, TikTok etc), or those experiencing typical human worries about self and identity. These over-18s all particularly deserve protections from rapacious pushers of gender ‘treatment’, at every stage of their lives.
Adult women and men seeking sterilisation after having had kids are generally far better protected from their own impulses, counselled toward caution before tying any tubes, than are any teens or ‘adults’ walking into Planned Parenthood asking for wrong-sex hormones.
But at what magic point does ‘adult’ happen? The human pre-frontal cortex – the bit responsible for risk evaluation, considered decision-making, acting generally more like a grown up – isn’t mature in most until around 25. We are adolescent until then. Yet our legal artifice says 18.
Young people on the autism spectrum are hugely disproportionately drawn toward the gender cult for many reasons, as are those with other mental health problems, those who fell down internet holes (Tumblr, porn, trans ‘influencers’ on Reddit, TikTok etc), or those experiencing typical human worries about self and identity. These over-18s all particularly deserve protections from rapacious pushers of gender ‘treatment’, at every stage of their lives.
Adult women and men seeking sterilisation after having had kids are generally far better protected from their own impulses, counselled toward caution before tying any tubes, than are any teens or ‘adults’ walking into Planned Parenthood asking for wrong-sex hormones.
Does planned parenthood do that? I don’t think so. Anyone into The Enneagram may know that bi-sexual, bi-polar, autistic, and paranoid people, are the type six, fear based personality type. It’s fascinating stuff.