So, I've followed the notes on MIT's courseware up to this (first formula on page 3), and it seems that my "intuitive" test formula is correct apart of the fact that I am summing SDs instead of variances, which will account for a factor \sqrt{2} at most if I am not mistaken. Is that it? Or the fact that statistical significance \neq practical significance (which I was never claiming in the first place)?

Well, according to actual scientists, the politicized bullshit is on WUWT et al.

Yeah please enlighten me. I'd be happy to learn more on the right way to set up the calculation, this was just to have a magnitude estimate.

Yes, but this shouldn't be an issue in this research, since they are comparing apples with apples, at least from my understanding.

That is my intuition anyway: if the SD of a single IQ measurement is 15, then the SD of the measurement on the population that possess the gene is 15/sqrt(718*1/5)=1.25. The SD of the measurement on the population without the gene is 15/sqrt(718*4/5)=0.63. The SD of the difference should be 1.25+0.62=1.88. So yes, 6 points is over 3-sigma. IANAS and I could be saying complete nonsense.

The standard deviation is 15. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... As for the statistical significance, not sure. IANAS, so I am not sure which formulas to best use to model it. According to TFA, their sample size is 718, of which 1/5 possess the gene, so intuitively I'd say that 6 points do seem significant.

The value of all the proven reserves will plummet if the market for oil and coal decreases. That is the source of the disinformation campaign.

We cannot do without coal/oil in 2014, but with the correct incentives, we can change our infrastructure to do with a *lot* less, and emerging markets can skip the coal trap all-together.

According the IPCC AR5 WG3, sustained movements away from carbon over 90 years will do the trick. You can still drive your car, and so can your children.

There is a lot of detail to get into for why we should be introducing economic incentives now -- you can read all about it in the 1700 page report, and 10k references.

The solution *has* been proposed, and big oil is fighting it with a misinformation campaign as to whether AGW is happening at all.

If the comment systems on the internet have taught me anything, it is "if you are insulting someone in your post, make sure that your spelling and grammar are flawless".

We could fix this problem easily with barely any significant change to our style of life. Sure there will be winners and loser, and the losers will be big oil/coal companies -- some of the most powerful institutions in the world -- and that's why nothing is being done. It is really easy to throw mud and claim there is "confusion" on whether AGW is happening. Meanwhile, they tell themselves a story about how CO2 isn't a pollutant, and doing anything would be communism, and therefore morally wrong.

AGW is easy to solve compared to the little lies we tell ourselves about what is moral, in order to protect our little empires.

I'm pretty sure that most people agree on most things, and even policy wonks can find a huge amount of common ground to move forward on. Alas that politics is all about fighting. I heard one GOP insider saying that they push some of the conspiratorial nonsense to distract the base from making up nonsense about the GOP leadership.

If you are a conservative, you may enjoy this 20thC history of economics. The analysis leaves out a few important details (like the role of the OPEC crisis, and Nixon's price and wage controls, as causal factors in stagflation), but I think the general idea is pretty accurate. But no one theory of economics can claim to describe the economy, so it's important to realize that you are looking at a point of view that has blind spots, even if it is mostly true.

Even that is overstating the case. Global cooling was *investigated* by a small number of scientists, including Steve Scheider (!). Time magazine and the media pushed it as a good story. Must have sold newspapers.

Cheaper things may or may not be better for the environment though. There can be a paradox, where you end up using more resources because there is more collective demand.

Also, you're ignoring externalities, which is kind-of the whole point.

Most Nobel Prizes for physics go to scientists who demonstrate an existing idea is wrong. There are some problems with Kuhn's analysis, in that at any point of time, you'll find multiple paradigms active in large fields, and you'll also see rather incremental changes in and out of dominate paradigms, for the most part. This is a pretty big flaw in his argument.

This is a rather sad point of view, because it is simply wrong. The strongest incentives are for the status quo. The largest industry in world (the energy sector) is staring down regulation, and they have the most to lose. If you care whether or not your beliefs are true or not, then do yourself a favour, and read "Merchants of Doubt" which chronicles in excruciating detail, the very real history of how companies manipulate the media to protect their interests.

Most scientists could make far more working in industry. (I sure could.) So they aren't chasing money. They are trying to understand cool new things, and leave a footnote in the lineage of human consciousness. You don't get that by being wrong. You get that by being new, innovative, and mostly: demonstrating the status quo is wrong. In fact, you've got the incentive structures completely ass backwards.