tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post2278267668711730253..comments2024-03-18T06:11:04.848-07:00Comments on The Curious Wavefunction: A wrong kind of religion; Freeman Dyson, Superfreakonomics, and global warmingWavefunctionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-74475460741153427012009-11-11T19:28:13.220-08:002009-11-11T19:28:13.220-08:00Thanks for the reference; will look it up nowThanks for the reference; will look it up nowWavefunctionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-91241589394301707142009-11-10T09:02:03.478-08:002009-11-10T09:02:03.478-08:00The glacial mails around here being what they are,...The glacial mails around here being what they are, I finally received my 2 Oct '09 Science the other day (after it had to be resent). It is worth a look at pp. 28 - 29. The data on the absence of any change in global temperatures for the past decade is reported, along with a reply of the climate modelers. <br /><br /> They reran their simulations 10 times for a total of 700 years and found 17 episodes of stagnating temperatures lasting a decade or more. The longest period was 15 years, so we'll have an idea of how good the present models are in another 5 years.<br /><br />Why wasn't this published initially? The whole exercise smells of fudging and is reminiscent of cartoons of bearded robed prophets on street corners holding up signs saying the end is nigh (but not just yet). <br /><br />The credibility of the global warming (now known as climate change) crowd just took a hit.<br /><br />RetreadAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-44265473536151181962009-11-10T06:08:52.155-08:002009-11-10T06:08:52.155-08:00"I think we are beginning to elevate polemici..."I think we are beginning to elevate polemicism culturally to a point where it is not simply enough to have strong opinions, but to browbeat others who have considered and informed opinions that differ. It's one thing to lapse in the heat of an argument, but quite another to make it a virtue."<br /><br />You are absolutely right.<br /><br />The response has indeed turned rather irrational. It's an especially galling response considering that climate change comprises maybe 1% of all of Dyson's writings until now. "The Scientist as Rebel" for instance has nothing to do with climate change and is a wonderful collection of essays.<br /><br />These days it has become almost fashionable to dump all climate change critics into the same bin and paint them with the same broad brush. The prime example is the climate blogger Joe Romm, an otherwise intelligent man who not only maligns anyone who disagrees with him with condescension and froths at the mouth, but has gone so far as to demand that journalists who in his opinion have penned favorable sounding portraits of critics like Dyson actually retract their pieces. I don't know if people like him realize that they are sounding almost as bad as the right wingers who they used to rightly oppose. As someone noted, perhaps not too unkindly, people like Romm are the liberal version of McCarthyism; instead of seeing communists everywhere they are seeing climate change "deniers".Wavefunctionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-12796289643588360712009-11-08T08:55:09.067-08:002009-11-08T08:55:09.067-08:00Regarding Dyson specifically, I remember quoting f...Regarding Dyson specifically, I remember quoting from his book, <i>The Scientist As Rebel</i> somewhere only to get a strident response- something that had all the meaning of, "Well, and why are you quoting that loon?"<br /><br />I played dumb and pushed the objection but never got a response. The topic at hand was not related to global warming or religion (Dyson's views on this have also earned him ire from certain quarters) but I suspected either or both.<br /><br />I don't think this is restricted to AGCC and surrounding issues, however. I think we are beginning to elevate polemicism culturally to a point where it is not simply enough to have strong opinions, but to browbeat others who have considered and informed opinions that differ. It's one thing to lapse in the heat of an argument, but quite another to make it a virtue. Freeman Dyson is no George Will. Whatever condescension Will gets is deserved for all his gibbering nonsense but Dyson is on another level by astronomical proportions. Yet here we are castigating him in much the same way- perhaps even more, since there is the issue of his "betrayal".<br /><br />Not that vocal opposition to his views are unwarranted, but the line is crossed where personal attacks begin.<br /><br /><i>Superfreakonomics</i> could perhaps do easily without drawing attention to the "Global Cooling" canard, but I haven't picked up the book yet myself to see what they decided to do with it.The Chemisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15970398885870679916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-33489876829951635682009-11-07T13:15:01.770-08:002009-11-07T13:15:01.770-08:00to put it in the words of the authors of "Nud...to put it in the words of the authors of "Nudge" (another nice popular science economics book): if there is a conflict between the emotional and rational systems, the emotional system usually wins<br /><br />and i think that is a big problem for any debate: if there is an emotional preoccupation, people just turn off their rational system. that's human psychology and no-one can change that. maybe being aware of this fact and being self critical could somehow helpFelixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05138335803929997277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-32502053511186861352009-11-06T05:01:58.810-08:002009-11-06T05:01:58.810-08:00Quite correct. Unfortunately, genuine scientific q...Quite correct. Unfortunately, genuine scientific questions are being treated as "attacks on global warming". The moment this happens something starts looking more like a religion. How anyone can think that they can understand a complex system like the climate with any kind of finality is unnerving. In my opinion at least some of the modeling of the climate is like force fields, where there's a lot of parametrization based on empirical data plugged into the model. But can it predict the next data points? Not if those data points differ from the ones used to parametrize. A lot of times these models are great at explaining what's already known, and even there climate models don't seem to be perfect.<br /><br />Plus, a lot of the policy decisions seem to come from people like Gore who are neither scientists nor economists, and who have largely made up their mind about what the correct solutions are. That's not how science works.Wavefunctionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-43700132396181087582009-11-05T11:02:37.739-08:002009-11-05T11:02:37.739-08:00Of course it's part of a religion, which as yo...Of course it's part of a religion, which as you note is beginning to become the tail wagging the scientific dog. Look at all the nonscientific types who support it with such fervor. In '75 there were all sorts of serious people worried about global cooling (See the Delanceyplace.com posting of 3 October). <br /><br />How anyone can place such trust in models, after the recent meltdown of various financial models is beyond me. <br /><br />I'm with you and Dyson, even if true (and there has been no warming in the past 10 years) the models are imperfect and give little guidance as to what to do about it. Have any of the models predicted the absence of warming in the past 10 years?<br /><br />Two of the smartest people I know (a physicist at NOAA who was valedictorian of an Ivy league school, and another physicist from the Argonne National Labs) disagree about whether the warming is real. Both do agree that the models are far from perfect.<br /><br /><br />LuysiiAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com