Thursday, September 15, 2011

Another Crack In The Façade

Nobel-Prize Winning Physicist Resigns Over Man Made Global Warming. Link
Posted by at
Labels: , , ,

6 comments:

  1. LLSeptember 15, 2011 at 8:55 AM

    I read that article elsewhere. And it speaks to the unscientific skewing of results that has been the Green Agenda.

    Science should speak outside politics, but that's not always the case.

    ReplyDelete
  2. chickelitSeptember 15, 2011 at 9:03 PM

    Linus Pauling was one of the first "political" scientists, thanks to his wife Helen.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ritmo Re-AnimatedSeptember 17, 2011 at 7:01 AM

    I think you were just inspired to post that by my reference to Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis, whom, as we all know, has taken the brave stance of proclaiming (with just as little evidence) that HIV does not cause AIDS!

    I'm really not sure of why it makes sense to say a prize in one field makes somebody the arbiter of interpreting findings in another, especially when Giaever's objection results from a quibble over the use of a single adjective ("incontrovertible"), and his own contrary opinion makes use of an argument from/appeal to personal belief ("which means... to me"). Scientists don't care what the finding means to someone (themselves included) personally. Should they?

    That Giaever talks of an improvement in "both human health and happiness" over the previous warming period is also irrelevant... and reveals his ignorance. Yes, it's great that the natural cycle that brought us out of the ice age had occurred. No, we don't have any reason to think that further warming via any particular industrial addictions will be better for us.

    And I seriously doubt that temperature changes had anything to do with improvements in health and happiness over the last 150 years. Does anyone seriously think that the temperature is the reason for what we like better about the world of today compared to the world of 1861? Screw the technological advances, modern medicine, political change and social improvements! It's the temperature in the year 2011 that we have so much to be thankful for!

    I think lawyers would call that prima facie ridiculous!

    As long as you brought up Linus Pauling, is there really much doubt that his views on Vitamin C weren't borne of some degree of crackpot thinking? He strongly advocated mega-doses as some sort of cure for cancer, long after the Mayo Clinic ruled out any such effect on the disease.

    ReplyDelete
  4. chickelitSeptember 17, 2011 at 8:14 AM

    I think you were just inspired to post that by my reference to Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis, whom, as we all know, has taken the brave stance of proclaiming (with just as little evidence) that HIV does not cause AIDS!

    Actually, Sissy Willis inspired me to post this. I saw her link secondhand on Twitter.

    I think Mullis may be linked to Peter Deusberg at Berkeley. Just a hunch.

    Paulings' views late in his career don't invalidate in any way what he did earlier. Same with Mullis on HIV.

    Even the blogosphere has individuals who were once shining lights who then became ridiculous.

    Didn't Napoleon say there is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous? I need to find the original in french and look at the context.

    ReplyDelete
  5. chickelitSeptember 17, 2011 at 8:25 AM

    I'm really not sure of why it makes sense to say a prize in one field makes somebody the arbiter of interpreting findings in another,

    I wish people would apply that logic to Steven Chu.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ritmo Re-AnimatedSeptember 17, 2011 at 9:47 AM

    I wish people would apply that logic to Steven Chu.

    At some point, science should be allowed to inform public policy.

    If Chu were appealing to personal beliefs and feelings as a way to trump a stance on the issues about which politics is allowed to opine and governments obliged to seek empirical evidence, then as with Giaever, Pauling, Mullis and even Einstein (when he famously rejected quantum mechanics on theological[!] grounds), I'd say he's wandering too far afield from the mission asked of him.

    Of course we allow/encourage creativity and dissent to inform the scientific spirit in ways that will allow for superstitious cranks as easily as they will for genius. But shouldn't a public service be compelled to rely on the most accurate evidence possible? And when it comes to the projection of limited data on an evolving, real-life scenario decades into the future, is the precautionary principle and reliance on smaller scale models really too much to ask for?

    If pharmacologists were allowed to treat animal toxicology the way Americans treat climate science, we'd have generations of flipper babies and other disturbing catastrophes to show for it. We rely on smaller preclinical studies to temper our willingness to proclaim an IND absolutely safe, no matter how notoriously difficult it is to extrapolate animal toxicology to safety in humans.

    I think this is at it should be and the appropriate model for planetary real-time experiments in tinkering with the composition of the atmosphere, and for public policy generally.

    The flip side of that risk does not allow for a favorable cost/benefit trade-off to the population as a whole.

    One could call environmentalists overzealous, but their track record on giving us a cleaner and more sustainable planet is better than that of their adversaries. And I have a difficult time understanding why financial conflicts of interest are obvious and acted upon when it comes to petty crimes and personal matters, but not when entire industries and political factions are involved.

    My scientific understanding would be greatly enhanced by an adequate explanation of that.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)