Kerry Emanuel, a climate scientist at MIT and former member of NAS, says he was initially drawn to the organization because he was worried about what he saw as a growing relativism in the academy, evident in the work of deconstructionist philosophers like Jacques Derrida. NAS seemed to be taking a stand against those intellectual currents, Emanuel said — though he adds that he eventually became concerned about the organization’s stances on climate change, especially during a much-publicized incident in which hackers stole thousands of emails from a group of climate scientists and accused them of misusing data.
In a 2010 article published on the NAS website, Emanuel described the event as “a scandal” — but he didn’t see it as a challenge to the scientific consensus on climate change. The National Association of Scholars, on the other hand, sought to extrapolate the Climategate incident “into a universal condemnation of the field,” Emanuel told me. “It was just patently disingenuous.”
He left the organization soon afterward.
“It sort of revealed them not to be what they claimed to be — people who stood for scientific truth and scientific integrity. It was just another organization that used that as a front,” Emanuel said. “They’re basically a political organization posing as an organization dedicated to free inquiry,” he added.
https://undark.org/2018/04/18/national-association-of-schola...
> " Mr. Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars. "
Of course the person being "cancelled" would write an opinion piece on "cancel culture".
One person criticised his event on twitter and he wrote an opinion piece on WSJ about how he's being persecuted. This seems incredibly childish to me. Especially considering the original tweet* got under 100 retweets and about 130 likes.
Honestly, I feel like this is more likely to be advertising for the conference than an actual complaint about "cancel culture". Nothing here is noteworthy in any way.
[1]:https://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/b...
The paper, along with some really basic googling, raises a big red flag over NAS's impartiality. Namely that:
* NAS was founded by a conservative
* Its president is conservative
* Its funders are conservative
* Its board is full of conservatives
* It frequently uses conservative (arguably far-right) catchphrases like "defending western civilization"
* Often pushes conservative viewpoints such as climate scepticism
* Other conservative organisations call NAS conservative
Yet despite all that NAS, or at least Peter W Wood, consistently claim they are not a conservative organisation.
This is completely absurd. Definitely an advert and no sane person should trust anything that Wood is saying here.
And most of the people complaining about it don't care about the specifics but want a chance to vent about the fact that their preferred version of phrenology isn't taken seriously anymore.
More troubling is his claim that they are "weaponizing" reproducibility against climate change. Doesn't that raise a red flag? If you're worried that reproducibility poses a problem for something, doesn't that mean you might just a little bit probably have beliefs not based on reproducible science, but on faith? And that the irreproducible science has a chance of being wrong?
I'm not trying to deny climate science, I think it's real. But it seems like there's a real problem with this person's stance and how they're trying to argue and obstruct.
I'm kind of a believer that people can think for themselves. Let anybody attend anything - if it's a science convention that isn't promoting science it seems like it's not going to get very far, no protesting required.
Who are these people who feel that simply listening to someone speak is equivalent to endorsing them?
No one is hiding scientific claims about climate change. It wouldn't be difficult to list scientific claims, but that's not his point. He is complaining that this organization is misrepresenting itself and the nature of its event in order to trick people into attending or appearing to support something they do not actually support.
He doesn't claim that climate deniers' arguments are incorrect because of something about their character or motives (that would be an ad hominem attack). He just doesn't want people to be deceived regarding this organization and its conference.
> More troubling is his claim that they are "weaponizing" reproducibility against climate change. Doesn't that raise a red flag?
No. Why should it raise a red flag? People can invoke the name of true and important criticisms in the defense of beliefs that are incorrect or harmful.
> I'm kind of a believer that people can think for themselves. Let anybody attend anything - if it's a science convention that isn't promoting science it seems like it's not going to get very far, no protesting required.
It seems like this person would agree with you: and that's why he has made an effort to inform people that (in his view) this conference is not promoting science. Moreover, how is this so-called "cancel culture" incompatible with people thinking for themselves? This person can write criticisms about an organization in a Twitter thread. Someone from that organization can write a WSJ article in response. People can and do choose what to believe. This Twitter poster (presumably) does not have the ability to unilaterally cancel anything, nor is there some cultural rule that if his tweets get a certain number of likes then the target of his criticism automatically gets cancelled.
If I encounter an organisation with a name that tries to make me sound reputable primarily funded by Marlboro If I take not of the fact that they make the claim that cigarettes are not unhealthy. If they support this claim by picking and choosing data and misconstruing and twisting the words of reputable sources and scientists to make them fit their claim. (See their mention of a Claudia Tebaldi statement in the report this mess is about and other fud they've written in the past of course completely disregarding anything else she'd say that conflicts with their views) If disregarded and bashed for this I then see them rethink strategy and simply start saying there are too many studies showing the negative effects on health are not reproducible (not defining what is too many which can be anything from hundreds to a single one) and drawing a link to "anti cigarette dogma"
Can I then not say they are weaponising reproducibility without being accused of just "being afraid I'm wrong"?
Anastasios Tsonis https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-who-deny-climate-...
Elliot D. Bloom https://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=403...
Patrick J. Michaels https://climateinvestigations.org/patrick-michaels-climate-d...
S. Stanley Young https://errorstatistics.com/2014/12/13/s-stanley-young-are-t...
David Randall https://undark.org/2018/04/18/national-association-of-schola...
David Theroux https://blog.independent.org/2012/10/27/its-official-no-glob...
Peter Wood https://undark.org/2018/04/18/national-association-of-schola...
Overall, I'm mostly underwhelmed by the evidence he presents. Anastasios probably falls into the climate change denier camp, though I know him from my time in UWM's math department and I believe he's a genuine skeptic acting in good faith. On the other hand, I turned up an awful lot of unscientific nonsense peddled by Elliot Bloom in my short time looking into him [1].
I haven't looked into the rest other than by following links above, which again are off-putting but not completely damning. I will add that the National Association of Scholars does appear to publish a lot of articles on climate change by clear climate change deniers and authors with significant links to the oil and gas industry [2], including:
- Leo Goldstein, whose website makes such claims as "CO2 in a greenhouse does NOT warm it. 'Greenhouse gas' is a misnomer.", "Higher CO2 concentrations in atmosphere do warm the surface, but only insignificantly.", and "Of all potential global dangers conceivably related to human activity, nothing has been studied better and found more harmless than anthropogenic CO2 release." [3]
- Edward Reid, who has at least 26 years of experience in the natural gas industry [4] and "fifty years of experience in the energy industry".
- David Legates, who according to Wikipedia "is a senior scientist of the Marshall Institute, a research fellow with the Independent Institute, and an adjunct scholar of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, all of which have received funding from ExxonMobil." [5]
[0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/136FNLtJzACc6_JbbOxjy...
[1] For example, the graphic at 1:17:08 of https://youtu.be/1zrejG-WI3U?t=4628 is based on the same data as the graphic in http://archive.is/qlqA8, which is debunked here https://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/02/roy-spencers-latest-dece... and in the follow-up linked at the top of that page
[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20180921133012/https://www.nas.or...
[3] https://defyccc.com/summary-of-science/
There are certain topics that are so settled, that to engage with anyone with a contrary view is tantamount to giving them credibility and a platform to reach the uninformed. Some topics simply don't have "both sides" in any meaningful sense. Flat eartherism, Holocaust denial, and antivaxxerism are ones that immediately come to mind. Anyone who denies the mainstream consensus on those subjects is either a moron, a dishonest person with selfish or malicious motives, or both.
Denial of human-caused climate change is close to being in that bucket by this point (the next 2 decades will determine the truth of it). From the perspective of those advocating for action against climate change, deniers have blocked any sort of meaningful action for nearly 30 years. Their actions have led to unprecedented, potential economic, humanitarian, and ecological crises.
>The @NASorg [National Association of Scholars] sounds like the National Academy of Science, but it's not.
>The conference they are organizing has 21 speakers. Of them, 7 are hard core climate change deniers and 0 are climate experts.
Sounds like a pretty shady group to me.
I took an environmental law seminar at Northwestern, and one of the invited guests was read the riot act by faculty who accused him for being a climate change denier. But he didn't actually deny climate change, he just had a model that predicted 50% as much increase in temperate at IPCC average models. And, for that, many called him a denier.
So just because Teytelman makes this claim, doesn't mean its true. Teytelman might also be 100% correct.
That is NOT what his Tweets say. He is warning that the conference is not what it says it is but nowhere does he argue for canceling the conference.
I've been warning people not to attend it.
# Nasorg sounds like NAS and could be mistaken for it.
# Nasorg is conservative and have published material with conservative slant.
# 7 out of 21 speakers are climate denialists.
# Therefore it is righteous to deplatform them.
The question is the last point: assuming everything else here is true, is this sufficient grounds for deplatforming? Do you want to live in a world where it is?
Edit: apparently the HN answer is: yes, we totes do.
It's not "deplatforming" when your objection to someone speaking is about what they're saying. An organization pushing climate change denial should not be treated as credible because climate denial is not science.
Anyone who has even the faintest experience with physicists -- anyone who has sat in a room full of them -- knows that there are thousands upon thousands of physicists in the world, any of whom are perfectly capable of interpreting the detailed technical reports from climatologists. If the theory of global warming was carious, there are a lot of people who would know. Physicists are known to complain about theories they don't like, and they do -- usually about string theory or fusion power, never about climatology.
And that's just it. Anyone who understands enough physics to read a paper knows that the "climate change debate" is a media ploy to trick people into voting for something stupid.
The people running the ploy have made their beliefs known as well -- they realize that climate change is going to happen, but they think that the world, or at least the West, will be OK. Ronald Bailey delivers the exegesis of this viewpoint, and his readers are largely the educated right, who go on to encourage this nonsense among the gullible.
Agree or disagree with the event's motivations, trying to get it shut down is an outright attack. Defending against that publicly, like this article seems so do, is warranted and not an attack on Mr. Teytelman.
I have a feeling that with sufficient rabble rousing a twitter mob could figure out how to get the name of the space telescope and constant changed.
Like the tabacco industry, maybe dissing these folks and giving them a hard time is in fact a good idea and also like tobacco pushback comes from older folks and the industry. In the former case it's a conservative form of ignorance. I've been smoking my whole life and it hasn't killed me yet or in this case I've been driving my whole life and it never caused any harm. In the latter case, it's psychopathic opportunism.
Meanwhile Australia and California (in season) are burning.
The claims in this piece of "cancel culture" and fear of disagreement on my part are utter nonsense.
This National Association of Scholars is a group using the legitimate reproducibility discussion to undermine the EPA and climate research.
I've warned people not to attend this conference because 7/21 total speakers are climate change deniers and 0 are climate experts. My full response is here: https://twitter.com/lteytelman/status/1216770668475252738.
Lenny Teytelman, Ph.D. CEO, protocols.io
https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repr...
The results are less effective social and economic policy, and poorer research in general, as incentives are no longer aligned with classical goals of objective knowledge discovery.
Perhaps, but all the spoken taboos—that is, the concrete examples of things which are cited as being supposedly taboo to address in research—are, it turns out, actually quite well covered in the literature (sometimes, they are things one side would like to be true that are consistently refuted by empirical research, sometimes, as is the case with race/IQ correlation, they are facts both opposing sides acknowledge but each side prefers a different explanation for, and where one side, rather than acknowledging the dispute over the explanation, prefers to pretend the other side denies the phenomenon, and sometimes there is some other dynamic at work, but its pretty much never that the research either isn't done or is suppressed.)
The problem is you don't know how much research into taboo topics would exist in an academic environment where freedom of speech was actually respected. It could be double, triple or 10x what we see today. Or it could be equal.
However, it would be strange to assume it's equal given the very public mob mentality and academic "executions" for conservative thought, the many testimonies from academics saying they're afraid to even voice conservative ideas in academia let alone apply for grant funding for them, and the work of people like Jonathan Haight who showed fields like psychology are dominated by one political ideology.
To me it's obvious there are areas that are under-researched by academia. To name just two:
1. Climate change skepticism. All the research I've seen here is done by academic outsiders. They find real problems, publish papers and get real retractions or changes made in the field, but none of it is done by academia itself. When you read the various emails showing how academics try to block people who disagree with them from getting published, it's obvious what's going on.
2. Men's rights. Academia churns out vast amounts of "research" into various feminist and intersectionalist topics. I've seen very few papers on anything approximating the male opposite. The small amount that does exist tends to come out of psychological research into education in the context of why boys are falling behind at school (they find some worrying things about teacher bias). But it's an occasional dot compared to the torrent of government-funded feminist thought.
The problem with areas of inquiry like these is that leftists attack them as not only illegitimate to study at all, but to even talk about. This is despite the fact that they're both completely mainstream sets of views.
Can you point to specific examples of this where the science is actually robust and well documented but has somehow been blocked from being published or otherwise stopped due to this pervasive bias?
The premier example of robust, well documented science with vociferous opposition has to be intelligence. Besides scholars with a fiercer attachment to their politics than the truth like Gould you also have introductory psychology textbooks that go out of their way to muddy the waters by giving space to alternative theories of intelligence to g with fuck all empirical backing like Gardner’s or Sternberg’s. If they had similar standards in other areas of psychology everything would be as bad as social.
For suppression there was an article in Third World Quarterly withdrawn due to credible threats of violence because a mob didn’t like the topic. Note it wasn’t retracted and it passed peer review. David Graeber recently led a campaign to have Noah Carl’s offer of a postdoc withdrawn at Cambridge, successfully. And there was a campaign at Hypatia, a feminist philosophy journal to have an article withdrawn for discussing trans racialism in the context of transsexuality.
It's fundamentally unknowable how much science is being denied the imprimatur of good science for ideological reasons while "actually" being good science. The best you can hope for is examples that meet a lower, more reasonable bar that point to problems in the culture of academia, from which you can extrapolate chilling effects.
There are examples of things like this, as in Case & Deaton's description[1] of the reaction to their study on declining mortality amongst US whites:
> Deaton: Anne presented the first paper once and was told, in no uncertain terms: How dare you work on whites. Case: I was really beaten up. Deaton: And these were really senior people. Case: Very senior people.
This example is just off the top of my head, and it's a blatant example of a study that _isn't even saying anything that taboo_, except among those whose brains have been thoroughly liquefied by politics. If examples as dramatic as this exist, at well-known, highly-regarded institutions, for a paper _published by a Nobel Laureate_, it's not unreasonable to conclude that there's some degree of unobservable cases that were actually successfully blocked, along with chilling effects changing the direction of research in the first place.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/06/how-d...
https://thefederalist.com/2018/08/31/explosive-ivy-league-st...
You don't have to block science, if you can block the scientist.
Also take into account this is an official, open requirement. For something like that to manifest, it has to be preceded by a lot of bias.
I have been hearing for a long time about how scientists are scared to question climate change, or gender differences between men and women. From what I've seen, the reality is that there are pretty clear conclusions that we can draw in those areas: that climate change is human-caused and dangerous, and that purely biological, mental differences between men and women are usually overstated.
Frankly, I don't think that there's a particularly strong culture in science that is scared to ask those questions, and while cancel culture is a real thing, I don't think it's a real problem here. I do think there's a culture at the edge of science that doesn't like the answers researchers have found, and that is aggressively underestating the degree of confidence in those answers in the hopes that certain debates can be prolonged forever rather than used to influence policy changes right now.
In other words, pervasive doubt can be just as dangerous and just as politically motivated as pervasive certainty. There are certain topics (such as climate change) where we effectively know the right answer. Of course we never reach 100% certainty, of course there are areas where we want to learn more, but we're a heck of a lot closer to 100% certainty than we are to 50% certainty.
Because of that, some of the taboos you notice on the far-edges of the scientific community are actually justifiable defensive measures -- because running the clock down while introducing impossible standards of certainty is an effective strategy to circumvent scientific and social progress. We saw this happen with the sugar industry, we saw it happen with the tobacco industry, we saw it happen with race science, and we're seeing it happen today with gender studies, climate science, and anti-vaxers.
If you were to look at the subjects I just listed to pick out a common theme or lesson, I would say that it is, 'beware isolated demands for scientific rigor, particularly when those demands are selectively applied in ways that benefit a political or socioeconomic status quo.'
The problem is this is circular: you reached your conclusions based on the output of the academic system (presumably).
I used to think like this, that if most scientists agreed on something it was very likely to be true, that mistakes by whole fields were exceptionally rare and remarkable events, and that groupthink wasn't very powerful.
Over the years I've been faced with evidence that I was wrong about those things, over and over again. Now I think if most scientists agree on a topic where you can't run extremely rigorous experiments then it's quite likely to be wrong, that mistakes by whole fields are very common and groupthink is extremely powerful.
I do think there's a culture at the edge of science ...
Science is almost entirely funded by governments. In some fields there's more diversity than others, but it's notable that the fields that seem to have the biggest problems and most controversies attached are the ones where there's little private sector involvement. If groupthink sets in, and due to the lack of any feedback loops from outside the academic system that is clearly a problem in academia, then almost by definition anything that's taboo will be at the "edge of science" even if it's right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_march_through_the_ins...
That is a downright sinister use of moving the goal posts that effectively calls not actively ensuring suppression of all inevitable all succession related mutations an evil. Since how else do they hope to maintain a status quo post-mortrem? Merely leaving the replacements to decide would.
I wonder if there is a word for that "not-even remotely a crime" cast as something sinister vilification effort. Given an inverse Halo effect I wonder if most users are even aware that they are doing it.
What this article and other "dark web" people are doing is trying to play the victim and contriving a boogeyman. Just because science isn't shouting "omg women are inherently submissive" and "oh black people are better suited to manual labor", "dark webbies" make it sound like someone is suppressing research into any such area. Finally, climate change is real and people should get over it. If you look within the scientific community there's a huge range of diversity on opinions on every issue, including climate change. It's just not of the type "dark web" enthusiasts would like it to be because it's constrained by actual facts and not fantasies.
By the way, scientists tend to be left-leaning in general. It's not like there's some force out there "pushing them" to act like lefties. And no, the general leftward tendency of scientists doens't negatively impact research, because science isn't political. Climate change isn't a political issue, and neither are any of these other so-called "points". Science is about learning how nature works. The scientific establishment certainly has some flaws, most notable being the publish-or-perish regime that dominates many fields. But this dark web stuff is total nonsense that's only there to justify shitty beliefs or make people feel special and part of some "cool", "rebel" outsider group without having to put any work in.
Edit: oooh looks like i made some dark webbers salty. Downvote as many comments as you want, everyone is onto this charade. If you care about objectivity, fairness or justice then stop looking for boogeymen and easy narratives and focus on trying to make a difference for people who need help.
A bunch of liberals at American universities isn't enough to completely throw off something like climate change or genetic influences on behavior. A lot of eyes have looked at a lot of data.
So why do taboos against topics like race and gender biology exist?
Tell me why the gate is there.
So... the correct results that are being suppressed all skew to the political right and in favor of established social order? Really? You're sure that's not itself an observer bias?
The trick is to find one that will produce money for you as a researcher/investor even if it's an unpopular opinion (i.e. not reliant on investment / cooperation from mainstream players).
Suggestions?
Related, what's the best way to short cancel-culture-heavy endeavors? Seems like it predicts a much higher chance of failure in the long term.
> ensuring pursuit of severely one sided science for decades
More like a government level effort, not some random left leaning activism infesting science. So this is the social and economic policy they want.
Once you start trying to attack climate change, you lose all your credibility. This is something that has MOUNTAINS of evidence that is quite clear and gets even clearer with the passage of time.
> extremely strong, emergent cultural pressure against certain results and certain questions, which has been holding back a wide range of fields and ensuring pursuit of severely one sided science for decades.
Your comment:
> Once you start trying to attack climate change, you lose all your credibility
I am a firm believer in climate science, but this reaction suggests that the post you're replying to is correct.
There is a chilling effect on various lines of inquiry. For now, you can claim the information is out there, but any further writings could become more esoteric or limited. In the case of IQ, I don't think certain people want scientific answers as to why. They would rather assume IQ is highly malleable while they run social and economic experiments to find ways to equalize it and other factors that predict success.
The race IQ war is never going to go anyplace good for this site, and it attracts hard-core ideologues who proceed to do hard-core ideological battle, which is off topic here.
You could argue that some of his statements are bad jokes, but that is subjective.
To quote the guy 'rob' who made the comment on June 4, 2018 at 5:22 am :
------------------------------------------
Is he an old man? Yes. Does he not know when to keep his mouth shut? Yes. Are some of his views outdated? Yes. Get over it. 90% of the planet is as bad as him, if not worse. And 90% of your views will be outdated too in 20 years.
This never-ending desire of "the left" (which includes most of academia) to feel offended is far more damaging than the ramblings of an old man.
------------------------------------------
quote: “Some anti-Semitism is justified”
full quote: “Should you be allowed to make an anti-Semitic remark? Yes, because some anti-Semitism is justified. Just like some anti-Irish feeling is justified. If you can’t be criticized, that’s very dangerous. You lose the concept of a free society.”
They pounced on the unfortunate and/or unusual use of the word "justified", where the full context makes it clear he's talking about what you should be allowed to say, not what is correct. He means its existence in public discourse is "justified".
The question is who is most likely to be right, a nobel prize winning Ph.D. specialized in molecular biology, genetics and zoology, who worked 20 years at Harvard etc, etc....or you.
This is exactly the problem of cancel culture.
Just because he points out something you don't like you're suddenly an expert and somehow think he is now wrong.
What about double helix? Is he wrong about that too? Based on what? Why don't you have an opinion about that? Because you don't care? Even though your ability to judge the correctness of this research is the same as the race-related studies.
Even Watson admitted, before being fired, that the last straw that did that wasn't a well-supported scientific finding.
> In the case of IQ, I don't think certain people want scientific answers as to why
The people that don't want the answers as to why are the people that are busy trumpeting any reported finding of correlation that fits their political narrative, no matter how thinly supported, and insisting that it must be an inherent racial difference. The rest of the world is very much interested in both testing the correlations and seeking causal explanations.
It's quite obvious they don't want that, so they can continue to stretch the remaining gaps in knowledge enough to fit the entire blank slate hypothesis inside.
Is it possible for both sides of this matter to be right and wrong?
Absolutely, and that is mostly the case.
This, because of how f'd-up this climate change thing has become. It's a mess of indescribable proportions.
Why are deniers right?
Well, they are not. There's no denying this. Where they are right is in the outcome they are helping create: Taking action to "save the planet" is going nowhere.
How are deniers wrong?
Well, their belief system is completely skewed and devoid of scientific support. They believe in a fantasy they have woven over time.
OK, then.
Why are proponents right?
Well, because climate change is real. We have irrefutable data going back 800,000 years to show how things used to be on earth and how we influenced things in the last, say, 200 years. One look at atmospheric CO2 concentration and it is impossible to argue against it. And that's just the start.
How are proponents wrong then?
Well, because they have turned this thing into an ugly combination of politics and religion. It's as irrational as can be and EVERYONE is lying through their teeth.
The greatest lie is that we can actually "save the planet". It's an absolute pile of manure.
Politicians are the worst. They are using climate change as a battering ram to drive votes. And 100% of what they say are lies. And 100% of what they want to do is pointless and maybe even dangerous.
OK, you might say: That's crazy! What proof do you have to support this?
Easy: Exactly the same proof we have to show climate change is real. That is 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 data resulting from ice core sampling.
This is the point where people don't bother to do the work and either dismiss or attack the messenger (rather than to think, follow the argument and actually apply a bit of critical thinking).
Step 1: Check out the graph for the last 800,000 years of CO2 fluctuation. Here it is:
https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical...
Here's the source:
https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html
Step 2: Print that graph or open it in Photoshop and fit lines to the up and down cycles.
Step 3: Measure the slopes for up and down cycles of approximately 100 ppm of CO2 change
Step 4: Average the ups and average the downs.
What I get, in rough strokes, is (roughly):
25,000 years for a 100 ppm increase
50,000 years for a 100 ppm decrease
Step 5: Stop and think about this:
That, what you just calculated, is the NATURAL RATE OF CHANGE OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 WITHOUT HUMANITY AND OUR TECHNOLOGY ON THE PLANET.
That is crucial, absolutely crucial, in understanding just how ridiculous this has become.
It means the following: IF WE LEAVE THE PLANET IT WILL TAKE 50,000 YEAS FOR ATMOSPHERIC CO2 TO DECREASE BY 100ppm
What does that mean?
It means you are not going to fix it by:
- Switching to renewable energy sources everywhere on the planet
- Eliminating all fossil fuel-based transportation
- Switching the entire planet to electric cars
- Carbon tax credits
- Eliminating all plastic
- Taking humanity --all 7 billion of us-- back to medieval times
- Destroying the economies of every developed and developing nations
Why?
BECAUSE, EVEN IF YOU DO ALL OF THE ABOVE AND MORE, IT DOES NOT EQUAL ALL OF HUMANITY LEAVING THE PLANET.
Please think about this for more than a moment so you can start pushing for real conversations based on the truth rather than the ridiculous fantasies being pushed by both sides. This is beyond silly now. It's tragic.
We know that the natural down-slope rate of change is in the order of 50,000 years for 100 ppm without humanity, factories, cars, planes, etc.
What politicians and zealots are talking about is achieving somewhere in the order of 1000x better performance while all 7 billion people, our cities, factories, technology, etc. remains on the planet. I mean, you don't need to do any math to understand how silly this is.
All you have to do is look at these graphs, look at the rate of change and ask: How are we going to do 1,000 times better? How are we going to do that without using unimaginable amounts of energy and resources to the point that we are far more likely to kill everything on the planet than fix it.
These are planetary scale problems that require beyond planetary scale energy and resources to "fix". The sooner we start talking about the realities of climate change --that we can't fix it or "save the planet"-- and stop being hysterical about it, the sooner we can start talking about how to live with it and improve things to the extent possible. Which also means both sides will meet somewhere in the middle.
BTW, this does not mean we should not clean-up our act at all. We should. All we have to do is stop lying about the reasons for it. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to live in cleaner cities with renewable power sources, climate change and saving the planet just happen to not be among them, not if we want to talk about reality vs. fantasy.
BTW, don't take my word for it. Read this for an insight into how futile some of these crazy ideas actually are. This is from Google Research:
https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...
Prediction: Nobody is going to take the time to consider the above, much less do the work and understand. And by that I mean not one person from either side of the argument. Nobody seems to care about the truth, particularly not scientists who depend on bullshit grants and don't dare bring up the fact that we are wasting valuable time and resources focusing on nonsense. There's big money and great power to be had by riding the gravy train of lies on both sides. Sad. Truly sad.
However, I have to disagree that humanity has to leave the planet, or that it's impossible to fix. I will agree that it's very unlikely to be fixed or mitigated to a decent amount before disaster happens, but that's because of politics and human stupidity, not because it's not possible.
More CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't have to equal higher average global temperatures. CO2 holds in energy from the Sun. So the answer is simple: decrease the amount of sunlight. There's already ideas of how to do this, such as "solar shades". Basically, put a bunch of things in orbit that block some of the Sun's light, so less of it strikes the atmosphere. Now, even with the higher levels of CO2, less energy is entering the system that will be retained by the greenhouse effect. Of course, planetary engineering ideas like this are megaprojects and would require huge amounts of money to do, and probably international coordination, which seems unlikely given the terrible state of world politics at the moment.
The answer is simple: We cannot fix this. Because any attempt would require energy and resources beyond planetary scale. Which means we are far more likely to kill everything on this planet than to fix it.
I am not a climate scientist either. I am, however, an engineer, and I have a pretty solid handle on Physics. Conservation of Energy alone says we cannot fix this.
BTW, by "fix this" I mean, any faster than the natural rate of about 50,000 years for a reduction of 100ppm.
If you take the time to read the Google paper I linked you'll find the statement that sent me on a path to truly try to understand this many years ago. They said, paraphrasing:
"Even if we convert all energy generation on the entire planet to the most optimal forms of renewable energy, not only will we not see atmospheric CO2 levels decline or level-off, they will continue to rise exponentially".
This was a conclusion exactly opposite what the researchers went into this "knowing". I appreciate they were honest enough to publish this and actually expose just how confused we've become about this concept of saving the planet. It simply isn't going to happen. Not in a generation, not in a hundred, not even in a thousand.
You see, it's that pesky bit of data: 50,000 years for a reduction of 100 ppm. Without humanity.
This means that if humans stay on the planet, even if population growth stopped, and we magically --because it would require magic-- became carbon neutral, it would still take at least 50,000 years to drop 100 ppm, or, more than likely, 100,000 or 200,000, pick a number.
This is equivalent to trying to remove smoke from your kitchen with a small fan while you continue to burn the food you are cooking on the frying pan. You just can't do it. You have to stop cooking and then wait for the small fan do do the job over a couple of hours. If you want it done faster you have to stop cooking and use a much larger fan (more energy). If you, on the other hand, continue to burn your food and install a bigger fan, you may or may not clear the smoke. If you do, it will likely take just as long or longer.
This isn't difficult stuff to understand. It's actually the most common sense science I've seen in a long time. The graphs tell a story. All we have to do is see it, read it and understand it.
Didn't a female brown university professor's study on transgenders get "canceled" because it offended some people not too long ago?
Didn't Bret Weinstein, a biology professor, at some college in oregon get "canceled" not too long ago?
Didn't Jordan Peterson get "canceled" not too long ago?
Academia and journalists have been canceling people for a while now. Was WSJ asleep for the past decade?
If you are that well versed in the lives of weinstein and peterson, you most definitely are aware the first. But being as woke as you are, you probably can't admit it to yourself.
> but Bret Weinstein was fired because his behaviour didn't reflect his employer's values, not because of the science he was doing
Weinstein wasn't fired, he resigned after getting a settlement from his university since the university couldn't provide for his safety from racist mobs.
> I also don't think Peterson is having particular difficulty doing scientific work, nor is the actual research he does "taboo".
You don't think? I suspect Peterson would disagree. You sure his research into political correctness, authoritarianism, identity politics, evils of postmodernism, etc aren't "taboo"? If it wasn't taboo, jordan peterson wouldn't be so well known. He'd be just another no-name professor somewhere in canada.
Instead of saying racism, hate and cancel culture is bad, you are defending racism, hate and cancel culture. Which may get support and upvotes in echo chambers online, but is laughed at in the real world. Reality will ultimately trump fantasy.
So I suppose as long as these people are trying to tell the truth as they see it good luck to them. But articles like this are fundamentally a cross between advertising and propaganda so aren't much use to the general public. There is a dire need for some political balance in academia as it is a sheltered institution that by and large doesn't have to deal with the cost of things in the same way as broader society does; so it is good to see someone pushing the right wing as long as they are playing by the rules of honesty and citation which is what academics is about.
The fact that every woman they invited declined to give a talk is a huge red flag.