Steve Olson (the author) earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Yale University in 1978.
I also earned a bachelor’s degree in physics. I say he’s the slave owner keeping us from having a thriving economy based on fossil fuels. Why don’t I get an opinion piece in USA Today?
I notice the retconning of the 1981 Mount Saint Helens eruption features prominently. According to the newly revised history, an ex-governor of Washington state set the off limits zone around Mount Saint Helens too close because Big Wood wanted it that way in order to chop some old growth forest not because the governor’s people didn’t think the eruption would get out that far.
If posterity retcons history as much as this author does, then why should we try? “History” would praise or condemn us on the basis of some fantasy narrative that we have nothing to do with. It would be a waste of our time to care.
And this quote is beautiful:
In her new book Great Tide Rising: Towards Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change, Oregon State University philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore calls for the use of moral reasoning, where people “affirm what they think is true or good or right and then, the crucial step, back their claims with reasons.”
That sounds so much better than calling it Begging the Question or circular reasoning.
But the danger zones were much too close to the volcano
The bit about Mt St Helens got me too. How were they supposed to know what was too close and what wasn’t? Following his links, even David A. Johnston, the man who got the government to close areas off, put himself in harms way and was killed.
I guess we will have to read the author’s new book to see the evidence that larger safety zones were rejected because of Big Wood and that everyone knew how big the eruption was going to be. I’m surprised that predicting when and how big volcano eruptions would be was so accurate back in 1980.
Under worst case scenarios, they might have had to evacuate half the state. Can’t believe they didn’t do all that they could.
Writing a book, eh? That explains the sudden surge of crazy. Well, if I start seeing the slave owning climate denier angle in internet discussions combined with peculiar digressions into Mount Saint Helens, I know where it came from.
Or “drylabbing” — decide what answer you want to get, and then figure out what the data must be in order to reach it.
Sounds like a sophisticated inverse scattering or statistical imputation technique. Too bad I didn’t know about that when I was an undergrad.
I’ll be fair to Ms. Moore – in philosophy and claims of moral value, “true” has to refer to the truth of the moral claim, not truth-as-in-physics; not “true” as in “we know this to be true about the world”, because a moral claim is not a claim about the world in itself, as such.
Moral claims and valuations are entirely distinct from physical/natural-science claims of truth, though the latter normally informs the former, and thus while “affirm what they think is true or good or right” is bollocks in a physical question it’s all you can get in a moral question.
(In physics, what is true is true no matter what anyone thinks; in moral reasoning, all we can have is what people think.)
What she’s really saying is “state your moral position and then give us reasons to think you’re right“, which is about as grounded and strong as moral philosophy can get, since it’s necessarily a non-scientific arena. (Not, note, anti-, just non-scientific.)
(This is also why, as a trained philosopher myself, I laugh at people like bioethicists, who continually forget that in their overwrought, under-argued pronouncements…)
I’d go further and say that physics, and science in general, isn’t about “truth.” Thinking it is is at the core of the pseudo-religious nonsense about climate “deniers.”
Verdict first, trial afterwards! And, we are truly through the looking glass. Outstanding.
Gives one pause, dunnit? How much “history” we take for granted is bollocks?
So-called “climate skeptics” are really just Democrats?
When I see someone talk about numerous refugees _today_ from lands stressed by climate change, I can see right off the bat that there’s no point in listening.
When are we tarring and feathering anti-nuclear activists?
These articles always say that climate change can be stopped, when it really can’t. At best, they should be claiming that human impact on the climate can be altered. If science is really on the AGW alarmist side, they should be pedantic in clearly stating that humans are not the only thing impacting climate and place current climate conditions in historical context of being in an interglacial of unknown duration with the disappearance of ice sheets caused by natural warming. But I guess sensationalist fear mongering is science these days.
It should be pointed out that AGW alarmist seem to believe the sun revolves around them and they can control it.
There certainly is the individual who has a certain amount of hubris to think they can change vast, macro processes such as the environment or the economy by simple inputs.
I wonder if Steve Olson took this new discovery into account. I doubt it as it doesn’t fit his narrative:
Until now, most scientists have thought that a warming planet would cause plants to release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which in turn would cause more warming.
But in a study published Wednesday in Nature, scientists showed that plants were able to adapt their respiration to increases in temperature over long periods of time, releasing only 5 percent more carbon dioxide than they did under normal conditions.
Based on measurements of short-term temperature responses in this study and others, the scientists expected that the plants would increase their respiration by nearly five times that much.
The comments on that article were, however, encouraging.
Steve Olson (the author) earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Yale University in 1978.
I also earned a bachelor’s degree in physics. I say he’s the slave owner keeping us from having a thriving economy based on fossil fuels. Why don’t I get an opinion piece in USA Today?
I notice the retconning of the 1981 Mount Saint Helens eruption features prominently. According to the newly revised history, an ex-governor of Washington state set the off limits zone around Mount Saint Helens too close because Big Wood wanted it that way in order to chop some old growth forest not because the governor’s people didn’t think the eruption would get out that far.
If posterity retcons history as much as this author does, then why should we try? “History” would praise or condemn us on the basis of some fantasy narrative that we have nothing to do with. It would be a waste of our time to care.
And this quote is beautiful:
That sounds so much better than calling it Begging the Question or circular reasoning.
But the danger zones were much too close to the volcano
The bit about Mt St Helens got me too. How were they supposed to know what was too close and what wasn’t? Following his links, even David A. Johnston, the man who got the government to close areas off, put himself in harms way and was killed.
I guess we will have to read the author’s new book to see the evidence that larger safety zones were rejected because of Big Wood and that everyone knew how big the eruption was going to be. I’m surprised that predicting when and how big volcano eruptions would be was so accurate back in 1980.
Under worst case scenarios, they might have had to evacuate half the state. Can’t believe they didn’t do all that they could.
Writing a book, eh? That explains the sudden surge of crazy. Well, if I start seeing the slave owning climate denier angle in internet discussions combined with peculiar digressions into Mount Saint Helens, I know where it came from.
Or “drylabbing” — decide what answer you want to get, and then figure out what the data must be in order to reach it.
Sounds like a sophisticated inverse scattering or statistical imputation technique. Too bad I didn’t know about that when I was an undergrad.
I’ll be fair to Ms. Moore – in philosophy and claims of moral value, “true” has to refer to the truth of the moral claim, not truth-as-in-physics; not “true” as in “we know this to be true about the world”, because a moral claim is not a claim about the world in itself, as such.
Moral claims and valuations are entirely distinct from physical/natural-science claims of truth, though the latter normally informs the former, and thus while “affirm what they think is true or good or right” is bollocks in a physical question it’s all you can get in a moral question.
(In physics, what is true is true no matter what anyone thinks; in moral reasoning, all we can have is what people think.)
What she’s really saying is “state your moral position and then give us reasons to think you’re right“, which is about as grounded and strong as moral philosophy can get, since it’s necessarily a non-scientific arena. (Not, note, anti-, just non-scientific.)
(This is also why, as a trained philosopher myself, I laugh at people like bioethicists, who continually forget that in their overwrought, under-argued pronouncements…)
I’d go further and say that physics, and science in general, isn’t about “truth.” Thinking it is is at the core of the pseudo-religious nonsense about climate “deniers.”
Verdict first, trial afterwards! And, we are truly through the looking glass. Outstanding.
Gives one pause, dunnit? How much “history” we take for granted is bollocks?
So-called “climate skeptics” are really just Democrats?
When I see someone talk about numerous refugees _today_ from lands stressed by climate change, I can see right off the bat that there’s no point in listening.
Climate sensitivity anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
He has a point.
When are we tarring and feathering anti-nuclear activists?
These articles always say that climate change can be stopped, when it really can’t. At best, they should be claiming that human impact on the climate can be altered. If science is really on the AGW alarmist side, they should be pedantic in clearly stating that humans are not the only thing impacting climate and place current climate conditions in historical context of being in an interglacial of unknown duration with the disappearance of ice sheets caused by natural warming. But I guess sensationalist fear mongering is science these days.
It should be pointed out that AGW alarmist seem to believe the sun revolves around them and they can control it.
There certainly is the individual who has a certain amount of hubris to think they can change vast, macro processes such as the environment or the economy by simple inputs.
I wonder if Steve Olson took this new discovery into account. I doubt it as it doesn’t fit his narrative:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/03/17/scientists-discover-a-good-climate-surprise/
The comments on that article were, however, encouraging.