Category Archives: Mathematics

Health, Law, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Progress On Aging

12 Comments

…and the resistance to it. I think he’s right that it’s not based on science or logic, but philosophy. Some people (including Isaac Asimov) think that death is necessary, almost to the point of ultimately worshiping it. Of course, some of it could be a recognition, conscious or otherwise, of the supreme disruption to many accepted institutions that it would entail, including pensions, life-time appointments, death taxes, etc.

And I hate when they use the word “immortality.” I think an eternal life would be far worse than death, but that’s not the goal; it’s simply living as long as we want to continue to live.

Update a couple minutes later]

Sort of related: GM Salmonella cures cancer. Cool. But the anti-science left will oppose it because GM.

Law, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Lawsuit Update

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Tomorrow is the deadline for filing amicus briefs on our behalf. Judith Curry has filed another one. I haven’t read it yet, but I expect it to be good.

[Update a while later]

Reading through it, it would seem to make a strong case for her own defamation, though she’s above that.

[Update late morning]

Some thoughts on “alternate facts” in the climate debate:

My tweet asked the climate scientists on my feed whether they agreed with the statement specifically the use of the word “all”. My expectation was that a reasonable core of climate scientists would agree that Dr. Mann had overstepped the science. This was not the case. Instead, what I got was overwhelming support for Dr. Mann with not a single non-skeptic initially commenting negatively. It was as if Dr. Mann was the pope and the climate community his congregation. Nothing he said could be considered to be anything less than the truth, even if it took huge convolutions of logic to make it true. In the last couple weeks the term “alternative facts” has entered our lexicon. Well in the next few paragraphs I want to unpack Dr. Mann’s “alternative fact” and see if it is indeed defensible. Then I will go into what I feel this means for the climate change debate.

RTWT.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

The “Hottest Year On Record”

26 Comments

What are they hiding?

I was very gratified to see that all of the climate BS on the White House web site is now gone.

[Update a few minutes later]

Obama did leave one more last-minute turd in the punch bowl; he outlawed three-way bulbs. That should be one of the first things that Trump undoes. In fact, Congress should repeal that idiotic law.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The “Warmest Year On Record”

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#ProTip to “scientists.” We have never been heading into a “known” climate. At least they included some cautionary voices, from people like Christie, Pielke, and Curry, even if they shoved them to the end.

And speaking of Judith, she has some thoughts on the “social costs” of carbon:

The bottom line is: water, food, energy. Heck, even the folks attending Davos get it. People need it and large numbers of people want more of it. And there are more and more people all the time. A single minded focus on reducing CO2 emissions neglects a lot of real problems facing many nations across the globe.

Climate variability and change impacts water, food and energy. But there isn’t much we can do to influence the climate on the timescale of the 21st century — however much we have impacted the climate over the past 70 years or so, those impacts (large or small) will work their way through climate system over the next centuries as the oceans act as a big flywheel on the climate system.

Back to the question posed by Revkin: Will Trump’s climate team accept any social cost of carbon? Well, I hope not.

I hope not, too. The uncertainty is far too great.

[Update a while later]

As usual, the “threats to science” come from the Left.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Solar Power

7 Comments

It’s getting more cost effective, but it will always need load leveling. But I found this amusing:

Looking even further ahead, if we want a stable climate, humanity must bring net carbon emissions to zero.

There is no good reason to believe bringing net carbon emissions to zero is either a necessary or a sufficient condition for a “stable climate.” This planet has never had a stable climate, and it’s delusional to imagine that we know how to give it one now.

Speaking of which, Professor Curry has some thoughts on “skin in the game.”

If you are a weather forecaster in the private sector, you will quickly lose your clients if your forecasts are consistently wrong. Daily forecasts are evaluated daily; seasonal forecasts are evaluated several times each year. Clearly weather forecasters have skin in the game in terms of their forecasts.

With regards to climate projections, the predictions being made now will be irrelevant in 2100, which is their target prediction date. In fact, the forecasts become obsolete every 5 years or so, as new model versions are implemented. Recent attempts to evaluate climate model projections in CMIP5 during the early 21st century have shown striking discrepancies between model projections and observations.

Defenders of the climate models and climate model projections argue that climate models shouldn’t be expected to verify on decadal time scales.

In other words, climate modelers have no skin in the game in terms of losing something if their forecasts turn out to be wrong. In fact, there is actually a perversion of skin in the game, whereby scientists are rewarded (professional recognition, grants, etc.) if they make alarming predictions (even if they are easily shown not to comport with observations).

Let’s give them more money!

Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Judith Curry

19 Comments

…has resigned her tenured faculty position:

A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.

How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus career suicide (I have worked through these issues with a number of skeptical young scientists).

Despite the fact that she was protected by tenure, I suspect that she will be able to speak out even more effectively now.

[Update Thursday morning (London]

Thoughts from Mark Steyn.

Saturday-morning update]

Tucker Carlson interviews her.

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, General Science, History, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

A New Little Ice Age

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Has it already started?

Earth’s new climate will affect much more than the energy sector. Abdussamatov leaves us with a dire warning.

“The world must start preparing for the new Little Ice Age right now. Politicians and business leaders must make full economic calculations of the impact of the new Little Ice Age on everything — industry, agriculture, living conditions, development. The most reasonable way to fight against the new Little Ice Age is a complex of special steps aimed at support of economic growth and energy-saving production to adapt mankind to the forthcoming period of deep cooling.”

An overheated planet has never been a threat, say climate skeptics, not today, not ever in human history. An underheated planet, in contrast, is a threat humans have repeatedly faced over the last millennium, and now we’re due again.

To me, the evidence is quite a bit more compelling than it is for warming. He’s relying on history and empirical data, not computer models.