Category Archives: Science And Society

Freeman Dyson

on climate:

When I was in high-school in England in the 1930s, we learned that continents had been drifting according to the evidence collected by Wegener. It was a great mystery to understand how this happened, but not much doubt that it happened. So it came as a surprise to me later to learn that there had been a consensus against Wegener. If there was a consensus, it was among a small group of experts rather than among the broader public. I think that the situation today with global warming is similar. Among my friends, I do not find much of a consensus. Most of us are sceptical and do not pretend to be experts. My impression is that the experts are deluded because they have been studying the details of climate models for 30 years and they come to believe the models are real. After 30 years they lose the ability to think outside the models. And it is normal for experts in a narrow area to think alike and develop a settled dogma. The dogma is sometimes right and sometimes wrong. In astronomy this happens all the time, and it is great fun to see new observations that prove the old dogmas wrong.

Unfortunately things are different in climate science because the arguments have become heavily politicised. To say that the dogmas are wrong has become politically incorrect. As a result, the media generally exaggerate the degree of consensus and also exaggerate the importance of the questions.

It’s not a new interview, but if anything, it’s even more true now than then. The “consensus” has broken down considerably in the interim.

Climate Skeptics

How and when did you become one?

A lot of interesting responses.

As some note there, to me the biggest deal with the release of the CRU data five years ago wasn’t (just) the duplicity and unscientific behavior revealed in the emails, but the utter crap that was the source code of the computer models. It was clear that it was not done by anyone familiar with computer science, numerical methods, or modeling, and the notion that we should have any confidence whatsoever in their output was societally insane. In terms of Matthews’ paper, I’d put myself somewhere between “lukewarmer” and “moderate skeptic.”

[Update a couple minutes later]

Starting to read through the comments. Here’s just one horror story:

Most of the claims being made by climate change advocates appear to run contrary to basic meteorology. As I’ve been attacked personally and professionally for offering contrary views, I decided to leave the field. I will defend my Atmospheric Science PhD thesis and walk away. It’s become clear to me that it is not possible to undertake independent research in any area that touches upon climate change if you have to make your living as a professional scientist on government grant money or have to rely on getting tenure at a university. The massive group think that I have encountered on this topic has cost me my career, many colleagues and has damaged my reputation among the few people I know in the field. I’m leaving to work in the financial industry. It’s a sad day when you feel that you have to leave a field that you are passionately interested in because you fear that you won’t be able to find a job once your views become widely known. Until free thought is allowed in the climate sciences, I will consider myself a skeptic of catastrophic human induced global warming.

Yup. Totally, totally politicized. It’s not a science any more. Unless you think that Lysenko was a scientist.

Uncle Sam, The Nutritionist

He’s a terrible one:

Here’s a bet: someday saturated fats — full fat butter, whole milk, tallow, and other animal fats — will be welcomed back, just as cholesterol has been. Until then, plenty of damage will be done to our health and the way we eat.

The American Heart Association and the U.S. government have been recommending a low-cholesterol, low-saturated fat diet for more than half a century. In 1961, when the AHA’s guidelines first came out, one in seven Americans were obese. Now one in three are.

As I’ve often noted, these quacks killed my father thirty-five years ago.

The New Cholesterol Guidelines

This is progress, but it’s still unscientific advice:

In December, the advisory panel said in its preliminary recommendations that cholesterol is no longer “considered a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.” That would be a change from previous guidelines, which said Americans eat too much cholesterol. This follows increasing medical research showing how much cholesterol is in your bloodstream is more complicated than once thought, and depends more on the kinds of fats that you eat. Medical groups have moved away from specific targets for cholesterol in the diet in recent years.

It’s unclear if the recommendation will make it into the final guidelines. Dr. Robert Eckel, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver who is a past president of the American Heart Association, told Reuters that there’s not enough evidence to make good recommendations on cholesterol right now, but “no evidence doesn’t mean the evidence is no.”

People can enjoy high-cholesterol egg yolks in moderation, but “a three- to four-egg omelet isn’t something I’d ever recommend to a patient at risk for cardiovascular disease,” he says.

Junk science.

And then there’s this:

Of course, all fat must be consumed in moderation, which is why many dieticians recommend eating only a few egg yolks each week. And for patients with a history of vascular disease, keeping track of the eggs they eat is critical to their health. A study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that patients with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease should limit their cholesterol intake from foods to about 200 milligrams a day.

Despite their fat and cholesterol content, egg yolks are a good source of vitamin A and iron, along with a host of other nutrients.

It’s not “despite” that. Saturated fat is good for you. It’s the healthiest kind of fat, and trying to replace it has been a public-health disaster. One battle at a time, I suppose.

On Climate Change

…the science battle rages.

It would sure be nice if some of these self-identified climate “scientists” would learn some statistics. And stop calling people who understand statistics names like “denier” and “anti-science.”

[Monday-morning update]

Inside the latest global warming scandal:

This kind of thing is going on all over the world. It is one of the reasons why the satellite data (which, however, go back only to 1979) are so important: they have not been corrupted.

Yup.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

Soviet-style disinformation dominates the climate “debate”:

Why is it that when a political figure makes a misstatement about a global warming-related issue, which happens many times every day, no government scientific agency or leading university scientist ever corrects them?

For example, all climate modelers correctly label their speculations of future world temperatures as “projections,” meaning that they have no validated forecast skill. Yet politicians, mass media, and the public treat the models as providing temperature forecasts or predictions. Because this misusage is never corrected, politicians cheerily continue to base expensive public policy on it.

Another example: carbon dioxide, as an essential factor in photosynthesis, is the elixir of planetary life, yet politicians dub it a “pollutant.” Similarly, badging the theoretical global warming problem as a “carbon” issue represents scientific illiteracy because it fails to distinguish the element “carbon” from the molecule “carbon dioxide,” and deliberately encourages the public to confuse a colorless, odorless, beneficial gas with soot. Again, climate-alarmist scientists say little or nothing to correct these mistakes.

Many in the public understand that Hendricks’ behavior is typical of politicians everywhere. But most people do not recognize that fraud is also being directly committed in support of this travesty by many of today’s self-appointed “leading climate scientists.” For when they are not directly massaging the data relied upon in their scientific writings, these scientists often report their findings in ways that are intended to deceive the reader into believing that dangerous global warming exists, or will shortly exist. The UN’s climate reports are the magnum opus of this style of operation.

Yes.