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Heretical thoughts about science and society (2005)

37 点作者 hypertexthero11 个月前

12 条评论

npunt11 个月前
Smart analysis that aged like milk, given the subsequent 17 years of record heat trends. This is a good example of the dangers of being too in the weeds of complexity to not see the big simple picture, the sometimes blinding bias of contrarianism, and how methods of science alone are insufficient guides to solving all of society&#x27;s problems.<p>One might come to a much clearer conclusion about carbon by looking at the incentives of societies to consume carbon, our struggles with collective decision making, and our very strong tendency to create tragedies of the commons.<p>If you follow the &#x27;needs more research&#x27; approach and wait until all the data are in (as Freeman Dyson essentially proposes here), you may be way too late to address and overcome the problem. In other words, science is a method of finding certainty, but often we find ourselves in situations that demand acting from positions of uncertainty, where we have to rely more on judgment calls based our understanding of human behavior.<p>Great points about the need for heretical science tho! Sometimes heretics are right, just not in this case.
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delichon11 个月前
<p><pre><code> To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per year. Good topsoil contains about ten percent biomass, [Schlesinger, 1977], so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil. </code></pre> Improving the atmosphere by improving the soil, a virtuous circle. We can measure global warming mitigation by tons of biomass created.
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jiggawatts11 个月前
In the opening paragraphs, he confused weather models and climate models. They’re not even remotely the same codes! One uses fluid dynamics, the other has inputs such as the precise absorption spectrum of isotopic variants of ionised molecules at low pressures!<p>We can’t predict where the bubbles will form in a boiling pot of water, but we can predict that it’ll boil at 100 degrees C.
hscontinuity11 个月前
It is naive of humans to believe we can accurately model something we cannot measure against. Until a time machine enables someone to vastly scale back climate data, we have a huge missing gap and continually rely on the short term models for association, whereby those models are a collaboration of data collected over roughly 400 years. The last 250 are better statistically and the last 50 are exceptionally accurate.<p>But to levy them upon data extrapolated without correlation is where science falls short. You can surmise the corroboration between soil, ice, and methane samples as well as biological data from the eons; but piecing together a picture is more akin to believing the extremely faint stars you see in the night sky - are still there.<p>We tend to believe what is in front of us not realizing that change is happening all around us, every moment, every microsecond. Nothing ever stays the same. This is true of climate change as it is humans.<p>The debate on what to do about change and how much humans have potentially and&#x2F;or are contributing is an entirely different discussion. With technology perhaps we&#x27;ll coalesce. It is otherwise far more likely that the planet and the cosmos could make it so we can&#x27;t.
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tuetnsuppe11 个月前
It always amazes me how well this 1982 model created by ExxonMobil scientists has held up <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.documentcloud.org&#x2F;documents&#x2F;2805576-1982-Exxon-Memo-to-Management-About-CO2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.documentcloud.org&#x2F;documents&#x2F;2805576-1982-Exxon-M...</a>
causality011 个月前
Man, has HN grown up? A bunch of thoughtful, critical comments about something written by Freeman Dyson and not even a single example of cow-eyed worship. Never thought I&#x27;d see the day. I&#x27;m proud of you guys.
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everyone11 个月前
It&#x27;s a meme at this point for successful physicists to go crazy at a certain advanced age and rant on fields they dont know much about. Eg. Linus Pauling and vitamin C, Roger Penrose and consciousness, this.
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westcort11 个月前
Heretics are sometimes right, but not every time. Few know that Manabe’s 1972 paper proposed a solution of reducing insolation to offset a doubling in carbon dioxide levels. And that could still work, but like the solution of carbon sequestration in topsoil, probably will not be done in time before tipping points are irreversibly triggered.<p>Dyson believed that, like Hari Seldon in the Foundation series, suppressing doom-saying would help bring about a desired future of galactic conquest for humanity.<p>It is worth noting that he engineered the firebombing of Berlin. The pattern of bombing was designed by him to start a kind of fire tornado to consume the city. With that experience, perhaps he knew something about the importance of influencing scientific opinion to steer things toward a desired end.<p>Edit: I was wrong on a few details (the firestorm was not in Berlin, it happened in Dresden and Hamburg; some of Manabe’s publications were published in 1971; and Dyson was not the only one to work on the firebombing math)
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dang11 个月前
Related:<p><i>Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society (2005) [video]</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34092635">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34092635</a> - Dec 2022 (3 comments)<p><i>Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society, by Freeman Dyson</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43793">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43793</a> - Aug 2007 (9 comments)
fromMars11 个月前
Not a compelling article especially one from 2005. I think history has already proven Dyson wrong.<p>Sean Carroll has had numerous excellent podcasts on this subject. As I understand, in general, these climate models have actually underpredicted the rate of changes we have seen so far.
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andrelaszlo11 个月前
Previously on HN: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43793">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43793</a>
thimkerbell11 个月前
Title should include the author, if author is famous.