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From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk_at_rockandwater.net> subject: Re: [Paddlewise] Thank you global warming Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2009 07:25:12 -0500 · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:52 PDT

As a scientist, I am continually amazed that people who lack basic
literacy in the field have the audacity to not only think they understand
complex issues like global warming, but the outright arrogance to assert
that they can participate in the scientific conversation despite the fact
that they don't speak the language it's conducted in.

To explain: there are a multitude of basic physical concepts that must be
mastered before one can grasp a subject like climatology.  The list is long,
but might reasonably include things like adibiatic cooling, ocean currents,
Rayleigh scattering, planetary albedo, jet streams, ionization,
and hundreds of others.  Yet we frequently find -- as in this discussion
thread on this list -- that there are people holding strong opinions on
the topic who don't understand these concepts -- and therefore do not
know what those opinions mean.  (We know that they don't understand
the concepts because their own words convincingly demonstrate so.)
These opinions aren't worth refuting: they can be summarily dismissed,
because they're based on junk.  Or worse.

	That is not even good enough to be wrong.
		--- Enrico Fermi

And grasping all those concepts is still not enough.  They're merely
the building blocks, the conceptual foundation, and they're related to
each other, and to the larger general processes of climate, by complex
mathematical relationships.  THAT is the language in which the discussion
is held, and anyone without the requisite level of mathematical literacy
(e.g., multivariate stochastic processes) simply can't participate.
They are as wholly illiterate in this field as I am in (to pick one of
many) contemporary Italian poetry.  I can't read Italian.  I know very
little about poetry.  I have no idea what the hell is going on in
that discipline.  And anyone without a sufficiently advanced mathematical
background has no idea what the hell is going on with climate change.

	The greatest shortcoming of the human race is man's inability
	to understand the exponential function.
		--- Albert A. Bartlett

I don't entirely blame these people for their lack of knowledge; I could
go on (and have gone on) at great length about the appalling lapses of
educational systems that actually permit students to escape high school
without -- at minimum -- achieving a satisfactory understanding of basic
calculus and introductory physics.  Anyone lacking these is clearly
scientifically illiterate, and unfortunately, that currently covers
the overwhelming majority of the population.  But whatever the underlying
cause(s), the reality is that these people are very ill-equipped to
discern fabricated crap (e.g., creationism) from actual science
(e.g., evolution) and we as a society end up spending an absurd amount
of resources -- not on making actual forward progress in scientific
research, but on preventing it from being dragged back into the Dark Ages
by the superstitious, the ignorant, the exploitive, and the just plain crazy.
(There are entire web sites devoted to this issue; one relevant to
this discussion is climatedenial.org, which is written by someone who
clearly has far more patience than I do.)

What I blame them for is not *admitting* their lack of knowledge,
for pretending that they actually understand the discipline when in
fact all they're doing is mouthing talking points, repeating
long-discredited assertions, or spouting gibberish.  This is
irresponsible behavior, and at least to me, highly annoying behavior.
I view it with the same disdain that I would view a serious assertion
that the earth is flat: it's a complete waste of everyone's time.

So here's my advice: unless you [generic you] can -- right here,
right now, without looking anything up -- state the three laws of
thermodynamics, explain the carbon dioxide phase diagram, provide an
example of a perturbation function, and solve a partial differential
equation, then you should really stuff a sock in it when it comes
to climate change, because you don't understand it.  Not really.
You're welcome to change that: in fact, that'd be be an entirely
good thing, for you and for society in general.  But it'll take a
lot of time and effort.  And until them, you should really be listening
to and learning from the people who've already done that.

	This is precisely what common sense is for, to be jarred into
	uncommon sense.  One of the chief services which mathematics has
	rendered the human race in the past century is to put 'common
	sense' where it belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the dusty
	canister labeled 'discarded nonsense.'
		--- Eric Temple Bell

So here is the bottom line on global warming -- from someone who
has actually read a decent chunk of the original research, not just
the synopses published in the popular press or the propaganda spouted
by the denialists:

	It's real.

	Our actions are driving it.

	Reality keeps turning out to be worse than the most
		pessimistic predictions.

	Reality keeps turning out to be getting worse faster than
		the most pessimistic predictions.

	It's not clear that even if we do everything we can do,
		that it'll be enough to slow it down.  But it
		is clear that we should have done it yesterday.

---Rsk
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