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Heretical thoughts about science and society (2005)

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Re: Heretical thoughts about science and society (2005)

#11

Post by abecedarius »

majormajor wrote: post #9
delichon wrote: post #5

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. Improving the atmosphere by improving the soil, a virtuous circle. We can measure global warming mitigation by tons of biomass c…

"we only" need to do that, huh? > 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. Changes in farming practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow, cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this. If we plant crops without plowing the soil, more of the biomass goes into roots which stay in the…

> What about all the land that isn't even farmed or managed?

Dyson was talking about "half" the Earth's land area. https://www.fao.org/sustainability/news/detail/en/c/1274219/ says "Globally agricultural land area is approximately five billion hectares, or 38 percent of the global land surface." That's surprising to me too -- maybe they're wrong?

Re: Heretical thoughts about science and society (2005)

#12

Post by heisenzombie »

npunt wrote: post #7
npunt wrote: post #4

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's problems. One might come to a much clearer conclusion about carbon by looking at the in…

Another factor I think that plays in here is a bit of hubris about who has access to truth. Someone of Freeman Dyson's caliber is used to being the one who can see further into complexity to find truth. When someone has these talents, they tend to see all problems as problems they have special access to. If they see a lot of people without their abilities believing a thing with a lot of complexity, this creates the c…

Yes, there is certainly an archetype of "Accomplished physicist who has ventured outside their area of expertise and is patronizing the locals with confident proclamations that `this would all be trivial if you knew math better and made these obvious simplifying assumptions`".

Occasionally a figure like that is actually correct — for example, Schrödinger bringing the concept of entropy over to biology and thereby influencing Francis Crick to search for the gene.

But many more are, to put it politely, not Schrödinger.

Re: Heretical thoughts about science and society (2005)

#13

Post by acdha »

majormajor wrote: post #9
delichon wrote: post #5

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. Improving the atmosphere by improving the soil, a virtuous circle. We can measure global warming mitigation by tons of biomass c…

"we only" need to do that, huh? > 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. Changes in farming practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow, cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this. If we plant crops without plowing the soil, more of the biomass goes into roots which stay in the…

> Oh, so it might not be practical, without much math into whether or not it's an easy "only" or an "actually this would be far harder than other approaches" idea?

That part was eye-opening: had he simply gone to Princeton’s library, he would have learned that people have been studying this concept and had a far more precise understanding for how effective it would be than simply guessing. This is especially disappointing given the stakes: if he was right, the outcome is that we do it quickly and put the issue to rest; if he was wrong, billions of peoples’ lives are upended.

Re: Heretical thoughts about science and society (2005)

#14

Post by npunt »

acdha wrote: post #10
npunt wrote: post #4

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's problems. One might come to a much clearer conclusion about carbon by looking at the in…

I also find it interesting how he correctly recognized that the problem is not simple fluid dynamics but then made two major mistakes assuming that he correctly identified all of the complicating factors and concluding that he had a more accurate understanding than the thousands of people who’d been working in the field for decades. This is practically insulting when he just asserts that climate scientists are stayin…

100%, it reads like 'I found a clever flaw and followed it up with an unrigorous conclusion because I was blinded by my cleverness'.

His conclusion that oh the soil can recapture carbon also reminded me of generally smart & accomplished but non-expert people online these days that lean on unrealistic tech solutions they just heard about as being an adequate mitigation for climate change. 'Oh just have ships burn bunker fuel again to put sulfur in the air', 'we can seed the clouds', 'we'll surely build technologies like carbon capture that will solve this'.

Rather than fall into the nerd snipe trap of trying to analyze these technologies and their deployment and effect, it's far easier to see it for what it really is: cope. People don't want to face up to how existentially scary and out of control things are in our climate, so they rationalize their fears away. It's understandable, but it's also not sound analysis, and can be safely dismissed as such.

Re: Heretical thoughts about science and society (2005)

#15

Post by acdha »

npunt wrote: post #14
acdha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also find it interesting how he correctly recognized that the problem is not simple fluid dynamics but then made two major mistakes assuming that he correctly identified all of the complicating factors and concluding that he had a more accurate understanding than the thousands of people who’d been working in the field for decades. This is practically insulting when he just asserts that climate scientists are stayin…

100%, it reads like 'I found a clever flaw and followed it up with an unrigorous conclusion because I was blinded by my cleverness'. His conclusion that oh the soil can recapture carbon also reminded me of generally smart & accomplished but non-expert people online these days that lean on unrealistic tech solutions they just heard about as being an adequate mitigation for climate change. 'Oh just have ships burn bunk…

I think your last point is really important. Once you accept that climate scientists are right, you start to think about all of the ways your lifestyle depends on cheap carbon emissions and the things you’ll be doing less, not to mention all of the fun ecosystem and disease implications. It’s sooooooo much easier just to hope that the multi-billion dollar campaign saying business as usual will be fine is right, because otherwise you’re pretty much saying your children won’t have a world as good as you did.

Re: Heretical thoughts about science and society (2005)

#18

Post by westcort »

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.

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.

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.

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)

Re: Heretical thoughts about science and society (2005)

#20

Post by defrost »

westcort wrote: post #18

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. Dyson believed that, like Hari Seldon in the Foundation series, suppressing d…

The Manabe paper was Estimates of future changes of climate due to increase of carbon dioxide concentration in the air ? That's cited as 1971 (four papers in 1971, five in 1972) [1]

Worth mentioning his 1967 paper Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity [2] was considered "most influential climate science paper of all time" [3] unlike this Dyson essay.

IIRC Dyson built upon the work of Jacob Bronowski [4] whose work on bombing optimisation remained classified until well after his death.

[1] https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=GPkBB-YAAAAJ...

[2] https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/24/3/1520-04...

[3] https://theconversation.com/the-most-influential-climate-sci...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Bronowski

EDIT: FWiW I gave westcort a vote for a good comment- out by a year and incorrect German city are minor mistakes we all make. I chased up the details as the coment piqued my interest about a Manabe paper that wasn't one of the few I'd read, etc.

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