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The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

rogerpielkejr.substack.com

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Re: The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

#131

Post by sgt101 »

roenxi wrote: post #118
sgt101 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your comment - there have been many policy interventions that have changed coal consumption in the UK in the last 100 years. There is a large amount of coal still available for mining in the uk - but lack of demand and low prices coupled with high extraction costs have destroyed the industry. - The clean air act made it illegal to burn many forms of coal and required coal producers to use higher st…

They've been in a steady linear downtrend of coal production for more than a century. Then stopped producing the stuff roughly on schedule for a prediction made in 1970 or 1980. Occam's razor here is they stopped producing coal because they ran out of coal, rather than because of any political will. > There is a large amount of coal still available for mining in the uk - but lack of demand and low prices coupled with…

I don't get this - is the reduction in energy consumption per head a bad thing in your eyes?

And occam's razor states "the simplest theory that fits the evidence" there is extensive evidence that the UK has large reserves of coal and could have continued to exploit them for many decades. However, for political reasons it didn't.

Re: The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

#132

Post by SubiculumCode »

domenicrosati wrote: post #69
SubiculumCode wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

building that in Zotero would be great. I all ready like that they flag retracted papers.

Done https://github.com/scitedotai/scite-zotero-plugin

you sir/madam, are awesome.

Re: The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

#134

Post by jkhdigital »

bachmeier wrote: post #112
vixen99 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow, 'feels like' and 'some skepticism' doesn't add up too much of a critique. He says Evidence indicates the scenarios of the future to 2100 that are at the focus of much of climate research have already diverged from the real world and thus offer a poor basis for projecting policy-relevant variables like economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions . The question is: is he right or wrong and if the latter, why?…

> Somehow, 'feels like' and 'some skepticism' doesn't add up too much of a critique. This is not helpful. Pielke has been heavily involved in one side (and only one side) of the political debate on this topic. It's dishonest to pretend that information isn't relevant in the context of a post like this. He's not a neutral academic that decided to look at the evidence and was shocked to see issues. > How would atmosphe…

Nowadays, the scarce resources are humility and intellectual courage, not qualifications. This is especially true when looking at public policy that is guided by scientific results, because the science often needs to take a back seat to more human concerns. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the science is all that matters, but for every scientific paper published on a subject there are an infinite number of unpublished papers and unexamined data sets. See also: Frederic Bastiat’s essay on “The Seen and the Unseen”

Re: The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

#135

Post by perrygeo »

psychiatrist24 wrote: post #85
perrygeo wrote: post #75

The emission scenarios were developed decades ago and are proving to be over-estimates. The author interprets that as outdated science which is a rather pessimistic view. I interpret it differently: Scientists make a spread of climate predictions and their potential consequences. Those listening mustered significant market/public/government pressure and ... it worked. We pushed the outcome towards the low end of the…

What exactly was done because of pressure? More solar cells and wind mills? Have those even crossed the point where they produced more energy than what was used in their production yet? In my country, they are shutting down nuclear power plants, relying on coal instead. Electric cars are still a rarity, and global car use seems to be rising still. I find your line of reasoning maddening. While it is possible that pre…

> What exactly was done because of pressure?

In the past 2 decades:

* Big business on the whole went from ignoring or denying climate change to embracing solutions.

* Innovation in alternative energy tech and its production has driven prices for non-carbon energy down to parity with coal.

* The political world has gone from ignoring it to signing on to international support for climate agreements.

* People are aware of the issue and it's a central issue to billions of voters globally.

* Carbon capture and other methods of reducing atmospheric carbon are being developed and scaled up significantly.

> I find your line of reasoning maddening

I can't prove causality but any good faith scientific argument needs to at least consider the hypothesis that the efforts of the last two decades might have had an effect. Simply ignoring the changes and saying that the original predictions were "wrong" is not a good faith argument, let alone a scientific one.

Re: The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

#136

Post by TaupeRanger »

herodotus wrote: post #43
TaupeRanger wrote: post #27

How many times do we have to rediscover Kuhn's 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' and write articles about ideas that were well understood 60 years ago?

Kuhn never argued about the misuse of data. He instead argued that the scientific understanding of the data lead to models that became increasingly complex. So much so, that scientists realized it was time to try a new way of understanding the underlying data. The new models were the "revolution".

Kuhn spent a great deal of time talking about the behavior of (usually older), establishment scientists clinging to outdated science, which is part of the problem here.

Re: The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

#137

Post by adrianN »

InDemoVeritas wrote: post #133
adrianN wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get enough energy out to sequester that CO2 back.

Say hello to my little friend, entropy.

Earth is not a closed system. You might have noticed the giant miasma of incandescent plasma that regularly makes an appearance in the sky.

Re: The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

#138

Post by rini17 »

adrianN wrote: post #137
InDemoVeritas wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say hello to my little friend, entropy.

Earth is not a closed system. You might have noticed the giant miasma of incandescent plasma that regularly makes an appearance in the sky.

Perhaps it isn't visible at the moment.

Re: The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

#139

Post by psychiatrist24 »

perrygeo wrote: post #135
psychiatrist24 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly was done because of pressure? More solar cells and wind mills? Have those even crossed the point where they produced more energy than what was used in their production yet? In my country, they are shutting down nuclear power plants, relying on coal instead. Electric cars are still a rarity, and global car use seems to be rising still. I find your line of reasoning maddening. While it is possible that pre…

> What exactly was done because of pressure? In the past 2 decades: * Big business on the whole went from ignoring or denying climate change to embracing solutions. * Innovation in alternative energy tech and its production has driven prices for non-carbon energy down to parity with coal. * The political world has gone from ignoring it to signing on to international support for climate agreements. * People are aware…

I don't think the article was about pointing out that the original predictions were wrong. It was about the need to adjust them according to actual developments.

About the other points, it is possible that politics had some effect, but I personally rather doubt it. The general assumption that businesses would just waste away energy is incorrect imo. There is always an incentive to become more efficient.

Re: The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

#140

Post by InDemoVeritas »

adrianN wrote: post #137
InDemoVeritas wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say hello to my little friend, entropy.

Earth is not a closed system. You might have noticed the giant miasma of incandescent plasma that regularly makes an appearance in the sky.

In the context of collecting pollutants, entropy is huge. Big light in sky is source of juicy low entropy energy, true, and the big win is the flux of infrared out. Ten times as many photons to carry away the same energy.
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