Thursday Throughput: I Just Didn’t Want It To Be True Edition
New observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have investigated the nature of the powerful gamma-ray burst GRB 190114C by studying its environment. Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the Universe. They emit most of their energy in gamma rays, light which is much more energetic than the visible light we can see with our eyes. Hubble’s observations suggest that this particular burst displayed such powerful emission because the collapsing star was sitting in a very dense environment, right in the middle of a bright galaxy 5 billion light years away.
[ThTh1] Once upon a time, I was a climate “denier”. This would have been in the mid- to late-90s. The reasons for this were various: earlier environmental panics that hadn’t panned out; the linkage of global warming to left wing policy; my natural skepticism and suspicion. But over time, the evidence changed my view. My desire for a fair argument led to me to realize that many of the points being raised by the skeptics were inaccurate or unfair. And the evidence kept mounting. Some time around 2002, I realized that I knew the weight of scientific evidence supported it. I just didn’t want it to be true.
Ronald Bailey describes a similar journey over at Reason, detailing how the evidence slowly changed his view from skeptical to moderate to moderate alarmist. It’s a long read but I recommend it because he details just how much the scientific case for global warming has changed and strengthened over the last 20 years.
What we do about global warming is a subject about which I welcome intense and spirited debate. And I also welcome scientific debate about it as well. But it’s become clear that case that it isn’t happening or that it is nothing to worry about is growing weaker by the day.
[ThTh2] Measles kills. It kills without mercy. Samoa is being ravaged by the disease, with dozens ted, including a couple of dozen small children. The anti-vaxxers are turning their backs on one of the greatest inventions in human history.
[ThTh3] I was peripherally involved in this research, which detected some of the highest energy photons every seen from a gamma-ray burst.
[ThTh4] When our universe was young, the galaxies within it were small. Over the last ten billion years, those galaxies have merged to form the vast galaxies we see today. When they merge, the massive black holes lurking at their centers merge as well after a few hundred million years. We’ve seen galaxies in those intermediate stages, when the black holes are slowly migrating toward each other. Now we see a galaxy with three of them. Three! Three black holes! Hahahahahaha!
[ThTh5] It now looks like water may be very common on extrasolar planets.
[ThTh6] I’ve mentioned the impact that Starlink is having on astronomy already. The common response is “well, build telescope in space!” Ethan Siegel (no relation) (that I’m aware of) explains why this isn’t a solution.
[ThTh7] This is a very good style-guide to writing scientific papers:
Physicists and chemists use equations to make very complex things simpler to understand and digest. In my experience, social scientists and psychologists often use impenetrably complicated language to discuss very simple matters. I am generalising here, of course. pic.twitter.com/bfMFQU8ThG
— Adrienne (@Grape_Gripe) November 20, 2019
You won’t get much of an argument on “the climate has measurably changed since we started measuring it”.
The issue is the chain of reasoning that goes:
Climate change is real and occurring at an unprecedented level.
Climate change of this magnitude is caused by humans.
Climate change is caused by humans who mostly live in the United States Of America, a little bit in Western Europe, and absolutely nowhere else.
Climate change is caused by white Westerners and the only possible solution is for white Westerners to adhere to the Puritan ideal of extreme temperance, of self-denial to the point of self-harm, the same ideal that Puritans have considered vital to Earthly salvation since they were run out of England four hundred years ago and people burned individual lumps of coal for heat let alone do anything on an industrial scale.
Not everyone follows you down that hill.Report
“Climate change is real and occurring at an unprecedented level.”
Overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence.
“Climate change of this magnitude is caused by humans.”
Also overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence.
“Climate change is caused by humans who mostly live in the United States Of America, a little bit in Western Europe, and absolutely nowhere else.”
No one is claiming that but much of what we were experiencing now has been driving by first world countries. That is changing with China and India moving up economically.
“Climate change is caused by white Westerners and the only possi..”
This is not the logical endpoint of the debate. There are numerous ways to deal with the climate crisis that don’t necessitate burning that particular straw man.Report
“No one is claiming that but much of what we were experiencing now has been driving by first world countries. ”
lol
“no one is saying this!” (goes on to say this)
“There are numerous ways to deal with the climate crisis that don’t necessitate burning that particular straw man.”
Sure there are! But we aren’t hearing them! We’re hearing “ban plastic straws”, we’re hearing “force people to move into cities”, we’re hearing “cars are INHERENTLY IMMORAL”. We aren’t hearing “let’s reconsider our decision to not pursue short-term biodegradable plastics”, we aren’t hearing “let’s encourage uptake of telecommuting”, we aren’t hearing “let’s develop distributed nuclear generation systems so that the charging issues of electric cars aren’t as much of a problem for power grids”.Report
There is a big difference between what “we’re hearing” and what’s being said. The first is a function of the listener’s limitations, the second is a verifiable fact about the world.Report
There is also a big difference in what is being said, and what (and how) the media likes to report on. Take, for instance, the whole ’12 years until doom’ bit. That’s not what the report actually said, and a whole lot of context is ignored for a hyperbolic headline.
I mean, I’ve pretty much stopped listening to the media on climate change, because they can’t stop presenting things except in the most catastrophic manner.Report
The same dynamic I pointed out to DD about what “we’re hearing” in general applies to what one “hears” in the media and what is actually in it.Report
You are letting ‘hears’ do some pretty heavy lifting.
The other night I was listening to a Christmas concert that was being held in a public space, but it was very difficult to ‘hear’ that concert because there was a doom and gloom Jesus freak standing right behind me shouting loudly about how we need to accept
Greta into our hearts and repent our environmental sinsJesus into our hearts and repent our mortal sins.All that noise made it very difficult to enjoy the concert.Report
Climate change isn’t real because some people are saying dumb things about it.
Corollary: Nothing is real.Report
Didn’t say climate change wasn’t real.
Did say that there’s “climate change is real”, and then there’s “climate change is real and it really was caused by white Westerners and it really is something that only white Westerners need to change their lifestyles to fix and it really is only fixable by to starving in the cold dirty darkness”, and these are two different statements, and if you’re going to tell me how inspiring Greta Thurnberg is then you very much subscribe to the latter.
Someone is going to point to acid rain, and I’m going to point to catalytic convertors, and say “if we handled acid rain the way people want us to deal with carbon emissions then gas would cost ten dollars a gallon but there’d still be lead in it.”Report
considering that its white westerners who keep trying to sabotage the Kyoto and Paris agreements and not the other 147 countries who signed them . . . . then yeah I’d say as a first order approximation white westerners have the greater obligation.
And Frankly anyone telling you you have to starve in the cold darkness to address it isn’t serious. Aeons ago I did a blog post about this which did some basic math and concluded that most cities could become self generating electricity wise if they just put PV racks on the roofs on every building. As an example, New York City has painted roughly 9.2 Million square feet of roof white to reflect solar heat and try to cool the city. the normal solar panel is roughly 17.3 square feet and generates 265 watts per panel. doing the beverage napkin math, if NYC put solar panels on all those roofs (a boost to employment as well as a green energy alternative), they’d generate 140.9 megawatts. Sure, that’s not enough to run the whole city, but there’s way more then 9.2 million square feet of roof there to cover.
My point here is white westerners made the problem; white westerners can significantly solve the problem, and we can start now n ways that aren’t economically disruptive.
Or we can sit back and keep throwing stones until citizens of drowned island nations show up on our doorstep on the heals of more South American refugees who are fleeing the deserts their countries are already becoming. We have a choice now – we won’t later.Report
Hell, the mirror finish on skyscraper windows can be made from a PV film. It doesn’t generate as much power as a conventional PV panel, but it’s enough to, say, power all the LED lights in the room the window is in. Put some battery storage in the room and you don’t have to pay to light that room.Report
My point exactly. We have solutions. We can create economic opportunities implementing those solutions. That implementation is blocked by political actors who believe they loose economic and political advantages from that change.Report
” the mirror finish on skyscraper windows can be made from a PV film”
I wish Kim was still around to yell about Solar Fucking Roadways 😀Report
Those were effing stupid. PV film as window tint is not. Just have to look at the CBA.Report
Wine production is important in my state. The vineyards around here have been picking about two weeks earlier in the past few years than the traditional dates. It is warmer; the grapes have no politics.
If I see someone throwing a used wrapper from a car, I resent them dirtying up my street. I get upset when other forms of garbage get thrown into our streets, our rivers, our air; does this make me a bad person? I want access to the same seats of power as the garbage producers.
Water on other planets! Any trout in those waters?Report
When our universe was young, the galaxies within it were small. Over the last ten billion years, those galaxies have merged to form the vast galaxies we see today.
It’s gotten to where the business plan for every young galaxy is to be acquired by one of the big ones.Report
Style guide: This works in the liberal arts as well. When contemplating a paper written in High Academic, I will pick out a paragraph and painstakingly translate it into plain English. If the result is longer, and juggles lots of moving parts, then the jargon is probably justified: technical language used by and for specialists to concisely convey complicated ideas. If the plain English translation is shorter and simple, then the paper is bullshit and can safely be ignored. Sadly, the bullshit variety is not uncommon.Report
” the linkage of global warming to left wing policy”
This is, and always was, a huge logic fail. It doesn’t even rise to the level of being an ad hominem argument, unless one supposes scientists to all be a bunch of lefties (what with reality’s notorious liberal bias…)Report
Its like the way any solution to homelessness is derided as leftism.
Its true, only in the sense that any possible solution will necessarily involve massive amounts of government power and money which triggers conservatives.Report
Paying people fair market wages for their labor, wages enough to actually live on and prevent homelessness, also seems to trigger conservatives.Report
We’ve had plenty of discussions on the many, many ways government stymies the development of affordable housing because of the preferences of powerful interests. Solving homelessness DOES not necessarily involve massive amounts of government power and money. Hell, telling government to get out of the way will probably do more to relieve homelessness than anything else.
But NIMBY’s gotta NIMBY…Report
Increasing affordable housing (by whatever mechanism you choose) will help the easy cases of homelessness, those people who are able to work and live independently.
Which is a good thing, and should be pursued!
But the hard cases, the homeless people that we all see on the streets are not those. Most are addicts or mentally ill or otherwise unable to live independently.
They require massive amounts of public resources and government power in order to get off the streets.Report
It’s like the way that any solution to homelessness is derided as not workable because it only helps some people instead of creating a utopia.Report
“We should build more buildings.”
“Leftism!”Report
person in LA: there sure is a big problem with homeless people, addicts, the mentally ill
other people: Sure wouldn’t want to live in LA
Wang Chung: I can’t get away…..To live and die in LAReport
But scientists aren’t. Lots of scientists have proposed a large number of market based and government backed approaches to improving the climate picture that routinely get ignored because they don’t align with some idealist (or entrenched) preference.Report