Eugene Shubert
Valued Senior Member
Go for it.
I'd like to hear the answers to the scientific challenges put forth by the Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever.What about the video did you want to discuss?
Skeptical Science said:We often see scientists from non-climate fields who believe they have sufficient expertise to understand climate science despite having done minimal research on the subject; William Happer, Fritz Vahrenholt, and Bob Carter, for example. As he admits in his own words, Nobel Prize winning physicist Ivar Giaever fits this mould perfectly:
"I am not really terribly interested in global warming. Like most physicists I don't think much about it. But in 2008 I was in a panel here about global warming and I had to learn something about it. And I spent a day or so - half a day maybe on Google, and I was horrified by what I learned. And I'm going to try to explain to you why that was the case."
That quote comes from a presentation Giaever gave to the 62nd Meeting of Nobel Laureates in 2012, for some unknown reason on the subject of climate change. As Giaever notes at the beginning of his talk, he has become more famous for his contrarian views on global warming than for his Nobel Prize, which have made him something of a darling to the climate contrarian movement and climate denial enablers.
There are a lot of people who think they have some great insight into the nature of reality and then go on a web campaign to try and get the world to follow them and tar and feather the physicists who actually have jobs and the respect of their peers. To help future students of physics not fall so badly off the rails, please allow me to present my constructive notes on what physics actually is.
[Revised] Fundamental Principles in Physics
That’s not a lot, but represents a mindset not found in introductory physics textbooks (as of the last time I checked). I hope you will find it useful.
- “Science is about the management of ignorance.” Science-as-an-occupation is the confrontation of ideas about reality with experiment and observation of reality so that science-as-a-body-of-knowledge expands. This knowledge can come about in many ways: by repeating an experiment to see if it plays out the same way for us and in the reports of others, by seeking out new phenomena, by measuring more precisely, by pushing into areas that we were once ignorant, etc. Saying ‘I don’t know’ is the beginning of learning about reality, not the end. Related to this is Karl Popper’s quote from The Open Universe : An Argument for Indeterminism (1992), p. 44, “Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification — the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.” (h/t: danshawen) Unlike mathematics where theorems may be rigorously proven from logical arguments from axioms, postulates and givens, there is no concept of proving an idea right in science. The best we can do is demonstrate that we can demonstrate experiments or observations which are not compatible with an idea or that the totality of knowledge still leaves us ignorant of any examples incompatible with that idea. Lots of ideas will fall into the ‘I don’t know’ area of incomplete knowledge.
- “Beware confirmation bias and intellectual dishonesty.” Science isn’t about proving that your ideas are right, but that some ideas are objectively more precise or equally precise and more parsimonious than others. This means you have to look at all the relevant evidence, not just the evidence in favor of the ideas you support. As Richard Feynman wrote in “Cargo Cult Science”, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
- “A physical theory is a useful, precise, communicable framework for predicting the behavior of a wide variety of related observable phenomena.” Basically, we assume reality has behaviors which are commonly observable by all of us and physical theories are the summaries of our observations. To the extent it goes beyond this or doesn't measure up to this, it is not a physical theory. (But because math and physics are necessarily tightly linked by the "precise" requirement, we sometimes speak of mathematical theories as simply theories when the context isn't confusing to professionals. Sorry.)
- “The map is not the territory.” Physics can't tell us about reality -- physics can only give us validated models of the behavior of reality. Newton's assumption of (and reliance on) Euclidean space and universal time does not, for example, tell us what space and time are, but only how they behaved up to the limit of his knowledge by experiment and observation. This expression originates with Alfred Korzybski following up on Eric Temple Bell.
- “Management of uncertainty is vital to relating theory and observation.” Every physical measurement necessarily has an associated uncertainty, because rulers, diffraction gratings, clocks, sextants, weights and compasses only have finite manufactured precisions and comparisons with them can only be made within certain tolerances. Knowledge of and experience with statistics is vital. Amateurs plot points, experts plot error bars.
- “Symmetry usefully encapsulates ignorance.” When a validated physical model has a symmetry, it means we have not yet seen nature violate that rule. Mathematical models have many types of symmetry, which is a more general term than just the symmetries of geometrical objects. A perfect sphere gives us three dimensions but no reason to single out any direction as special, but that might just be an artifact of our ignorance. The sphere could be a crystal with several special directions related to internal structure. Until we know more, the symmetric description is the safest description of what we know and do not know.
- “Continuous symmetries are associated with conserved quantities.” This is a famous theorem from Emmy Noether. Early physics instruction consists of working with conserved quantities of physics models, which result from symmetries of those physics models which encapsulate our ignorance based on the behavior of reality never violating the assumptions of those models. Therefore it is of great interest if nature appears to obey a conserved-quantity rule without a current physics model having an associated symmetry.
- “The correspondence principle tells us something about future theories.” Since a validated physical theory is also a summary of the up-to-then observed behavior of reality, a successful successor theory must be able to reproduce all the predictions of the former theory with at least as good of precision. That is the predictions of the Standard Model of Particle physics, must in the appropriate problem domain reduce to the predictions of the theory of quantum electrodynamics which in the appropriate problem domain reduce to the predictions of Maxwell's electrodynamics which must in the appropriate limit reduce to the predictions of Newton's three laws of motion. Likewise, the predictions of General Relativity must in the appropriate problem domain reduce to the predictions of Newton's Universal Gravitation which must in the appropriate problem domain reduce to Kepler's laws.
1st challenge (1:46-2:55): Global warming is a religion because you can’t discuss it.It's intellectually dishonest to promise "scientific challenges" in the thread title when you present an anti-scientific Gish gallop with nothing that passes for scholarly research.
It's also intellectually dishonest to promise Nobel Laureates (plural) in the thread title when you present only one.
Eugene, this is definitely a spurious argument. What PERCENTAGE change does it take to cause a cascade phase transition on some part of this planet? It depends.nd challenge (4:25-4:42): From 1880-2015 the average temperature has been amazingly stable. It has increased from ~ 288K to 288.8K, i.e., only 0.3%.
On a satellite would be an excellent choice, wouldn't it?3rd challenge (5:10-5:59) Only 8 thermometers to measure the average temperature of a continent. Where do you put them?
Under that argument, a lot of science, like relativity, to name only one example, fails miserably. Observation beats common sense, a lot of the time.most of his challenges are based on commonsense.
What? No one is capable of proceeding in a chronological order? Has the global warming religion got everyone stumped?1st challenge (1:46-2:55): Global warming is a religion because you can’t discuss it.
It's not a religion to me, Eugene. I have nothing to gain or lose by discussing it, but I'll be the first to admit, I'm no expert on the subject. I'm a former telecom engineer, so when someone asks me "where do you put the thermometers?", the answer to that one is kind of obvious, to someone with my background, at least.What? No one is capable of proceeding in a chronological order? Has the global warming religion got everyone stumped?
Not only is climate changing but hurricane severity is actually decreasing according to observational data presented by Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever. Measured CO2 levels has no appreciable effect.Climate is changing but it has nothing to do with CO2 levels.
And what about any observational data presented by an actual, qualified, climate scientist?Not only is climate changing but hurricane severity is actually decreasing according to observational data presented by Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever. Measured CO2 levels has no appreciable effect.
And what about any observational data presented by an actual, qualified, climate scientist?
Well, he has us dead to rights there, Eugene. With the exception of 1995, the trend in the Atlantic has been a decrease in hurricane activity over the last two decades. Authority: NOAA. I'm not certain this statistic would be an accurate predictor of global warming trends, and evidently neither does NOAA.Not only is climate changing but hurricane severity is actually decreasing according to observational data presented by Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever. Measured CO2 levels has no appreciable effect.
Is [URL='http://everythingimportant.org/SDA/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1326&start=15#p7963']Professor Richard Lindzen a qualified, climate scientist? Where does he disagree with Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever? They both seem to be saying that climate change hysteria has no scientific support.And what about any observational data presented by an actual, qualified, climate scientist?