It appears “global warming” is now the most potent force in the universe, according to a scientist from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. An actual scientific paper preprint published in the Cornell University science archive makes the connection to black holes in the title, and includes “climate change” in the abstract.
Sigh. It isn’t even past coffee on Sunday morning and already we have our winner. This one… is weapons grade stupidity. I would not believe that a scientist from a prominent research institute could utter such a statement had I not read it in a prominent science magazine. It’s another “Vinerism” in the making: Children just aren’t going to know what black holes are.
It immediately reminded me of the famous line uttered by Tom Cruise in the movie a A Few Good Men:
“Should we or should we not follow the advice of the galactically stupid!
But then again, this is The New Scientist. Read on, emphasis mine.
…
Something must have limited the growth of these black holes. Now Takamitsu Tanaka at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, and colleagues have a climate-based explanation.
…
Black holes need cool gas to grow so this would have slowed down the growth of other black holes in smaller protogalaxies, even as the growth of black holes in the most massive protogalaxies continued apace (arxiv.org/abs/1205.6467v1).
“This global warming process could have basically quenched the latecomers,” says Tanaka. “The early ones end up being the monsters and they prevent the overgrowth of the rest.”
Tanaka probably should have said the “galactic warming process”, and maybe he did, and this could is a misquote by the unnamed author of the article at TNS. UPDATE: This line from the abstract tends to suggest it was a deliberate statement from the scientist:
Our calculations paint a self-consistent picture of black-hole-made climate change, in which the first miniquasars – among them the ancestors of the z 6 quasar SMBHs – globally warm the IGM and suppress the formation and growth of subsequent generations of BHs.
Either way, it shows how global warming on the brain tends to create an environment for such ridiculous comparisons to make it to press.
I decided I should make a screencap of the paper abstract, becuase I have a feeling it will disappear:
Next I suppose we’ll be reading comparisons of the “global warming process” to problems at the atomic interaction level, such as maybe the sun is now producing fewer neutrinos or some such rot. Don’t laugh, it could happen.
Read The New Scientist article here.
Unfortunately, comments are only allowed from subscribers, so if there are any subscribers out there, please leave a comment pointing out this idiotic comparison. Better yet, write a letter to the editor of the magazine.
In the meantime, feel free to use this motivational poster:
kim2ooo says:
June 10, 2012 at 9:32 am
“it becomes clear that children just aren’t going to know what black holes are.”
I’m sacred now…Oh wait…I never knew what Black Holes were in the first place.
Does anyone?
____________________
Made a trip through Black Hole
To see the other side
Had to get past light speed first
A fast and whirly ride
As to what was found there
Sorry, can not say
While consciousness expands for us
Man’s not yet there, this day
CO2, Such a multipurpose and all powerful substance. To think that for all these years I have been drinking neat Scotch whisky when I should have been drinking soda pop.
pat says:
June 10, 2012 at 10:01 am
Japanese into German into English likely left a bit of the meaning on the editor’s desk. What an embarrassment. I suspect auto-translation.
There are three co-authors — Takamitsu Tanaka (MPA), Rosalba Perna (JILA/Colorado), Zoltán Haiman (Columbia University). Based on their organizational affiliations and the use of English astrophysical terminology, dollars to doughnut holes the paper was written in English ab initio.
Tom i Oslo says:
June 10, 2012 at 8:36 am
I think you all are a little unfair. New Scientist is really a dating site. The magazine is only a cover so there i[s] really no need for them to be to scientific.
http://dating.newscientist.com/s/a/17833
Gary thinks it’s unfair to take cheap shots. Let’s make fun of their dating site instead!
In Scott Adams’ world of Dilbert, finding shiny toilet paper replacing the expensive soft stuff in the rest room was the first sign of your company going down the pan. Maybe having a dating site is the first sign of New Scientist going down the pan. One can but hope …
So, if a Yamalian tree fell into a black hole…
And yet there exists a celestial globe dating from 25AD. Think these guys know that?
Whether Tanaka chose “global warming” ineptly or not, it will probably increase the paper’s score on computer searches (and is there any other kind today?). The phrase is Google-bait. I don’t doubt many “researchers” salt their text (and particularly their abstracts which the search engines constantly scour) with just such terms. Just smart marketing…who cares about the truth?
Ken Harvey says: To think that for all these years I have been drinking neat Scotch whisky when I should have been drinking soda pop.
Never! I’ll stick to my scotch.
I’m also voting for “This is what is commonly referred to as research”.
Pride comes before a fall….
It is unfortunate that people, including the readers of WUWT, seem to focus on the specific keywords and not the substance of what is being said. It’s even more unfortunate that the rabid lunatics in the warmist press will be now seriously believing the preposterous notion that _our_ global warming may affect black holes.
This is indeed a poor choice of terminology on the researcher’s part. The words “climate” and “global” in this case are applied to the gas surrounding the black hole. Perhaps instead of “climate” they could have used something like “ambient temperature trends of the surrounding gas clouds”. And perhaps instead of “global” they could have used another word… But help me out here. What word other than “global” would _you_ use to describe a phenomenon that affects gas in the volumes measured by hundreds and thousands of light years? “Galactic” works if you have a galaxy, but there may not have been a galaxy around a primordial black hole. As much as I dislike it, the words “climate” and “global” do get the sense across — as long as you aren’t seeing the world only through the climate debate filter.
The New Scientist must be a direct offshoot of New Math – results are unimportant, only your intent is.
WOW!
Now as long as you can work the word “climate” or “global warming” into a paper you can get published even if the paper has nothing to do with our globe.
I think the “Blackhole” of “Global Warming” has sucking enough scientists’ integrity up where the sun don’t shine.
You guys in it’s pull, RESIST!
What’s next – the United Galaxies spawning an Intergalactic Panel on Climate Change? And what’s the new boogie-man – cosmic rays and neutrinos? The universe must be made safe for future generations of black holes!
There’s local warming- warming that occurs just in certain areas like the proximity of stars or galaxies and the other warming is called global, because it happens everywhere in the whole universe.
It’s sounds confusing but think about programming, where you have local and global variables and the latter are always “global variables” even when the computer system leaves earth and travels to mars or the outer solar system and has. I don’t think NASA’s programmers call their “global variables” in spacecraft’s something like “universal variables” just because their not on the terrestial globe anymore.
While I am not sure this explanation would satisfy Max Planck, I think the mentos theory will appeal to Doug Plank, the hard-hitting ex-defensive back of the Chicago Bears.
Or thickasaplank elsewhere.
Grandpa Boris says:
June 10, 2012 at 11:51 am
“But help me out here. What word other than “global” would _you_ use to describe a phenomenon that affects gas in the volumes measured by hundreds and thousands of light years?”
“Global” comes from “globe”; meaning a ball-shaped object representing the Earth, available in shops around (!) the globe (!). See, I used the word correctly.
The universe is not a globe.
Grandpa Boris says:
June 10, 2012 at 11:51 am
You could try gas cloud in it’s entireity. Those gas which are influenced by the Black Hole. The remnants of a galaxy or sun which ahs come under the influence of, or thoses particle in the environment of the Black hole. Globe, in english, is expected to be used in reference to a globular object, usually solid unless you are talking about the Globe theater in London, England. If not, don’t be stupidly pedantic.
C’mon, is this really any more silly, stupid, asinine, gut busting hilarious, idiotic, or downright ridiculous than Obama claiming last week that the economy’s actually “fine”? Maybe that jokester, Tanaka, could get together with that old jokester, Obama, and feed us a few more. They say things go from bad to worse to hilarious. Ok, we’ve just now gotten to the hilarious part but what happens after that?
Les Clay (@LesClay) says:
June 10, 2012 at 11:22 am
So, if a Yamalian tree fell into a black hole…
=======================================================
“The Team” would ensure a hockey stick still emerged.
BarryW says:
June 10, 2012 at 9:20 am
Come on. The abstract said globally warm, warming in a spherical volume. Climate referred to the conditions around the black hole. Tanaka said nothing wrong.
Now I remember what jarred when I read that. The paper said “global” rather than the specific term I’ve seen and heard astronauts, astronomers, and the (only) astrophysicist I know use when they described a spherical volume in space — the word “globular.”
I definitely heard that noise, Gunga Din.
“this is weapons grade stupidity.”
I hope that phrase is released under a Creative Commons license, I think I may need to use it in the future.
I have a lot of respect for the Max Planck Institute. This is presumably a mis-attribution, you must have meant Max the Plank (as in two short…).
When political correctness creates an environment where colleagues dare not tell a scientist just how stupid they are, you get things like this.
Didn’t “black hole” at one time have rather vulgar connotations, before astronomers and theoretical physicists co-opted the term? ;-> Maybe the authors of this paper are referring to the original meaning.
/snark
I pity the authors, who are likely to find themselves at the center of a fecal maelstrom, not understanding why. I think from context it’s clear enough to me the discussion is not about terrestrial climate, but rather the galactic “climate” with respect to black hole formation. Note the warming effects are on the “IGM” (interglacatic medium).