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:
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This is great news. I’ve always felt rather uncomfortable about the risk of LHC creating a mini black hole that gets out of control. At least now we know global CO2 emissions will prevent any such entity from expanding once it spreads beyond the confines of CERN.
Hold on, Anthony. Isn’t it possible that Tanaka is using the word “global” in the broad connotation (i.e., as being universal to the system in question) rather than in the planetary sense?
Soon we will learn that our sun, other planets, and yes, even the stars revolve around the earth.
First: it doesn’t matter what was said or if it was right or wrong – if WUWT makes a habit of making fun of things they haven’t bothered to look at to find out what the meaning is – it not only looks ignorant it is ignorant.
“@Gary Young: so, are you saying the terms “climate change” and “globally warming” are usual terms of reference in this subject? ”
Reading the science reference it clearly has nothing to do with global climate or climate in any real sense – but referring to x-ray emissions as heating the galactic gas raising the average temperature which has the effect of reducing favorable conditions for the formation of black holes. Even on the New Scientist, without looking to the reference, one who bothered to try to understand what was being said could make sense of what it meant.
Discussing the particular characteristics of this event is off the point. Due attention should be paid and some effort to figure out what was being said before shooting one’s mouth off. (This is not the first WUWT article I have read this week that I felt departed from that general advice.)
In this case maybe what the New Scientist translated to its readers from the scientist’s paper made sense to make fun of but since no one bothered to understand it or looked into what they were referring they not only made fun of the article but took shots at the scientist as well. Reading the scientist’s comments in context what was being said made sense to me and would probably make sense to anyone who bothered to try to understand.
I think failing to do so and speaking ill of everyone involved without bothering to figure out who said what or why greatly undermines the reputation WUWT has earned with all its hard work and attention to facts. To those who read the article and understood what was being said and then encountered what was written on WUWT will see the writing on WUWT as ignorant and without depth or understanding and that opinion will carry over to other things on WUWT.
…or so I do caution. Do with it what you please.
I wrote Taka, and here’s his response:
Global is commonly meant in terms of the “globe” but I’m pretty sure global variables don’t mean variables pertaining to the Earth. Of course Kernighan and Ritchie could have been wrong on that.
“Global” can be used in the more general sense used by Taka, and he meant it as a clever play on words.
OK, I’ve sent it off to http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm.
Gary, you can’t be serious. You actually think that these choice of words, clearly borrowed from climate science of a more Earthly bound variety, provided clarity? I prefer my technical reading dry, dry, dry, and free of popular jargon. The article begs to be jeered at for such a juvenile attempt to sex up the subject, instead of heralded as being a clear and concise treatise of black hole propagation theory.
Gary says:
June 10, 2012 at 2:40 pm
First: it doesn’t matter what was said or if it was right or wrong – if WUWT makes a habit of making fun of things they haven’t bothered to look at to find out what the meaning is – it not only looks ignorant it is ignorant…………
I think failing to do so and speaking ill of everyone involved without bothering to figure out who said what or why greatly undermines the reputation WUWT has earned with all its hard work and attention to facts. To those who read the article and understood what was being said and then encountered what was written on WUWT will see the writing on WUWT as ignorant and without depth or understanding and that opinion will carry over to other things on WUWT.
…or so I do caution. Do with it what you please.
=====================================================
I’ve never claimed not to ignorant of just about everything, to one degree or another. One thing I’m not completely ignorant of is how the varied verbage associated with “hockey sticks” is showing up in papers and the MSM. In this article it has nothing to do with this planet. Yet, there it is. Why? Because it sells? Because it seeks to make “hockey sticks” here so accepted that they can be used figuratively to explain events outside our galaxy? Perhaps Tanaka used an unfortunate comparison. But if he was trying to say that the unproven theory behind “hockey sticks” explains what he’s saying about blackholes, there are better minds than mine here at WUWT, with more information than I have that understand that info, to put that theory to the peirazo.
@Gary Young
Without reading the article at all I knew instinctively what they would have been talking about. C’mon…it is just plain silly and or laughable to, in this day and age, use the phrase ‘global warming’ in relation to delaying or limiting the formation of black holes. It is obviously distracting and adds nothing to the science.
Written science is supposed to communicate, effectively. Physicists are given to a bit of whimsey when naming their discoveries, but ‘global warming’? Gimme a break. If the use of the term was not deliberately trying to attract attention (who knows, maybe even ridicule of the term) it was thoughtless. Maybe there is a betting pool in their research group that will go to the person making the most outrageous and pointless use of the phrase. If so, they have stiff competition, what with everything under the sun being blamed on it. His over the sun link is over the top.
CO2 does have an effect on black holes.
I call them mental black holes – minds so dense that no cognizant thought can escape.
I agree with the comment that said this is a cheap shot that’s making you look petty.
The Japanese gentleman is obviously using the term ‘climate change’ analogously – not trying to draw a direct connection but trying to illustrate a point. And the term ‘global’ – with the meaning of occurring everywhere – is standard English, albeit not the very best term he could have selected.
It would serve to differentiate skepics from apologists if you (especially commenters) weren’t as spiteful and needlessly picky as they are.
Jesus wept.
He is obviously playing the race card. 😉
The propagation of our global warming can not travel faster than the speed of light, therefore only entities within about 200 light years could possibly be affected. Just in case you need a quick rebuttal to the ill informed New Scientist reader.
I read an article once where Carbon Dioxide was on the brain of the writer so much so that he said he used to breath in deeply carbon dioxide years ago before air quality improved in his city, apparently unaware that carbon dioxide is created deep within your lungs continuously, and even more so when you are exercising. Even the editors of the newspaper missed that one. (probably meant monoxide).
If this were April 1st I would a gotcha. Now I’m speechless.
[my bold]
garymount you forgot to add the sarcasm sign at the end of your post.
I see lemur eyes. One big one and one not-so-big one. Who wants to peer review that?
No, he meant it as a not so clever way of attracting the attention of future funding organisations. I wonder whether the words “global warming” or “climate change” appeared in his grant application?
Am not so sure if black holes prefer their gas chilly. It might help them to reel in more if the velocities, either of the molceules or of the cloud as a whole, are low – but they heat them up pretty thoroughly before dining on them – until they emit lots of x-rays. Given that most interstellar gas clouds are pickled at 2 to 10 degrees Kelvin, that may be understandable, though I suppose a steady diet of hydrogen and helium tends to taste a little stale at any temperature.
I think what has happened is he had the AGW dictionary addon for Microsoft Word installed. He tried to type in Galactic Warming, but it automatically changed it to Global Warming. When he tried to change it back, ‘Clippit’ warned him that the probability of his paper being published would be significantly lower.
In fairness, I think they are using the word “global” to mean something other than the climate of a planet. The global neighborhood of our galaxy is the “Local Group”, the global neighborhood of the center of a galaxy is the core of the galaxy. I would give these guys the doubt of using a “loaded phrase” here.
Can you read? This article is not about nor does it reference climate change on earth. It is talking about galactic changes in climate around black holes. So who is galactic-ally stupid again?
REPLY: Can YOU read? The point is they are using Earthly terms of the present to describe the distant past histories of black holes…that have no “climate”. Plus that, the universe has been cooling ever since. Note the cosmic microwave background radiation temperature – Anthony
I think Gary is confused. He assumes in his own words that we did not try to figure out what was said, and that would be an incorrect assumption as far as I go at the very least. These guys basically used terms improperly and that is not good science. In science, you are precise with both language and with terms. If you do not use terms properly, you are wrong in the end.
So yes, they deserve derision and they deserve to be laughed at. If they had put in the paper a /sarc or a reference that they were being sarcastic that would be something different. But without that, this paper is hopelessly lost.
As carrick shows, this was meant as a play on words, which without a disclaimer somewhere at the end if you will detracts from what they are saying. They really need to edit the paper and add that or put something in the end showing that they were being humourous. Then again, science is not about humor and making small little jokes. Its about science and nothing else.
I could use the terms such as stupid to refer to someone and if I meant to say smart without the sarcastic mark, it appears I am calling someone stupid. Same is true here. Words have meaning and in the end you have to use proper DICTION otherwise you are being humorous. Not sure what the scientists were thinking personally. As much as its funny, its not defensible. I thought science was serious business with serious money being spent. Is the point being made that money spent on science is just a funny way to waste it?
Christopher Watson writes:
I agree with the comment that said this is a cheap shot that’s making you look petty.
The Japanese gentleman is obviously using the term ‘climate change’ analogously – not trying to draw a direct connection but trying to illustrate a point. And the term ‘global’ – with the meaning of occurring everywhere – is standard English, albeit not the very best term he could have selected.
It would serve to differentiate skepics from apologists if you (especially commenters) weren’t as spiteful and needlessly picky as they are.
Christopher, there appear to be a lot of us commenters here who do not necessarily buy the notion that the title and abstract were not composed with the intent of their being misconstrued (either accidentally or deliberately) in the popular media.
If these curiosities written by Tanaka et al. were innocent, it doesn’t matter because they are still potentially damaging to science and to the public if misused. And that’s something they should care about.
RTF
Anthony:
I think you’re being too literalist here. Is a “global variable” in a software program one that pertains to a terrestrial quantity?
“Global” gets used in other ways than in terms of the “globe”, especially in mathematical sciences. See definition 3 in Merriam-Webster:
See my comment from the author above.