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.
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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.
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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:
All your base are belong to us.
I suspect he meant “globally” as in universally, like a global variable, rather than global as in applying to a single planet.
But somebody with a tin ear still has some ‘splainin to do. Or somebody who think they’re a marketing whiz would get more attention for the paper (hey, worked!) playing word games.
I think you have ndeed worked out your problem. to fix it you could try reading using even basic wiki more often (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas)
[quote]
A greenhouse gas (sometimes abbreviated GHG) is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect
[/quote]
Being in stationary orbit around any planet is not a requirement of a greenhouse gas,
That is an indication of how far out of context this whole argument has been taken.
All we need next is Doug Cotton to start posting on how his theory covers black holes and our jourmey to the absurd will be complete.
@ur momisugly remotecontrol I see an orangutan with a concussion.
In our country people say: Idle priest baptizes and kids!
Looks like the actual black hole bit (ie quasars heating up the early gas clouds & thus reducing black hole formation) could make sense (well… unless those relatively dense streams of particles from the quasars *cause* more black holes…?). But… global warming? Urgh.
Hmmmmm. Seriously guys, these are physicists. They call subatomic particles quarks. And give them properties like charm and color.
So the first thing to watch out for is metaphors and other quirky descriptions.
You really need to get this addiction to pissing on every scientific paper that comes along under control. Maybe there is a telephone hotline somewhere you can ring.
The abstract is now on phys.org. The more one reads the sillier the abstract. Who knew that black holes had generations? At least their calculations paint a self-consistent picture. If not they would have told us, right? Having two models that agree adds to their credibility. Or is that one model with a variable?
Well it is Cornell. Call it Carl Sagan one upmanship.
It means an offense to Max Planck´s name, the greatest physicist of the 20th century.
Particle physicists are notorious for whimsical nomenclature. In this case, some cosmologists with a nice paper got attention by applying the term “global warming” metaphorically to describe the increase in temperature of the early IGM due to heating by the first generation of galaxies.
I’d cut them some slack, not wanting to be thought of as a humorless scold. Don’t we have actual distortions and misrepresentations to worry about?
But this all presupposes that there realy are Black Holes – and maybe a Great Pumpkin. For those keeping an open mind there is always the Electric Universe.
Are people REALLY so poor at critical thinking and context?
Repeat after me: ” This paper has NOTHING to do with earth’s climate. It has NOTHING to do with the mechanisms that change earth’s climate.”
This paper is about the climate (Climate: noun 3.the prevailing attitudes, standards, or environmental conditions of a group, period, or place) of the Intergalactic Medium and the global (Global: adjective 2. comprehensive.) changes that black holes caused in the IGM about 8 billion years before our sun or planet were even formed.
Suggestions to use “galactic” instead of “global” would be improper, since the paper deals with intergalactic materials (ie outside of galaxies). And “universal” would be too large. So “global” is a perfectly legitimate adjective in this context. The title and abstract are perfectly understandable.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“… it shows how global warming on the brain tends to create an environment for such ridiculous comparisons …”
The irony ….
Since black holes are to astronomy what manmade greenhouse gasES are to “climate science,” the scientist simply accidentally showed the true parallelism between the state of the two sciences.
I am sure it was just an innocent slip of the tongue. In spring, this happens a lot.
Notice how his “Monte-Carlo realization” (aka computer model) “provides a feedback mechanism” for “black hole created climate change” and saves the consensus theory which is failing to match observations returned from space. I think it is a wonderful bit of involuntary truthtelling.
He is certainly to be commended for working out that the production of z>6 “black holes” predicted by theory is far too high and does not match what is “seen” by several orders of magnitude, as noted in the first few sentences of his abstract.
No, tjfolkerts, you are wrong about the title and abstract being perfectly understandable.
Please don’t be saying that I and everone else you are criticizing believes as you just said we have, about the paper. That’s not very nice. We have varying beliefs on this matter.
I have already described some of my beliefs about it.
To boil it down: this matter is not about physics. It is about ethics. Something that requires an above-average amount of critical thinking skills to understand. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who haven’t understood, perhaps because it would never have occurred to them that people outside their own little groupthink bubble could be anything but wrong in their understanding of a complex matter. How very unfortunate.
An updated reply from the author Taka Tanaka.
Anthony–I’m pretty sure Taka wouldn’t mind if you included his comments as an update to your post.
@Carrick- ask him why he didn’t think that using the terms “global warming” and “climate change”, two of the most overused phrases on the planet, in the context of a paper on cosmology and subsequent news story, would not cause any controversy? Surely, he can’t be living in a cave. Point is, I think he used these phrases to bring attention to his paper and himself (it worked) and simply won’t admit he’s using a wordplay strategy.
– Anthony
Carrick says: June 11, 2012 at 10:41 am
You know, I find Dr. Tanaka’s use of the term “climate change deniers” vs. “activists” quite revealing in itself.
Science is all about self-promotion these days. You see catchy titles and puns in paper titles all the time (e.g., “Some Like It Hot” or “Caught in the Act”). I don’t fault a scientist for trying to get her peers to read her papers, any more than websites using controversial-sounding headlines to get clicks.
The analogy is metaphorically apt but has nothing to do with planetary climate science at all. THAT’S WHY IT’S FUNNY TO ASTROPHYSICISTS.
I don’t see how this is any different than the New Scientist using catchy-sounding findings to increase readership, or how Anthony has taken the study totally out of context to take any dig at scientists.
What I see as malicious is this: Why didn’t Anthony attempt to contact the author(s), as Carrick has, to see what they meant? Their emails are publicly available, and Tanaka seemed very willing to answer questions. Why just call them “weapons-grade stupid” on a very technical paper that is light-years outside your own expertise? In my view, this was done solely to incite controversy, and is unethical.
Anthony if you mean by “worked” that it generated more PR for his very interesting paper.
Very clearly he was making a play on words. We physicists do that sometimes. He’s says that’s what he did. I don’t know what there is left to admit by that. You’re assuming motives of somebody you’ve never even met for the reasons that he chose that particular play on words,
It was pointed out above the names for our quark particles, “up, down, strange, charm, top, bottom [or truth and beauty]”, each of which either a ±2/3 or± 1/3 of an electron’s charge and are endowed with a color red, green or blue (or their opposites, anti-red, anti-green and anti-blue). As Taka points out, as you know who your audience is, there isn’t much chance of miscommunication.
What’s not to like?
REPLY: If the situation were reversed, the MSM and blogs would be all over me or some other climate skeptic. Clearly, when he uses phrases like “climate change deniers”, we know what sort of person he is. Clearly, he meant to use those words. When you give an interview to “the New Scientist, that puts your “audience” in the realm of layman, and he made not caveats. He knew what he was doing, either that or he’s a complete idiot.
I find his labeling and wordplay disturbing.
Lubos Motl had it right, this was “climate porn” – Anthony
Robert, “You know, I find Dr. Tanaka’s use of the term “climate change deniers” vs. “activists” quite revealing in itself.”
Why? They’re standard terms. Nobody can decide what either side should be called, and it seems no matter what you call them, they’re going to object (or the other group will object).
Please come up with a term that we can all agree on, and we’ll all agree to use it.
[Reply: Concerning the pejorative “deniers”, please read the site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]
Carrick says: June 11, 2012 at 11:18 am
Carrick, that is just a bit disingenuous, don’t you think? There are quite a few “standard terms” that are derogatory, malicious, and betray either ignorance or deceit. There are quite a few terms Dr. Tanaka might have used (I prefer Climate Realist myself, but that does have pejorative connotations toward those who do not accept my point-of-view) and, much like those who casually use “the N-word” to describe certain fellow Americans, betrays having taken a position and point of view without a great deal of analysis or thought. Such is the base of the vast “scientific consensus”.
Carrick says:
June 11, 2012 at 11:18 am
Robert, “You know, I find Dr. Tanaka’s use of the term “climate change deniers” vs. “activists” quite revealing in itself.”
Why? They’re standard terms.
For one thing, the term “climate change denier” is a lie. Skeptics do *not* deny that the climate changes; we affirm that it does, and it’s a part of natural variation for which there’s empirical evidence, as opposed to those who believe — on the basis of no evidence — that humans are somehow the cause of global warming/climate change *right now*.
[snip – name calling doesn’t help here, resubmit ~mod]
Bill, some people do deny that climate is changing. Heck some of them deny the existence of photons! Others deny well established physics like radiative physics. Or well established measurement practices (once you hit this threshold, ironically, you’ve included people on both side of the divide including some people being excoriated on another thread for their flawed statistical methodology).
Robert, I think it’s a bit unfair to expect him to spend over-much time on your feelings in using a broadly used term used commonly in the press to describe you (see who this thread was activity and perhaps unfairly ridiculing). I can understand not liking the term, I won’t use it myself, but I am a lot more heavily involved in the debate that Taka is.
If you guys want to get really grumpy, read this on climate change deniaal i n the Wikipedia.
I agree that calling everybody who is skeptical of proposed remediations of potential catastrophic AGW is over broad a “denier” is overly broad and unfair. Enough said, IMO, let it lie.
Let’s get Michael Mann’s take on this
Carrick says: June 11, 2012 at 12:56 pm
It’s not a question of my “feelings”. I suspect Dr. Tanaka does have views on climate and he is one of the thousands of scientists that are touted as part of the scientific consensus… yet his views are no more profound than any other reader of the MSM.