Guest essay by Leo Goldstein
This essay attempts to address a rarely asked question: How did Silicon Valley, one of the greatest centers of wealth and brain power on Earth, embrace climate alarmism? Silicon Valley insiders are smart and successful people. By “Silicon Valley insiders,” I mean the founders, owners, venture capitalists, executives, and software professionals of the so-called tech companies located not only in the Silicon Valley, but elsewhere in the U.S.
Cognitive biases affecting understanding of the sciences
1. Silicon Valley insiders are educated and experienced in the software side of computer sciences but rarely in the kind of sciences that are directly involved with climate topics, such as physics, biology or energy engineering.
2. Software professionals tend to have a habit of not RTFM (and are proud of it). Software and Internet billionaires also might lack the time to RTFM.
3. Hardware design and manufacturing requires knowledge of physics, chemistry, and engineering. However, within the last 25 years most of the hardware manufacturing and even design that put the word “silicon” in Silicon Valley went offshore. In the last ten years, Silicon Valley has been doing very little outside software development (including firmware,) graphic design, marketing, “content,” and finances.
4. In contrast, software-centered computer sciences knowledge is very small in volume compared to the natural sciences, such as physics. One might even say that there is a 80/80/80 rule: 80% of what 80% of software engineers and architects use can be studied in 80 months. And this is the same pool of knowledge, shared by all these intelligent professionals. One cannot even remotely compare that body of knowledge to that of physics. It wouldn’t make sense to try to calculate how many months it would take to study all applied physics, or even one of its many branches (geophysics, atmospheric physics, nuclear physics, etc.) Consequently, smart minds with a software background easily fall into believing misleading “greenhouse” explanations by climate alarmists.
5. Software sciences are also everchanging. Ideas that haven’t been in circulation within the last five years just don’t matter. For example, one can be an excellent software engineer without ever hearing about the Turing machine, proposed and analyzed by Alan Turing in 1936. Can someone become an aerodynamic engineer without ever knowing Newton’s laws?
6. Developers of video games use realistic physical models and work hard to make them produce 60 frames per second. It is hard for them to believe that self-appointed “climate scientists” can cook up alarmist climate models designed to produce a physically incorrect output every 6 years.
7. Success is known to breed hubris and arrogance. Many SV insiders are extremely successful.
Cognitive biases affecting politics of the Silicon Valley businesses
8. It’s possible that some SV insiders (just as many politicians) confuse the “Internet opinion” (comments, tweets, subreddits etc.) as reflection of the US public opinion, when it’s more reflective of the leftist echo-chamber. Much of this content is written by college faculty and students, individuals with extra time on their hand and people living outside of the US. Most Silicon Valley companies are “Internet companies.” The Internet transcends international borders, so SV insiders seem to be blind to the dangers of global governance agendas, and some may even embrace them. A clear example of this is the promotion of the “United Nations Global Goals” on the Google’s U.S. front page. This is offensive to those who do not want to be subjects of the UN or any global governance. Climate alarmism has a very strong global governance component.
9. Silicon Valley is a suburb of San Francisco, a notorious Leftist stronghold, and includes Berkeley. Many SV insiders lived in this atmosphere long enough to imbibe its “values” and do not question its strong agendas, including climate alarmism. Add to this the prejudice that liberals are smarter and more educated than conservatives.
10. I suppose SV insiders find it hard to believe that the speech of climate realists could have been suppressed to such a great degree in this country. I could not believe that, too.
Possible Financial Motives
11. Silicon Valley companies do a lot of business abroad, including content business, from web search to news. Many SV companies derive more than 70% of their revenues from sales abroad. In doing so, they must obey local laws and satisfy demands of foreign governments. These demands may be political or ideological. Foreign laws and political demands seem to influence the thinking and actions of Silicon Valley companies. For example, Germany’s government demanded Facebook remove or filter out “fake news.” Immediately after, Facebook announced an initiative to do similar things (flagging “fake news”) in the U.S. Not surprisingly, all announced fact checkers are left-leaning, and some of them are notorious purveyors of fake news. Most foreign governments and political parties are either enthusiastic supporters or even instigators of climate alarmism, and might have heavily influenced SV insiders.
12. I hope none of these tech companies attempted to acquiesce demands of foreign governments or other foreign (including international) political entities regarding the content they provide in the US.
13. Of course, many tech companies are notoriously linked with the Democratic Party. This might be a consequence of the factors listed above, or it might have been a condition for success under Democratic administrations. For example, Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt was on Obama’s 2009 transition team before he went on to take a position in his science and technology advisory council.
14. Some SV insiders might be, as Richard Lindzen said, “newly minted billionaires who find the issue of ‘saving the planet’ appropriately suitable to their grandiose pretensions.”
California derived its early growth from the oil, soon becoming the national scientific leader. Now, it is comprised of little more than Hollywood, software, Jerry Brown, and collapsing infrastructure. Massachusetts, California and New York, the states that were once leaders in science, technology, and education, are now leaders in climate obscurantism.
This article focuses on the root causes of the climate alarmism conquest of Silicon Valley and its timeframe before 2014. Examples of recent actions by Google and Facebook simply illustrate earlier trends.
There’s a huge number of people all over the world that refuse to believe that either NOAA or NASA could possibly be manipulating temperature or sea level data. I’m frequently encountering them in various blogs. Also they seem to think that if there is some kind of manipulation going on, it must involve thousands of scientists in many countries so there’s no possible way that this could be true etc.
I think you are on to something. You know they must have access to AREA 51 and satellite communications, so no emails. Every month a signal goes out from AREA 51 to the satellites to tell them how much to manipulate the climate data. Then they put it thru a model, so they don’t all get the exact same answer. Then publish.
Seems likely to me.
Clearly you’ve never read the climategate emails.
Where do you I got this? Clearly _you’ve_ never read the climategate emails.
@RS: Climategate revealed that only a few opinion leaders and gatekeepers were needed to massively manipulate the climatological consensus and intimidate journals.
Mmm, no. Area51 transmissions sounds more plausible.
Yep, Area 51 sound most likely.
“Also they seem to think that if there is some kind of manipulation going on, it must involve thousands of scientists in many countries so there’s no possible way that this could be true etc.”
I think that is definitely a factor, Alan. Most people don’t realize that it is only a small number of people who are in charge of the temperature records, and they are all in the “climate science club” and thus associate with each other in the course of carrying out their jobs, which makes it a lot easier for them to get together and decide to adjust the temperatures to make it look like humans are causing the climate to change through the burning of fossil fuels.
So in reality, it is just a few people who are doing the temperature manipulations, and are then passing this manipulated data on to all the other scientists in the world as legitimate. Unfortunately, the general public is unaware of all this.
The AGW conjecture at first seems to be quite plausable. As Mankind has been using fossil fuels, the level of CO2 in our atmosphere has been increasing and is now over .04% but many do not realize how small that number is. The increase in CO2 is coinsiding with the Modern Warm Period so there seemingly must be some connection even though looking at the paleoclimate record such cool and warm periods have been going on for quite some time without bering a function of CO2. Proponents of AGW have been trying to get rid of the previous Medeival Warm Period which was a warm period that was not caused by Mankind’s use of fossil fuels. Most people these days are not up on paleoclimate issues and the hockey stick chart for them is what they believe in particularily if they had to learn it in school or saw it on some official web site.
Then there is the idea that CO2 controls H2O so even though H2O has to be the primary greenhouse gas it is controled by CO2 so it just does not matter. That is what made no sense to me but apparently many people buy. I never understood how H2O could provide a positive climate feedback to added CO2 but not provide a similar positive feedback to more H2O making the entire climate system unstable. If one with a science background takes a really critical look at how AGW is suppose to work according to many of the most popular explanations one begins to realize that it is really science fiction because the climate system really does not work that way. But most people have only an 8th grade general science mentality and just beleve what the text book tells them.
Then there is the idea of “scientific consensus”, so if so many say that AGW is true then it must be true. For many, AGW must be proven fact so to say otherwise is some sort of blastphmy. Then they will claim that your arguements are not valid because they do not come from a peer reviewed paper from an appropriate climate journal or because you yourself are not a qualified climate scientist. With many it has become a religion so sceintific arguements do not really matter any more.
The idea that a greenhouse stays warm because of IR absorbing materials was shown to be false via experiment early in the last century but most people do not know that. People have to learn that our climate is controled by a radiant greenhouse effect which the AGW conjecture is based upon even though in reality such a radiant green house effect has yet to be observed. According to the AGW conjecture the surface of the Earth is 33 degrees C warmer on average because of the action of heat trapping greenhouse gases and apparently all of the other gases in the atmosphere are thermally inert. We must believe in the AGW explanation because there is no other possible explanation. Of course there is another explanation that totally excludes the existance of a radiant greenhouse effect but most people do not know that and will tell you that you are lying if you try to explain it to them because it is contrary to what they had to memorize in school and their school text books must have been right.
Then there is the SKS mentality which will tell you that every arguement against the AGW conjecture is just some sort of right wing propoganda and hence must be rejected. I have had so many of my comments deleted over at SKS that I do not even try to post over there but there is one set of by comments that blows away AGW that they left because they did not really understand that is what my comments did.
I myself really wanted the AGW conjecture to succeed so I could use it as another reason to conserve on the use of fossil fuels but for many the AGW conjecture is too full of holes but you really have to have a critical scientific background to find those holes and to realize that under critical examination the AGW conjecture cannot be successfully defended. I cannot prove anything regarding climate science but the best evidence that I have seen is the the climate sensivity of CO2 is some small number close to or equal to zero but most people just accept what the text books are telling them.
Willhaas:
You wrote:
Of course there is another system that totally excludes the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect”
I am not sure what system you are referring to, but I have posted a system which explains all that has happened to the climate over the past 160 years, and is applicable to earlier eras as well.
It can be found by a Google search for “Climate Change Deciphered”.
Your comments??.
Willhaas “Of course there is another explanation that totally excludes the existance of a radiant greenhouse effect but most people do not know that and will tell you that you are lying if you try to explain it to them”
Please tell us. Why is the Earth 33K warmer than it would be?
Why water vapor of course. There’s so much of the stuff it’s the dog.
Co2 was important before the ice melted.
BTW, you can see WV is good for almost 20F in this graph.
Burl Henry. My objection is that removal of SO2 does not cause temperatures to rise. SO2 results in cooling. Removal of SO2 means less cooling. Less cooling does not equal warming. Something is making the temperature rise and it is not removal of SO2.
Seaice1:
You wrote: “My objection is that the removal of SO2 does not cause temperatures to rise”
This is nonsense!
Earth’s climate is extremely sensitive to the amount of dimming SO2 aerosols that are present in the atmosphere. EVERY time that their net global quantity is reduced, average global temperatures will rise (unless offset by a La Nina, or a large volcanic eruption).
This is proven in my post “Climate Change Deciphered”. Do a Google search.
(As would be expected, reduced SO2 levels can cause regional temperatures to be even higher than average global temperature increases).
.
micro6500: Your explanation is surely that water vapor is a greenhouse gas. The proposal was that there was ” another explanation that totally excludes the existance of a radiant greenhouse effect”, so your answer is not the one I asked for.
seaice1
Less cooling does not equal warming.
Wow. Your ability to repeatedly demonstrate your complete lack of understanding of the processes involved is truly remarkable. This time with a single sentence.
Burl Henry, several theories of that matter have been floating around for years and for me thay have more substance than the AGW CO2 theory. The problem with climate science is that one cannot really prove anything because there are just too many variables and one cannot run definitive exeriments. One cannot control all climate related variables for several hundred years and then rerun the several hundred years with only one variable changed. There has also been some work that shows that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans. Climate change has been taking place long before Mankind has had any effect on CO2 or SO2.
willhass:
The “model” that I have posted, which perfectly matches the behavior of the climate 1975-2011, needs only ONE variable: the amount of SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere.
Decrease that amount,and temperatures increase. Increase that amount and temperatures decrease. (This is applicable across the centuries).
From this data, a “background” temperature.can be calculated, which, when there are no .temporary natural variations, is essentially an exact match (to within .02 deg. C.) to reported J-D average global temperatures.
Upon this background temperature, temporary natural variations due to recession warming, El Ninos, La Ninas, and volcanic eruptions will alter the observed temperature.
A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of the LWIR absorbing properties of so called greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass retards cooling by convection. It is a convective greenhouse effect. So too on Earth. As derived from first principals, the surface of the Earth is on average 33 degrees warmer because gravity limits cooling by convection. The convective greenhouse effect is a function of gravity, the heat capacity of the atmosphere and the depth of the atmosphere and has nothing to do with the LWIR absorption properties of so called greenhouse gases. The convective greenhouse effect accounts for all 33 degrees C that has been observed. There is no additional radiant greenhouse effect. The convective greenhouse effect has been observed on all planets in the solar system with thick atmospheres. If CO2 really affected climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but such has not happened.
Burl Henry, your observations may provide rational upon which to base a hypothesis but not proof. Short term correlation is no proof of causuality. For a definitive experiment try rerunning the Earth’s climate for the past 160 years without any SO2 in the atmosphere and see what happens. Unfortunately such a definitive experiment cannot be run.
Wlihaas:
What I have presented is NOT a hypothesis, it is a FACT.
Over the past 160 years, whenever there is a business slow down. there is a temporary increase in average global temperatures., due to reduced SO2 levels.
Whenever there are reductions in SO2 emissions due to Clean Air efforts, temperatures increase by a predictable amount.
SO2 aerosols ARE the control knob for Climate Change.(and I have further proof)
Burl Henry and Davidmhoffer. I did look at “climate change deciphered”. If you look up-thread I suggested to someone else that they look you up to see about SO2 cooling. My objection is that SO2 results in less solar radiation reaching the surface, so in the presence of the sun shining it results in cooling. Removal of the SO2 does not result in heating, but less cooling. Yes, if the sun shines the same the temperature goes up, but it is the sun that causes the heating. It may seem a pedantic point but it is important.
Imagine a block with an IR lamp shining on it. We now put a sheet of glass between the lamp and the block. The heating is stopped and the block cools. Now we move the glass: the heating resumes. What cause the heating? I would say it was not the removal of the glass but the IR lamp.
This is important because if we say removing glass sheets causes heating we will be horribly mis-led and might start removing all our windows. We must put it in context of the IR lamp because removing glass sheets does not cause heating. Similarly we must put the SO2 in the context of the energy budget of the Earth.
Seaice:
Let me give you a better analogy:
You are outside on a bright, sunny day, with an umbrella to protect you from the heat of the sun.
If you close the umbrella, you are now exposed to the full force of the sun, and you will feel much warmer.
For planet earth, the umbrella is the amount of dimming anthropogenic SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere. Reduce that amount, and the earth’s surface WILL get warmer.
This has been proven over and over with temporary warming occurring during each business recession for the past 160+ years..
And unfortunate permanent warming as net global SO2 emissions are reduced by Clean Air efforts.
Burl Henry, you have not provided any proof. You do not seem to know what proof really is. You cannot prove anything regarding the Earth;s climate with only 160 years of observation. What about climate change before human civilization and Mankind having nothing to do with SO2? If SO2 is the control knob them maybe there was just no climate at all in those days.
You say that I haven’t proved anything:
If an experiment is repeated over and over with the same results, and with no exceptions, then no further proof is necessary.
With respect to earlier eras when man was not around to influence the climate, then the source of the SO2 would be volcanic, or out-gassing.
For example, the Little Ice Age has been attributed to the VEI7 eruption of Mount Rinjani in 1258
Mount Tambora, another VEI7 eruption (1815) lowered global temperatures by about 5 deg. F., giving us “the year without a summer.
Earth was much more volcanic in the past, and it is knot a stretch to suppose that Ice Ages were preceded by extensive volcanism. Cessation of the volcanism would allow the climate to warm up, and the ice to melt..
Well where is the experiment that proves your theroy?. To do so you will have to rerun the Earth’s climate with all variables controled. You will have to run the same years once with SO2 present and another time with no SO2. To perform this experiment you will need both a time machine and God like powers.
The coldest part of the Little Ice Age occoured at the end of the 1600’s and the beginning of the 1700’s and coincided with a minimum in solar activity and had nothing to do with an erruption in 1258.
Willhaas.
The experiments have already been performed by Nature. Multiple times, temporary warming occurred when SO2 aerosol emissions were decreased, and the temporary warming disappeared when SO2 aerosols emissions increased after the recessions ended.
In addition, Nature has shown us that volcanic eruptions temporarily cool the earth’s surface, then warm it up again to pre-eruption levels after the SO2 aerosols have settled out.
And decreases in net global SO2 aerosol emissions due to Clean Air Efforts also cause temperatures to increase.
.
willhaas:
With respect to your Little Ice Age comments:
According to Wiipedia, the eruption of Mount Rinjani in 1258 is considered to be the beginning of the Little Ice age, which spanned some 400 years, with warmer periods interspersed.
They do agree that the coldest portion occurred at the end of the 1600’s (There was a VEI6 eruption in 1660 (Long Island volcano) which probably caused the minimum)
Sorry, don’t buy into this reasoning.
First if all, the bulk of employees in a SV company have nothing to do with technology. They are in accounting, marketing, sales, manufacturing, warehousing, distribution…. They are no more qualified or interested in climate science than their peers making cars or running cruise ships.
As for their founders, they have very narrow areas of specialization, and are tasked with running companies which are under intense political scrutiny and it is safer to be politically correct. The skeptics are unlikely to boycott you if you are green, but the alarmists will be picketing your front door if your not. Or at least paying lip service.
@davidmhoffer
A small, practically insignificant comment that, nonetheless, nails the point of the article.
I could not have put it better, myself.
The question is whether or not all these go-along-to-get-along folks will realize that it is costing everyone an arm and a leg to be PC.
Based on my experience with Silicon Valley employees, I’d add to the list that Silicon Valley employers tend to fire employees approaching 50 year of age. This strips the companies of management personnel with adult perspectives and leaves the employees largely without adult supervision. In addition, the employees tend to begin being filtered out of the work place as they begin to have children… leaving behind a work force that lacks the tempered perspectives that come with child rearing.
To get on the good side of the neo-hippies, so the Libtards buy more of their stuff.
There is just one reason: AGW is politics and nothing else. When things become political smart people are no longer so smart.
Everyone has their articles of faith, religious/moral imperatives, and secular priorities.
I don’t
If you are human, you do.
We are all different
IMO your first reason nails it. They are ignorant of the relevant science and unaware of their ignorance. It didn’t help that climate science got off on the wrong foot by not discovering that thermalization explains why CO2 has no significant effect on climate.
Really smart people with narrow, in-depth knowledge of a specific field frequently are assumed to be as knowledgeable in fields outside their specialty. They also frequently prove this to be an invalid assumption. Linus Pauling is exhibit #1.
Real reason no. 1:
Most of the software companies depend on the whims of the public and the whims of the government, so they keep their heads down.
Remember MySpace ? It was taken to the cleaners in under a month.
Perhaps it is simply that their mindsets correspond more with the mindsets of hunter-gatherers.
Nature as the basis of survival.
As an SV insider, I’ve seen it first hand and it’s all a matter of guilt for being successful which the political left has leveraged to the hilt. ‘Helping the world’ seems noble until you look at the motivations and few have the time to bother.
..a perfect explanation for the behavior of “elite” Hollywood celebrities also!
Years ago the Reverend Ike took great financial advantage of the guilt of the wealthy. The darned thing was that he made no secret about it.
In an industry that’s overweight in thirty something millennials who’ve been subjected to an education that was essentially a narrow perspective, ideological brain washing what else would anyone expect? Normally if intelligent young people were subjected to 10-20 years of real life experience in non-group think environments many would eventually realise they’d were conned by their teacher preachers. However, in the hot-house, group-think environment of SV that requires far greater independence of thought – a characteristic actively discouraged and likely to be a career limiting if not career ending offence.
Exactly what I was thinking. They were taught climate change, not basic climate (you know, it’s determined by location, etc.) They think it’s all caused by CO2. There have been times I’ve been laughed at for saying that both poles cannot melt at the same time due to the opposing seasons. These people were taught none of what we learned in grade school.
It’s interesting that you bring up physics as something that silicon valley engineers don’t know – half of my team and most of my friends have at least a master’s degree in physics. Granted, though, none of us are alarmists.. so you are not exactly correct in your generalization, but perhaps correct in your correlation. Not sure – I have a small sampling compared to the entirety of population you describe.
This is the point – they are not alarmists. And let me guess – their age is about 50, and they have no influence? Majority of SV insiders have either computer sciences or non-scientific education, and know little physics.
Leo, thank you. I feel as though you summed up the reality in Sillycon valley very well. And for sure those silly guys are conning us all.
SV insiders are conned themselves, too.
Very good article. I first crossed it in system development, but it was “if all else fails, read the frigging manual.” However I understood that to be ironic, as in “Back-ups are for wimps.”
Mass virtue signalling. Simple.
“Software sciences are also everchanging. Ideas that haven’t been in circulation within the last five years just don’t matter.”
There is a strange dichotomy here, in that software engineers create change -often pointless change- at a willy-nilly pace, yet all of their work is rooted in 40-year-old systems with massive security flaws. The parlous state of IT security is almost entirely a consequence of the flat refusal by programmers to consider using anything other than C and SQL as the two main languages.
The issues are, specifically, buffer overflows in C, and malicious code injection in SQL. Protecting against these two issues is problematic, because even a momentary oversight in some obscure part of a large program can leave a vulnerability.
Nowadays, most students aren’t even taught that the security problems of C and SQL didn’t affect earlier languages, and would go away if these languages were ditched. Yet, that fact has been conveniently forgotten, and as a consequence in their professional capacity they continue to turn out software with completely avoidable security flaws.
Asking programmers why this situation continues, it becomes apparent that a strong element of hubris is involved. Many will claim that they are aware of the high risk of creating accidental security holes, but reckon they’re so good at it, they never make missteaks.
It has been argued that the software houses don’t want to change this situation, because having builtin security holes in software provides a ready means of expiring older products so as to keep the revenue stream flowing. Once the patch support ends, you as the end user can be told that if you don’t upgrade, you are at risk!! Point of fact you are at risk anyway, because the new product also contains similar vulns.
Ian,
I can’t speak to the SQL security issues, but I agree that buffer overflows in older code is definitely a major cause of security holes today. This is not specifically a problem with the C language though, as you can write bad code in any language. True, some make it more difficult to create buffer overflow type errors, however there are many other types of security holes. And nearly all of the buffer overflow problems could have been avoided with better coding standards and processes. The truth is, much of this code was slapped together and pressed into service with little peer review and testing. So it’s a bit disingenuous to blame the C language.
The vast majority of the time the only thing that happens when buffers overflow is that the system crashes. Either that or you get randomly corrupted data that is impossible to track down.
The idea that every buffer overflow is a security issue waiting to happen is ridiculous.
“80% of what 80% of software engineers and architects use can be studied in 80 months.”
I believe you mean 80 days. 80 months is 6 years and 8 months.
(This rule-of-tongue-in-cheek is an almost-accurate description for most technical positions; it’s the last 20% of the knowledge that takes a lot of time to master…)
I’m tempted to say 80% in 80 days, 18% in 18 years and 2% in two lifetimes.
The key is that the knowledge pool is almost the same for all these software engineers. Can you say the same about doctors, for example? A typical doctors studies ~ 7 years (weighting down years of general college and residence). But different doctors learn different things! Each of them learns something like 0.8% of what 80% of doctors know and use. The doctors know their limitations, and consult other specialists when needed. And no doctor would make diagnosis based on a “scientific discovery” that he read in a newspaper. Unfortunately, some of my colleagues in software engineering overestimate their knowledge of sciences and non-computer engineering.
I live in Silicon Valley. It has less to do with politics, in my opinion, than it has to do with seeing “climate change” as a catalyst to creating emerging markets. So — things like solar power at the home creates a market for things like energy management controllers. Energy conservation adds an incentive for things like automotive control systems, software such as self-driving cars that might reduce traffic congestion and conserve energy. They see “climate change” as the “hook” that gets the everyday masses to buy into regulations that raise the level of difficulty to do things and they are ready to provide the software and hardware that meet those stricter standards. So it’s basically greed. They see “climate change” as potentially driving many markets for them so of course they are on board with it.
I didn’t read past the first section, “Cognitive biases affecting understanding of the sciences”, as it was full of crap. I know loads of software engineers, having been one myself for the last 30 years, and the vast majority of the ones I’ve spoken to have not been sucked in by climate alarmism. The primary reason for that is that they are mostly free thinking logical people, who want evidence (e.g. Test results, observations etc) to verify the correctness of their work, clearly an attitude that is anathema to the climate alarmists.
Computer engineering is not standalone in most cases. It is commonly a tool in a science or engineering field, in business, and economics, etc. I used computer engineering in earth sciences projects over many years. Computer engineering in earth science is like saying you also use a car to get to work so have to compare cars to earth science.
But former software engineers and current tech moguls – such as Bill Gates – are sucked into it.
Leo,
Bill Gates is no longer a software engineer (and hasn’t been for a long time). He is a wealthy white guy that is trying to salve his guilt at being so white, male, and successful.
He was one, and some of SE mindset remains. But he is a special case. He is totally surrounded and overwhelmed by the “non-profit community,” craving his money.
How many of the programmers that you know work in Silicon Valley?
Ask them to educate their bosses in Google, Microsoft, Reddit etc.
Supporting a political party that you do not is not “notorious”.
Ironically it’s that kind of narrow-minded partisanship that leads to groupthink in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
They’re practicing topiary on a wreath.
Silicon valley are all leftists so despite being brilliant they all believe in climate change??
Oh my. Oh my ears and whiskers. Oh, stop it, stop it.
Oh dear.
The tears are rolling down my face… I laughed till I cried. I actually hurt my sides laughing.
Take it easy Griff, remember the fate of Calchas.
Tears for the people who cannot afford a home and ride the buss all night. You are all compassion Griff.
Actually, if your sides are so in pain through laughter, I suggest the PlayTex 24hr Girdle, it helps me when I read you infantile posts.
I shall for ever imagine you martini in hand dressed only in your girdle…
I did not find it funny as it was too sad.
1) – would require that people involved in chemistry and biology reject climate science. This is not so.
2) Not RTFM suggests an independent way of thought, that is not one to be persuaded by orthodoxy without evidence.
3) See 1. It assumes that a knowledge of physics and chemistry would lead to rejection of climate science, and then imlies that the converse must also be true, that is a lack of working in these fields will result in acceptance of climate science. The first is just wrong and the second a logical fallacy.
4) Goodness, 80% if what 80% of any field can be learned in 7 years. That still leaves 34% requiring more than 7 years to study. Meaningless, but if true that physics were somehow different, it still implies that physicists reject climate science. I have seen zero evidence that this is the case, so is a non sequitur.
5) Comparing the Turing Machine to Newtons laws is not a valid comparison. But even if it were valid, what does that say about why Silicon Valley entrepreneurs believe in climate science? Where is the step that takes us from working in an ever changing field to rejecting climate science?
6) Assumes the antecedent – the models are not designed to produce physically incorrect output.
7) Success breeds hubris and arrogance. And just why would arrogance lead to a rejection of climate science? No reason at all. It is arrogant to reject it since that is claiming to know more than the experts.
8) Assumes business in the USA is better served by pandering to global government than by cheap fuel. Very unlikely.
9) Oh my, I can’t go on.
Exactly. Silicon Valley is not a political party. This article is fundamentally flawed.
These guys go along with Climate Change scares stories because it pays well. That’s all.
It’s about money.
Look Google tried to invest in renewables, realised it wouldn’t work and stopped. If they believed the end of the world was night they would have thrown good money after bad. They would have had to. There’s no profit in a world in the grave.
But they don’t do that.
This is not apolitical movement. Not in tech companies anyway.
It’s about profit.
If taxpayers are willing to give them lots of money they will take it.
I’m a chemist, seaice1, and after investigation have disproved the AGW claim.
Rejecting AGW does not involve rejecting climate science. It involves a recognition that climate science as currently practiced is not science at all.
A chemist making a pronouncement about climate is like a medical doctor representing a client at a criminal trial.
My work there is about physical error analysis, Martin. Something chemists must do as a matter of course and about which climate modelers are apparently totally ignorant.
To propagate climate model error through a climate model projection is to find that the climate projection is physically meaningless and that the climate model has no predictive value.
Finding error in climate models is not disproving the AGW claim. The AGW hypothesis predates climate models.
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PS, publishing in a blog is not “science”, but as a chemist, you already know that.
Martin, do you have any idea how stupid you sound when you proclaim that only those who are recognized as experts in climate have any right to talk about climate.
Anyone can point out that the data does not support the hypothesis.
The science is in the content, Martin, not where it appears. As a chemist, I know that.
A truely scientific AGW hypothesis must be falsifiable. The current version is not. No scientific AGW hypothesis has ever appeared. AGW is hardly more than a conjecture.
Pat Frank:
You wrote “A truly scientific AGW hypothesis must be falsifiable”
The model which I have posted on “Climate Change Deciphered” is completely falsifiable (and has been falsified).
So why is it being ignored?
MarkW, do you have any idea how stupid you sound when you proclaim that Frank is talking about data? He’s not, he’s talking about “models.”
Frank, why don’t you publish your “findings” that AGW is not falsifiable in a reputable peer reviewed journal? While you are at it, you might as well provide an alternative hypothesis that explains the approximately 1 degree C rise in global temps over the past 150 years.
You’ve shifted your ground, Martin. If you can’t argue the content, you haven’t a case.
FYI, I’ve been trying to publish that work for going on four years, over the most incredibly incompetent reviews it has been my misfortune to experience, ever.
I have yet to encounter a climate modeler who knows the first thing about physical error analysis. Their mistakes are reminiscent of naive college freshman.
Frank, please follow your own advice, and stop “shifting ground.” Your blog posts are about climate models, not about your claim of an “unfalsifiable hypothesis. There are plenty of vanity journals that will publish your work, so don’t complain about “incompetent reviews”
Your argument has dissolved into mindless and irrelevant complaints, Martin.
It’s clear you’re just arguing from authority, not from knowledge.
Climate models deploy the current physical theory of climate. They are for Climate Science as software deploying quantum mechanics is for Chemistry. QM models make predictions that can be, and are, tested. QM stands or falls on the test.
Climate models use the physical theory of climate to purportedly predict future climate states. Except the errors they make are so large, that they cannot be tested or falsified by any conceivable observation.
No climate model accuracy, no valid predictions, no test, no knowable AGW. That’s the verdict of science.
Burl, I’m unfamiliar with your work. But if your model does not include the correct physics of cloud formation (necessary but not sufficient), it’s not a climate model and it’s not falsifiable by observation because its output is not a prediction.
Pat Frank:
The “model” can be viewed by a Google search for “Climate Change Deciphered”.
It’s output leads to temperature predictions/projections accurate to .02 deg. C., or less.
Frank, again you are “shifting ground.”
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You are arguing about climate models not the AGW hypothesis.
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When you begin to argue about (in your words) ” the current physical theory of climate” then you might make some sense.
Frank, for example, when the weather forecasting model gets it wrong, and your picnic gets rained on, that does not invalidate the ideal gas law, right?
Poor Martin, he can no longer tell the difference between data and models.
It is the data that has refuted the models.
Poor MarkW, he can no longer tell the difference between models and theory. A refuted model doesn’t refute the theory.
Martin, the model includes the entire physical theory; it consists of all the math, all the physical relationships, everything. When it tests out wrong, the theory is disproved at the level of the test.
If you don’t understand this, you understand nothing of science or of how science works.
Frank, the weather model(s) include the entire physical theory; it consists of all the math, all the physical relationships, everything. When it rains on you picnic, the theory is NOT affected at all. All you can surmise is that the model needs improvement.
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Have you as a chemist ever run a climate model?
Martin, if your weather model predicted no rain where you’re having your picnic, and yet it rains on your picnic, then the physical theory in your weather model is falsified at that level.
All of science is a model of physical reality. Maxwell’s classical EM equations model the behavior of radiation, Relativistic mechanics is a model of space-time, Molecular Dynamics models the behavior of ions in solution. It’s all models. There is no distinction between theory and model.
Physical error analysis is model-independent. It’s done the same way for all quantitative physical models … exposing the nonsense of your last question.
What science do you do, Martin? You don’t seem to know anything at all about how science works.
OK Mr. Chemistry, when it rains on the picnic, the weather model has problems. Please tell me which physical theory the model is built on is falsified. The ideal gas law? The physics of the momentum of moving air masses? Thermodynamic relationships with water vapor? It’s becoming plainly obvious you seem to be unable to distinguish the difference between climate models and climate theory. That sort of thing happens when you get outside of your field of experience.
it’s the energy conservation parameterization of air/water boundary, where they make sure they get more water vapor out of this zone. The same was done in GISS , in that case they fixed it by allowing a super saturation of water vapor.
People must have been talking so they changed it in the cmip models.
The models are just encoded with your opinions of how all of the physics actually combines.
That’s actually why there’s the big difference between observations and models.
Right – I just asked what science you do, Martin, and you punted the question. You know nothing about science, and then presume to diagnose what I don’t know.
Regarding models, there is no difference between theory and models. All theories are models — another thing that scientists know but you do not.
It takes detailed work to discover where a physical model goes wrong. Sometimes, often in fact, the source of the problem turns out to be counter-intuitive. Your off-hand, ‘is it this, is it that’ is exactly the wrong way to approach the problem.
micro6500 says: “The models are just encoded with your opinions of how all of the physics actually combines”…..which might be correct. However, the failure of the model does not falsify “energy conservation” which just so happens to be a physical theory. Choosing the incorrect parameterization does not falsify the physics. It’s a model building problem, not a physical theory falsification. So, no matter how badly the climate models fail, that has no bearing on the AGW hypothesis.
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Strike one. Please try again.
Fine Martin, here this invalidates it
Frank says: “You know nothing about science”
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A perfect example of an assertion without evidence. And you call yourself a scientist? Strike one.
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Second Frank says: “there is no difference between theory and models.” WRONG Weather forecasting models are based on solid theories. So tell me which theory that the these weather forecasting models are built upon make the model fail at three months into the future? You are correct when you say all theories are models, however the converse part of the equivalence is not true. All models are not theories. Because of this there is a serious difference. Strike two.
Martin, you have been wrong about everything, every time. You’re on about strike 50.
Your arguments are obvious nonsense, your comments display ignorance, and your expressed thoughts don’t rise above the fatuous.
Your next best step is to declare victory and go away singing your huzzahs. Declamation is all you do anyway, and your word is all you need to prove you’re right.
So, declare victory and you’ll just know you’ve won the argument. Martin said so, after all, and that’s all the evidence required.
Be sure and tell all your friends, too.
Mr. Pat Frank, I’m sorry to inform you, but Mr. Martin Clark is correct about all models not being theories. I suggest you reconsider what you’ve said about Mr. Clarks position, because he has not been wrong about everything.
Mr. Pat Frank, this might help you in clearing up your confusion: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/187967/what-is-the-difference-between-a-model-and-a-theory
Ralph Dave Westfall, the first explanation at your reference site uses an engineering model to distinguish model from scientific theory. That is a categorical mistake.
The second explanation merely says that a model uses physical theory to calculate particular examples of phenomena explained by the general theory. This definition means that the model includes the general physical theory plus the specific information for the problem at hand.
Read through my comments. My description of a mocel, including a climate model is exactly the second of those two explanations.
Martin has been wrong throughout, and your comment is misguided.
Martin Clark: “The models … are not theories they … [use] physical theories.”
It’s always fine to see an ignorant zealot contradict himself. Congratulations Martin, you refuted yourself in one sentence.
Let’s see: that’s now about strike 52.
Martin Clark, “An automobile uses gasoline, but that does not make an automobile gasoline>”
Argument by equivocation. A classic of ignorance, unless it’s dishonesty.
English is my first language, Martin, and science is my profession. You don’t know what you’re talking about, but that doesn’t stop you.
Fortunately, this thread will remain in the WayBack machine, so future generations including, one hopes, your relatives, will be able to see how thoroughly vacuous you were.
Pat Frank: “I’m a chemist, seaice1, and after investigation have disproved the AGW claim.” And
“A truely scientific AGW hypothesis must be falsifiable. The current version is not. No scientific AGW hypothesis has ever appeared. ”
There seems to be an inconsistency here. How have you disproved the unfalsifiable?
Regarding your paper, why don’t you go for a statistics journal rather that an climate journal? Journal of Multivariate Analysis or something?
Burl Henry “The model which I have posted on “Climate Change Deciphered” is completely falsifiable (and has been falsified).
So why is it being ignored?”
I would suggest that it is because it has been falsified. Perhaps that is not what you intended to say?
Seaice:
To repeat Karl Popper’s admonition “scientific theories must be falsifiable (that is, empirically testable), and that prediction was the gold standard for their validation”
Thus, a theory must be falsified to be correct. The greenhouse gas hypothesis fails this test.:
seaice1, “There seems to be an inconsistency here. How have you disproved the unfalsifiable?”
Climate models are unfalsifiable because they can not make predictions.
The AGW hypothesis is not a climate model. It is an assertion that climate models have demonstrated a human imprint on climate. I can show that the uncertainty in air temperature projections is so large as to make the projections meaningless. That falsifies the AGW assertion, that models have demonstrated the effect.
For models themselves to be falsifiable, they must become able to make low-uncertainty predictions that can be tested against observables.
“Regarding your paper, why don’t you go for a statistics journal rather that an climate journal? Journal of Multivariate Analysis or something?”
I’ve thought about that. Nothing in my paper includes anything new about statistical analysis. It’s a totally straight-forward error analysis, standard in the physical sciences. It has nothing to offer a statistics journal.
It really is amazing how hard Griff works in order to miss the point.
His only functioning mental skill seems to be creating strawmen.
Fer chrissakes Mark. Can’t you come up with anything other than a constant stream of childish crap? I take it you think its kind of clever but it is just repetive drivel.
Post something else.
McClod, if I didn’t know better, I would suspect that you were referring to yourself in that post.
One trick pony.
Virtually all science has a shelf life that degrades over time. This is true in computer science, and is true in all earth sciences. For example, the US Geological Survey concluded that the Eel River, CA rocks included the gemstone nephrite. This was determined by 1800’s technology including microscopy and refractive index. However, when I took specimens from that site obtained by miners, infrared spectroscopy on a machine from post 1995 infrared technology, the mineralization is diopside and clinochlore. There is no nephrite at all. All 3 are serpentine group minerals, but only one is generally considered a gemstone. So to say all old technology beyond computer science is as valuable as current technology, is false. The entire study of mineralogy has gone through a revolution in technology use. The same for chemistry. In all fields, the instrumentation technology improves over time, increasing the quality of the data obtained, commonly invalidating old results. Silicon Valley moguls do not object to Trump’s climate direction based on information or differences in engineering or science studies. They object because they are globalists that benefit from the commoditization of labor enhanced by free trade regulations and quick transmittal of currency across borders.. Their opinions are economic, not scientific.
“Possible Financial Motives”. Never assume malice when stupidity is sufficient explanation.
+1