Robert Bryce
My emails with Smil on C.P. Snow’s 1959 essay, scientific illiteracy and innumeracy. Plus: Kotkin, Gurri, and Teixeira on the elites vs. the “normies”
In 1959, British novelist and physical chemist C.P. Snow gave a now-famous lecture called “The Two Cultures.” Snow argued that there was a growing disconnect between the culture of the sciences and the culture of the humanities and that bridging that gap was critical to understanding and addressing the world’s problems. Snow declared,
I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups… Literary intellectuals at one pole – at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.
Snow then underscored the general public’s lack of understanding of energy. As Snow put it:
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?
Indeed, while most moderately cultured people will be familiar with the Bard’s A Comedy of Errors or The Merchant of Venice, the three laws of thermodynamics are considered by most people to be the domain of nerds and wonks. Snow cheekily described them: “You can’t win. You can’t break even. And you can’t quit the game.”(This Khan Academy explanation is a good primer.) For most people, fundamental physics seems too troublesome to learn. This apathy towards physics is matched, or possibly exceeded, by the lack of interest in mathematics. Indeed, innumeracy is rampant.
Snow’s seminal lecture matters today because the divides in our culture are widening. Yes, there’s a divide in the sciences. But that divide doesn’t explain why so many policymakers are being bamboozled by the alt-energy mirage that’s being promoted by the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex and their myriad allies in media and academia.
I have written about scientific illiteracy and innumeracy several times, including in my 2010 book, Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy And the Real Fuels of The Future. In that book, I cited my 2007 interview with Vaclav Smil about energy issues. I asked the Canadian author and polymath why Americans are so easily bamboozled by the rhetoric about alternative energy. He responded:
There has never been such a depth of scientific illiteracy and basic innumeracy as we see today. Without any physical, chemical, and biological fundamentals, and with equally poor understanding of basic economic forces, it is no wonder that people will believe anything. (Emphasis added.)
That 17-year-old interview comes to mind because last week, I published “Vaclav Smil Calls Bullshit On Net Zero.” That piece, which details Smil’s debunking of the net-zero silliness that is being flogged by the Biden administration, nearly two dozen states, and about 100 cities, has been among the most popular ones I’ve written here on Substack.
After it was published, I emailed Smil a link to the piece. He immediately replied with a terse note: “Thanks, none of this really matters, this is a fully post-factual world.”
I emailed Smil back with these questions: To what do you attribute this post-factualism? Is it scientific illiteracy and innumeracy? Tribalism? Purposeful ignorance? I also asked about Snow’s 1959 lecture. He replied:
Yes, even your typical expert is near-utterly ignorant of basics (be they physics, chemistry, or biology) and very few people have actually internalized the difference between million and billion: hard to say which is worse, innumeracy probably.
He then cited Snow’s lecture:
All of this goes far, far beyond any two cultures, because now, on mass-scale, we have no particular culture: how else, when people check their mobile 244 [times] a day and spend 3 hours on YouTube and TikTok watching imbecilic videos. Goebbels would be stunned to see with what universal success his slogan of repeating a lie so often it becomes new truth has taken the global root, precisely because the soil is receptive: utterly brainless mass of mobile-bound individuals devoid of any historical perspective and of any kindergarten common-sense understanding.
I didn’t pose any more questions. (What’s left to ask?) While I agree with Smil about the general ignorance of basic science and the prevalence of innumeracy and imbecilic videos, there is another way to think about the two cultures and how the schism in our society has deepened over the past few decades. That schism helps explain, at least in part, the continuing popularity of Donald Trump and the anti-elite populism now sweeping Europe.
America’s most important cultural divide isn’t about left versus right, Biden versus Trump, or Democrat versus Republican. The most worrisome divide is the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. More specifically, it’s the enormous gap between the elites who dominate media, academia, NGOs, and politics, and the working class. Nowhere is that gap more evident than in the policies that promote alt-energy and net zero.
Every one of the climate policies being enacted by liberal states and the Biden administration screws the poor and the middle class, and in particular, the poor and middle-class folks who live in rural America. You name it — EV mandates, bans on natural gas stoves and heaters, strict emission cuts on power plants, lavish tax credits for Big Wind and Big Solar, or the latest FERC rule on high-voltage transmission — all of them are, in one way or another, regressive energy taxes that fuck the working class.
Many other writers are spotlighting this issue. Author and demographer Joel Kotkin has written extensively about the regressive energy policies being enacted by what he calls the “clerisy,” which he defines as “a group that makes its living largely in quasi-public institutions, notably universities, media, the non-profit world, and the upper bureaucracy.” While Kotkin, a fellow in urban studies at California’s Chapman University, says the clerisy isn’t unanimous in its politics, it “generally favors ever-increasing central control and regulation.” The most obvious place to see the climate clerisy at work is in California, where draconian decarbonization policies imposed by the administrative state are driving up housing and energy prices. The result of those regressive decisions are what California-based lawyer and civil rights activist Jennifer Hernandez has dubbed “Green Jim Crow.”
Last month, author and former CIA analyst Martin Gurri published an essay in The Free Press titled “The Revenge of the Normies.” Gurri focuses on the cultural gap between the “normies” and the “elites.” His assessment rhymes with Kotkin’s take:
On one side we find the normies: ordinary people who defend, naively, the historic principles of democracy such as freedom of speech and assembly, the separation of powers, etc. On the other side stand the elites, masters of the great institutions of wealth, knowledge, and power, who insist that extraordinary measures must be taken to save a depraved and self-destructive society from its own history and its own people…The normies want to get on with life. They want to work, get married, have children—boring stuff. That’s what normal means. The elites, for their part, wish to change everything: sex, the climate, our history, your automobile, your diet, even the straws with which you slurp your smoothie. (Emphasis added.)
Gurri continued, saying the normies “fight back by pouring into the streets in frighteningly large numbers and electing politicians loathed by the elites, like Donald Trump in the U.S. and Javier Milei in Argentina.”
Last year, Ruy Teixeira, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, identified the same elites-versus-working-class dynamic in a trenchant essay titled “The Working Class Isn’t Down With The Green Transition.” He explained:
Nothing defines the Democratic economic strategy more than a single-minded focus on fighting climate change — an “existential crisis” as Biden, other top Democrats and a galaxy of Democratic-leaning pundits have termed it…Democratic elites and activists are very, very committed to this approach and are willing to pay high costs to make it happen.
Teixeira cited a Monmouth poll that found “just one percent of working-class (noncollege) voters in an open-ended question identify climate change as the biggest concern facing their family.” And what about those EVs that Joe Biden’s EPA mandated last month? Teixeira cited a Gallup poll which found that “just 2% of working-class respondents say they currently own an electric vehicle and a mere 9% say they are ‘seriously considering’ purchasing one.”
Teixeira called the gap between Democratic elites and the working class the “Great Divide.” He concluded by saying, “Really, it’s madness. Biden needs to do more, not less, on moving the Democratic Party away from its obsession with renewables.”
There’s plenty more to write about the class divide over net zero, alt-energy, and the growing divide in American politics over climate policy. But if the clerisy and the elites in America want to understand what lies ahead if they continue their headlong rush to impose ever-more-regressive climate policies on voters, they only need to look at the latest elections in Europe. On Sunday, The Guardian published an article titled: “Green party losses in EU elections raise concerns over Green Deal.” The nut of the story:
In Germany, a core Green stronghold, the party’s vote share appears to have nearly halved since the last election in 2019. Exit polls suggested it fell 8.5 percentage points from 20.5% to 12%. In France, where the far right was leading and President Emmanuel Macron called snap elections, support for the Greens fell by the same amount. (Emphasis added.)
Meanwhile, the Associated Press called the parliamentary elections in France and Germany “stunning defeats to two of the bloc’s most important leaders: French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.” It added that their defeat “could well have an impact on the EU’s overall climate change policies, still the most progressive across the globe.”
I’m not predicting the outcome of the November election, but given the European elections, I won’t be surprised if Trump wins. If he does, it might be called the revenge of the normies.
Media Hits
- Last week, I was on Jim Puplava’s “Financial Sense” podcast along with geometallurgist Simon Michaux. We discussed commodities, net zero, China’s dominance of critical metals, and why, as Simon claimed copper “may be the new gold.” I disagree with Simon’s take on peak oil, but he has deep knowledge of the mining sector and its challenges, particularly when it comes to producing more copper. You can watch it here.
- Also, last week, I was on Chicago’s Morning Answer radio show with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson to discuss my recent Substack on why environmentalism in America is dead. You can watch/listen here.
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“[…] hard to say which is worse, innumeracy probably.”
I often say the same thing. And that politicians numeracy improves somewhat when it comes to awarding themselves pay rises.
Now all of us, and all “experts”, have our own areas of special ignorance. Some much larger than others.
But basic numeracy allows non-experts to make back-of-an-envelope mental calculations from simple data that may be presented to us. One can then quickly ask questions, draw conclusions, and call BS when necessary.
For example, if there are roughly 300 million tax payers in the US and the US government eventually ends up giving/taking roughly $300 billion for foreign proxy wars in the Ukraine etc, then that works out at about $1000 per tax payer.
Of course these are ball-park figures that can be argued about, but are within an order of magnitude. When voters and politicians are unable to do these sort of calculations in their head then they can’t even get to the point of asking informed questions about whether they think it is a good thing or not.
Edit: CP Snow’s thoughts also described what was well known in England since at least around the time of the industrial revolution: Innumeracy was, and still is, worn as a badge of honour among the ruling elites. Actually crunching numbers was something left to the servants, the nouveau riche, and those weirdos who made science their hobby.
Yes. Its not that they do not know basic arithmetic, its that they have no idea how to use it, and that it never occurs to them to try use it in the decision making process. As in, when you point out that net zero for your particular country will have no effect, you often get the reply that we must do something.
I read Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”. While I don’t disagree with his basic premise, I found his studies he referenced demonstrating “fast decisions contrary to self interest” to indicate innumeracy of the studied above all else.
Innumeracy being so widespread is an example of the failure of the education system. Education majors are themselves not very highly ranked among those tested, and the tendency to teach to the lower part of the class will not push anyone to do well generally.
And, Innumeracy keeps those embarrassing questions to a minimum.
Tom, on the issue of innumeracy and education:
In 1947 Dorothy Sayers read an excellent paper at Oxford, The Lost Tools of Learning.
Is it not the great defect of our education today that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils “subjects,” we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think? They learn everything but the art of learning.
Later Sayers said:
I am concerned only with the proper training of the mind to encounter and deal with the formidable mass of undigested problems presented to it by the modern world. (Notice she correctly called them problems and not challeges)
People who earn a modest salary of say $4000 or less a month are upset if there has been an unexpected deduction of $200. However, these people cannot visualize the amount of the US debt that exceeds $34 trillion or be deeply troubled when it increases by 5% or $1.7 trillion.
This innumeracy and failure to think through matters is especially obvious when looking at climate alarmism and the supposed threat of increased CO2. We need to use appropriate analogies to help people visualize the claims. Our biggest rugby stadium in Ireland is Croke Park which seats 82 000 and even the simplest Irishman can visualize a full stadium. The CO2 part of the atmosphere would be equivalent to about 32 people in a full stadium (NOAA numbers = 29 people). If the NOAA numbers are correct the increase in annual CO2 increase would be less than one person per year in a full Croke Park. Just imagine the crowd in the stadium about to expire just because someone without a ticket snuck in and exhaled.
Erratum
problems and not
challegeschallenges“we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think”
Correct. If you accept that the science is settled without bothering to understand that science (laws of thermodynamics, Beer-Lambert, Stefan-Boltzmann, Kirchoff, etc.) then your understanding is based on an appeal to authority. In other words, you have swallowed dogma and you been indoctrinated.
is an example of the failure of the education system
Or an example of it’s success – success in creating an undereducated “servant” class, which Dewey proposed as a function of public education.
Although, to be fair, it seems that the undereducation has extended to the “elites” at this point.
Simple, straightforward, irrefutable numbers.
If only there were enough people out there who could count.
Its a post numeracy world.
Dont like the numbers , then create a ‘model’ that says what you want. no PhD thesis is finished until they have modelled something , anything
computer models now rule the future , even though in climate they cant predict more than 50 :50 accuracy the weather ( outside of same as today)
The President of Harvard plagiarized/lied herself to the top.
Just move on folks, Just BAU
In Russia, China and India, 25% of university graduates have STEM degrees, and those professionals are in charge.
There is no way the West can match that for decades to come.
We have been so brainwashed by our woke-go-broke Orwellian leaders
Agree. The folks who think the answer is to put everything in units of Olympic Swimming Pools suffer from innumeracy themselves.
The wording needs to distinguish between rich + elites, the poor, the middle class, and the working class. There is tremendous variation. Maybe a Venn diagram is needed. Never mind. I think that would qualify as numeracy, so likely would not help. 🙂
Your mean Palm Beach Fl and 5th Ave NY where Trump lives arent ‘elite’ areas ?
Biden won all the poor counties in New jersey while Trump won the wealthy ones like Ocean co
Its Trump who gets elites votes not Biden
Such an unserious person.
depends on how you define elites
based on wealth? or based on Ivy League “education”?
Trump gets votes, Biden gets credited with ballots emerging from the woodwork after the election.
Biden’s Obama/Clinton clique plagiarized/lied themselves into the White House
Its Trump who gets elites votes not Biden
So I guess all the members of my rural fire department must be elites. Who knew?
Duh duker, sure the communists (so-called Democrats) have their poor welfare slaves who vote for them. They also have the elite scum who want to lord it over us by controlling government.
The rest of us want to be productive citizens
Do “The Elites” know that Hillary considers them to be “deplorable”?
This post is headed in the right direction and I’m glad to see it. I don’t buy it all though. It is true that the vast majority of people today can’t speak to the laws of thermaldynamics. I don’t think that is unusual. I have friends and relatives born in the 1940s, 1920s and late 1800s. Most of them have passed. I can guarantee you that almost none of them could tell you anything about the laws of thermaldynamics. So what. That is not the problem, the problem for the average guy is that they are bombarded with CAGW doomsday talk 24/7. They are assured that the information they are getting is from the top experts. They are given this mis-information in the simplest possible language, in short sound bites that anyone can understand. Our governments, our news sources and our schools are all lying to us to gain more control and power. We are the ones who need to step up, we need to tell the truth to all these people who have been lied to all these years in plain, simple, easy to understand language.
Many so don’t want to hear it that one of their most well developed skills is deflecting the topic
Yes, especially by ‘intellectuals’
Experts, professionals and intellectuals have pretty much used up any respect I may have held for them. A liar is a liar I don’t care what their education is or their profession.
Believe me Andy almost all of my friends and relatives are mainstream media junkies. Talking to them is a struggle, I don’t tell them things so much as ask them to explain to me what they believe. It is more important in my view to let them find out themselves how little they know. They put so much faith in the news I am convinced that if we would concentrate on airing our message from any news source it would make a big difference.
Here in Wokeachusetts, what we hear every day in the media and especially from the state government is CLIMATE EMERGENCY. Never explained. Just screamed out – louder and louder. Nobody here challenges it, other than a few of us- who are absolutely ignored. I often mentioned essays here- and suggest that people read them. None do. Here, people are so brainwashed they think any alternative views have to be from some Satanic cult. A state with more higher education per capita than any place on the planet.
I am sure you are right Joseph but I am convinced if we could get a foot in the door at any news source with honest, simple, and short messages we could plant the seed of doubt and we would be off to the races.
It all starts with home schooling and abolishing the unconstitutional US Department of Education
Story Tip.
Coal Meets India’s Record Power Demand As Net Zero Gets Sidelined – Climate Change Dispatch
COAL IS KING !
India and China’s FF usage absolutely swamps any minor reduction that “might” happen due to western countries destroying their energy supply systems.
The Net-Zero agenda is completely and utterly pointless. !!
Intellectualizing the problem of unexpected negative developments in a society is an instinctive but unrewarding response to it because it doesn’t answer the question, why? Here is a remarkable 40 yr old video interview of a high level Soviet spy defector who fortells the future subversion and breakdown of the social cultural fabric, economy, education and resultant unrest and demoralization of the US. He describes today in frightening detail.
How does he know? The strategy was designed and implemented by a committee of the KGB! Who is orchestrating this? Americans themselves after being “educated”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA
Silly nonsense purporting to be predictions from 40 yrs back
I understand your reaction! If you watched it for only a minute, you would get that it wasn’t a prediction of the future, but was a planned project. I could say something flip but the fact that a clever malevolent adversary can do this to a country largely from afar is frightening. They obviously had great success in Europe first and freedom loving America took longer. The rest of the West naturally fell into line behind the US.
I wish more people would take a few minutes to explore the diabolical ‘project’ and how it gave us today’s nightmare. He even tells what needs to be done to unravel it. Bezmenov is now a concerned American (probably dead by now).
The man who allows his enemies to educate his children is an idiot.
roaddog, it is interesting that there is always a minority that transcends the brainwashing. Even the weight of 70yrs of Soviet oppression couldn’t knuckle down the small percentage of dissidents and they opened a window into freedom..
I wasn’t sure what in the US context the term ‘deep state’ meant when often I came across it before and during Trump’s first term but now the meaning is only too clear.
None of the clerisy who continue to impose their crazed fixations on ordinary people have been elected by anyone.
Admittedly while campaigning Biden did promise a constituent: “I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you. I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel”, maybe voters assumed it was just more Biden bullshit.
The upcoming election will have serious ramifications for the US and the rest of the world whichever way it goes, hopefully should he win Trump will get the opportunity to be more successful in ‘draining the swamp’ setting an example for the EU and the Anglosphere in particular.
Watch a few minutes of the 1985 Bezmemov (KGB defector) interview to see how today’s social/political nightmare came to be. Deep state indeed!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA
“Democratic elites and activists are very, very committed to this approach and are willing to pay high costs to make it happen.”
I think it would be more accurate to say “and are willing <i>for us</i> to pay high costs…
Interesting article… Much aligned with my own take on the modern world.
Ive read the introduction of Smil’s net zero article. Of course he is right that the numbers of reaching net zero by 2050 do not add up. But i was rather surprised that he completely accepted that rising Co2 emissions will result in large temperature rises. He accepts the standard forecasts and narrative. I suggest he reads Tony Heller’s piece about the manipulated NOAA temperature graph in relation to the actual weather station data. Maybe it was an old article of Smil’s. Has he changed his mind? He seems oddly uncritical of the mainstream Co2 narrative..
It seems Smil’s article was published last month.
If you stipulate to the effect of CO2 you won’t loose the readers you need to reach.
Indeed, but i dont think that was his motivation. However, i do believe it is safer to somewhat accept a medium influence of Co2, taking the IPCC 2.5 model/graph as reference ( although in reality even that seems high) and take the Bjorn Lomborg route of balancing pros and cons. The cons of Net Zero 2050 are becoming so bleeding obvious that a little doubt goes a long way when discussing things w a more or less ignorant population. Alarmism as such seems to have peaked. The public does not feel the urgency in light of other things, although you wouldnt think so judging by the msm..little by little some critical articles are even creeping in there.
If something is not true why stipulate that is just to be safe?
That is a valid question and actually part of my criticism of Lomborg. But the point being the willingness of the public to move to more realistic prospects. I see the IPCCs 2.5 scenario as the first step to less alarmism. I actually think that, once the shift has been established in the public perception, it will be easier to confront them with even more likely scenarios which quite a few knowledgeable people judge that, many of them in forums like this, carry minimum influence of Co2 on temperature in the calculations. In my estimate Lomborg et al will in time be seen to be mostly wrong about their climate assessment. But the public is still largely unaware and the msm is still pushing full on alarmism. It is a political fight and whatever anybody can do to halt alarmist progress is good in my book. I applaud Lomborg, Koonin, Shellenberger for their efforts. In the end the truth will become apparent but i dont think the time is right yet. However, your question remains. Ive given my answer. If it was a pure academic issue i wouldve given a different one. I realise im on shaky ethical ground as is my defense. So be it..
The old cry wolf paradigm. Go outside and write down what you think the temperature is to two decimal place. You most likely will be far off.
People do this everyday. They don’t feel the increased temperature has changed anything, and they are correct. There are other, more immediate problems, to concern them. The louder the alarmism, the less attention is paid.
The below comment calculates the CO2 retained energy role in the atmosphere at less than 0.5%. Any engineer can calculate this. Water vapor in the troposphere, up to about 2 km, is nearly constant at 9 g/kg of dry air, based on balloon measurements.
The atmosphere is 999,000 ppm dry air; water vapor near the surface is 14,500 ppm; CO2 is 421 ppm at end 2023.
Excerpted from
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/natural-forces-cause-periodic-global-warming
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/hunga-tonga-volcanic-eruption
Retained Energy (Enthalpy) in Atmosphere Equals Global Warming
About 5.5 million EJ/y from the sun enters the top of atmosphere, and almost as much leaves,
Some energy is retained in the atmosphere on a continuing basis
Retained energy, RE, is a net effect of the interplay of the sun, atmosphere, earth surface (land and water), and what grows on the surface and in water, i.e., all effects are accounted for, including radiation, evaporation, condensation, precipitation
Assume WV near the surface at 9 g/kg dry air (14,500 ppm) and TS = 16 C for 2023, and 8.244 g/kg dry air (13,282 ppm) and TS = 14.8 C for 1900
As temperatures, pressures and WV vary at higher elevations, specific heat contents vary, and calculations are needed at each elevation, to get more accurate RE values
That complex approach would subtract from the 2023 and 1900 REs, however, the 2023/1900 RE ratio likely would be unaffected
This method is suitable to objectively approximate the RE role of CO2
.
NOTE: This short video shows, CO2 plays no detectable RE role in the world’s driest places, with 421 ppm CO2 and minimal WV ppm
https://youtu.be/QCO7x6W61wc
.
Enthalpy of Dry Air and Water Vapor
ha = Cpa x T = 1006 kJ/kg.C x T, where Cpa is specific heat dry air
hg = (2501 kJ/kg, specific enthalpy WV at 0 C) + (Cpwv x T = 1.84 kJ/kg x T), where Cpwv is specific heat WV at constant pressure
.
1) World, enthalpy moist air, at T = 16 C and H = 0.009 kg WV/kg dry air (14,500 ppm)
h = ha + H.hg = 1.006T + H(2501 + 1.84T) = 1.006 (16) + 0.009 {2501 + 1.84 (16)} = 38.870 kJ/kg dry air
RE dry air is 16.096 kJ/kg; RE WV is 22.774 kJ/kg
.
2) Tropics, enthalpy moist air, at T = 27 C and H = 0.017 kg WV/kg dry air (27,389 ppm)
h = 1.006 (27) + 0.017 {2501 + 1.84 (16)} = 70.524 kJ/kg dry air
RE dry air is 27.162 kJ/kg; RE WV is 43.362 kJ/kg
https://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-the-Enthalpy-of-Moist-Air#:~:text=The%20equation%20for%20enthalpy%20is,specific%20enthalpy%20of%20water%20vapor.
.
Enthalpy of CO2
h = Cp CO2 x K = 0.834 x (16 + 273) = 241 kJ/kg CO2, where Cp CO2 is specific heat
World, enthalpy CO2 = {(421 x 44)/(1000000 x 29) = 0.000639 kg CO2/kg dry air} x 241 kJ/kg CO2 @ur momisugly 289 K = 0.154 kJ/kg dry air.
.
RE In 2023; 16 C; CO2 421 ppm; World surface WV 14,500 ppm
World: (16.096 + 22.774 + 0.154) kJ/kg dry air x 1000 J/kJ x 5.148 x 10^18 kg x 10^-18 = 200,896 EJ
Dry air, WV and CO2 played 41.25%, 58.36% and 0.39% RE roles.
RE ratio WV/CO2 = 147.8; RE ratio dry air/CO2 = 104.5
.
RE in 1900; 14.8 C; CO2 296 ppm; World surface VW 13,282 ppm
World: (14.889 + 20.843 + 0.108) kJ/kg dry air x 1000 J/kJ x 5.148 x 10^18 kg x 10^-18 = 184,500 EJ
Dry air, WV and CO2 played 41.54%, 58.16% and 0.3% RE roles.
RE ratio WV/CO2 = 193.5; RE ratio dry air/CO2 = 138.2
.
CO2 RE role was 0.39% in 2023 and 0.3% in 1900
2023/1900 RE ratio was 1.089, an increase of 16,396 EJ
1900 CO2 RE was (0.108/35,839) x 184,500 EJ = 554 EJ; in 2023 was 0.154/39.024 x 200,896 EJ = 793 EJ, an increase of 239 EJ
CO2 ppm increase was 421/296 = 42%, and CO2 RE increase was 793/554 = 43%
.
RE In 2023; 27 C; CO2 421 ppm; Tropics, land/water surface WV 27,389 ppm
Tropics: (27.160 + 43.360 + 0.154) kJ/kg dry air x 1000 J/kJ x 2.049 x 10^18 kg x 10^-18 = 144,804 EJ.
Dry air, WV and CO2 played 38.43%, 61.35% and 0.22% RE roles.
RE ratio WV/CO2 = 281.6; RE ratio dry air/CO2 = 176.4
The Tropics is a major RE area, almost all of it by WV. About 35% of the RE is transferred, 24/7/365, to areas north and south of the 37 parallels with energy deficits
I take no issue with that..
Wilpost
You’re off track…it hasn’t really got anything to do with how much heat the CO2 in the atmosphere holds as a result of its specific heat.
It has to do with how much the Sun heats the SURFACE as a result of the radiative (and reflective) properties of the atmosphere, and CO2 is an IR absorber compared to IR transparent N2 and CO2. And of course we can’t forget water vapor, evaporation, and clouds affecting that surface temperature, all much more than CO2….
Robert was very graceful in allowing Michaux to present his scheme without much pushback. It is the opposite of Doomberg’s, especially in regards to peak oil. We are watching reality unfold. I am critical of Doombergs assessment of economic prospects ( no recession) but at the same time critical about Michaux’s view that we are already past peak oil ( which he links to the current economic woes). My view is that Doomberg is higher on expertise in regards to oil and gas, both the industry and it’s energy impact on society and markets. Michaux’s is more of a generalists, like Nate Hagen. Ultimately the market price of gas and oil will be key in the final assessment disgarding the effect of geopolitical conflicts. That is Doomberg’s take also. We shall see..
Interesting piece, and goes some way to explaining why the climate policies proposed and enacted in the English speaking world are at the same time impossible, unaffordable and, even could they be done and afforded, would still be totally ineffective in achieving their supposed goal of lowering global emissions.
There is however an electoral revolt going on, and its going to get worse. The Greens have collapsed in the EU elections. The EU Parliament isn’t a Parliament in any normal sense, its just a pressure relief valve. But as a pressure relief valve its an important indicator, and its started to blow. Good and detailed account here (sorry, paywalled for most people):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/06/10/europe-turns-its-back-on-green-policy-embraces-hard-right/
In the UK Reform is rising in the polls. There is some chance that on the way up it will pass the Conservatives coming down. The last poll they were 17% compared to the Conservative 19%. Could happen.
The piece reminded me of the old cultural clash, between Snow and Leavis on the ‘two cultures’. They were both about equally wrong headed. Snow, because he thought the issue was ignorance of science on the part of the liberal inteliigensia. He seems to have thought the culture to be defended was academic science. In fact, it was technical knowledge and understanding, There is ignorance of science, but that is not the real flaw, the real flaw is the ignorance of systematic evidence based reasoning. Ignorance, for instance, of basic accounting or of how to calculate policy outcomes using methods of basic engineering. Ignorance of business management methods.
To that extent, Snow’s approach was part of the problem.
Leavis because he seriously thought that the study of novels and poetry should be the center of all education. He was of course totally ignorant of business methods or scientific method – though at his best he was the finest English critic since at least Leslie Stephen, and perhaps since Dr Johnson. He too had no idea of education as teaching how to manage things, And its not an accident that in later life he fell completely under the sway of Lawrence, abandoning the methods and approach that had made his earlier work so fine.
I think we should be modestly encouraged by recent developments. The debate has moved from endless arguments about climate science and accusations of denial to the much more important issue of energy policy. And this is where its becoming apparent to voters that whether or not there is a climate emergency, the current renewables mania brings no viable energy sources, and is going to impoverish them without delivering anything they need. Where voters go, politicians will follow. Its a cloud at the moment, but its a sign that the storm is coming, and they will start paying attention now.
Eloi versus the Morlocks.
I like it. But a better sci-fi analogy is the Krell vs the Krell.
The more important split is between silly rich nations who believe in magic and the rest of the world.
China is the unofficial leader of the Global South because they are willing to help any nation accomplish any goals so long as China sees a way to get paid. These countries have on working with rich nations because we always want to tell them what to do.
In this spirit, China built 70 GW of new coal plants in 2023. No amount of magic thinking in the rich world can possibly reduce global emissions in any way when the Global South is using coal to climb out of poverty.
The “clerisy” and the “normies”.
If I may be so bold: when a society becomes so prosperous that a significant portion of people are not directly involved in producing goods or services–but become the thinking class, and attribute themselves with an undue self importance.
Viewed in another way, these are like parasites on the body of an organism–the non-producers and the producers. Dust off the concept of an “emergent” entity, a cooperative of cells that consumes energy (money), exists for its own sake beyond any one individual cell, and will defend itself.
The parasitic web: big government, the big government contractors, the universities, the drug companies, managed care, the defense industry, etc. An enormous entity with its fangs firmly in the jugular of the American taxpayer.
Yes, when you don’t produce anything but problems to solve, you have reached the emergence of the deep state.
I learned 50 years ago from a prescient political science professor that bureaucracy has one and only one goal, growth. Just like cancer, bureaucracy has no choice but to become an entity whose only pursuit is solving problems, many of which it creates. Society has reached the point where government bureaucracy is staffed with graduates from elite colleges and who are self-proclaimed “experts” who know exactly how we should act in our individual lives.
These elite graduates know exactly what is needed to increase their power so utopia can be achieved. What is that you ask, more and more problems to solve. Bureaucracy grows by finding an increasing number of problems that prevent society from reaching utopia. Increasing detail will be required as to how the normies lead their lives. Today, automobiles, hvac, kitchen stoves, and toilets are as far as they go. I can envision at some point in time, government controlling the amount of living space each individual gets, what groceries one is allowed to purchase and consume, how far one can travel to work, on and on. In other words, the normies will become slaves to the government. Does this ring a bell about history?
Our immune systems are beginning to react. Only time will tell if these immune systems are strong enough to excise the cancer from our midst.
Sokal affair – Wikipedia
The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax,[1] was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal’s intellectual rigor, specifically to investigate whether “a leading North American journal of cultural studies—whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross—[would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.”[2]
The article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity“,[3] was published in the journal’s spring/summer 1996 “Science Wars” issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. The journal did not practice academic peer review and it did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist.[3][4] Three weeks after its publication in May 1996, Sokal revealed in the magazine Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax.[2]
The hoax caused controversy about the scholarly merit of commentary on the physical sciences by those in the humanities; the influence of postmodern philosophy on social disciplines in general; and academic ethics, including whether Sokal was wrong to deceive the editors or readers of Social Text; and whether Social Text had abided by proper scientific ethics.
In 2008, Sokal published Beyond the Hoax, which revisited the history of the hoax and discussed its lasting implications.
Headline from the Guardian December 2022:
MPs and peers do worse than 10-year-olds in maths and English Sats
Only 44% of the Parliamentary group achieved the expected standard of a 10 year old!
Meanwhile, 59% of 10 and 11 year olds did.
Of course, MP’s called for the exams to be dumbed down to put less pressure on the children taking the exam.
These are the imbeciles running the UK.
Carl Sagan made the point about this studied and wilful ignorance and the risks it posed just before he died.
I am waiting on the Hunter Biden verdict. If it is not guilty, the civil war is declared.
The point is, not just science and math, but also law, constitution, language, history, etc. Those that look at things critically (critical thinkers) and those that just read headlines.
Guilty on all counts.
I enjoyed the article very much. One point, though, for which I will hat-tip GK Chesterton: While the divide between Humanities or Arts, on the one hand, and the Physical Sciences (and, to an increasing degree, Social Sciences), on the other, exists and is widening, the cause and solution are actually the opposite of what Smil and the author maintain.
Of course, I agree that innumeracy is unbounded in the western world, but the root cause of all of this is the decline in liberal arts fundamentals. Solving for the Eigen values is important, and the hypothesis-to-theory lane of travel in important and overlooked with impunity, these don’t speak to meaning and value; indeed these, when unconstrained, lead to scientism. And scientism is the cancer that is killing us. After all, even an idiot like Mann knows his maths and methods — but he lacks any ability to weigh alternatives, to prioritize, to articulate the good and beautiful. Same for other mendacious hacks like Fauci.