More News from the End of the World
1)Here's what a recession/slump/depressions looks like.
4).. and yet, for some reason, the Doomsday Clock still stands at five minutes to midnight. (In fact, I'm rapidly losing my faith in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Their timeline says nothing about the Cuban Missile Crisis when they should have been at one second to midnight.)
7)When does the Large Hadron Collider get going again? A vacuum metastability disaster looks like a walk in the park compared with this lot.
# posted by Bryan Appleyard : 5:25 PM
9 Comments:
At March 02, 2009 5:53 PM,
Concerned Citizen said…
Ive just had the best fish and chips ive had in ages, proper Cod, curry sauce, nice chunky chips, washed down with a glass of irnbru, and you go and spoil it.
At March 02, 2009 6:14 PM,
malty said…
Pr[Ta<1,Tb,1]=?2(?-1(1)),?-1(Fb(1),T) says it all.
As does this
At March 02, 2009 7:39 PM,
richard said…
Well done for that good news malty. And on the five minutes to midnight two sentences out of four:
Climate change also presents a dire challenge to humanity. Damage to ecosystems is already taking place; flooding, destructive storms, increased drought, and polar ice melt are causing loss of life and property.
can safely be deleted. We do have problems, in banking, and in the correction now being felt. But not here. Very small beer at worst - Lomborg and others have done the numbers. Iran with nuclear weapons - a different matter. Increased millions of humans (plus plants and wildlife) being burnt alive in an instant because some fanatics willing to die themselves wish to bring in a warped rehash of the Caliphate, that I think counts as a potential problem.
At March 02, 2009 7:49 PM,
Bryan Appleyard said…
Lomborg is not a climate scientist. You ought perhaps, to focus on those who are.
At March 02, 2009 8:30 PM,
Concerned Citizen said…
Richard did not claim he was.
Why should I take Lovelocks word, when this lot cannot agree.
This is a link
At March 02, 2009 9:53 PM,
Gordon McCabe said…
Nice bit of eschatology.
What we need is a saviour, a simple and noble celebrity, perhaps, loved and adored by the masses, who can redeem us in death and avert Armageddon.
Too bad there's no candidates around.
At March 02, 2009 11:15 PM,
richard said…
On the acute problems with 'climate science' as a discipline I strongly recommend Richard Lindzen's informed summary from four months ago.
On a more populist note I enjoyed this mock exchange from Willis Eschenbach, in the middle of a very important discussion of model verification:
Gotta love Climate Science ? a scientific field with no agreed-upon subject of study.
"What is the climate, Daddy?"
"Son, if I knew that, I wouldn't be a Climate Scientist"
I think that's fair comment. But take in the whole debate before coming to a conclusion.
At March 02, 2009 11:24 PM,
richard said…
PS Note how in that last page referenced all manner of men rub shoulders, including some reasonably famous economists, as well as some undoubted scientists, such as the chemist Pat Frank and the brilliant Greek hydologist Demetris Koutsoyiannis. The key thing throughout is to get to grips with the statistics Koutsoyiannis is presenting. Some economists - like Lomborg - are well capable of that.
At March 02, 2009 11:33 PM,
richard said…
PPS Koutsoyiannis is of course inspired by the non-Gaussian maths of Benoit Mandelbrot, just like Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
back to blog home