Wednesday, February 07, 2007
on pseudoscience
I've noticed, since the temperatures have consistently remained below freezing here, that there has been somewhat less talk of "global warming." By "somewhat less" I am implying that some people have been going outside for a change. The temperature got up to 293 K at the beginning of January throughout much of the northeast, even in upstate New York, so the usual alarmists went crazy. Now the temperatures have fallen dramatically.
I was quite disgusted to discover that Columbia University is now offering a somewhat new master's program. Not in loop quantum gravity, physics blogging, or anti-string policy... but in "climate and society."
I didn't know it was possible to major in pseudoscience, let alone get a master's in it, but here we go. This example of "groupthink" is far more frightening than anything theoretical physicists could ever come up with. :) Indeed, climatology is an actual example of groupthink, and an alarming one at that.
Fortunately, not everyone is buying this global warming garbage, not even in the climatology community. As the Reference Frame tells us, there have been quite a few papers recently (and a lot more to come) which are trying to convince the groupthinkers that "global warming", if it actually did exist, would not result merely from human activity. It is the opinion of this blogger that anthropogenic global warming theories were developed by Luddites who want to make people feel guilty for wrecking the planet through CO2-emitting technology.
It gets even sadder when you realize that the Kyoto Protocol is costing untold billions of dollars, all of which are being thrown away. If only that money could have gone to legitimate science, to physics research, to something perhaps even more powerful than the LHC (like the ill-fated SSC). I am not as optimistic as Dr. Motl that the LHC will find evidence for supersymmetry a few hours after it starts up, but we desperately need the LHC to continue actual scientific research. The "trouble with physics" is that it doesn't get enough funding and has to resort to less-powerful accelerators. (The SSC would've been about twice as powerful as the LHC.)
If only pseudoscience would make way for real science... ¶ 4:44 PM
I was quite disgusted to discover that Columbia University is now offering a somewhat new master's program. Not in loop quantum gravity, physics blogging, or anti-string policy... but in "climate and society."
I didn't know it was possible to major in pseudoscience, let alone get a master's in it, but here we go. This example of "groupthink" is far more frightening than anything theoretical physicists could ever come up with. :) Indeed, climatology is an actual example of groupthink, and an alarming one at that.
Fortunately, not everyone is buying this global warming garbage, not even in the climatology community. As the Reference Frame tells us, there have been quite a few papers recently (and a lot more to come) which are trying to convince the groupthinkers that "global warming", if it actually did exist, would not result merely from human activity. It is the opinion of this blogger that anthropogenic global warming theories were developed by Luddites who want to make people feel guilty for wrecking the planet through CO2-emitting technology.
It gets even sadder when you realize that the Kyoto Protocol is costing untold billions of dollars, all of which are being thrown away. If only that money could have gone to legitimate science, to physics research, to something perhaps even more powerful than the LHC (like the ill-fated SSC). I am not as optimistic as Dr. Motl that the LHC will find evidence for supersymmetry a few hours after it starts up, but we desperately need the LHC to continue actual scientific research. The "trouble with physics" is that it doesn't get enough funding and has to resort to less-powerful accelerators. (The SSC would've been about twice as powerful as the LHC.)
If only pseudoscience would make way for real science... ¶ 4:44 PM
