I’ve had a number of things that have kept me from blogging over the last couple of days, and so I’m happy to have something quick today. Although it’s on the light side, it is profoundly true and insightful. This ought not be a surprise, though, as it comes from a profoundly insightful and critical mind.
Science cabaret artist and physicist Vince Ebert is featured in an interview at the online Schweizer Monat (Swiss Month) and gives his impressions on science, hypocrisy, and depressed polar bears. Hat tip: www.achgut.com/.
In a nutshell, Ebert claims Einstein, Planck and Schrödinger have got to be rolling in their graves as a reaction to how climate science is run today. The following are some excerpts of the interview from the part on climate science.
On the role freedom plays in science
Science is open to results. Experiments are made to refute theories and to improve. Someone can come along tomorrow and prove the theory of relativity is false. Suppose a biologist claps his hands near a fly, and it flies away. Then he takes a second fly, rips off its wings, claps his hands and discovers: Flies go deaf when you rip out their wings. Every new experiment can produce new knowledge. So a scientist can never say: “The problem is solved”.
On the gap between serious science and our daily perception
There are complex interactions that you simply cannot broadly explain. That’s why it annoys me when someone just comes along and believes he can explain such highly complex systems as climate change through the media, and trumpet it as irrevocable truth.”
On the “arrogance of science”
One should accept one’s own lack of knowledge and consider it as part of the process. Certainly many scientists are torpedoing this mindset. With climate change, many specialists and experts appear not as scientists, but rather as politicians. They come over, having studied physics, and actually claim: “The discussion is over.” And that when it is impossible to falsify their models! Einstein, Planck and Schrödinger have got to be rolling in their graves.”
On climate scientists and the public
Climate research is really a mine field here. Climate scientists get no funding when they say: “Actually, everything is not really that bad, and our models really are not able to predict the future”. On the other hand, a lot of money flows to those who claim: “Let us explain what your climate will look like in 20 years”. Many scientists are jumping on this bandwagon. Who can blame them!”
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Vince Ebert majored in experimental solid state physics at the Julius Maximilian University in Würzburg. He worked as a consultant at Ogilvy & Mather Dataconsult in Frankfurt. Since 1998 he has been performing as a successful cabaret artist at major theatres. He is also a guest author at Henryk M. Broder’s weblog Die Achse des Guten.
Here he erred, the very thoughtful Vince Ebert:
“many specialists and experts appear not as scientists, but rather as politicians.”
NO,
they are civil servants,
and in no way curious on
what the world is all about.
Here are some relevant quotes from Einstein himself about science and curiosity.
It is climate science FUNDING that continues to fuel this charade.
People believe what they want to believe. Talked to another German alarmist today who said “Carry on with coal power? And what with the Ozone hole?” I told him that he should at least stop mixing up the scare stories and pay a little more attention to the propaganda of his own side.
You see, they made up their mind that everything with a smokestack is evil (and every nuke). They often don’t know that CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere. But they support dumping wagonloads of Euros into renewables.
Arguing with them makes no sense; they don’t get their own arguments right and don’t even try. They just believe what the media tells them; yes, the good ole telly, the good ole radio and the good ole newspapers.
As usual i’m not talking about some analphabet but a person with a university education. I think they don’t even perceive that energy is the master resource of an industrialized nation.
I will start explaining to them in a calm voice that the value of a good is determined by the amount of labor used to produce the good without telling them that that misconception is the basis for Karl Marx’ ideas. Let’s see how many of them will notice… sigh.
This reminds me of the chief science editor of my newspaper. He is a physicist and about two years ago he started to produce the climate mantra about settled science, etc. He also decided that sceptical opinions were no more allowed in the newspaper. It marks my interest in the issue since he behaved like a religious convert, introducing medieval censorship in a newspaper of the twentieth first century. AGW belief has a profound pathological aspect, I still try to understand.
Not climate related, but related to trusting scientists who come up with wrong numbers:
http://www.ftd.de/politik/konjunktur/:rueckschlag-fuer-trendforscher-wieder-eine-panne-fuer-das-diw/60048418.html
The DIW, Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung in Berlin, came up with high numbers for child poverty in Germany before the last federal election, higher than in all other OECD states. The press was running maniacally with it. Now, it turns out, oops, the number was too high by a factor of two. Turns out that Germany, a rich country and a welfare state with a very low Gini index, in fact does NOT have any particular problem with child poverty.
Whether this mistake was agenda driven is, as usual, up to interpretation.