PBS, a major U.S. Public TV station, has aired this 54-minute documentary, The Climate of Doubt:
See also additional PBS material on the program.
The program – starting with some video sequences from the latest Heartland Climate Skeptics Conference in Chicago – was largely criticized by Joe Bast of Heartland, Tom Harris of Canada, and some pre-program comments were mentioned by Chris Horner and The Heartland Institute. Gavin Schmidt posted the video on Real Climate, mostly to boast that he has appeared for a few seconds, too.
I think that a viewer will have no doubts that the creators of the program are hostile towards the skeptics – due to the constant usage of offensive words such as "contrarians" and due to the hostile faces of the host (especially John Hockenberry), among a few other reasons. On the other hand, I think that this program has done a relatively fair and open job when it comes to the revelation of the information for the viewers, especially the information about the changes of the debate in recent years.
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It seems to me that most of the viewers understood that the climate skeptics are damn reasonable, educated, and kind of nice people. There are many of them – the number of "visible" climate skeptics among scientists isn't really lower than the number of "visible" climate alarmists.
While the program tried to claim otherwise, I guess that an intelligent viewer will understand that using a World War II analogy, the climate change controversy is like the war and the alarmists resemble the Axis powers while the skeptics are like the Allied forces. The Axis powers may be more tightly packed, they may demand a stricter discipline from themselves and from everyone else, and they may be spending more time by spreading the idea that their ultimate victory is inevitable. But even from their programs, an intelligent viewer must understand that the Allied forces are at least comparably powerful, they may be right, they seem to offer observations and arguments that are almost certainly right even now, they may already be winning battles, and they may soon celebrate the final victory in the war.
The idea that the Axis powers have some unbreakable superiority is a meme that just the most intellectually limited viewers may be eager to buy – at least I hope so – and I am kind of not afraid of it. I don't think it's too important what the people who can easily be brainwashed by a transparent propaganda think. What matters are the skeptical people who began to be somewhat interested in the issue, who understand other things, and who won't be fooled easily. And I am confident that this PBS program only helped those people to fall in love with the climate skeptics.
But the hostile tone towards climate skepticism notwithstanding, the program acknowledged that the bulk of America went pretty much skeptical in recent years. Surprisingly, it also acknowledged that Al Gore is a divisive asshole who helped the skeptics to strengthen even more. The viewers could hear some short "excerpts" from the skeptics who speak about the actual science – although the scientific "technicality" were not the main focus of the documentary.
At some points, both alarmists and skeptics are saying things. And such segments often reminded me of the first Obama-Romney debate. For example, around 10:30, you may compare John Kerry and Myron Ebell. Kerry is subdued and seems to have developed bad conscience. He seems to admit a sequence of recent defeats and the non-existence of the actual consensus. Ebell speaks confidently, as a person whose words have already been pretty much established.
So I believe that this program, a mixture of an apparently prejudiced tone against the climate skeptics and some facts about the skeptics' victories, their decency, education, arguments, upward trend of their influence, and their rather large number as well as the subtle hints about the alarmists' dishonesty that may be seen in the program, despite the clear attempt to create a pro-alarmist program, will help America to become one additional little bit more skeptical again.
I would grade this program on the recent years in the climate debate: B. The biased language and the narrator's apparent bias penetrating the program is my only complaint.
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Alan Guth on himself, science, cosmology
Aside from Edward Witten, another well-known winner of the Newton Medal (in 2009) was Alan Guth, the first father of cosmic inflation. Two month ago, the Institute for Physics posted the post-Newton-Medal interview with him, too.
He had no science background in his family. At least he doesn't remember any background. But his family was happy when it learned that Alan was into science. Well, they were happy for a while, before they realize that science wasn't quite the same thing as engineering, but it was fortunately too late for them intervene. ;-)
He grew up in a small town, Highland Park, New Jersey which only has 15,000 inhabitants or so today. Well, it may be a small town but your humble correspondent knows it very well from his Rutgers years (1997-2001). In fact, I officially had a physician over there although I have never visited him so at least, I was sometimes going to do shopping in a grocery store over there. You may guess what Guth's father was: Yes, he had a grocery store in Highland Park. It burned at some point. ;-)
Many or most people in the Academia and especially theoretical physics come from scholarly families – the tradition usually goes back several generations, in fact. It has advantages and it has disadvantages. This "inherited occupation" adds some amount of sterility to the environment. On the other hand, the "scholars who inherited the job" are trained to be productive scholars so I am pretty sure that in average, they write many more papers than the "first explorers of the scientific occupation in a family". The latter may often be more audacrious and creative, however.
Guth was affected by a fabulous high school teacher. He didn't know too much physics, Alan Guth later realized, but he was still lucky to have a dynamic guy of this type. He described some success of him as a theoretical physics when he was a high school pupil – something based on a pure thought but it still works well. ;-) Alan Guth married his high school sweetheart. Two kids, the son is a mathematician who proved e.g. the Son-of-Guth Theorem (naming convention due to Susskind, if I caught it well).
MIT was where he went to college. MIT was unusual socially because it didn't separate people who are "in" and "out". He liked it. He was surprised he had superior competitors – unthinkable at the high school. People specialized a bit. He became sure he wanted to be a theoretical physicist. Grad school. Postdoc jobs. One of them made him interested in cosmology. Magnetic monopoles in the early Universe became his important obsession.
Alan Guth explains what cosmology is – science of the Universe as a whole, especially focusing on its childhood. The Big Bang Theory was great but it needed things to be fine-tuned and failed to explain the uniformity, too. He discovered cosmic inflation while solving another problem, namely why Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory has't found magnetic monopoles during their polar expedition. Guth explains why inflation gives the bang to the Big Bang. A gram of matter is enough to create our large visible Universe. A gram is not much but it's still much more than the Planck mass so it's not a theory of everything.
It looked dramatic so he was afraid it was wrong but after some talks, especially those with big shots in the audience, it became clear it wasn't wrong. Today, cosmology is in the golden age, indeed. Things are accurate. He describes the composition of the Universe and the absolute nothingness at the beginning. God is pointless because because He is just a redundant connecting link – with this addition, you must just explain why He is there instead of the Universe. ;-)
Hat tip: Joseph S.
He had no science background in his family. At least he doesn't remember any background. But his family was happy when it learned that Alan was into science. Well, they were happy for a while, before they realize that science wasn't quite the same thing as engineering, but it was fortunately too late for them intervene. ;-)
He grew up in a small town, Highland Park, New Jersey which only has 15,000 inhabitants or so today. Well, it may be a small town but your humble correspondent knows it very well from his Rutgers years (1997-2001). In fact, I officially had a physician over there although I have never visited him so at least, I was sometimes going to do shopping in a grocery store over there. You may guess what Guth's father was: Yes, he had a grocery store in Highland Park. It burned at some point. ;-)
Many or most people in the Academia and especially theoretical physics come from scholarly families – the tradition usually goes back several generations, in fact. It has advantages and it has disadvantages. This "inherited occupation" adds some amount of sterility to the environment. On the other hand, the "scholars who inherited the job" are trained to be productive scholars so I am pretty sure that in average, they write many more papers than the "first explorers of the scientific occupation in a family". The latter may often be more audacrious and creative, however.
Guth was affected by a fabulous high school teacher. He didn't know too much physics, Alan Guth later realized, but he was still lucky to have a dynamic guy of this type. He described some success of him as a theoretical physics when he was a high school pupil – something based on a pure thought but it still works well. ;-) Alan Guth married his high school sweetheart. Two kids, the son is a mathematician who proved e.g. the Son-of-Guth Theorem (naming convention due to Susskind, if I caught it well).
MIT was where he went to college. MIT was unusual socially because it didn't separate people who are "in" and "out". He liked it. He was surprised he had superior competitors – unthinkable at the high school. People specialized a bit. He became sure he wanted to be a theoretical physicist. Grad school. Postdoc jobs. One of them made him interested in cosmology. Magnetic monopoles in the early Universe became his important obsession.
Alan Guth explains what cosmology is – science of the Universe as a whole, especially focusing on its childhood. The Big Bang Theory was great but it needed things to be fine-tuned and failed to explain the uniformity, too. He discovered cosmic inflation while solving another problem, namely why Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory has't found magnetic monopoles during their polar expedition. Guth explains why inflation gives the bang to the Big Bang. A gram of matter is enough to create our large visible Universe. A gram is not much but it's still much more than the Planck mass so it's not a theory of everything.
It looked dramatic so he was afraid it was wrong but after some talks, especially those with big shots in the audience, it became clear it wasn't wrong. Today, cosmology is in the golden age, indeed. Things are accurate. He describes the composition of the Universe and the absolute nothingness at the beginning. God is pointless because because He is just a redundant connecting link – with this addition, you must just explain why He is there instead of the Universe. ;-)
Hat tip: Joseph S.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Edward Witten on science, strings, himself
Two months ago, the Institute of Physics revealed this YouTube video:
Edward Witten, whom they still call "a 2010 Newton Medal Winner" rather than the "An Inaugural Milner Prize Winner" because they think that £1,000 with a stamp "IOP" on it (plus the name of Isaac Newton, without his permission) is more than $3,000,000 ;-), is talking for 25 minutes about his CV, previous scholarly interests, as well as hot topics in string theory.
Edward Witten is known for having studied some social sciences – journalism, history, linguistics – and being a tool of the Democratic Party candidates (such as George McGovern 1972 who just died) but he has been interested in physical sciences from his childhood. He was interested in astronomy but he was afraid that the job required him to be an astronaut. It is cute to mix astronomers and astronauts. My dad doesn't distinguish astronomers from astrologers.
Of course, his father – a theoretical physicist – was probably affecting Edward Witten, too.
He has been interested in the peace in the Middle East. In fact, some of his $3 million Milner money is going to J Street, a left-wing NGO trying to create peace between the Israeli Arabs and Jews in some of the most naive ways. Of course, just like anyone who takes string theory seriously, he shows an old picture of himself on a camel.
He talks about his wife, kids, and interests. His parents didn't believe in pushing kids too far too quickly. He got a standard theoretical physics education rather soon. Only when he was a postdoc, his maths was getting deeper. Supersymmetry became essential when he was a student. It has played a key role in his research from the beginning.
Some extra remarks are dedicated to Einstein's general relativity, extra dimensions, and unification of all forces. He talks about his negative-energy instability of higher dimensions without SUSY. He paints himself as a relative latecomer to string theory. Of course, it depends whom you compare him with. Witten compares the beauty of the sound of different musical instruments depending on the admixtures of the higher Fourier modes.
In the early 1980s, he realized that the available consistent string vacua failed to violate the left-right symmetry (P and CP). At some moment in 1984, the first superstring revolution explodes and it was the first string miracle that occurred when Witten was watching. That's why it was a signal from the Heaven for him. String theory got much more realistic.
The 1990s are the decade of dualities and M-theory. Who needed the other four string theories, and so on. From that time, he's been intrigued by the application of string/M-theoretical methods to understand issues in "ordinary" established particle physics theories (why positive energy, why confinement, ...). This light that string theory manages to shine upon the established theories is Witten's main reason to be convinced that string theory is on the right track. The elegance with which string theory sheds the light is another reason. Witten still calls our understanding of string theory "the rough draft" but this rough draft has already led to amazing insights and Witten doesn't believe that such a chain of astonishing discoveries has happened by coincidence.
The last reason why string theory seems right to him is that it teaches us new and deeper things about the geometry – including things that surprised mathematicians and inspired those at the frontier. He hadn't expected such a thing when he was young but these insights did materialize. Our confusion has actually helped to develop the new concepts.
A special discussion is dedicated to the big mystery what is the core principle underlying string theory much like the equivalence principle or spatial curvature underlying Einstein's general relativity. What string theory really means? It fascinates him most. But for decades, the theory has been smarter than us and forced us to move in previously unanticipated direction with twists – and that's probably still true today.
Witten isn't actively trying to solve the biggest questions. He says a thing often told by Andy Strominger as well – an important skill in the research is to choose a question small enough so that you have a chance to answer it but big enough so that it is worth answering. The Khovanov issues are mentioned as an example. Witten couldn't understand what the stuff was about – but he did understand it was physics-related (I am not that far). Witten makes it clear he realizes that most string theorists aren't interested in those things but he's independent enough not to care. Of course, there's no guarantee this stuff will be important. He knows that but he suspects it will be important. ;-)
At the end, he compares the string theory research with the discovery of new continents and with finding a treasure underground that we don't fully understand but we see that pieces fit together.
New element
Some fun via Fred S. – a new densest element was just found.
Edward Witten, whom they still call "a 2010 Newton Medal Winner" rather than the "An Inaugural Milner Prize Winner" because they think that £1,000 with a stamp "IOP" on it (plus the name of Isaac Newton, without his permission) is more than $3,000,000 ;-), is talking for 25 minutes about his CV, previous scholarly interests, as well as hot topics in string theory.
Edward Witten is known for having studied some social sciences – journalism, history, linguistics – and being a tool of the Democratic Party candidates (such as George McGovern 1972 who just died) but he has been interested in physical sciences from his childhood. He was interested in astronomy but he was afraid that the job required him to be an astronaut. It is cute to mix astronomers and astronauts. My dad doesn't distinguish astronomers from astrologers.
Of course, his father – a theoretical physicist – was probably affecting Edward Witten, too.
He has been interested in the peace in the Middle East. In fact, some of his $3 million Milner money is going to J Street, a left-wing NGO trying to create peace between the Israeli Arabs and Jews in some of the most naive ways. Of course, just like anyone who takes string theory seriously, he shows an old picture of himself on a camel.
He talks about his wife, kids, and interests. His parents didn't believe in pushing kids too far too quickly. He got a standard theoretical physics education rather soon. Only when he was a postdoc, his maths was getting deeper. Supersymmetry became essential when he was a student. It has played a key role in his research from the beginning.
Some extra remarks are dedicated to Einstein's general relativity, extra dimensions, and unification of all forces. He talks about his negative-energy instability of higher dimensions without SUSY. He paints himself as a relative latecomer to string theory. Of course, it depends whom you compare him with. Witten compares the beauty of the sound of different musical instruments depending on the admixtures of the higher Fourier modes.
In the early 1980s, he realized that the available consistent string vacua failed to violate the left-right symmetry (P and CP). At some moment in 1984, the first superstring revolution explodes and it was the first string miracle that occurred when Witten was watching. That's why it was a signal from the Heaven for him. String theory got much more realistic.
The 1990s are the decade of dualities and M-theory. Who needed the other four string theories, and so on. From that time, he's been intrigued by the application of string/M-theoretical methods to understand issues in "ordinary" established particle physics theories (why positive energy, why confinement, ...). This light that string theory manages to shine upon the established theories is Witten's main reason to be convinced that string theory is on the right track. The elegance with which string theory sheds the light is another reason. Witten still calls our understanding of string theory "the rough draft" but this rough draft has already led to amazing insights and Witten doesn't believe that such a chain of astonishing discoveries has happened by coincidence.
The last reason why string theory seems right to him is that it teaches us new and deeper things about the geometry – including things that surprised mathematicians and inspired those at the frontier. He hadn't expected such a thing when he was young but these insights did materialize. Our confusion has actually helped to develop the new concepts.
A special discussion is dedicated to the big mystery what is the core principle underlying string theory much like the equivalence principle or spatial curvature underlying Einstein's general relativity. What string theory really means? It fascinates him most. But for decades, the theory has been smarter than us and forced us to move in previously unanticipated direction with twists – and that's probably still true today.
Witten isn't actively trying to solve the biggest questions. He says a thing often told by Andy Strominger as well – an important skill in the research is to choose a question small enough so that you have a chance to answer it but big enough so that it is worth answering. The Khovanov issues are mentioned as an example. Witten couldn't understand what the stuff was about – but he did understand it was physics-related (I am not that far). Witten makes it clear he realizes that most string theorists aren't interested in those things but he's independent enough not to care. Of course, there's no guarantee this stuff will be important. He knows that but he suspects it will be important. ;-)
At the end, he compares the string theory research with the discovery of new continents and with finding a treasure underground that we don't fully understand but we see that pieces fit together.
New element
Some fun via Fred S. – a new densest element was just found.
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