Comment by robomartin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robomartin | Hacker News Reader

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> The incentive structures in science encourage novelty

I would modify this statement somewhat.

The incentive structure in science today encourages following the money. Very little research these days is done just for the sake of research or discovery. Science is expensive, and scientists who want to have a job, like it or not, have to fish to where the fish are swimming (where the money is being spent), which typically means delivering the narrative sought by those who control the money.

The most salient examples of this today are saving the planet and electric everything (cars, trucks, planes, water heaters, stoves, etc.) --which are usually connected. The first of which is ridiculous beyond description and the latter is so unimaginably far from being attainable it might as well be labelled a fantasy. Yet, these narratives are pushed because they have political power through emotion that results in votes (you can divide people) and the only money being spent in research is in support of these narratives --not research, confirmation propaganda.

> The first of which is ridiculous beyond description

What about working to save the planet from the very much real, devastating effects of climate change do you find “ridiculous beyond description”?

> What about working to save the planet from the very much real, devastating effects of climate change do you find “ridiculous beyond description”?

A few things.

First, the planet will be just fine. It has endured much worse than any of the imaginary scenarios being tossed about these days.

Second. It is nothing less than hubris to think we can actually control something at a planetary scale. We are far more likely to kill everything in sight than to save the planet. The whole thing is laughable.

And, BTW, this isn't my opinion, this is a scientific fact that a 15 year old with basic math skills can confirm inside five minutes. Since there's no financial or political power in saying "we are sorry, this is all nonsense" the money keeps flowing in that direction.

Find just a single non-trivial funded program trying to refute the current narratives. You can't. Nobody wants to fund that research. No scientist wants to talk about it that angle because, in todays context, it would end their career instantly. People are making way too much money in an "Emperor has no clothes" utopia relentlessly promoted by industry, government and the media.

Here's a reality check:

Anyone who thinks we can control matters of planetary scale, kindly show how we immediately controlled and stopped the effects of the massive fires in Canada, the fires in Maui, etc.

I mean, seriously, can we have some intellectual honesty around this topic?

Just looking at the Canadian fires [0]. Just this year, over 132,000 square kilometers burned. These fires have already released the equivalent of a full year or Indonesia [1] burning fossil fuels (a country with nearly 300 million people).

And how about these fires [2][3][4]?

Let's show how we can control these events and then, maybe then, we can speak of regional control. Global control is a fantasy.

I mean, they are doing things like throwing billions of dollars at giant air sucking filtering machines. We have gone completely insane.

More?

OK.

Look out this chart:

https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/styles/original/p...

Now, let's magically erase China and USA from the planet. We have Star Trek beam everything on these lands into space, never to be seen on earth again. That removes 44% of CO2 emissions. That isn't even close to being enough. That isn't enough to STOP CO2 accumulation, much less REVERSE it.

If CO2 emissions went to absolute ZERO tomorrow, it would take somewhere between 50K and 100K years for atmospheric CO2 accumulation to come down by 100 ppm (this is a scientifically known fact). That's how ridiculous the "save the planet" narrative has become. It is so far away from attainable reality that anyone pushing it should be laughed off the stage.

I mean, removing all of humanity from the planet means 100K years for a 100ppm drop. And we are talking about fixing it in 50, 100 or 200 years...with electric cars and water heaters? Have we gone mad?

[0] https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/here-s-a-look-at-what-s-happen...

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...

[2] https://www.wired.com/2015/03/johnny-haglund-the-earth-is-on...

[3] https://www.history.com/news/mine-fire-burning-more-50-years...

[4] https://www.atlasobscura.com/lists/places-that-are-always-on...

>trying to refute the current narratives

That is not how it works. You don't try to do one thing or the other unless you're crooked. You are supposed to try to research it.

Not sure what you mean.

If all research is funded to support the idea that 1 + 1 = 4, where funding, profit and political power are centered around this being found to be true, you are not engaging in research at all. When powerful forces can --and will-- take you from being a funded researcher to being an Uber driver or stacking boxes at the hardware store, well, lots of people will find ways to find justification for 1 + 1 being equal to 4.

This happens in other domains as well. A pyramid sales scheme is one where early participants are aligned with the fraud because they need to both recover their investment and continue making money. My point is: People, under various types of pressures, will do such things.

When it comes to the range of matters generally wrapped around the "if we don't save the planet" fear mongering machinery, 100% of research funding is focused on promoting "1 + 1 = 4" ideas. Again, any researcher sticking their neck too far away from "The answer is 4" knows full-well they will suffer career/professional decapitation. You cannot say "Wait a minute, this stuff isn't right. We are nowhere near 4!". Well, you can. And then you are done.

This is conclusions-by-fear, science-by-fear, financial coercion, etc. Pick a name. They all apply in one sense or another.

Nearly everything being pushed today under the "save the planet" banner are lies. And the things we are being made to do and are planning to do under this manufactured narrative are between futile and down-right dangerous on many fronts.

The problem with the idea of scientific dissidents is that it isn't any different from someone going against a brutal totalitarian regime: Nobody speaks up because they know their life will be over when they do. The relative cost of speaking-up, when compared to praising the invisible clothes, is tremendously high. If you praise the emperor for the invisible clothes you get to keep your head and live whatever life you might be able to live.

That's the problem.

Doing science today means expanding on the known body of published work, and progress involves either (a) doing novel work or (b) overturning established work - which is why scientific debates are often contentious. For example, there was one a theory that tidal cycles controlled the climate but technical discoveries in the 1950s and 1960s pointed towards infrared-absorbing gases (mainly CO2) being the main factor, and plate tectonics came along and overturned the orogenic consensus.

It is true that some fields of science have large budgetary demands, like high-energy particle physics, relative to things like cold condensed matter physics, but climate science is hardly a budget-breaker, and much of the data is just archived weather data.

It's been an issue in some fields though - renewable energy development in the USA is lagging far behind China because China invested a lot of money in R & D in the sector, resulting in engineering victories like mastering monocrystalline silicon ingot production at scale.

Also, there are dozens of practical studies pointing to the ability to eliminate fossil fuels from the energy mix while maintaining and expanding overall energy production on a global basis.

> It's been an issue in some fields though - renewable energy development in the USA is lagging far behind China because China invested a lot of money in R & D in the sector, resulting in engineering victories like mastering monocrystalline silicon ingot production at scale.

The US is so busy with two political parties trying to destroy each other that we can't even build a train. And we are going to save the planet? Have we gone insane?

> Also, there are dozens of practical studies pointing to the ability to eliminate fossil fuels from the energy mix while maintaining and expanding overall energy production on a global basis.

Reducing and, on a very long time scale, eliminating fossil fuel usage is a worthy objective. Nothing wrong with that. However, pretending that this is going to save the planet is just fantasy. It isn't. Not even close. We can't control things at a planetary scale (other than make things worse).

Destroying an economy in support of something that is, at best, laughable, isn't good for anyone other than those using it to make money and gain power.

I don't think we could build a train regardless. And the CA HSR program was idiotic from the start, based on basically fraudulent premises of potential ridership.

> I don't think we could build a train regardless. And the CA HSR program was idiotic from the start, based on basically fraudulent premises of potential ridership.

Absolutely true on both points. The math supporting the justification for this train is a complete falsehood. Something that lends further support to what I was saying in my other comment about researchers not daring go outside the politically and economically favored narratives. Imagine someone daring to prove the CA high speed train was stupid beyond any doubt. Their professional life would be over instantly. And for what?

The point I was trying to make is that we actually have people talking about saving the planet in a few decades --a planetary scale problem-- when we can't build a train and we can't even control fires.

Have we actually gone insane or are people so numb to this stuff that they just checkbox everything and let it happen?

Maybe it is a matter of education. When a large number of the population needs an app to calculate tip at the restaurant, how could they possibly be equipped to critically evaluate anything? An uneducated population is far easier to control than one with real critical thinking chops.

If the planet actually needs saving, then inability to do so isn't any sort of comfort.

There are actually plenty of examples of environmental protection that were smashing successes, so I don't see why pessimism is warranted. The Clean Air Act returned value some 40 times its cost. The Montreal Protocol on ozone depleting substances was a huge win. SOx control in the US came in a factor of 6 cheaper than had been warned.

This is very different. I am not being a pessimist at all. Just being brutally realistic.

People are talking about "saving the planet" (in quotes because I think it is a ridiculous statement) in 20, 50 or 100 years.

If humanity ceased to exist on this planet. If we all evaporated tomorrow, it would take 100K years for a 100ppm drop in CO2 levels.

How the hell is installing solar panels or driving electric cars going to make that happen a THOUSAND times faster.

It's like claiming we can safely stop a semi truck in 0.5 feet (roughly the width of your hand) from 65 miles per hour (normal braking distance from that speed is about 500 feet) without killing everything in it, in close proximity, causing massive destruction and using unimaginable amounts of power and energy.

In other words, nice sci-fi fantasy, and that's all it is. Can't be done.

I know of one paper that set out to prove renewables could solve the problem. The researchers were stunned to learn they were wrong. I commend them for printing their conclusion. To paraphrase, they said something like this: Even if we deploy the most optimal forms of renewable energy world wide, forms that have yet to be invented, the best of solar, wind and more, not only is atmospheric CO2 concentration not going to decrease, it will continue to grow.

If you look at a chart of the annual contributions of CO2 by country it is easy to see how this works. I posted a link in a prior comment. You could erase the entire US and China from this planet and atmospheric CO2 concentration will not drop any faster than 100ppm in 100K years. That's reality.

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