Gaia herself was reportedly besides herself with excitement when she heard Willie Soon and I were to be interviewed on The Yaron Brook Show today.
You can tune in to the show by clicking over to Blog Talk Radio. It’s scheduled to begin at Noon Eastern, 9 AM Pacific.
I gather the title of the show is “The Climate Science Article Greenpeace Doesn’t Want You to Read“. Copies of that mystery article, and the brouhaha surrounding it, can be had here.
If I understand the website correctly, if you miss the show, it will be archived at the link above, so you’ll have plenty of time to listen in.
It will be co-hosted by Keith Lockitch, a physicist at the Ayn Rand Institute. Lockitch has an article from last year that will be of interest: “Earth Day Pop Quiz: What Is the ‘Most Ethical Meat?’” No, not whale, though it’s darn yummy; nor is it monkey, which makes a terrific stew. You’ll have to click to find out.
The other co-host is Amanda Maxham, from the same place as Lockitch. She too is a physicist. Does a lot with GMOs.
In case the question arises: No, I’m not an objectivist nor a Randian. I don’t think I’ve ever even finished one of her books, and I know I haven’t started most. It has been said one must attack them while young. And young I’m not, comparatively speaking.
However, unlike herself, her followers don’t mind a little disagreement here and there, which is the opposite sentiment of the global-warming-or-bust folks. And in any case, I don’t think we’ll be disagreeing about the physics.
After the show, when I have time, I’ll come back here and update this post to let you know how it went, in case you won’t have a chance to or won’t remember to listen in.
Update
Went well. Lockitch, being a physicist, asked very good questions about the physics. Imagine that! Most of our interview was about how the models work, what parameterizations are, what assimilation is, what climate sensitivity is and whether it is even meaningful.
I emphasized, as I never tire of doing, and as true believers cannot understand, that because the IPCC models have consistently made forecasts we know with certainty that they are flawed. Why they are flawed is an open question, though we have some ideas on that. Indeed, that’s what our “Why models run hot” paper was about.
Willie was in fine form. To steal from Jean Shepherd, never had his words flowed with such feverish fluidity! (P.S. He always talks like that. As, I think, do I.)
Go and listen!
Matt,
Rand’s long fiction is very difficult to plow through.
However, there is an excellent, quick and easy read, devoid of the wooden characterizations, that encapsulates her philosophy and observations:
Anthem
The full text of the novella is here:
http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/anthem/complete.html
It is even suitable for children. She captures the communist end-game, and its inevitability. In contrast, she also captures the inevitable human nature that negates the communists’ anti-human philosophy.
Worth the 45 minutes, or less, it takes to read.
The opening paragraph:
“It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws. The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them so. May we be forgiven!”
Briggs and Soon
Godspeed
You mean Lenin’s Birthday?
To be fair I will post a link to dismiss the correlation:
http://environment.about.com/od/earthday/a/earth_day_and_lenin.htm
It’s a hoot. It reminds me of the overheated rhetoric that we have come to associate with some of our more agitated friends that comment here.
Scotian:
Thanks for the link – I had just seen Lenin’s BD mentioned on Real Science
Glad you investigated further, that really is a hoot.
It really is remarkable that the first was Lenin’s Centennial, but those darn coinkidinks. But keep Sheldon’s remark about coincidences and theory of large numbers. No conspiracy here, move along.
Not exactly on point, but a useful reference before I forget to introduce it later at a more opportune time:
Here’s the link to the MOST PRESTIGIOUS JOURNAL IN THE WORLD (based on acceptance rate):
http://www.universalrejection.org/
Surprisingly on topic, I think…
After the previous post comments mentioned Marching Morons, I read and realized MM (at least the genesis of the problem) is kinda/sorta (maybe) parallel to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (at least what I culled from watching the first two installments of the movie).
Earth Day and Lenin’s birthday are probably coincidental, but the incidents in Waco and Oklahoma City occurred on nearly the same day. There seems to be something about the warming weather that gets the sap flowing.
If you are tuning in on the archive, the segment starts at about 1:00:00.
Scotian:
Lenin’s birthday, eh? But did you know that the people who re-invented both nietzsche and marx for Japanese consumption were known as The Kyoto Group?
The primary there was one Tanabe Hajime – and if you want to try to decode the eduspeak here’s the britainnica entry
—-
Tanabe Hajime, (born Feb. 3, 1885, Tokyo, Japan—died April 29, 1962, Maebashi, Gumma prefecture), Japanese philosopher of science who attempted to synthesize Buddhism, Christianity, Marxism, and scientific thought. He taught the philosophy of science at T?hoku Imperial University in Sendai from 1913 and later at Ky?to Imperial University, where he succeeded the foremost modern Japanese philosopher, Nishida Kitar?.
After studies at the universities of Berlin, Leipzig, and Freiburg (1922–24), Tanabe wrote his major early work, S?ri tetsugaku kenky? (1925; “A Study of the Philosophy of Mathematics”), which made him the leading Japanese philosopher of science. In the late 1920s and into the 1930s, he developed “the logic of the species”—the “species” signified the nation as a historical mediating force between the individual and mankind. Tanabe departed from Nishida’s “logic of field,” which was thought to emphasize the individual to the detriment of the historical aspect of humanity. Tanabe’s Shu no ronri no bensh?h? (1947; “Dialectic of the Logic of the Species”) was published in the midst of the post-World War II turmoil.
Works on Tanabe’s syncretic approach to Christian love and Buddhistic “nothingness” include Jitsuzon to ai to jissen (1946; “Existence, Love, and Praxis”) and Kirisutoky? no bensh?h? (1948; “The Dialectic of Christianity”). In the postwar years,Tanabe developed his philosophy of metanoetics, which proposed that the only way to transcend noetics (speculative philosophy on the subjective aspect or content of experience) is to undergo a complete metanoia in the death-and-rebirth phenomenon of conversion.
—
Briggs, speaking of Jean Shepherd
http://jeanshepherdpodcast.blogspot.com/
I used to listen to Shepherd every night when I was a kid on a transistor radio under my pillow. Alas, I fell asleep most nights shortly after he began his tale-telling.
Wait, so the most ethical meat is roadkill? Dagnabit, I had a hankering for some mahi mahi, but it will be pretty hard to arrange for Flipper to become roadkill.
All models need to be checked for assumptions and integrity. Some models are so complex that it is hard for even the “designer” of the model to determine if it is flawed or not. Then one needs to check to see if the “data” is valid that the model uses. These checks are for all types of models from financial to weather for people use the information from these models to make predictions for their business and personal finances.
An interesting article for Earth Day.
http://www.uctc.net/access/30/Access%2030%20-%2002%20-%20Horse%20Power.pdf
I’m not sure where I found this but I dedicate it to any polution obsessed readers.