Most of us, myself included, don’t have either the time or the expertise to get involved in the nitty-gritty of the mathematical details of things like the climate models or the covid epidemiological models. But a smattering of basic mathematical understanding can help us frame our ideas on these subjects.
"What other inputs (variables) affect the output? Have they been included?"
Seeing this at the end of the article reminded me that I'm sure I read/heard somewhere (possibly the Ukranian professor of physics whose name eludes me) that the climate alarmists don't really take into account the effect of the sun, so I tend to assume all their outputs are pretty worthless.
"Mathematicians love to take a simple idea and turn it into something impossibly complicated."
Kind of the reverse of what economists do then.
Getting flashbacks to fourth grade reading this, that was when functions and equations used to be introduced in schools here way back when. Now, they do it 7th-8th grade. Or whenever the teacher deems the class as whole up to speed. Or when the teacher feels like it. Sounds messy? The consequence of "liberalising" (think Thatcherite neoliberalist policies) the school system in the early 1990s - total chaos, unpredictability and grades that mean squat diddley.
You could say the decline in knowledge and the increase in cost is a direct function of liberalising the system.
I remember doing first semester Macro, Micro and national economics at university - math skills were so deteriorated even then that they needed an extra zero credit compulsory class for people to be able to understand the formulae they'd be using, instead of just being able to feed data into machines preprogrammed with the relevant formulae. And I'm not a math-head, it bores me to tears. Even ghostwritten biographies of politicians are more interesting.
Then again, how someone /wants/ things to be almost always trumps how things /are/; accepting that and learning to recognise it in oneself (or one's self, maybe?) is key to "figgering fings owt". I want to grow pumpkins. I can either insist it should be doable, or I can figure out how to fix the soil, how to maintain at least +10C temp all the time, protection against grubs and creepy-crawlies, and so on.
Which one is the path of least resistance?
And there's the problem - no (selection) pressure on eggspurts, politicians, banks, copro-rations, and so on to do good or be good (as per Aristotle's reasoning). Lots of incentive for doing the opposite. Let the dog nick stuff from the table, it won't ever stop doing it.
This is a great explanation of the multiple inputs to the climate change issue. I recently had this conversation with a close friend that buys into the climate change rhetoric. Some of this is due to the fact that his son works for an energy company and said son is involved in setting up a huge solar farm. I mentioned to my friend that climate change may have more than one variable. Best part is my friend IS a mathematician and I’m sure this article will resonate with him. I’ll share this with him and see what his opinion is. Thanks Rudolph.
Good job of explaining -- you must have been a pretty effective teacher. Now, explain what's missing from the various functions of generally-accepted physics.
"What other inputs (variables) affect the output? Have they been included?"
Seeing this at the end of the article reminded me that I'm sure I read/heard somewhere (possibly the Ukranian professor of physics whose name eludes me) that the climate alarmists don't really take into account the effect of the sun, so I tend to assume all their outputs are pretty worthless.
"Mathematicians love to take a simple idea and turn it into something impossibly complicated."
Kind of the reverse of what economists do then.
Getting flashbacks to fourth grade reading this, that was when functions and equations used to be introduced in schools here way back when. Now, they do it 7th-8th grade. Or whenever the teacher deems the class as whole up to speed. Or when the teacher feels like it. Sounds messy? The consequence of "liberalising" (think Thatcherite neoliberalist policies) the school system in the early 1990s - total chaos, unpredictability and grades that mean squat diddley.
You could say the decline in knowledge and the increase in cost is a direct function of liberalising the system.
I remember doing first semester Macro, Micro and national economics at university - math skills were so deteriorated even then that they needed an extra zero credit compulsory class for people to be able to understand the formulae they'd be using, instead of just being able to feed data into machines preprogrammed with the relevant formulae. And I'm not a math-head, it bores me to tears. Even ghostwritten biographies of politicians are more interesting.
Then again, how someone /wants/ things to be almost always trumps how things /are/; accepting that and learning to recognise it in oneself (or one's self, maybe?) is key to "figgering fings owt". I want to grow pumpkins. I can either insist it should be doable, or I can figure out how to fix the soil, how to maintain at least +10C temp all the time, protection against grubs and creepy-crawlies, and so on.
Which one is the path of least resistance?
And there's the problem - no (selection) pressure on eggspurts, politicians, banks, copro-rations, and so on to do good or be good (as per Aristotle's reasoning). Lots of incentive for doing the opposite. Let the dog nick stuff from the table, it won't ever stop doing it.
This is a great explanation of the multiple inputs to the climate change issue. I recently had this conversation with a close friend that buys into the climate change rhetoric. Some of this is due to the fact that his son works for an energy company and said son is involved in setting up a huge solar farm. I mentioned to my friend that climate change may have more than one variable. Best part is my friend IS a mathematician and I’m sure this article will resonate with him. I’ll share this with him and see what his opinion is. Thanks Rudolph.
Good job of explaining -- you must have been a pretty effective teacher. Now, explain what's missing from the various functions of generally-accepted physics.