It’s been hot lately. Therefore, I assume the press (which I’ve been ignoring) is baying about global warming. Nothing new under the (too hot) sun.
A side note about this video (hat tip to Feral Irishman).
I remember watching this particular episode when it first aired. I remember seeing it on our shitty black and white TV. I remember enjoying Leonard Nimoy’s voice. I remember thinking; “If he’s Spock, doesn’t that mean he’s just an actor? Nah, I’m sure he did his research.” I remember asking my parents about the looming ice age. I remember getting some vague unspecific answer along the lines of “shut up kid”.
I was just a kid. This particular episode scared the shit outta’ me; unlike crap about bigfoot or UFOs which were just plain nerdy fun.
Now I’m older. I’ve seen great heaps of “expert predictions”. Many of them (the vast majority) were so utterly wrong that it’s almost comical. I think maybe each person in every generation has to individually learn “what they say” is crap. Some do it young and quietly. Some do it slow and loudly; spending their twenties “trying to change the world” from their campus sandbox before they settle down and pay off their huge loans for a useless degree. Like the matrix, you can’t be told, you gotta’ see the depth of their incompetence for yourself. A few simply never learn at all; old, gullible, dumbasses exist. However, they’re the exception, not the rule.
I take solace knowing each generation usually figures it out. Someday, maybe 15 years from now, today’s Gen Z kids will be telling their children about how everyone lost their shit in 2020. “It was at most a minor risk, but everyone flipped out. They cancelled school for a year, drove half the restaurants in town bankrupt, and we have all these historic TV commercials where people wear masks and talk about how Applebees cares. It was nuts! You had to be there.”
Their kids won’t believe it. They’ll be busy fretting over their own generation’s bullshit du jour. They’ll be saying things like “this new threat X will wipe our asses from the map in 20 years if we don’t act now!” Doom is always 20 years in the future. It’s always solved by urgently needed massive social change. It’s always something that should be imposed by someone on everyone… for the good of society. Happens every generation.
The experts will make bad predictions. The kids will fret. The geezers will counsel them to calm the fuck down. The wise will shrug their shoulders and go fishing. It’s the cycle of life.
What da hell…you didn’t cut anything with an earth saving, electric chain saw yet?
It’s my fault. Instead of using the rechargeable device that runs on coal fired grid power (which is apparently good for Gaia) I’ve been zipping around the forest with my 200cc Yamaha thumper that gets like 85MPG (which is apparently bad for Gaia).
OOOHHHHH…..Ok. That Is HIGHER pursuit, carry on.
Speaking of experts making (possibly bad) predictions: Apparently the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon has been measured and it’s … not what QED predicts. This is very interesting to me: I’m sort of in an uphill slog right now trying to learn quantum field theory. (I’d like to think I’m not an idiot, having 10 years of engineering and research under my belt, but the mount everest of mathematics you have to ascend to even begin to parse “modern field theory” jargon is immense.)
I actually like a lot of the older lectures and presentations by physicists in the 50s-late60s – Feynman would always start with the experimental facts informing the theory, rather than trying to pretend, after the modern fashion, that the entire nature of the universe was intuited straight out of Platonic space by the brilliant interpretation of a seamless mathematical jewel that can scarcely be added to or improved. “This is all obvious and necessary? How could it be otherwise?” Baloney!
One of the predictions from which the entire authority of the edifice depends is the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron. (The QED “vacuum polarization” correction to the bare Lande g-factor of 2. I’m still trying to figure out the 2, nevermind the .0001blablabla) Apparently that value for the electron wasn’t “predicted” in a clean fashion at all, it was dialed in from the freedom that this barely manageable mathematical process gave theorists. In fact, according to one paper I’ve read, it was dialed in several times as the experimental value moved around in the 40s. Bethe cheated! These 10 digits of theoretical accuracy (anytime anyone claims more than 3 or 4 digits, reach for your wallets) are an epicycle! What else (beyond the experimental facts and the patterns of organization) are duct tape and epicycles that were never challenged after the generational handoff of the 70s?
Keep that in mind next time someone effects an air of authority while hiding behind mathematical squid-ink! The idea that we’re just tidying up the final theory of everything, and that the universe is entirely explained, the only remaining questions are what show up in the popular science press, is some sort of neo-Gnostic nonsense.
“air of authority while hiding behind mathematical squid-ink” is the best phrase I’ve heard all week!
Sure, right, quantum mechanics works great until a 1024 bit integer wraps in the implementation.
I remember reading that crap in Popular Science back in the day. Follow the science people!
The older I get, the more I’m certain of Deja Poo, aka I’ve Seen This Shit Before. I try to share these things with my daughter without sounding like an old geezer; I’m failing on that last point.
I vividly remember the cover of Newsweek with “The Coming Ice Age”
Richardcraver, I hereby notify you that Deja Poo has now been adopted into my vocabulary.