A Chat on Climate Literacy With a Nobel-Winning Physicist

The physics Nobelist Murray Gell-Mann muses on why some people can't accept that climate is a mix of cycles, random noise and an underlying greenhouse warming trend.

[QuantCoder]

No, science doesn't expect "the fifth one will do it". The IPCC was constructed *by* *governments*, not by scientists. Governments *asked* for the IPCC.

[vidfreak]

Can this guy not grasp the concept of political bias? Its not that people are incapable of understanding this stuff. Its a matter of denying it for the sake of their worldview.

[davegrenier]

I can't believe he's so off-base on this subject. He expects the "secular" component to overwhelm natural processes, when that "third term" is so small a component that if it has any effect at all, it can't even be teased out from the noise (according to William Happer).

Why can't "people who are supposed to educate the public""can't get this across"? Because they're lying and the people, although they can't articulate what the lie is, know it.

[TenneyNaumer]

Andy, if you had not spent the last 4 years doing your best to confuse Dot Earth readers, we might be in a better position to deal with this problem. The truth is that you don't feel it is your duty to educate the public. You are just going along for the ride. It can be seen from Dr. Gell-Mann's facial expressions and his sighs and his posture that he is not at all satisfied with the your response to his simple question. And it is simple. You had so many teaching moments that you wasted.

[C_R_O_M________]

People will get what? What kick in the ass? Give me ONE alarming evidence from every day life that will eventually “kick me in the ass”! That’s right! No such thing exists! However taxation is happening NOW and when the predictions of doom won’t materialize, who is going to reimburse all those trillions of $s in taxes?

[sandyherho]

Basically what Murray thought as a typical theoretical physicist is simplified the idea of Carbon Emission as a classical time-series analysis.

[jmf]

Social “science” is not science but political ideology looking for “evidence”. Economics is the same. We follow Keynes whose theories are bunk.

[ilikethisnamebetter]

9 and a half years later, and what the interviewer said has been shown to be true.

[TenneyNaumer]

@anrevk: if you start from the proposition that your work does not really make a difference in the scheme of things, as you stated upon acceptance of that journalism award, then for sure nothing will be accomplished. You act as if no one can be convinced of anything. Hardly true. Imagine if Martin Luther King, Jr., had had the same beliefs.

[usenlim]

Who is here after reading Taleb's book Skin in The Game's one star review?

[garyhochstetler]

“Is it really so hard to explain that global warming isn’t necessarily a bad thing”

Freeman Dyson

[cougar]

Respect to MGM, but this interview should be called “Let’s agree with each other! Starting an old man who keeps asking how hard it is for the public to understand graphs”

If this doesn’t persuade people, nothing will...rolls eyes

[rideon]

We can't get speeding drivers to stop bombing down the highway. All we can do is give them a good exit. The idea that the exit is new and efficient energy generation is a good one. Maybe add some fast food or ice cream to the exit sign, too. The point is they will never quit, but they can be redirected with a good incentive. Otherwise they will drive right through the last freeway barrier and off a cliff. It's like drugs, they wont stop taking them, one just has to give them a better one.

[ailblentyn]

Gell-Mann was clearly difficult to the point of being disagreeable, but he was also smart and blunt.

[dantyler]

Hard to discern what Gell-Mann is really saying or where he might stand in the climate issue.
Many other talks Gell-Mann has had are simple to follow and track his thinking.
But climate?
Suddenly, a universe of questions!!

[dantyler]

A mix of random noise and a cooling trend?
Oh no!! That's impossible!!
Is it so hard for people to not understand global cooling?

And I'm not even a Nobel prize winner.

[Nostradamus_Order]

“Arithmetic” “adding terms” Gellman is calling him out!

[mrnarason]

Funny how Dyson instead denies the consequences of climate change and Gell-Mann sees it as it is.

[daburack]

That's not all there is to it, Murray! There's little (although not zero) doubt about the secular term and trend. But that's only part of the question when it comes to conclusions termed catastrophic anthropogenic global climate change. There are at least three other questions, none of which have been definitively answered: (1) is the trend accelerating? The general trend has been warming since the Holocene. (2) Is the correlation of the trend with increased CO2 proof of a causal relationship? (I feel funny lecturing Murray Gell-Mann about correlation fallacies.) (3) is it actually harmful? I'm sorry, like some other science consensuses (consensi? consensus?), the jury is out, and likely to be so for some decades.