They have a very interesting second to last section on anthropological climate change, and some interesting ideas on ways to combat it (as opposed to the “let’s just revert to medieval times” ala Kyoto). So I had a look around for more information on the topic. Which brought me to read a post on climateprogress.org, an “authority” blog written by Joe Romm which is essentially pro Kyoto.

Disagreeing is a good thing. We shouldn’t take things at face value, and most certainly shouldn’t simply believe things simply because they are in the press or published on the Internet.

My issue is, if Joe is right, and has the science to back himself up, why does he need to resort to schoolground name calling. I started reading his posts hoping to get an alternative view, but all I saw was what looked like to demented rantings of a spoilt child. Super Freakonomics says some bad things about (for instance) Al Gore, but at no point do they stoop to calling him an idiot, or making up derisory nicknames for him. Bjorn Lomborg didn’t do that in “Cool It” either. They didn’t need to – why does Joe I wonder.

Yet again, a pro Kyoto voice that simply is not willing to listen to any alternative. THAT’s why for some people (I’m one of them) the anti carbon movement is more a religion than a science. A shame, because I’m willing to listen to rational arguments. I’m not listening to someone who tells me this is how it is “you just need to trust me”. Asking me to trust you is telling me you have a secret, ulterior agenda.

Trust is for religion. Proof is for science.

If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no-one there to see it, does it fall at all?

Quantum mechanics tells us that in fact it falls, and it doesn’t fall. Both states exist as possibilities until someone comes walking through the forest to look at the tree. As soon as they observe the tree, the wave function collapses and the tree decides whether or not it fell yesterday, last week or last year. If it turns out it did fall, it rushes back in time, and falls. The observer just sees a tree that fell at some time in the past.

If you think that’s confusing, just check out quantum tunneling!

To begin with, you have to accept what Albert Einsteins theory of relativity tells us. The universe is not a three dimensional object (like the Earth) but a four dimensional object (the fourth dimension being time). There are theoretical physicysts who tell us there are in fact even more than four dimensions, but that’s not important here. The problem with a four dimensional universe is that it’s not something you can visualize in your head – your (and my) understanding of the world we live is is that it is three dimensional. The Earth is a big sphere. It’s finite and unbounded because we know how big it is, but we also know we can walk around it in a straight line and never get to the end (unbounded).

To make this even simpler to think about, we can go down to just two dimensions – a clock face. As the minute hand travels around we can start at 12 o-clock, and move through each of the twelve hours on the face until we get back to twelve o-clock again. But there is nothing stopping us at that point – the hand can continue to go around and we can start to see that the twelve o-clock position is not only twelve, it is also zero at the same time. Not only that, we can start the clock from any position we like, and that position will become the zero position after a complete revolution. the twelve o-clock position has no real significance per se.

My universe is the same as the clock face. You can start from anywhere you like, travel away from that point and eventually you’ll simply come back to where you were. You’ll never come against and edge or boundary, you’ll just end up back where you started. What with the universe being a four dimensional object, you’ll also not even be aware that you have come “full circle” because you won’t in fact have travelled in a circle – you’ll have followed a “straight line” through space and time to all intents and purposes.

So there you go – just because it doesn’t have and edge, this is not a reason to believe the universe to be infinte. By the same token, just because we don’t know what it is, it is not reasonable to assume there is no “biggest number”. Just like the clock face, the biggest number exists, and in a rather neat way to describe it, it also just happens to be zero (think back to 12 o-clock – it’s the Alpha, and the Omega all at the same time). I like this idea – it has beautiful symmetry.

I didn’t much like the constant being told things like Googles, Googleplexes & Graham’s Number are so big we can’t imagine them. I don’t need to be told that – I can’t imagine 1000000 personally, and I’d question if anyone can. Personally I can’t imagine 1000. I might be able to have a rough idea of what 1000 looks like, if I have a point of reference like, say I’ve seen a picture of a crowd of people which was reported to number 1000, then maybe I have a rough idea of what 1000 people look like. Even then, I don’t really have a good visual of that number in my head. If you asked me to point out person number 764, theres no way I can do it and I doubt very many people could. I can cope with, say 10. Show me 10 of something, even for a couple of seconds, and almost right away I will know how many there are, and probably be able to describe number 7 from memory.

Then, the idea that the Universe is not only infinite in size, but that there are an infinite number of infinite universes. This one is surely simply a mathematical construct – it can’t have any real world consquences (other than providing an after dinner conversation topic) since in an inifinite universe, nothing outside it can have any observable consequences on our universe so there’s not a lot of point in them EVEN if they do exist, from the point of view here in our universe.

For me, it seems that the universe, based on my reading, ought to be finite and unbounded. If we’ve got a point of reference for the beginning of the universe, which we seem to have, it makes a nonesense of the idea that the universe might be infinite. Saying it is, when we also say it was once finite in size, is saying that at some point in the last 13.7 billion years ago the universe somehow jumped from a finite to an infinite size. That simply doesn’t make any sense at all. Edwin Hubble managed to show us that the unverse is apparently expanding (which re-enforced the idea of the Big Bang which originally surfaced as a consequence of General Relativity).

My conclusion: infinty does not exist in any meaningful sense. It’s merely an amusing construct for mathematicians to tease us with.

The book is totally engaging, and totally strips away the propaganda around the whole man made global warming issue, and just what we should do about it. I don’t want to spoil what should be a great and eye opening read, but can’t stop myself mention the central theme that the Kyoto agreement (signed by multiple nations agreeing to reduce carbon emissions) is going to cost billions of Dollars, yet have minimal impact on the climate and negligible (sometimes even negative) impact on the welfare of the people of this planet. Bjorn argues that these Dollars can be far more usefully spent, and huge numbers of lives saved and improved.

The question we need to ask ourselves is do we want to reduce the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, or is our goal a better environment. The two are not the same.

The problem seems to be that the UK Meteorological Office’s Hadley Center for Climate Studies are saying temperatures have been dropping since 1998. NASA say they have risen.

The best part of the Register’s article is the suggestion that, if the world is cooling, we might halt the coming Ice Age by burning MORE fossil fuel, thereby releasing the needed CO2 to raise the planet’s temperature.

The basic point being of course, that there isn’t so far any actual proof, of any kind, that Carbon Dioxide actually has a measurable impact on the greenhouse at all, and in all likelihood isn’t really doing anything much at all. Apart from making life possible on the planet, but let’s not worry about that eh?

It’s about time this was put to bed. This planet is facing some huge man made environmental issues which are on the back burner (if they are even treated with any importance at all) such as over population, food shortages, deforestation etc. Did you know for instance, in the last 200 years humans have removed HALF of the world’s trees? Now THAT I can believe will have a dramatic effect on the planets’ entire ecosystem. Forget buying a Golf Bluemotion (and in the process allowing your old car to go into landfill and poison the planet some more). Plant some trees.

Last week my uncle suggested I read what Bjorn Lomborg has to say about how best to preserve this planet as a habitable place for humans. In a nutshell, the amount we plan to spend pointlessly controlling carbon emissions is more than enough to solve some real problems – like the shortage of fresh water supplies, Malaria and HIV. Popping out for the book now. After planting a tree.

Here are a few problems with the “theory of man made global warming” which from what I read are not in dispute:

1. Global temperatures fell between 1945 and 1975, just when the post war economic boom was creating ever more man made carbon emissions. Solar activity was lower during this period (as anyone with any common sense knows, it is the sun which ultimately drives climate change).

2. Ice core samples, going back millions of years show a higher level of carbon in the atmosphere are as a result of temperature change. Not the other way around. Al Gore didn’t feel this was important enough to mention.

3. Human CO2 production is MINISCULE compared to the natural sources.

I honestly do not understand why this farce is continuing. The theory that it is being used to stifle economic growth in the developing world is an interesting conspiracy theory. The idea that political activists have joined the ecological activists and are using ecological issues to attack governments is easily believable.

I’d love to see some SCIENTIFIC evidence that can convince me that what we are told is happening is really happening. I never will of course – there is no evidence!