Ross Lea,
We can hope such articles will be recognised in due course. In optimistic moments I begin to feel that the climate juggernaut is slowing, but it will take a while to turn around. It is brave of Clauser to speak out. While it wasn't over climate, James Watson has set the precedent by having had his Nobel Prize cancelled for saying something politically incorrect.

Was idly listening to a radio show hearing someone urging us to take "a conceptual leap" when thinking about renewables. He should try a different metaphor. Anybody inviting me to take a leap gets a "You first bucko".

This from the Daily Sceptic we need articles like this to receive wider recognition.

https://dailysceptic.org/2023/07/23/cancellations-start-for-john-clauser-after-nobel-physics-laureate-speaks-out-about-corruption-of-climate-science/

M Courtney,
I completely agree: the precautionary principle has no basis in logic. It is used to take a magical leap: X is uncertain, the consequences might be serious, therefore we must assume X to be certainly true. Ludicrous. The decision whether to assume that X is certainly true or that X is certainly false is invariably political (e.g. GE crops assumed dangerous, untested vaccines assumed safe). The fact is that all decisions have two tails of risk: what if we do?, what if we don't?, and turning a blind eye to one of them under cover of the PP doesn't mean it isn't there.

My blurb to DaveS was an attempt to explain why the Oceangate tragedy was a simple failure in precaution which should not be confused with the PP.

Heard a radio report on this case where ChatGPT is being sued for copyright infringement. Seems like no big deal to me. Fair enough, it shouldn't have been trained on pirate copies, but once the material has been "learnt", you would expect the copyright to be irrelevant. I was taught out of copyrighted textbooks; what I say today is derivative from that but hardly plagiarism.

So if ChatGPT pays for plain retail copies of all the material it's trained on, that should suffice.

A related thought: a few years ago, Google was on a great spree aiming to scan and OCR every book in the world. This was ostensibly to facilitate search, but it seems qualitatively much the same as what ChatGPT is being sued for.

Further afield, but still AI related, it was interesting to hear the judge involved in the Royal Commission on Australia's "Robodebt" Scheme talking about government use of AI.

Robodebt used "AI" a few years ago (pre-ChatGPT of course) to identify and penalise social security fraudsters. It had a few problems... I'll not go into those except to say that Terry Gilliam's Brazil gets my nod for this particular dystopia.

What the judge had to say accorded with what I heard in the '90s about neural nets: if you're going to hand out penalties, there has to be a line of reasoning and a person accountable. It's outrageous to be deemed a criminal on the basis of a magical algorithm and the accusing finger (digit?) of a computer.

Lastly, another thought on the BBC's "false claims of election fraud" formula: I might forgive them if they standardised a few other couplings: "alleged low-carbon transport", "supposed consensus", "global warming hypothesis", etc.

It doesn't add up...,

Thank you. My ignorance was on show. Makes perfect sense: enough molecules between ground and space that little radiation from the ground will make it straight out. So your question about whether more surface heat in Antarctica would lead to more radiation would require a more circuitous path: radiation or conduction handing over to convection and ultimately radiation into space. And mix in other unknowns about winds, lateral and vertical, and we have another picture of the uncertainty monster. I suppose the answer to your question would be in the satellite readings.

DaveS,
The precautionary principle is not just to do with precaution or the lack thereof, it's meant to apply to situations where Donald Rumsfeld's known unknowns are in play. On the climate it leads to the argument that we know CO2 is going up, we don't know how much that will affect temperature, best to exercise caution and try to reduce CO2 emissions. The Oceangate people were dealing with known knowns (e.g. the pressure rating of the viewport was far less than what it was going to face). While there were definitely known unknowns too (the behavior of the mixed composite/titanium construction under high pressure), the known risks meant they were really applying the (not formally named) foolhardy principle.

Was listening to last week's FooC and an adjective reminded me of other BBC reports with the same redundant usage. I think a BBC directive is in play. The reporter was referring to a new attorney general (or maybe it was a DA) in Iowa. Apparently that state has been seen as a bellweather, but is now swinging more and more Republican (you could picture the curl on the reporter's lip). Not only is the new man a Republican, but he subscribes to the false claims of election irregularities.

Why is the "false" necessary? I don't recall BBC documentaries referring to historical Popes holding to the false belief that the Sun revolved around the Earth, or that, just a century ago, scientists held the false belief that continents were forever fixed on the Earth's surface.

I suspect the redundant "false" is due to a BBC policy on applying findings of their "fact checker" unit.

With all these fact check units cropping up, I wonder if they're using the word in different sense.

And while I'm at word-play, it has long struck me that climate science has not only been settled, it's been colonised.

The thing with the "precautionary principle" is to know when it is sensible to apply it. The Oceangate CEO appeared to dismiss it as a hindrance to progress, and look what happened to him. In other circumstances (e.g. in the hands of politicians keen to be seen to be doing something to save the world) it can be positively dangerous.

Temperatures at 2m above the ground do not necessarily correlate with those at altitude which is where radiation to space effectively takes place. The weather can slide in via the turbulent troposphere without affecting the higher layers of atmosphere, and vice versa.

stewgreen,
Bit low on content, that one. Bad link? Or wrong forum and edited into a "oops"?

Listened to the recent EconTalk with Marc Andreesen (a Silicon Valley venture capitalist) on his view of recent AI "breakthroughs".

His stance is that AI is now a powerful tool, but that there's no "singularity" or other catastrophic consequences on the horizon. Apparently it will all be wonderful. I doubt its power, but if it is powerful, whether the results will be wonderful or terrible will surely depend pretty heavily on who is wielding it.

At one point he characterised all non-scientific arguments as reducing to prove that it isn't. Seemed a bit off to me, since that applies to scientific arguments too. He should go back to Popper school. On the plus side, he said he didn't think much of the "precautionary principle".

One thing he mentioned that I hadn't heard about was that the EU was already regulating AI stuff. I used to think that J.K.Rowling was as close as we came to a real magician — she invented things in her books, knowing that they would be made manifest in movies — but Ronald Reagan seems to have done much the same with his various quips about socialists, now all embodied in the EU.

If you listen to this one, no need to listen at high speed: Andreesen already talks at about 1.75x, so he's saved you the trouble.

It doesn't add up...,

The interesting question is whether the extra lack of extreme cold there is giving rise to increased radiation to space.

Ross Lea,
I hope you enjoyed your revisit to the Guide. My order of preference of its various renderings: radio show, books, tv series and ... long distance ... the Disney movie (but even it had its moments).

That paper was pretty good, but unfortunately using the outmoded approach of taking evidence and looking for conclusions. The accepted practice these days is to go the other way.

.,
Kerry was showing his presidential side — completely befuddled.

Listened to Brendan O'Neill interviewing Bjorn Lomborg. Not a peep about climate, it was Lomborg's 12 preferred targets to address poverty worldwide.

Struck me as slightly paradoxical that his criticism of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is that every possible fashionable thing is there, but no priorities set, so what to address; but he said he loves his 12 goals equally.

The interview went into a few of his goals. Sorting out tuberculosis was just a matter of making sure everyone stayed the course with their antibiotics (6 months, apparently). Might help, but not a solution.

Next was education. I liked that he derided the drive to focus on building schools and getting kids to attend. He favoured making sure that they *learn*. But then his solution to this, if you can believe it, was that kids should spend an hour a day "learning" from a tablet computer. Uh huh.

His idea for feeding the hungry was more promising. Rather than imposing productive wheat or maize on the locals, get scientific about boosting productivity of the crops they already use (sorghum or whatever). Worth a shot.

The last two items covered were standard economists' fare: free trade and free migration. There might be a devil lurking in the details there somewhere.

Safer ground than climate and, unlike climate action (and in the best Douglas Adams tradition), mostly harmless.