Nut Nut's Attempt At A Book About Politics & Society

does having a graduate degree in the sciences make you a scientist? don't you need to have published papers for that (in the academia) or having worked on R&D in the private sector to be one?

It's a good question. My career background is rather unique. Disclosing it could lead to doxxing myself which I'm not presently committed to.

Let me say this ... the level of science which is necessary to grasp our predicament isn't beyond the level of a curious individual who does not recoil in the presence of math. I've posted plenty of very simple and accessible science at the outset of this thread which is effectively a test of basic scientific literacy.

A graduate school experience generally involves a very deep specialty dive into a very narrow area of science. A way to differentiate oneself from the pack and provide the foundation for a niche corporate career or a path to academia and teaching or research & publishing.

The story of how environmental destruction brings human civilization to its knees is not derived from a deep narrow dive. It it a fusion of a basic understanding of capitalist economics, human behavioral science, and the physical sciences of chemistry, physics and biology and mathematics.

What I can say from anecdotal experience is this. I'm a male Boomer. I'm single and I date women. Among other things, I have taken the conscientious step to refrain from recreational jet travel
and I communicate to this to my prospective dates quite early on in a connection. Among my age cohort of educated Boomers, many women make jet travel a condition of dating so I understand the deep fundamental conflict between satisfying a primal need for companionship (which includes sex !!) and engaging in behavior we understand to be destructive.

It's not complicated at all Rococo. Money is arguably the biggest sign of masculinity in a capitalist society. We worship it. Everyone knows who Musk, Bezos, Gates and Buffett are because we treat them as Gods and give them plenty of press coverage. But how many good climate scientists does the average citizen know? Probably much closer to zero than to one.

I explained the feedback loops in which greenhouse gases and temperature reinforce each other in a spiral. If you want, I can walk you through that again. We can go very slowly and document each piece of that puzzle with whatever reasonable background reference material you wish. I'm not in a rush ..... I'm willing to go through it slowly.

I'm happy to share the names of prominent climate related scientists if you want to follow those who are respected in their fields.

General Physics - Dr James Hansen & Dr Carl Sagan. Hansen is a specialist in paleo climate reconstruction.

Earth System Boundaries - Dr Johan Rockstrom. Potsdam Climate Institute

Arctic Amplification & Extreme Weather Changes Related to the N Hemisphere Jet Stream Circulation - Dr Jennifer Francis. Rutgers & Woods Hole Institute.

AMOC Circulation - Dr Stephan Rahmsdorf. Potsdam Climate Institute

Polar Ice Sheet Dynamics & Related Sea Level Rise - Dr Eric Rignot. NASA and UC Irivine

Tropical Cyclones & Climate Change - Dr Kerry Emanuel, MIT

But the true understanding is not completely derived from just understanding the climate science.

The actuaries who work for the big insurers and reinsurers are crunching the numbers on expected losses and the evidence of big insurers and leaving parts of the economy uncovered is leading to state governments trying to fill in the void with socialist programs.

In the state of Florida, traditional rating agencies like Moody's and S&P are no longer involved in the rating of many insurance companies because their standards would not yield a passing grade. So they have invented a new rating agency for insurance companies by the name of Demotech from a relative nothing to a state of prominence in order to keep the market from totally freezing up. South Florida is toast. The planet is warmer than it has been for over 115,000 years when sea levels were 6-9 meters higher. The ice has a lot of surface area so it doesn't all melt in an instant. But it's an unstoppable process absent the intervention of a massive sun dimming volcanic explosion or some crazy human attempt at geoengineering.

I wasn't asking you anything about your career. I wasn't commenting on whether the science you are interested in is easy or difficult to understand. I certainly wasn't trying to dox you.

You identified yourself as a scientist, so I asked whether you had some sort of advanced degree in the sciences. Answering that question with "No" or "I have a PhD in biology" doesn't seem like it would allow anyone to identify you. To that point, I infer from your answer that you do not have any such degree, and I still of course have no idea who you are.

I was not questioning whether respected climatologists exist or wondering who they were.

This is a rather insane answer to a relatively simple question.

I'm letting you know some those of whose work I follow and respect and are well respected by their peers.

The world has changed quite a bit with the internet. These folks who I have mentioned have work which is accessible to everyone. They have published papers and give lectures which are recorded and presented with multi media slides and posted to youtube.

If you want to follow their work, you don't have to accept my interpretation of it. You can access it directly. I'm happy to forward you links.

This is a bizarre response. We all know that scientists exist. We all know that the people you identified are scientists.

You also identified yourself as a scientist. I was just trying to understand whether you were making that assertion based on having some sort of advanced degree in the sciences. It seems that you are identifying yourself as a scientist based not on your educational background in the sciences but rather based on the fact that you follow the work of a lot of scientists, which seems somewhat akin to identifying yourself as a lawyer because you read a lot of Supreme Court opinions.

It's a very sane answer to the near obvious intent of the question.

The apparent intent of the question is create an inference about my competence to speak with authority about the initiation of environmental feedback loops which will devastate human civilization.

My response is that such authority is not derived through a graduate degree academic credential and I'm explaining the irrelevance of the question.

The knowledge of GHG / warming feedback loops is thoroughly documented.

Anyone who has a remote curiosity about Earth understands we live in a normal oscillation cycle between ice ages and interglacials which last about 100k years and are governed by the Earth's orbital relationship with the sun. These oscillating cycles last about 100k years and the name of the cycles are called Milankovitch Cycles after the Serbian scientists who named them.

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You people can bring all of the name calling and character attacks that you like ..... but I'm pretty immune to them because I don't make any claims about being a good person or a good character.

I acknowledge that my aspiration for the longevity of the human race is a selfish expression of my desire that my genetic line not be ended. It's purely a selfish primitive animal impulse to wish to be succeeded and leave behind a legacy.

Selfishly, I won't be around after I die to know what happens afterward. But it provides my life some animation to struggle for something. I prefer to live with a purpose than without one. That doesn't make good or bad ... it makes me selfish just like everyone else.

I teach people about these phenomena because I enjoy teaching people things that others are reluctant to teach. Trust me .... I understand that it's weird to teach something that almost everyone wishes were not true.

I'm not interested in defending my character because I'm not representing myself as being a good one ...... I'm interested in a vigorous examination of data and science.

They just asked why you self-identify as a scientist and you went nuts.

That's suprising until people realize your chosen nick name is... nut nut

It would have been much easier to just answer my question with "No."

Your inference about my intent isn't really correct. I am not terribly interested in challenging whether you have the scientific chops to discuss the science that you have described thus far in this thread, most of which is very basic. I highly doubt that you have the scientific chops to get in the weeds with the scientists you admire, but that doesn't really matter.

My real issue is that there is more than a faint whiff of grandiosity in this thread. Claiming that you are a scientist and then dissembling when someone asks you whether you are academically credentialed as such doesn't cause the aroma to dissipate much.

Personally, I don't identify with this motivation at all. If my kids were happy and decided not to have kids, I would be happy. I could care less whether my genetic "line" continues.

This is also nonsensical. As I'm sure you know, "peer review" is a term of art in the sciences and academia. It doesn't refer to sharing your ideas on the internet with whoever cares to discuss them.

It might be easier. It might not.

But it wouldn't be relevant to the purpose of your question .... would it Rococo ?

You asked the question for a reason. To have it serve as some sort of benchmark of credibility.

You don't want to debate the science and the data .... you want to make this about character.

As you probably noticed, I haven't argued with you about science. I stated at the beginning of this thread that there is an enormous amount of scientific writing on anthropogenic climate change and the threats that it poses. That's why I said that the meat of your argument, if there was any meat, was the discussion about what sort of government and society was best suited to respond to the threat you were describing.

As to your point about credibility, I don't know what to say. If you want to be perceived as credible, then you should avoid implying that you have credentials that you don't have. Misrepresenting your credentials, and then saying that it doesn't matter if you are misrepresenting your credentials because it is really about the science isn't the way to go if you hope to get a book published.

My definition of a scientist is not someone who has a credentialed bestowed on them by an accredited academic institution.

The scientific method is available to everyone.

It's a simple process of

Observation ==> Hypothesis ==> Experiment ==> Results ==> Theory

It's a way of life which in which a practitioner is constantly iterating to the most cogent explanation of the observations with which we are presented.

You are absolutely correct that I am not omniscient and there is obscure granularity in some of the scientific methodology that those experts I alluded to understand that I do not. But those same experts would not have the same experience that I do either.

The important parts to be distilled from their work are not part of their erudite specialization. It's the simple stuff.

The ice cores we drill from Antarctica provide a precise historical record of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 for the last 800,000 years which synchronize perfectly with Milankovitch Cycle oscillations. We know that Earth's climate oscillated by ~ 5C during those cycles and that the Earth oscillated between ice ages which covered regions like Boston and NYC and interglacials like the present.

Now we know that greenhouse gas equivalent is double the peak of the previous 800,000 years and that it takes a long time to reach equilibrium to that change.

The important question is how much change and how fast. The most recent data from the 5 major temperature measurement agencies on Earth indicate surface temperatures are now increasing at 0.4C per decade. Not even in the paleo climate records which piece together the 5 mass extinctions of the past 450 million years is there any evidence of that much change that quickly.

The obvious question is what does it mean ?

What are those scientists I referred to telling us ?

They're telling us that we're ****ed.

But they aren't the scientists that the mainstream media brings on national TV or cites in the NY Times. They only bring on scientists who tell us that the problem is still solvable and that we don't have to put the people who pay for media advertising out of business to save the future.

Not the type of peer who is qualified to assess the validity of the claims you are putting out. You can seek a "peer" review from a random group of laypeople on 2+2, or you can seek academically qualified subject matter experts. You speak of science, so the correct approach should be obvious.

lol.. are you just trolling now. There are peer review standard practices, and I do not abstain from the standard practices. I do not have the subject matter expertise to peer review the topics you are writing about, and if I did I would not review it unless I knew both your academic credentials and your publishing history.

For some reason you won't provide your credentials, as if saying you have Master's or Phd in whatever might somehow reveal who you are. It wont.

How will me reading anything about these topics make me qualified to peer review what you are writing? I would suggest these and other things would arm me with enough information to be a quasi-academic nuisance to people fully emerged in their respective fields of study.

That's fine, but the world doesn't care about your idiosyncratic definitions. If you went on MSNBC and identified yourself as a doctor, people understandably would assume that you graduated from medical school. They would not assume that you defined doctor as "someone who cares deeply about human health."

It's interesting. No one ever uses idiosyncratic definitions in a way that diminishes their own stature. Here is a discussion that has never occurred on planet Earth:

Person A: "I'm not a doctor."

Person B: "What are you talking about? We graduated in the same class in medical school, you work in a medical practice, and you see patients all the time."

Person A: "True, but I define a doctor as someone who does all those things and also publishes regularly in highly regarded medical journals. I don't publish much in journals. Therefore I don't hold feel comfortable identifying myself as a doctor."

https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/...

Attached is the recent study headlined by Hansen called Global Warming in the Pipeline.

One of the important factors in the study is the time it takes for the planet to reach equilibrium to a change in greenhouse forcing.

The estimate use in the paper indicates an estimate that it takes a century for the planet to reach 63% (nearly 2/3) of it's equilibrium response to a change in forcing.

If we stopped greenhouse gas levels dead in their tracks and held them where they are today .... the planet would continue warming for well over a century. In recent years, it has been warming at a rate of 0.4C per decade. How long before that rate of change breaks human civilization ? I give it a decade it two at most.