Stoneforge Chronicles

As noted in a previous post, one aspect of the science of global warming is the measurement of ground temperature on a local basis. This kind of measurement is located on a really sporadic basis throughout the world, but the most coverage is in the United States as shown in the global view of station data from NASA on Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The extrapolation of all these sites to create a global temperature is obviously difficult, yet that is exactly what happens in climate science all the time. So, to look further afield, let’s analyze a more northern site where warming should have a larger effect, Prince Albert station in Saskatchewan, Canada.

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Freeman Dyson

Freeman Dyson is a physicist at the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study and has been for many years. His work, to another physicist, is incredible. I first heard him speak on the aspects of increasing CO2 in our atmosphere many years ago at IBM Research Center in Yorktown Heights. The following is an essay from his book, A Many Colored Glass, on the need for heretics in science.

As a scientist I do not have much faith in predictions. Science is organized unpredictability. The best scientists like to arrange things in an experiment to be as unpredictable as possible, and then they do the experiment to see what will happen. You might say that if something is predictable then it is not science. When I make predictions, I am not speaking as a scientist. I am speaking as a story-teller, and my predictions are science-fiction rather than science. The predictions of science-fiction writers are notoriously inaccurate. Their purpose is to imagine what might happen rather than to describe what will happen. I will be telling stories that challenge the prevailing dogmas of today. The prevailing dogmas may be right, but they still need to be challenged. I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies. Since I am heretic, I am accustomed to being in the minority. If I could persuade everyone to agree with me, I would not be a heretic.

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Is college worth the cost purely in financial terms? Apparently that depends on many decisions, including the student’s preparedness and career choices. According to a recent study, the median college graduate will earn approximately $300,000 more over a lifetime than a high school graduate. But, of course, that depends on the choice of major, followed by employment. And it depends on graduating in four years, not five or six. And it depends on the reduction of college cost by student aid, frequently restricted to certain income strata. And even then, only 75% of all graduates do better in the long term. So college is a risk, as are all choices that increase income. Risk is the major generator of income differences. So how to make that choice?

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How can anyone talk about healthcare in the current environment without carrying a lot of deplorable baggage? For instance, a lot of imagery involves the concept of single-payer healthcare versus the free market. But healthcare has not had a free market since the advent of Medicare in 1966; the federal government has manipulated and twisted the market in dozens of different ways. To see just a glimpse of that landscape, take a look at a summary of a health care plan that is supposed to minimize that manipulation. The number of workarounds to government interference boggles the mind. The direction for serious discussion should be to put the entire system in its proper context.

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On June 16, 1858, over 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln spoke on the division in our country over the issue of slavery. That speech established his credentials in the political debate of the time, even though he lost that particular election. In the speech, he quoted the biblical statements of Jesus, "A house divided against itself cannot stand”. And so the speech takes that name. In particular, in Matthew 12:25, Jesus said, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.” Notice the inclusion of the state.

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He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty