my favorite conspiracy theory has to be 9/11 an inside job. You think the government helped or was responsible for flying planes into buildings and killing thousands? And you still live here? Fuck I would be anywhere but here if I thought that.
It was also just a bad theory. I remember prolonged debates here, which I honestly don’t think I contributed much to. Some of their “facts” were incredibly stupid and easily debunked, yet they fall back on “these people are Engineers!”
If I could make a phone call to the past I would tell myself “As soon as Youtube starts paying folks, you need to make videos proving the world is flat. Trust me.”
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Here’s an interesting one. Scientists leaving their fields of research due to harassment- climate change researchers are mentioned among others in the first couple of paragraphs. Doesn’t specify which side or how in their cases though.
You may have misunderstood a little bit there…
This is precisely my point. I was pointing out that “the sky is absolutely definitely falling” is not found in any serious literature. Using that stick to beat researchers gets old really fast.
I was not touting Taleb specifically. I acknowledge that the argument is reductionist, but it is the very core of the matter. One does not wish away such a serious risk by saying “I don’t believe it, those guys are liars”. That’s the very opposite of rational.
And so their successful muddying of the waters for a critical number of those who matter* is a fantastic victory, especially when time is of the essence.
*whoever has power to act or make decisions
Which makes the junk science attack so effective, and so dangerous. Now anyone can question the scientist, an easier target than the science.
You understand, then, the internal conflict. Climate scientists have faced dismissal of their work, often by the ill-informed and ill-intentioned, who also call into question their character and honesty, all while exposing the entire population to significant danger. Never mind glory hunting, the need to clear one’s name and sound an important warning becomes an ethical imperative. Would you have healthcare professionals maintain their dignified silence (relatively speaking) while children are dying of tetanus and measles in developed countries because of the few but loud and idiotic anti-vaxxers? Is personal fame really a prime mover here? Even if it is, why taint the many with the excesses of the few? What does that achieve?
True, no one ever did a PhD because they wanted to get rich. Much easier ways to turn smarts into wealth exist.
Scientific research, but not into climate (change).
Anyway, I’m somewhat at the end of my tether here, so it’s best to leave this alone.
I apologize if I did, this one tends to be a pet peeve of mine as an aerospace engineer, especially when those claiming the moon landing didn’t happen preach about other science.
No way, watch the documentary about flat earthers. Watching them do an experiment that shows curvature or the earth rotating and trying to justify their belief against the evidence is pure gold. Documentary is call Behind The Curve on Netflix.
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CERAWeek in Houston proved pretty interesting. Most notably the cheif of Dutch Shell emphasized to the crowd that the oil & gas industry needed to be on the tip of the spear in the transition away from a carbons-based economy.
I wonder to what degree oil and gas firms will play (beyond natural gas)?
The social capital aspect @dt79 mentioned of climate activists in an interesting one, It seems based on the above that major players are trying to court this social capital to prop-up the current build-outs, with the expectation that it’s to fill an immediate need.
I have heard of o&g infrastructure to be repurposed to for hydrogen throughput in the far future.
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CSR is a viable and recognized profit making strategy. Most of the top corporations implement it in various ways. Almost all of my major clients set aside a portion of their marketing budgets for this. We are in the internet age with an emerging social enterprise industry spearheaded by private start ups with profit maximization as the main goal. The value of social capital definitely cannot be downplayed. And I wasn’t even referring to any of these when I was talking about activism.
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Man CSR is such a blossoming discipline in the digital age. A lot of what I do is CSR, where a fixed percentage of our revenues is dedicated to promotion and development. As our revenues increase, so does our AOR. Building social credit is great for project launch, and obviously it’s great to see tangible positive impacts. Though in truth, it seems to waver hard and fast.
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I will have to give this a watch when I’m looking for a good laugh. Will probably watch it this week. I’ll report back. And probably have my mind changed.
I’ve heard of Holocaust deniers but I think that was real. I’m a Civil War denier. Americans at war against each other? Yeah right. And I’ve never met anyone who was alive then. I’m just supposed to believe we went to war because of crops?! Wake up people the Civil War is an urban legend.
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Nah. It was real. I was on a clear cut over in the sites of a number of serious skirmishes. Inside of one of the larger oaks that we cut was lodged a human finger. The annual rings dated it directly to the year a battle took place on that ridge, and we smoked through a heap of saw chains hitting embedded musket balls.
There were those, and the fact that I’m a ridiculous bullshitter.
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Ok, then I’m not sure I got your point. Or perhaps misread it. My apologies.
My understanding of this aspect is that while papers might treat it as improbable there are many public statements or predictions made that treat major catastrophe as imminent or highly probable. These are on public record, certainly not peer reviewed studies, but they carry weight and are in my opinion fair game to criticize. Also from my readings of the primary literature there are a number of papers that make rather stark predictions. Although not the majority of papers, these are usually highly cited as well as reported on heavily in the media, so they have impact on the perception of laypeople. And again, beyond the actual studies there have been rather public statements made by people associated with the field that I would call less than responsible.
So what I personally see going on is a lot of interesting science with some very public predictions that are being called into question. Since I view it as irresponsible to make such public predictions (which to me are activist rather than science) I can’t say I mind calling them to account. However I do mind people who overtly deny it. If you’re talking about the one, we will have to agree to disagree. If you’re talking about the other, I’m on your side.
Your post (“do something and disaster is averted. Do nothing and the loss may be incalculable”) pretty much completely takes Taleb’s same premises directly, and seemed to suggest that it was the proper approach to risk. That is why I mentioned that there are alternative risk assessment approaches, and that not all of them come to the same conclusions as Taleb. I suspect you side with him in his Black Swan perspective. That’s quite fine, but not everybody does.
You may be running in a different circle from me, because I don’t see very many if any public figures (including corporations and CEOs) saying “I don’t believe it, those guys are liars”. There are a few, but most I see are not of that opinion. This is what I meant when I said “the denialist side is smaller than you seem to think”. Most pushback that I have seen does not come from outright denial. I think you give too much credit to the dark shadows.
This I agree with, and it is a large problem. However, there IS some bad science being published, and there are some fundamental conflicts in perspective in the field, which I’m sure you know about. This is particularly true as to the question of what if any primacy models should have, which models are the most reliable, the amount of retrofitting allowed, the types of predictions they’re tested against, the type of skill we should demand they have, what kind of runs, what kind of parameterization, single or ensemble runs (and why), and on and on. This touches directly on statistical practices and this doesn’t even touch the questions of physical mechanisms or fundamental understanding of the systemic interactions.
You again are polarizing the situation so far as to create a strawman in my opinion. However, as they say, “perception is reality” and I think we are seeing two different sample pools from which we draw our references.
I do. There are many, in fact.
This is also true for a number of climate scientists and well published scientists that disagree with the more alarmed side.
Perhaps, but not the way I see some of them doing it. Others I admire for it. You seem to agree with the notion that “one bad apple ruins the bunch” and I would posit it applies to BOTH sides in this. Neither side is blameless and both sides should be held responsible for their misbehaviors.
Probably a good idea. A nice chat anyway.
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I think this is true for all social media. I’d be interested in you and dt’s insights on CSR from an outside perspective. I’m completely unfamiliar but find it interesting.
As to your rhetorical question about oil/gas firms playing beyond the carbon based economy, I think they play quite a bit. They have an incentive (constructive use of the profit motive), and everybody understands that there NEEDS to be something beyond oil.
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I’m quite familiar with the oil industry due to where I live, and this is absolutely true. The super majors (like exon) are investing heavily in alternatives that aren’t fossil fuels, even so far as investing in electric cars and such. They aren’t naive. Others, such as StatOil, have rebranded so oil isn’t in their name and they are an “energy” company, in whatever way they make that energy. Right now that’s obviously dominated by fossil fuels, but they’re planning for the future.
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@TX_iron can probably go in-depth into it. I look at this from a purely marketing and management standpoint since that’s a large part of my profession. CSR encompasses a much wider range depending on which industry we’re talking about.
On the subject of the environment, we need to disregard the socialist lunatics who keep screaming about corporate profit maximization without understanding what actually goes into it. There are so many factors such as creating and maintaining brand equity.
A large part of the Starbucks brand are it’s green initiatives and socially responsible corporate governance. This is one of the methods in which they have differentiated themselves from the competition. It appealed to the growing young, “hipster” and more socially and environmentally conscious market starting back in the early 2000s. If they were to remove just the green aspects from their business model today, they would stand to lose billions in the mid term and future sustainability would be in question. Share prices will plummet and investors will pull out.
Profit maximization, as illustrated here, isn’t moral, nor is it immoral. Sure, they can cut expenditures by using cheap, shitty ingredients and paying employees sweatshop wages just to make the numbers on their Profit and Loss statements look good in the short term, but they’ll end up failing in the end. These are simply amoral business decisions. The only question is whether the result causes a net benefit to society, and if it doesn’t, then we need to look at other factors other than the profit motive.
Even if one were to be skeptical of the evil, mustache twirling, climate change denying villains hellbent on world destruction at the top, this should at least be limited to the quality of their characters, and not of the profit motive since they would be going against their personal ideologies for the pursuit this profit.
On the subject of the emerging social enterprise industry:
We’re looking at a gradual shift in the business landscape due to emerging tech like blockchain technology enabling ease of access and entrepreneurship even in the Third World. One of the current trends on the rise is:
Which ties in with:
https://www.euromoney.com/article/b12khpmf9096gb/are-impact-investments-the-new-hedge-funds
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@Aragorn @dt79
I operate in a highly public & publicized entity (we regularly make global news), which necessitates a broad approach. Ultimately, we work to secure social capital which we later leverage for support of projects, maintain a high degree of transparency & confidence, and genuinely work improve the lives and livelihoods in our local community and state.
Our approach can be broken down into three main categories: sponsorships in which we directly contribute to area 501(c)(3)s, based on a rather large fixed percentage of our projected annual revenues; public engagement through open meetings in the name of open communication and direct citizen stakeholder engagement, speakerships and event participation; and volunteer man-hours.
All of this does indeed have a tendency to bleed over into our marketing, but we try to keep it in separate baskets as much as we can.
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Shit! I hope they’re wrong. I don’t know what we can do other than to give environmentalists control of all natural resources and property!
Edit: “UNEP estimates it would cost the United States at least $100 billion to protect its east coast alone.”
-If we can somehow avoid this disaster, we should have plenty of spare money to Build the Wall.
If you go back a little further it’s fear of another ice age!