Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the absurdity of fear surrounding minor temperature increases and the drastic measures considered in response.
Richard Lindzen's quote critiques the panic exhibited by societies in the early 21st century regarding climate change, suggesting that future generations will view such reactions as exaggerated and irrational. He points to the reliance on uncertain computer models and implausible reasoning that led to calls for drastic reductions in industrial activity, reflecting on how overreactions to minor changes can lead to extreme solutions.
In practice
In a documentary discussing climate policy, this quote can be used to illustrate the extremes of public reaction.
In a small lab, if you make a mistake, you can go in the next day and fix it. But here, when you are committed to spending a hundred thousand or a million dollars, you can't fix it later. You need to have a system of checks and balances internally. In particle physics, that's just part of the structure.
Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.
The main difficulty is finding an idea that really excites me. We live in an age when miracles are no longer miracles, and science and the future are losing their sense of mystery. For science fiction, or at least the type of science fiction I write, this development is almost fatal, but I'm still giving it all I've got.
The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists of the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.
To command their professors of astronomy to refute their own observations is to command them not to see what they do see and not to understand what they do understand.
I think we're just scratching the surface. One of the most exciting aspects of 23andMe is that we're enabling you to watch a revolution unfold live during your lifetime, and I think that the decoding of the genome, in my opinion, is the most fascinating discovery of our lifetime, and you get to be part of it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.