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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

It's not "one thing wrong" it's just a dude not even bothering to learn research before dismissing it all as wrong. And then being proven wrong because he was being anti-scientific. It just happens to be the most critical challenge to humanity of this century, and he stupidly used his social power to undermine the science. Call "wrong think" as if it wasn't actually a terrible disservice to humanity and just being political. But it was actually wrong, both scientifically, morally, ethically, and gives future contrarians more difficulty.

This worship of personalities is very bad for science. We should prioritize data and ways to understand the data. Paying attention to misplaced authority is how we get lysenkoism.

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Or maybe critics like Dyson forced climate scientists to grow up and become a real science, instead of relying on hand-wavy fallacies. Often the best thing for science is vigorous opposition. Maybe a populist irrationally posing opposition to climate science innoculated climate science, making it able to stand up against the likes of Trump. If your critics are all people you can dismiss, you don't know if your theory will survive a political enemy until it happens.

Except that Dyson was not dismissed for who he was, he was dismissed because of what he was saying. He got original aurhority for who he was. That is exact opposite.

He also was not making it stronger against limes of Trump, he was pawing a way for likes of Trump. Who is also someone dissmissed because of what he says and does. And also someone whose original disproportional benefit of doubt and trust (when he was young) was because of familly he was from.

First of all, thank you for the reference to Lysenkoism:

"as any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable".

But I fail to see the connection with Dyson here.

Having an open discussion about taboo subjects is at the core of progress.

Conflating science with morality is adding another barrier to having those kinds of discussions.

I am aware of Brandolini's Law:

“The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

But if the criticism is done in good faith, with the tools of science, I think it's worth the debunking exercise.

Data is just data. It can be collected with a lot of bias in place and can be interpreted with the same biases. We are only humans after all.

When you say thinks like:

1. "it's just a dude not even bothering to learn research before dismissing it all as wrong" 2. "he stupidly used his social power to undermine the science"

I feel you are some priest that dismisses the sinner, by pointing out the vices of carelessness and stupidness, in the name of the sanctimony of science.

> as any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable

This is precisely what Dyson was engaging in. There was no scientific backing for his critiques, he didn't even bother to learn about what he was critiquing. He just went on a political crusade and pretended that because he had scientific accomplishments in a different field, he was applying the same scientific rigor in climate science. In fact, he was not.

As far as being a "priest," excuse me for caring about basic scientific honesty. This sort of hero worship of Dyson, to the point of excusing extremely bad science and abuse of authority by calling criticism religious, is exactly the sort of stuff that happened in the Soviet Union! Lysenko and Dyson promote the right politics, so they are considered above reproach.

No different than green people opposing nuclear energy.

"Green" people opposing nuclear energy aren't missing their scientific authority with non-scientists about their scientific ability (because they have none). And they aren't misusing their scientific ability to negligently skip even learning about the science, because, again, they typically have none.

So in reality, nothing at all similar.

The most critical challenge humans are facing this century is the quite reasonable scenario where we start to run out of fossil fuels. We're consuming them at a faster rate than we are discovering them and literally all our systems currently depend on fossil fuel consumption.

This theory is commonly called “Peak Oil” and has been repeatedly been debunked in practice since it was first proposed in the 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Predictions

While certainly the quantity of fossil fuels is finite. It is unlikely we will ever “run out of fossil fuels” because the price will simply increase as supplies begin to run low. Then two things will happen: we will consume less and expand the scope of production to more expensive source.

This has already happened repeatedly over the history of the fossil fuel industry.

> has been repeatedly been debunked in practice...

You say debunked, then link to a table with a near total consensus that we'll have hit peak oil by 2060. The exception being the EIA putting out 2067 as a stretch goal. That is not a table of crackpots, that is groups like the World Bank, IEA, Shell, etc.

Debunked usually means 'disproven', not 'consensus position'.

> Then two things will happen: we will consume less and expand the scope of production to more expensive source.

Either of those outcomes are a bigger threat than climate change.

> This has already happened repeatedly over the history of the fossil fuel industry.

We haven't ever hit peak oil before.

There was a peak conventional oil in the US in the 1970's.

The US never felt the full effects of that peak [0]. The difference was made up by imports and the US didn't have to face a raw decline in oil availability. Global peak oil is going to change that, or spark more very nasty wars as the US bullies people into continuing to send them oil.

In this century it is quite likely that we'll see peak oil globally. It is a bigger threat than climate change. Anyone who was going to suffer from climate change is also one of the people vulnerable to the affects of oil availability reductions.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-consumption-by-countr...

The 1970's peak oil triggered the oil crises. The 2006 world conventional peak oil popped the subprime bubble.

> It is unlikely we will ever “run out of fossil fuels” because the price will simply increase as supplies begin to run low. Then two things will happen: we will consume less and expand the scope of production to more expensive source.

You are just restating peak oil theory here.

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