Complex Systems, Simple Solutions, and the Myth of Climate Fixes
I was listening to Bret Weinstein and Joe Rogan talk and it made me think.
Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist and critical thinker, and who I stole the professor-in-exile moniker, has called attention to a fundamental distinction between complicated and complex systems.
His insights were very enlightening and offered a lens through which we can better understand humanity’s many challenges, including climate change.
Weinstein warns against the dangers of applying complicated thinking to complex systems, a common mistake with profound unintended consequences.
Nowhere is this more relevant than in the climate change debate, where solutions like Solar Radiation Management (SRM) are proposed without fully appreciating the intricacies and uncertainties of the global climate system.
Complicated vs. Complex Systems
Weinstein differentiates between “complicated” and “complex” systems in a way that is crucial for understanding how we should approach modern problems.
A complicated system, such as a car engine, involves many parts, but these parts interact in predictable and controllable ways.
Even though there may be numerous components, if something breaks, we can usually trace the problem and fix it without causing cascading failures. The system operates in a linear, deterministic manner where inputs have predictable outputs.
In contrast, complex systems, like ecosystems or human societies, involve interdependent variables that interact in ways that are often nonlinear, unpredictable, and context-dependent.
In a complex system, an action that works well in one context might have entirely different outcomes in another.
Moreover, the relationships between components can produce emergent properties, behaviors and characteristics that arise from the interactions of the system’s parts but cannot be predicted by studying each part in isolation.
Complex systems are adaptive; they evolve over time, and small changes can lead to disproportionately large consequences.
For example, a minor alteration in the food chain can ripple through an ecosystem, causing unforeseen changes in population dynamics and biodiversity.
Importantly, in complex systems, unintended consequences are often the rule rather than the exception, making it impossible to fully understand or predict all the outcomes of our interventions.
Applying Complicated Thinking to Complex Systems
One of Weinstein’s key concerns is that people often try to apply complicated thinking—appropriate for mechanical, engineered systems—to complex systems.
This mindset assumes that complex systems can be fixed or controlled by making adjustments to individual components, without considering the ripple effects that might emerge.
This mechanistic thinking is deeply flawed when dealing with systems like the environment, human societies, or economies, where interactions between variables are dynamic, multifaceted, and not easily reducible to simple cause-effect relationships.
In the context of climate change, this type of thinking manifests in many ways.
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crackpot
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The only challenge humanity faces with “climate change,” AKA “global warming,” is the powerful using the superstitious fear of the evil carbon dioxide molecule to throw the rest of in the volcano. Blot out the sun to appease the carbon god – what could go wrong?
True, you can’t isolate variables in the complex global climate system, but there’s still the arrow of time. CO2 comes well after warming in the climate history, so CO2 cannot be the cause.
We didn’t really need to look at the climate anyway. A cursory examination of the implications of the claimed “back-radiative forcing” mechanism for warming shows it’s a violation of the 2nd Law. If true, you would burn your face with your own refelection in the mirror.
Still fearful? When you can’t isolate variables in a comparison of a hypothesis to experience, you devise an experiment where you can. Since you suspect the hypothesis is false, you try a disproving experiment, exaggeratiing the claimed cause (back-radiation) greatly to see if there’s any effect at all (warming). RW Wood did that in 1909. ZERO warming.
The “greenhouse gas effect” does not exist at all. Disproven permanently. Cancel the grant, call off the volcano ceremony.
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Alan
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It is always good to see a reminder of Wood’s work.
There are only two ways known to man in which the temperature of system can be increased and they are by adding thermal energy or doing work. Carbon dioxide cannot do either.
Most people will believe that insulation on a house increases the temperature but it doesn’t. It reduces the rate of heat loss which is entirely different. In summer it reduces the heat gain from the sun, but nobody says that insulation cools a house.
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Herb Rose
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Hi Crackpot,
The 2nd LoT is invalid because it is wrong. The law states that an object with more kinetic energy will add energy to an object with less kinetic energy. An increase in energy (v^2) means an increase in velocity. If you are traveling in a small car and rear end a large slower truck your speed will not increase, even though the truck has more kinetic energy. In elastic collisions objects transfer energy, not mass.
Herb
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb,
How is it that you try to correct other people’s ideas and you don’t respond to my comments about what you have written in your article? (https://principia-scientific.com/the-thermometer-again/)
have a good day
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Herb Rose
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Jerry,
Your comment shows you have not read or do not understand the article. The article shows that when the thermometer is measuring a solid or liquid it is measuring the flow of energy from one phase of matter to another phase of matter. In a gas the thermometer is only exposed to one phase and measures the amount of energy being absorbed from the matter in that phases, not a flow. Yo\ur comment that the thermometer measures the temperature shows you have no comprehension of what the article was about.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb,
You just wrote: “The article shows that when the thermometer is measuring a solid or liquid it is measuring the flow of energy from one phase of matter to another phase of matter. Do you not know that a thermometer is an instrument which measures temperature and not the “flow” of anything”???
Have a good day
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Herb Rose
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jerry,
The temperature of liquid water cannot exceed 100 C at standard pressure. Take a thermometer and submerge the entire instrument in boiling water, exposing all the measuring liquid to to the 100 C water. This is the same as when in the atmosphere where all the measuring liquid is exposed to one medium. If the thermometer doesn’t burst it will show the water’s temperature to be greater than 100 C, even though it can’t exceed 100 C.
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crackpot
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The 2nd Law in its most simple and earliest form (Clausius) states that in a process heat does not transfer from cooler to warmer (without work). In thousands of controlled experiments and experiences, it has never once been disproved, so we call it a “Law.” It’s really a definition of temperature – cooler objects or gases simply do not have the potential to transfer heat to and thereby raise the temperature of warmer objects. The parallel in electricity is intuitive – a 6V battery does not have the potential, the electro-motive force, to transfer charge to and thereby raise the voltage of a 12V battery.
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Herb Rose
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Hi Crackpot,
If the 2nd Law is correct than the law of conservation of momentum is wrong. It says that when 2 objects collide energy flows from the object with greater velocity to the object with less velocity, regardless of their masses (which remain the same). It too has been verified by countless experiments. All that is needed to invalidate a law is one example where it is not true. Instead of a car and truck substitute a gas molecule and a larger molecule.
Energy flows to mass or the nucleuses of atoms and equalizes. The correct 2nd law should say energy flows from an object with greater energy per unit mass to objects with less energy per unit mass. There is no transfer of mass in elastic collisions or by radiation.
Herb
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