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> Hashem gave us plastic,
No, he did not. Hashem gave us daas and hishtadlus to develop science and technology to make plastics.
Aseh, of course you have to use it in the right way! But this whole global warming theory is just a theory, and there is no basis for it, especially that at a certain point the world will blow up.
It’s all the creation of some scientists’s own imagination, and they conviced others that it’s real because they got a big degree of science from harvard or columbia or whatever they make up.And besides, even if this theory is true, around 90% of all the fossil fuels and ‘harmful’ material comes from places like china, other countries in asia, & africa. Not America.
AAQ, you take things SOOO seriously. My words are not l’havdil the words of the Torah. Maybe my choice of words is not the best, but I’m sure everyone get’s my point.
Dear Ts,
Global warming is not just a theory. It’s a statistical model. And it’s been ironclad for almost two centuries. Even super-computers have not found an improvement over the mathematical formula. The warming part has been observed over the last thirty plus years. That is a factual observation, not a theory. As Ujm mentioned how much warming has actually been observed, is in dispute. And what the cause is, can fairly be called just theory. And nobody intelligent is saying that the world will blow up.
TS: People have tried discrediting the 99% of scientists who agree that global warming is real (and as a result of humans) on the basis that their research could have been funded by grants awarded by partisian organizations. On the other hand, I saw a good interview with a top climate denier. Even he admitted temperature was rising and it was a result of humans, albeit much less than the ‘liberal media’ suggests. I looked him up and he was an energy company lobbyist. And he’s not nogaia?? Moreover, his articles show he outright denied global warming and slowly he’s conceded more an more. The guy was a former a lobbyist for tobacco and claimed cigarettes don’t cause cancer. All of these 1-percenters are in the same boat. I’ll never understand why you’re all so loyal to these corporate lobbyists.
The core debate is not the warming trend per sei, its the first derivative of that trend or the rate of change. In brief, the argument is really over whether the available data is sufficiently reliable over a sufficient long time horizon to reach any decisions on the relative contribution of human activity to what most scientists now believe is an accelerating rate of warming.
Dear Gadol,
It is baffling to me how data will establish causation for global warming. It can be deduced from small scale experiments or mass computation. But after all there will always be some ambiguity.
Well one thing is for sure the world won’t explode & we won’t burn up until after the days of Moshiach, but anyways, it won’t be through the burning of fossil fuels. I understand that the world is getting hotter, but what I say is a theory is the effects of global warming and that we can stop it and it’s because we are using plastic bags. Yes, the world is getting hotter, but the reason is not necessarily from these things.
I’m not saying we should on purpose create more fossil fuels, even when we don’t need it, but if it will really help us in our day-to-day lives then why should we refrain from using things which are pretty important & helpful nowadays when the ‘terrible effects’ are just theories?
The causes are theories. The effects are known, but undefined.
TS Baum> you take things SOOO seriously
nobody accused me of THIS before, even Syag!
n0 > It’s a statistical model. And it’s been ironclad for almost two centuries.
It is a misconception. A model is built on old data. The more parameters (degrees of freedom) you have, the easier it is to fit to the data. As one Baki told me – you can always draw a straight line through any 3 points! (as long as your pen is thick enough). So, it is no wonder that someone constructs a model that works on all historical data. The real test would be to publish the model and see how it works in the future.
Same thing goes with stock market that most of us can not predict “shaa ahas” in advance, kal v’homer, 100 years. As financial advisor asked an economics professor – if you are so smart (explaining economics), why are you not so rich? [The retort was: if you are so rich, why are you not so smart].
Practically speaking – we saw how one month of covid dramatically reduced economic activity in the whole world (and price of oil went below zero) and then a month of war sent oil to the roof and fired up coal … so, when global warming will start really hurting the world, we can always reduce activity, seed clouds, paint the whole globe in reflective color, bomb Chinese coal factories … Solve today’s problems today and don’t try to feed Russian monsters in order to save your beaches tomorrow.
Dear Always,
You have no idea. It was published over a hundred years ago.
The opening poster partially answered his question in his last sentence, i.e., some frum Jews support any nonsense that liberals oppose. Another part of the answer, I believe, is the mediocrity of science education in yeshivas. And a different part of the answer is the failure to educate ourselves about how to reconcile the teachings of Torah with the teachings of science.
There is a journal dedicated to the interface of Torah and science, edited, I believe, by a Chabadnik named Yermiyahu Branover, who is a scientist educated in Soviet Russia, who became frum when he left the Soviet Union in the early 70’s. If you want to genuinely learn about Torah and science, find that journal.
“And a different part of the answer is the failure to educate ourselves about how to reconcile the teachings of Torah with the teachings of science.”
No “reconciliation” is necessary. The Torah is eternal, as true today – in every sense and in every word – as it was 3,500 years ago. “Science” is overturned once newer science disproves older science. Just because science says something now that does not mean that tomorrow a newer science will disprove and overturn it.
Dear Huju,
Separate the two, not reconcile. Just my opinion. I’ll look for that journal. Thanks!
B’Or Ha’Torah
n0mesorah: Correlation never establishes “causation” but can endow a hypothesis with greater or less statistical confidence. As you note, you can perform a HS science project showing causation (aka fossil fuel combustion yields greater C02 and tie that to warming) but then trying to directly link fossil combustion since the start of the industrial revolution to atmospheric CO2 levels, average temps, etc. requires statistical modeling.
> reconcile the teachings of Torah with the teachings of science.
> Just because science says something now that does not mean that tomorrow a newer science will disprove and overturn it.
> Separate the two, not reconcilethese opinions cover a lot 🙂 I think each of them have validity.
You can live nice ehrliche life without being bothered by science. Just don’t post noreshkeit and hate presuming you know better than those who pay attention.
Science indeed changes, and Talmidei Chachamim both made conclusions based on science of their time and acknowledged limitations, especially when masorah is different, such as argument whether the world was created from nothing (science acknowledged that 100 years ago with Big Bang theory).
Studying and reconciling seems like a fascinating approach for anyone who is interested in how Hashem created and runs the world. Possibly, He wants us to engage in that exploration. I forgot who says that pre-flood long lives were required because of lack of writing – so every person had to live enough to collect enough astronomical data and make conclusions about how the world is made.
n0 > It was published over a hundred years ago.
please give me a reference on what you are talking about. But then again, staying with statistical false impressions – there may be 100 books with 100 opinions printed in 1900, then 1 of them predicts something in the future – does not mean that the public opinion was really on it. But I checked google book ngram (it is like google trends for web, new popularity – but for books back to 1700): there is a indeed a short bump – there are some global warming/climate change discussions in 18th century (whatever that means, there was no man-made global warming at that time),
then a short bump in 1870s, another in 1950s and then really up from 19851. I think nOmesorah correctly named the journal I referred to.
2. ujm’s comment confirms that his yeshivah did not do an adequate job teaching science. Of course, if he went to public school, they don’t always do a good job either.
3. If Torah is eternal and was and continues to be true (which I believe), why do Torah scholars have so much to say about it? Maybe it’s too complicated for me. I am not as smart as I pretend to be.
“Why do you jump to blame the Yeshivos? ”
Very ironic. I was just going to say the same to you after you just made this statement
“Yeshivos come in many varieties, but I’m actually more worried about the quality of hashkafa education than the science education in Yeshivos, judging by some of the posts I see here…”
You don’t know enough about anyone here to be worrying about yeshivos based on their posting.
Aseh > Before we start worrying about reconciling science with Torah (not reconciling Torah with science, chas v’sholom), let’s first make sure we understand what the Torah actually says.
it is a good point, but also note that it all goes together. Not many people are completely isolated from the environment – even those who have no cell phones and radios in the car, go to shul with someone who knows someone who is watching MSNBC or Ben Shapiro. So, if they do not have skills to understand modern life, whether science or sociology, they will fall prey to someone’s opinions about those topics, and you can just pray that those will not be most destructive ones.
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