Last April I participated in a panel at MIT with The New Yorker‘s Michael Specter (the author of Denialism; on Point of Inquiry here), The Washington Post’s Shankar Vedantam, and the New America Foundation’s Shannon Brownlee. We were discussing why America has such problems with science–and whether we can ever be more rational. Well, the video’s now up, I see, so I thought I’d link and paste it in–I thought it was a pretty good discussion:
September 1st, 2010 at 8:31 am
Wow, from POI and your head shot I had pictured you totally differently.
September 1st, 2010 at 9:16 am
“The smarter you are, the better you are at gathering information.”
Chris, I think that is very good insight.
“Cable came along and obliterated that… There is no free and open encounter.”
Again, great point. And to add to that: so many people thought the internet would allow people to be immersed in a variety of ideas from around the world which would go on to cure many problems caused by ignorance. *To the contrary*, the internet is so diverse that it becomes fairly easy to find others with like ideas and stay there only hearing that what reaffirms you.
“We’ve got to give up on… the enlightenment.”
I think your point here was under appreciated. I think there is a lot of truth to this. The future seems to be headed in a direction that only further allows people to gather whatever information is needed to reaffirm their belief whether right or wrong.
Great points Chris! These realities will be a lot for many to swallow, but like you say, unless they do, they are in trouble.
September 1st, 2010 at 12:50 pm
If disinformation can cause a great deal of problem (such as creating “partisanship” whenever one side extracted a quote out-of-context) and if correction (to correct disinformation) cannot be effectively done to correct the effect of disinformation (as mentioned by shenkar), then censorship is the only solution!! How else could we stop disinformation without preventing it from occuring? -In the authoritarian way, we can remove any negative information from the media. For example; in the old days, we can censor television show and newspaper (which is equivalent to censoring the whole information media), but now we need to censor the internet.
I heard Australia censored porn from the internet. That doesn’t sound difficult, and it is do-able. -The only thing that hold us back is fear, we feared that censorship would block our freedom of disseminating ‘false’ idea. But fact is: most of us is a consumer of ideas, we do not bother to produce ideas except for social communication (facebook, comment blog, forum). Censorship could be the new ideal of protecting information consumer.
September 1st, 2010 at 1:34 pm
More denial…. but this time denial of scientific evidence regarding the human population.
Regardless of what we believe because it is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially correct, religiously tolerated and culturally syntonic to do so, whatsoever is is, is it not? Please assist me by examining research of the population dynamics of the human species. The implications of this research appear to be potentially profound. If human population dynamics is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species, then the unbridled growth of absolute global human population numbers in our time could be the proverbial “mother” of the human-induced global challenges looming before the family of humanity. If this global challenge continues to be ignored, the human family could end up winning some Pyrrhic victories over subordinate global challenges but losing the larger struggle for survival itself.
Please note the following perspective from Sir Fred Hoyle that dates back to 1964, a time prior to the publication of Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” and the Club of Rome’s seminal work, “Limits to Growth.”
begin—-
“It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance… and one chance only.”
end—-
It appears to me that Sir Fred Hoyle was asking people years ago, when I was still a teenager, to carefully consider and rigorously examine a superordinate situation that was too dangerous to ignore… that dwarfed other already identified global challenges. Rather than seriously scrutinize population dynamics leading to the human overpopulation of the Earth, which would require experts to rivet their attention on the placement of the human species within the natural order of living things, the topic was avoided, just as it is being ignored now. At the beginning of my lifecycle in 1945 there were about 2.8+/- billion human beings on Earth. Only 65 years later 6.8+/- billion people are members of the human community.
So much time has been wasted recently by the brighest and best of my generation. The implications of such an unfortunate failure of nerve appear to be far-reaching. We cannot address problems, the root cause of which we refuse to acknowledge.
Representative democracies led by human beings with feet of clay could readily become a force too formidable to ignore with remarkable speed, I believe, but first humankind needs to be helped to see why a force too formidable to ignore is necessary as well as to understand more adequately the nature of the primary human-induced global challenge that presents itself to the family of humanity in our time; that takes its shape in the form of a colossal looming threat to future human wellbeing, environmental health and the integrity of Earth as a fit place for human habitation.
Research by Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel appears to indicate with remarkable simplicity that human population dynamics is essentially similar to the population dynamics of other species.
Since many too many population experts remain silent about this research and blogmeisters associated with the mass media refuse to discuss the peer-reviewed evidence, perhaps you could take a look at it, make your comments, and encourage by your example others to do the same. You can find the article, Human Population Numbers as a Function of Food Supply, by Hopfenberg and Pimentel on the worldwide web or at the following link, http://www.panearth.org/ . Other articles and a slideshow presentation on human population dynamics and human overpopulation can also be found at this link.
No amount of rationalization or excuse will pass muster when the issue is the conscious denial of science. The abject failure of every major legitimate scientific group to respond to the exceptionally strong evidence of human population dynamics and human overpopulation of the Earth from Hopfenberg and Pimentel is simply inexcusable. Many too many experts have been effectively ignoring research from these two outstanding scientists, who have devoted their lives to actually observing data and providing critiques/interpretations in an intellectually honest manner.
The willful avoidance of the open discussion of science, especially the scientific research of human population dynamics, is as unconscionable as it is destructive. Experts who have remained silent need to be stood up to and directed to assume their responsibilities to science and their duties to humanity. Is there a reasonable justification for elective mutism in response to carefully collected, honestly analyzed and heretofore unchallenged evidence?
The tasks at hand for scientists are to freely acknowledge, critique and interpret evidence, I suppose, and to encourage that evidence to be examined from different viewpoints. It is irresponsible and pernicious for scientists to remain silent because they are slowing the development of momentum for necessary change in population policy and programming, I believe.
September 1st, 2010 at 2:34 pm
The most interesting question, I think, was (paraphrasing slightly):
“Why are people in this room so different from average Americans when it comes to science?”
To which the answer is, of course: they’re not.
Given that everybody on the panel agreed that confirmation bias was a human universal – a consequence of the way the brain works – and given that you’re all human (even Democrats!), isn’t it therefore obvious that some of your own beliefs will almost certainly be of this same ‘denialist’ type? Isn’t that what the science says?
And yet, huge numbers of people persist in denying this. “We’re being rational and science-based, it’s only those other guys who are being influenced by their political preconceptions.”
And so it is proposed that we bring the Enlightenment to an end. (Wow!) But of course, the critical question if you do so is, how sure are you that your side will be the one in control of the dissemination of ideas? What if the other side takes control? What if the other side gets to say what is orthodoxy, and what is certifiably nuts? What if they decide that it is you that is in denial?
This was all understood 300 years ago, which is why Milton said what he said. He knew perfectly well that truth does not necessarily have an easy time of it, if put in the ring against the competition. It has to work hard for its victories. But he also understood that in the long run it held the advantage, and that it was the only real way to be sure that it was truth, and that you wasn’t simply fooling yourself in thinking it was.
Science is not intelligently designed by totally unbiased and rigorously sceptical experts in collegiate and cooperative discussion, it evolves through conflict, opposition, attack, and violent argument – academia red in tooth and claw – in which weak ideas are pulled down by their opponents and destroyed. Well, OK, maybe that’s ‘poetic’ exaggeration, but evolution is a far better way of describing it.
Ending the Enlightenment is like putting your big-beaked bird on a remote tropical island paradise with no predators. And you know how that story ends.
September 1st, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Chris, thanks for putting this up. It was great!
September 1st, 2010 at 6:49 pm
“Denial” is the inability to understand other people. A scientist is also a “denier” if he doesn’t want to understand layman, and a layman is a “denier” if he doesn’t want to understand scientist. -The worst denier is the one who doesn’t want to accept a useful-advice/truth, and science is both useful and is the truth! To whom we call “denier” right now is the one who refuse to understand science.
Denier is called “denier” because they deny. If you deny everything that people say, like some teenager with adolescent angst, then you’re “denier”.. both felt the same way about other peoples. -You’ll have a negative set of mind, the one which wish to deny, and wish not to understand the point. If people were telepathic, then there’s no denier, but since we cannot, then we must talk, and you must understand.
I hope people give more effort to understand science. Science is not hard at all after you get to know the big picture. From there, you can add as much science fact as you wish, without bogging you down (if it does bog you down, then scientist isn’t human. Which is not true).
September 1st, 2010 at 7:07 pm
The Enlightenment thing is a mouthful. First I don’t agree with the definition of what enlightenment is. But let me not go there, rather let me pose this question: Should we listen to Chomsky with regards to meda, or should we listen to Walter Lippman. The answer to that decides if by this definition we should give up “Enlightenment”. I would completely resist if the answer indeed is that we follow Lippman, because it is resignation of advocacy for honesty in the public sphere.
The problem with the marketplace of ideas is that if we concede that the competition is troubled, the problem with giving it up is that historically, doing so we have lost exactly those best voices, those most critical innovative voices first!
No, freedom of expression is exactly to protect the difficult, innovative voice, even recognizing that it can and often will be drowned in chatter and demagoguery.
September 2nd, 2010 at 12:25 am
Great discussion.
Since its now possible to identify “tribal loyalty” thinking in ourselves, I wonder if it may be possible to develop training/education that can help us modify our behavior for the better.
Another question I have regards the Republican education level correlating with global warming disbelief. I wonder how the breakdown goes with respect to major or degree. Not all fields are the same. Are those with pure science degrees statistically different from those with non-science degrees (say humanities, or technical fields including medicine and engineering)?
Chris’ description of the influence of his grandfather’s science background really resonates. I wish this topic would come up more: childhood influences which lead to love of science (if not an outright science career). I don’t think this can be disconnected from the topics of improving science education and doing better science communication and outreach – they’re all very important, but they’ll have more effect on those individuals who already value science. Ironically, I’ve come to believe that Dan Quayle was right when he argued for family values. However, those family values should include love of education, knowledge, science and mathematics (perhaps not what he had in mind).
I agree strongly with Michael Specter’s call to strengthen statistics in high school education but was very put off by his offhand comment to make room for it by removing physics from the curriculum. That the nation is in such a bad energy predicament can be laid at the feet of a population that largely doesn’t comprehend basic principles of conservation of energy and elementary thermodynamics. Its hard to get worked up about saving energy if you think perpetual motion is possible or don’t think about the energy supply chain beyond what price you pay at the pump. And personally speaking, every time I see some numbskull tailgating me on a slick road, I would like to see mastery of basic physics (mechanics: friction, momentum etc) made a requirement for obtaining a drivers license.
September 2nd, 2010 at 1:36 pm
“Another question I have regards the Republican education level correlating with global warming disbelief. I wonder how the breakdown goes with respect to major or degree.”
And the same question for Democrats who believe in AGW catastrophe.
September 2nd, 2010 at 3:12 pm
This is what the conservative intellectual world has become:
http://www.frumforum.com/the-purge-at-cato
BTW, I have not listened to the talk, Chris, but be careful about bashing the Enlightenment. There’s a lot there that is a bulwark protecting a lot of good things. But like any body of work, it needs to be understood and appreciated in nuanced ways and not treated as a static thing that can’t have new meanings for modern times… And that debate between Lippmann and Dewey, that’s quite a thing…
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:13 pm
There are lots of forces chiseling away at enlightenment. It is really dangerous, not just a little. The misunderstanding here is that enlightenment does not say we are all rational. It says, we should strive to be rational! Take that goal away, or critically undermine it and you have undermined the marketplace of ideas, you have undermined the ability to actually do science, and you have undermined the ability to differentiate between a good idea and schizophrenia. We can have enlightenment with a heart, but a heart without enlightenment is an emotional rage-pot not a warm understanding.
Ultimately the main critique of enlightenment is actually that it did the best thing we have as a goal and not yet achieved, a true open pluralistic free society, where one can be different without being persecuted. I really wish people would stop being casual with enlightenment and think hard first what it really is and what they ask for by calling for its demise.
September 2nd, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Folks,
I don’t think people are getting what I was saying about the Enlightenment. I’m saying it gave us marvelous rationality, but also unjustifiable optimism about the extent to which this could be extended — communicated — to the public at large. The rationality is great. The optimism is unjustified….and needs to be tempered with realism…and ultimately, more rationality.
September 3rd, 2010 at 1:53 pm
#13,
Perhaps you could explain that a bit more. Because it wasn’t the impression that the words gave, and I’m not sure what the clarification means in practical terms.
If you mean that the public has not universally absorbed the open-minded rationality of the Enlightenment, then I’d agree. It would be nice if it was otherwise. But that’s their choice. (And your choice, of course, from my point of view. It’s all of our choices.)
But the impression I got from your original words, an impression not contradicted by your clarification, was that you wanted to propose an alternative that was counter to the Enlightenment approach. That is to say, if the Enlightenment isn’t ‘working’, then we need to change it to something else so it does.
If that’s what you mean, then what do you have in mind? And how will it avoid all the pitfalls that the Enlightenment approach was developed to circumvent?
September 3rd, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Have you read Chris’s books, Nullius? If you have, it’s pretty clear what he means in 13.
And I disagree that it’s all about choices. I couldn’t learn the complex details of a lot of things that affect policy even if I *chose* to try. I just don’t have the time. You just have to try your best to be informed. And people who would affect policy have to try their best to inform citizens, which involves more than just laying out facts in a dry fashion, or presenting expert credentials and expecting that to be good enough (a couple of assumptions which I think come down to us from the Enlightenment, and I think that is what Chris is saying), because there’s a lot of noise out there, even deliberate attempts to sow confusion.
So you not only have to lay out the facts, you have to study the way people consume information, and communicate in ways that adapt to that.
September 4th, 2010 at 7:59 am
#15,
Trying your best to inform citizens, and speaking in a more engaging manner would be encouraged by the Enlightenment, and opposition to Argument from Authority was a core Enlightenment value, one of its central arguments and amongst the biggest and most important changes it made.
Hence my confusion. It would appear that many people no longer know what the Enlightenment actually stood for, to the extent that they mistake it for its opposite. Chris apparently argues in his book in favour of it, while saying now that it hasn’t worked and we therefore have to get rid of it. Nobody seems to know what Chris means, and people seem to be making guesses based on what they think he ought to mean. Maybe Chris plans to clarify, and is composing the post as we speak, or maybe not. But I don’t think at the moment the position is clear.
Milton said: “Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?” But of course Milton did not mean that you simply had to state the truth, and its inner light would shine forth and defeat falsehood without effort. What he meant was then when you went into the details, set out the arguments, considered and criticised them, checked their consistency with observation, and so on, that falsehood would necessarily have fatal weaknesses showing it to be false, that the truth could find and reveal.
It was only through the trial of truth that it would be revealed to be such. A truth that relied on force and censorship to get promulgated was suspect – was it the accepted wisdom because it was actually true, or only because the Authorities enforced it?
“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence in the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.”
The problem Chris perceives is that he has set out the truth, as he sees it, and people have not been convinced. Milton I think would suggest that this means that either the arguments are not yet clear and detailed enough, the criticism and examination not yet complete, or that what has been set out is not truth, and stands revealed as such by its failure to muster such arguments.
Chris of course has come to a different conclusion, that the encounter was somehow not free and open, that political preconceptions and disinformation get in the way of it being open, and perhaps that truth needs to be given a helping hand to clear away the competition. That one might need to use some of the tools of falsehood to defeat it – advertising, framing, psychological manipulation. Or maybe that isn’t what he means, but just what it sounded like.
I have said the opposite. The reason catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (and no doubt other scientific theories) is not accepted is that scientists have relied on authority and advertising to try to persuade, and the general public today, through long experience with politicians and advertisers, have learnt to recognise that sort of thing. You hear this constant refrain from scientists: that the general public is stupid and scientifically ignorant, and you have to simplify, dumb down, and dramatise the science to get them to pay any attention. It’s totally wrong! The main reason for the public’s ignorance about science (and it’s drift towards accepting nonsense) is that for years now its public presentation has been simplified, dumbed down, and dramatised. You get told the conclusions with that air of authority, shown the cool toys, and the methods are glossed over with squiggly graphics and mood music. They don’t know how science really works because scientists don’t tell them. They don’t know how messy it all is – it’s always packaged up as a neat and tidy story. Whether it is truly the fault of the scientists, the media, or the general public – there is no easy road back now.
You can’t tell them the truth, because they are no longer capable of understanding it, and you can’t tell them the simplified baby-talk version any more, because they recognise it as junk. You’re stuck.
With CAGW theory, you’ve got the additional problem that the science isn’t nearly as solid as has been portrayed, which means you can’t go into the details, set out the arguments, check their consistency with observation, etc. For a science to be so tenuous and uncertain is quite normal, especially for such a young science, and nothing in itself to be concerned about. But clearly it is a problem if you’ve just set the world on a new course on the basis that it’s not. That makes it a double problem – educating the public, but not too much.
But enough of that. The question here is exactly what Chris means about an end or an alternative to the Enlightenment. I’m not clear, and I’m not convinced yet that you are – unless Chris is really arguing against it by arguing for it. He has said things in the past that are good – that his aim in using advanced communications methods is only to avoid the misunderstanding of complex ideas – and some things that are more worrying; and this seems to be one of the latter. But only Chris can answer the question.
September 4th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
If you’re confused, Nullius, you might check out Chris’s work on George Lakoff:
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/learning_to_speak_science/
And look up Lakoff’s position on the Enlightenment and public speech. I suspect it’s at least somewhat close to Chris’s.
And I don’t know what you mean by AGW hasn’t been explained. C02′s role in the greenhouse effect has been around for a long time. The more recent science gets more sophisticated and technical, so it’s not a surprise that it’s harder to explain to audiences that don’t have the context or the time. Who has the time or the context, for instance, to go through all this: http://tinyurl.com/heatisonline ?
September 5th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
#17,
That was an interesting essay by George Lakoff, but nowhere in it does he say anything about wanting an end to the Enlightenment, or it being a problem. To the extent that he says the same things as Chris – about ‘framing’ and ‘packaging’ the message – I am no more persuaded. But perhaps that’s another argument.
Regarding AGW, you have managed to put your finger on the problem. The issue I have with it is firstly that the simplistic explanations are incomplete or in error, and secondly that there is a huge gulf between those and the “sophisticated and technical” explanations that scientists have failed to fill in.
I meet a lot of people who believe that the simple explanations are all there is to it. For that reason, they can’t understand how anyone could fail to understand them, or honestly doubt them. “CO2 absorbs infra-red, it’s been shown in the laboratory, therefore the greenhouse effect is true.” Do I deny that CO2 absorbs IR? No. Do I deny that it has been shown in the laboratory? No. So how can I possibly be sceptical? I have to be either stupid or dishonest, right?
No. Because my argument is with the ‘sophisticated and technical’ bits, essential to the conclusion, that many people are not even aware exist. I don’t deny the greenhouse effect exists, or that CO2 contributes to it, or that increasing CO2 will tend to enhance it – but I’m still a sceptic.
And the same goes for a lot of sceptics. You ask “Who has the time or the context, for instance, to go through all this?” Lots of people do. Numbers 5 and 6, for example, on the list you linked to are some of the most intensively studied and argued over papers in recent history – the famous MBH papers. Entire books have been written; dissecting what they say, what was done, where they went wrong, and what the scientific community did about it. And we haven’t neglected the rest of the list, either.
You see, by asking “who has the time or context to go through all this?”, you are simply stating in a more polite form what I said above, that the public is stupid and scientifically ignorant, and you have to simplify, dumb down, and dramatise the science to get them to pay any attention. No, you don’t. We want to know. We have the time. It’s the scientist’s job to fill in the context.
I’ll try an example. Lakoff mentions that people find the analogy to a greenhouse confusing. Well of course – that’s because the analogy is incorrect. It perpetuates an incorrect understanding of how greenhouses work, one known to be false as early as 1909, and incorrectly applies it to the atmosphere, which works on an entirely different principle to either the false or the correct explanations for greenhouses. It’s wrong and its misleading, and as soon as people try to think it through beyond the most superficial level, they get totally confused. The same goes for the ‘blanket’ analogy. Both work by preventing convection, which obviously CO2 does not.
And this is where climate scientists have made the fatal error. You’ve given the general public a “baby-talk” analogy, but presented it as if it were authoritative science, without explaining just how much of a simplification it is. A knowledgeable sceptic can demolish the claim in about 30 seconds flat. The member of the public realises they’ve been ‘lied to’, casts around for a better, more detailed explanation that makes more sense, and falls into that yawning gulf between the ‘science’ designed for public consumption and the technical literature. People insult them for even asking the question, cite argument from authority, or direct them into a labyrinth of papers they can’t read, and which mostly don’t answer the question anyway. The only comprehensible analysis of the technical literature they’ll find is the sceptic one, where they emphasise all the complications and uncertainties that the scientists neglected to mention. Tra la! You have yourself another “Denier”!
The general public are actually being more scientific than the scientists. They’re asking to see the evidence, and when they don’t get it (in a form they can digest), they’re becoming sceptical. The answer is not to make up more convincing baby-talk – exchanging blankets for greenhouses or the like – it is to start to bridge that gap between where you have left the public stranded, and where the scientists and sceptics are.
Using communications science to enable people to understand and appreciate the technicalities more easily – that’s a goal I’d applaud. But when the stated aim is not understanding but persuasion to an orthodox view, I have big problems with it.
As a scientist, I’d much rather people understood the science without believing in it, than that they believe in the science without understanding it. That is, maybe, an unconventional way of putting it, and very much out of fashion nowadays, but it was something that was also implied by the Enlightenment. Is that, perhaps, the aspect of it people want to end?
September 5th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
That was an interesting essay by George Lakoff,
Now you’re just phoning it in. That essay is by Chris Mooney on George Lakoff. Lakoff’s views on the Enlightenment and public speech can be found using a Google search. But I’m going to say at this point that you’ve flunked the Turing test. I don’t think you’re really interested in Chris *or* Lakoff’s views on the Enlightenment.
September 5th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
#19,
Was it? I misread the byline. My apologies.
But given that was Chris, the same comments stand. It says nothing about the Enlightenment. It explains nothing about Chris’s strange comment in the video. It still misdiagnoses the problem (and gives a different diagnosis to the one in the video). And it just seems to be an irrelevant essay on a different subject, pulled out of nowhere.
So rather than assume I’m not really interested (actually, I am), why don’t you explain?
September 5th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
The same goes for the ‘blanket’ analogy. Both work by preventing convection, which obviously CO2 does not.
Space blankets are far more effective than a simple plastic wrap because of their radiation-reflecting properties.
I’ve heard astrophysicists use “blanketing” or “thermal blanketing” when describing radiation shielding; Its not such a bad analogy. Some analogies are better than others. Almost any analogy could be picked apart at some level.
September 5th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
I’m trying to be helpful, Nullius. Look up George Lakoff and his ideas about public speech and the Enlightenment. Then go back to what Chris said in that article on Lakoff, what he said above, and what he said in the talk. I’m pretty sure they’re related because I think Chris first made comments on the Enlightenment about around the same time he was writing about Lakoff.
September 6th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Jon,
Thank you. I think I see what you mean, now. George does seem to have the same sort of misunderstanding of the Enlightenment that Chris appears to.
But I think I’ve already covered that in my comment above, so I think I’ll leave it there. Unless Chris want to add anything else.
Sean,
Yes, in the case of ‘space blankets’ there’s more to it than convection alone. When used for keeping things warm, it’s not the reflectivity, but the low emissivity that matters more, but the effects do go together, so in a sense it’s still right.
I think astrophysicists might have a dual use in mind – radiation shielding is a different function (they usually mean solar wind and cosmic rays, which scramble electronics), but when weight is at a premium you re-use what you can.
September 6th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Nullius,
I was referring to E&M radiation (thermal, well below ionizing energies). One particular discussion I remember was about slowing down the cooling rate of a blackbody in space by enshrouding it with a shell which is also a blackbody. As the shell heats from the central source, half of its radiated energy goes inward and some of that will be reabsorbed by the central source, reducing the central bodies energy loss rate. That was called a thermal or radiative blanketing effect.
September 7th, 2010 at 7:56 am
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