Monday, June 16, 2008

Dr. Reid Bryson, "Father Of Modern Climatology", 1920-2008

Search this blog for many other articles and insight about global warming and climate change from Dr. Bryson, an extraordinary man, scientist, and teacher. May he RIP.
Peter

“You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling CO2”
Reid Bryson who died in his sleep at age 88 on June 11, 2008


source

Reid Bryson, a towering figure in climatology and interdisciplinary studies of climate, people and the environment, and the founder of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s meteorology department and Center for Climatic Research, and the first director of the Institute for Environmental Studies, died in his sleep early June 11 at his home in Madison. He was 88.

Bryson was one of the pioneers of modern climatology and was among the first to explore the influence of climate on humans and human culture and, in turn, some of the human impacts on climate. He was an early developer of simple computer models to study the causes of past climate change, comparing those simulations with records of paleoclimate and human culture.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks Dr. Reid Bryson, you were one of few, one of the enlightened, one of the brutally honest ones and there are too few left.

Peter said...

paladino444,
Thanks for your thoughts. I totally agree. It sounds as if you had the good fortune to know Dr. Bryson....

Pal444 said...

...in recent weeks I due to the Climategate with the IPCC I was revisiting links on the subject and I am repeatedly posting references not to my arguments to the knowledge and work of Dr. Reid Bryson.

In reference to your posting of June 24th, no I did not personally know Dr. Reid Bryson. I only knew him from his works and his achievements. I will explain. I was a skeptic long before it was cool.

Back in the late nineties I got really concerned about the subject of AGW. I am not a person who has any knowledge on the subject but I am also not a person who takes other peoples' opinions as my own.

So I started doing research and this included reading the entire summary document of the latest IPCC report of that time, something I imagine almost no one in the media has ever done. It took me about 60 hours of reading to come to the conclusion that the whole AGW thing was a hoax. I read equal amounts of claims on both sides and came to my own conclusions, something the AGW does not want you to do.

I am not a scientist but I do claim to have a trained mind. I spent seven years of my life studying philosophy and over three of those years at Texas Tech University under the eyes a wonderful PHD of Philosphy [now Emeritus], Dr Joseph Ransdell. Most important of my studies of that era was the study of C.S. Peirce and the pursuit of the works of said. For those not from philosophical circles C.S. Peirce is considered to be America's greatest philosopher and is easily considered by many to be in the top five intellects this country has ever produced. It would take many hours to discuss all that Peirce contributed to the modern world as he was an unbelievable mind.

I was trained to believe in nothing but truth and the unadulterated pursuit of it regardless of where it takes you. Pompous I know but when you are young all things are possible.

I will not get into details other than explain that Peirce could be considered the source of the post-modern mind due to his enormous contributions in disproving Descartes and substantiating scientific method as the most important method of fixating beliefs.

As I read more about AGW I of course learned more about Dr. Bryson and he just naturally reminded me of Dr. Ransdell though neither was alike they both obviously only cared about one thing in life, the pursuit of knowledge and if possible truth.

I will stop now as I have driveled on too long. It was a honor to have learned as 'little' as I did from Dr. Bryson even if I never met him. Thanks for reading.

Peter said...

Pal,
You will like this blog

http://thefellowshipofscientifictruth.blogspot.com/

copy and paste the above link into your browser

Pal444 said...

Thanks for the link and read. I finding myself uncontrollably exhaling sigh after sigh every time I see where the state of humanity has landed. As if ignorance and mental laziness where not enough to contend with now we have to contend with the a new, politically correct religion, "environmentalism".

An interesting observation which I again draw from C.S. Peirce: Though I cannot quote verse or specific writing is seems that C.S. Peirce when queried in his day as to 'future of mankind' evidently gave a similar sigh and doubted that mankind would be able to move forward much more than it had. Peirce simply did not see the mental commitment to deliver when it really counts. The average person was just not that interested in thought...too much work.

I know on the surface many will chime in that 'Hey you! look how far we have come...we put a man on the moon...etc.' yet that is not what is being referred to here. What I am referring to and in like Peirce was the advancement of the human intellect and humanity in kind.

There is so much evidence to show that mankind has simply given up trying to advance himself through philosophy and logic and now only measures his metal by the fanciness of his gadgets while at the same time having no idea how his gadgets work.

People ogle in dumbfoundedness when I expose them to the fact that philosophy used to be taught in high schools throughout the country fifty years ago. Now we cannot even convince people to take math classes, expecting them to actually think like a philosophy course would probably cause their heads to explode. Furthermore the dumbing down of the educational system is now beyond hope IMHO.

We are now destined to produce generation after generation which increasingly know less about the intellectual world than its predecessors did.

Cell phones, computers and Ipods rule the day not knowledge and we will eventually pay the price [if not already] and I believe that price will be our freedom as we replace freedom with convenience.

Thanks again. [I apologize for grammar and spelling mistakes as I was in a hurry to get to work]