The trouble is that you won't get the scientists to agree on a course of action. It is almost instinctive in science to accept contrary views, because disagreeing gives you guidance to experimental tests of ideas - your own and those offered by others...

Frederick Seitz

Categorized in : Ideas Giving Views

A good scientist is a person in whom the childhood quality of perennial curiosity lingers on. Once he gets an answer, he has other questions.

Frederick Seitz

childhood curiosity science

Things that people learn purely out of curiosity can have a revol... by Frederick Seitz

Things that people learn purely out of curiosity can have a revolutionary effect on human affairs.

Frederick Seitz

learning science people

Essentially all civilizations that rose to the level of possessing an urban culture had need for two forms of science-related technology, namely, mathematics for land measurements and commerce and astronomy for time-keeping in agriculture and aspects of religious rituals.

Frederick Seitz

technology land religious

It is one thing to impose drastic measures and harsh economic penalties when an environmental problem is clear-cut and severe....It is foolish to do so when the problem is largely hypothetical and not substantiated by observations....we do not currently have any convincing evidence or observations of significant climate change from other than natural causes.

Frederick Seitz

convincing-evidence environmental cutting

This treaty [Kyoto] is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful...agreement would have very negative effects upon the technology of nations throughout the world, especially those that are currently attempting to lift from poverty and provide opportunities to the over 4 billion people in technologically underdeveloped countries.

Frederick Seitz

technology opportunity country

In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.

Frederick Seitz

community president years

Individual curiosity, often working without practical ends in mind, has always been a driving force for innovation.

Frederick Seitz

innovation curiosity science

Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.

Frederick Seitz

data climate use

It required unusual inquisitiveness to pursue the development of scientific curiosities such as charged pith balls, the voltaic cell, and the electrostatic machine. Without such endeavors and the evolution of associated instrumentation, initially of purely scientific interest, most of the investigations that lead to the basic equations of electromagnetism would have been missed. ... We would have been deprived of electromagnetic machinery as well as knowledge of electromagnetic waves.

Frederick Seitz

cells science knowledge

It is one thing to impose drastic measures and harsh economic penalties when an environmental problem is clear-cut and severe...

Frederick Seitz

environmental cutting problem

But more than 15 sections in Chapter 8 of the report-the key chapter setting out the scientific evidence for and against a human influence over the climate-were changed or deleted after the scientist charged with examining this question had accepted the supposedly final text.

Frederick Seitz

finals keys energy