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Rewriting Environmental Science
Aqua OS X writes to tell us CBS News is reporting that government scientist James Hansen recently spoke out against the White House in an appearance on 60 Minutes. From the article: "Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science."
Is that better than eminent?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
When the Polynesians found Easter Island, they found a paradise. Seas teeming with porpoises, huge edible palm trees, bountiful flightless birds and tillable soil from coast to coast.
Unfortunately, they also brought rats with them on their canoes.
The rats ate the birds and bird eggs. The trees were cut down for timber and kindling. The land was farmed to exhaustion. And the entire civilization that arose there quickly collapsed under its own weight.
The whole time, people thought things would last forever, but they couldn't see the end coming.
We have our rats too.
until this story doesn't exist
Why is this under a "more-reasons-to-privitize" department? I'm all for private ventures going into space, but you're quite delusional if you expect there to be any large scale investment in global warming research by the private sector. Yes, I know there might be some exceptions, but privitization is not going to give us better research.
Better rockets, cheaper missions, maybe... but, in general, this sort of basic scientific research is *exactly* the sort of thing the government should be doing. Of course, in a perfect world, the government wouldn't be trying to stifle the scientists either...
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
ExxonMobile and its supporters in Washington state, " The earth belongs to man; he can wreck the earth in any way that he sees fit ".
Before 2050, we will know which bit of wisdom is the right wisdom. By 2030, we will have burned up all easily retrieved oil. Significant portions of Artic and Antartic ice shelves will have melted away.
Unless we do something now to create carbon-neutral energy processes and to achieve zero-population growth, we -- rich and poor alike -- will face a miserable future of unstoppable climatic catastrophes.
Son, we live in a world that has myths, and those myths have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, PrinceAshitaka? The President has a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the Big Bang Theory, and you curse the Baptists. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That the Theory's subversion, while tragic, probably saved souls. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves souls. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want us on that wall, you need us on that wall. We use words like God, Intelligent, Design. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very mythology that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a Bible, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
The politicization of science is an important issue for science. Why don't you think this is a science story?
Why would we need to limit population growth, and how would you ever propose we do this?
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
I don't think I've ever seen anyone try to write off a geoshities site as a credible source of information (or as any source of information, for that matter).
I'm a hair over 20 years old and I've heard people bitch and moan about the end of the world, global warming, WW3, etc, since I was born. And frankly, I'm a lot more afraid of WW3 than global warming. While I'm all for alternative energy, recycling, minimizing fossil fuel consumption, and what not, all the bullshit from BOTH SIDES of the global warming argument have made me extremely cynical of wether or not it should be taken seriously.
Frankly (and I have absolutely no credentials to back up my opinion) I think the sea levels rising several meters of more in the next 20-30 years has about as much chance of occuring as Bush resigning from office so he can star in the next gay cowboy movie. Maybe if people would stop bitching about nuclear power and accept the fact it's 19233274928734 times better than burning shit loads of carbon compounds, the world would be a better place.
Quicktime
Or, you could actually -read- the article.
Specifically the parts that note he was permitted from discussing a number of things and he had to give the interview with a NASA watchdog recording and overseeing the interview.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
However we now live in an age when even this is being eroded and where the forces of politics, never the most rational of disciplines, feel safe in attempting to pervert its path. Will anyone really care? Will anyone notice? Scientific learning is looked down on. You are more likely to be admired in society for your knowledge of baseball scores than buckyballs.
I would suggest to our american colleagues that they look elsewhere for those that will value their work. The US isn't going to get better any time soon, whatever the shade of the next party in power. It's either that or organise your own political party and take control...
The links above don't work. Go here instead and click on the links.
...in TFA. He mentions in passing that the previous executive branch crew tried the same thing, but in an opposite manner, he was encouraged to overstate findings.
The other important, if not newsworthy, quote was
An organization with a culture like that might be right about something someday, but only by coincidence.The problem isn't because the politicians are rewriting the science.
It's because the scientists are rewriting the theology.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Why would we need to limit population growth, and how would you ever propose we do this?
... the earth can barely handle the 6 or so billion people here now; try 60 billion on for size. As for the how ... well people aren't gonna like it, but its gonna have to happen one way or another.
Environmentalists say that the best thing you can do for the earth, the best way to conserve resources, is to not have more than two children. In retrospect, this is obvious
Actually, if not for immigration, most of the first world would already be in population decline. When people get reasonably comfortable, and childhood mortality is negligible, children are deferred and one or two are sufficent for most to satisfy their need for procreation. We've got one and that was enough for us.
I am all for listening to both sides of a story, but where did scientists worried about the future of the planet exactly do wrong? If someone except the politicians are to blame here, it is the sheep public who lets this happen. Or write posts like yours.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
If you want to cut birthrates, it's not the men who are going to have to swallow.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Not necessarily; Developed countries undergo population implosions.
Schools in Japan are shutting down in a wave, starting with the first grades, and then pushing onward through the school. Sometimes, they just shut down entire floors in their schools.
This is happening elsewhere, as well.
People are seriously freaked out about this.
The thing I find amusing, is that many environmentalists have problems with this.
In the 1990's, a bunch of environmentalists got together, and said, "What do we need to do? We need to seriously do something, so that people will be more environmentalist." The strategy, they decided on, was to mythologize environmentalism. That is, to get people to worship the Earth Mother, to shun technology, to get in psychic harmony with nature, and so on, and so forth.
And that strategy is totally being played out.
So when you tell them, "Hey, in Japan, they're freaking out, because people aren't having kids, and it seems to be because they're developed," it tends to not go over so well.
In Siberia, there is a forestry where the tress grows in pairs right next to each other.
While the common wisdom is that each individual trees need space around it to grow, the theory was that this was only true for capitalist trees. Rather than compete with each other for resources, socialist trees would cooperate for the common good.
Every official report from the forestry shows that the experiment was a great success.
With all due respect to James Hansen, the problem here is simple: just how many microseconds after scientists attempted to influence politics did you think it would take before politicians attempted to influence science?
We've seen it everywhere from the debate on Global Warming (where scientists have joined forces with ecologists to engage in massive social engineering in the form of the Kyoto accord) to the debate on evolutionary science (where fundamentalists attempted to redefine science with Intelligent Design) to the debate on gun control (where researchers have attempted to show a direct causal link between guns and crime) and pesticides (Alar, anyone?)
Now, whenever I see a news report on a political topic start quoting "scientists" or "researchers", I generally don't think "oh, good; a concerned scientist trying to weigh in on an important topic", but "whose special interest money is paying for this guy?"
It's hard to play in the mud and not get muddy yourself.
At first thought it might seem like the only way to limit the birthrate would be draconian or orwellian methods - nothing palatable to be sure. However, the truth is much simpler than that.
There is a long-observed direct corrolation between poverty and birth rate. Societies with greater poverty have higher birthrate. Even in China it's commom for city-dwellers to observe the 1-child rule, but poor farmers still have families of 6 or 7 simply because they need all the labor to help create an income. The same is true in the slums of Calcutta where children are needed to rifle through trash piles looking for recyclable goods. This happens across all the great poverty centers: Manilla, Bangkok, Mumbai, Calcutta, Nairobi, Cairo, etc.
Japan is a perfect example of the opposite. They have a NEGATIVE birthrate because the affluence of their society has led many to chose not to have children.
The solution to overpopulation will come hand-in-hand with our solution to many other injustices: great a fair distribution of resources and we'll be able to live sustainable on our planet.
World Changing - News for Humans, Stuff about our planet
Here in Holland, many times i see the same problem. Close to where i live, the government wants to build a highway to relieve congestion on a parallel highway. So they hired scientists to study the effects of the new road. It turned out the road would make things worse: instead of relieving the congestion on the other road, it would increase congestion on every other main road in the surroundings.
The scientists, knowing what would happen, leaked this result immediately to the press, but the final report got stowed away in a very deep drawer. Parliamant had a tough job to get the report out of this drawer again.
But. Then came the obligatory environmental impact study. In this study, the former report is completely ignored. The vast increase of congestion is not taken into account in an evironmental impact assessment!
If the politicians have it their way (and they must be quick, everyone knows they will get their asses kicked next elections) we'll have a road that increases the congestion, costs about a billion euro's of tax money and will terribly damage the environment and landscape. But the construction firms will be very happy.
Trust me, I work for the government.
The same four people also supported the thesis that the earth is round. This does not mean that the earth is flat. Just because evil people can see the obvious does not mean that the obvious isn't obvious. The earth has only so much stored energy; it receives only so much energy from the sun. The more people the energy has to be shared with, the less there is for each. The faster we use up the stored energy, the sooner we're forced back onto just the energy we get from the sun. That's just straightforward.
We cannot sustain our present rate of population increase; we probably cannot even sustain our present population indefinitly, once cheap energy runs out. This is obvious; so obvious that you don't need to be an evil genius to understand it.
What you may need to be an evil genius to do is to come up with a good solution, because this problem looks intractable in a free society.
There are indeed. Their names are Famine, Pestilence, Predation and Death. If we don't come up with a better solution, the Four Horsemen will be along shortly with one of their own.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I think you're leaving out a few factors, though... tradition and religion, for example.
/until/ they had the 5th or 6th child and had to pay for their education, etc.
If a society traditionally has large families, then it doesn't matter whether they live in poverty or health - they're likely keep that tradition.
As for religion - there's highly catholic families here who have 7-9 children. Not because they're poor - in fact, most of them lived in wealth
Of course these probably don't even begin to offset all the people who decide to have only 1 child or no children at all.
He actually meant immanent scientist. This guy is everywhere!
You misspelled "Dated Wisdom from a Hollywood Hack."
I saw a tongue-in-cheek poster at the Society for Neuroscience a few years ago, in which the authors compared portrayals of different professions in a large number of movies. Overall, the most negatively portrayed profession was murderer, and scientists were right in there at #2. The methods employed for this survey involved beer and pizza.
The average person in this country couldn't even begin to tell you what science is, what it's useful for, or what scientists do. To be fair, it's not a question with a simple answer like 42. But it's not surprising that people who make policy decisions at all levels of government know nothing whatsoever about science. It's mis-portrayed almost completely in the media, and probably mis-taught at all levels of education. Scientists are not valued by society in any meaningful way.
Any scientist whose work is in the popular press probably has a story about how their work was portrayed in a way to mislead, not inform people. Perhaps someone will repost the link to that recent insightful article about how few science reporters have any science background.
The government has been rewriting science more blatantly in environmental sciences than in other areas. But it's the other kind of rewriting that's more insidious and harmful. Necessarily, most science funding comes from the government. They decide what to fund and what not to fund. Serious scientists get input into this decision, but not the last word. What's insidious about it is that no individual scientist is doing what they do because the government told them. But since there's such an oversupply of scientists, including a healthy supply interested for their own reasons in doing the specific things the government would like, the government can shape science to whatever extent they want without there ever being a single scientist who was specifically influenced.
I don't know what kind of environmentalists you hang out with, but as a born and bred son of Oregon hippies, I think you are full of shit. Most environmentalists are far more educated and open minded and pro-technology than you give them credit for. However, where I think you get confused is believeing that pro-coal burning power plant is somehow the equivalent to being pro-technology. I think most environmentalists are, almost by definition, liberal, progressive, pro-progress, pro-equality, and striving towards both inner and external perfection. They are pro-technology because when they look around they say, "there must be a way to do this better." For most environmentalist, this is an inherintly pro-technology stance.
I have a new experiement to try.
Go visit your local Baptist (or any religion, really) church or even a professional football stadium. Start talking about technology, genetic manipulation, virtual reality, prevasive computing, nanotechnology. See how far you can get. Compare your results to your previous results in the "eco village" and see which group is more open to your ideas. I belive that the environmentalists, where they do disagree with you vision, are more likely to be able to express an alternative vision and be able to intelligently debate. Who knows, you might even learn something.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
You would be right, except that _60 Minutes_ interview is ephemera, while a report on climate-change, rewritten to not offend members of the petrochemical lobby, will be posted on a public website and referenced for years. This is similar to NIH, which had a website on birth-control edited to abstinence only, and of course the recent Big Bang flap, where a political flunky wanted a public essay rewritten to cast doubt on modern cosmology. Being able to speak is of no use if nobody hears it, or if they hear it in passing, but then can only find documents that say the opposite. Being discouraged from speaking because presenting reproducible results which disagree with predetermined conceits will result in loss of employment is being supressed, though in a softer manner than that used in Iran.
Nobody is arguing that NASA scientists are being rounded up, or threatened at night by Men in Black, but their work is being systematically supressed or altered beyond recognition by an ideologically driven administration which has nothing but contempt for the rational thought-processes of the enlightenment. They have publicly derided their opponents as being members of the "Reality-based Community", and openly stated that they believe that they make their own Reality.
This administration is arrogating powers to the executive branch in a manner not seen since the Nixon administration, without pursuing the middle-of-the-road policies of Richard Nixon. You may approve of the war in Iraq, support the tax cuts, or be a fan of whatever other administration policy you choose, but don't be blind that there are side-effects, and those need to be kept in mind.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Sigh. Doesn't anyone recognize a joke these days?
Does poor science qualify? How about Michael Mann's Hockey Stick work? From this week's New Scientist (subscription only article)
Though McKitrick and MacIntyre's paper is hidden behind Nature's subscription firewall, McKitrick shows the graph on his webpage. Note that McKitrick and MacIntyre aren't saying global warming isn't happening, they're just pointing out Mann's method is suspect.The New Scientist article goes on to cite poor data sources such as tree rings with known variability issues and inherent bias in data selection. When Mann was asked to divulge his source code so it could be inspected for methodology errors, he declined saying it was proprietary code. Revealing methodology is inherent in good science and Mann violated that key precept.
You should be skeptical of climatology in general given that it's even more removed from model failure than meteorolgy. Meteorologists are well acquainted with their models failing because they get feedback on a daily basis. Climatologist don't get that feedback because there's only one climate so they retrofit their models to fit past performance of the climate - a methodology that meteorologists have demonstrated doesn't work very well.
Even worse, they can't even agree on what's going to happen. One model has Europe roasting, another freezing. It can't be both but regardless of which outcome we eventually encounter, climatologists will claim they predicted it.
At it's core, the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis has relied on CO2 emissions as being causative. You have to be skeptical of a claim that an incredibly complex atmosephere which we can't fully model is being driven by variations of a single gas. A gas whose concentration is less than a tenth of one percent.
There is an idiom in English for reporting a text containing a misspelling or other inappropriate usage. The poster should have written:
But this imminent (sic) scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush..."
This points out the mistake to the reader while indicating that the poster recognized it.
Unfortunately, contrary to popular belief, planting trees is not a solution per se. The carbon cycle may slow down a little, but eventually, all the carbon in leafs and trunks will end up as CO2 in atmosphere again.
Dynamically, some of it is retained (new trees hopefuly grow, as old die and rot) in forests, but forest fires can dramatically change that.
Besides, some experimental research had shown that plants have upper limit on CO2 atmospheric concentration they can handle. After that limit is breached, photosinthesys stops...
The only direction is to think of a way to speed up sinking of CO2 to the bottom of the ocean rifts and back under the Earth's crust.
Out of the hat, it could go as follows:
- pressurise and liquidify air (first step in obtaining industrial nitrogen, too).
- do fractional evaporation of liquid air and extract the CO2 fraction.
- pump the taken out CO2 to the ocean bed.
or else:
- use fast growing algae to tie carbon into biomass. If nescessary, engineer the strain that can handle high concentration of CO2, then feed it with CO2- enriched (use gas centrifuges - CO2 is one of the heaviest components of air) air in controlled environment (hydroponics)
- harvest algae and carbonize them by anaerob baking in (i.e. solar) ovens.
- compress and burry or sink thus obtained charcoal.
but first: stop pumping natural carbon reserves into atmosphere (burning fossil fuels)! We don't need to stop using fire, but we must stop adding ancient carbon into short (atmosphere-biosphere) carbon cycle.
With all the recent advances in genetics, why can't we have an highly efficient single-cell photosynthetic lipid (oil) factory little friend? Put them in the glass tank, conduct light to the bottom of it using mirrors, let the little buggers swim down so that they don't get stuck in the oil layer forming on top of the tank, pump the CO2-enriched air thru the water (or do it separately, not to stirr the water) so that they have what to eat... and just let the oil pour from the top. Voila - diesel fuel at your disposal!
So because the purveyors of lies and the purveyors of truth both are flawed humans, you're not going to listen to either of them even though you can tell which is which? Lunacy.
Who is trying to gain more power -- the politician or the scientist? Surely the fact that being a politician is the business of wielding power implies the former? Who has the greater vested interest -- a scientist working for the government whose coming to the press could at best get him a book deal, or the politician representing the power of the U.S. government and the lobbyists of multi-billion dollar multinationals?
It's like the Bush administration who tried to discredit Clark by saying he had a conflict of interest in promoting his book. And the Bush administration had no vested interest... except for defending the "preemptive war" doctrine of the only superpower. Surely these interests are equal...
Or maybe, as the many who have come forward to describe the truth-fudging of the administration suggest, they aren't. Maybe one has a little more vested interest in muddying the truth. Naw, couldn't be... both are human!
Of course scientists are human. Of course they want things for themselves. Yet lying and fudging answers is not a good way to get what you want in the field of science. Look at Fleischmann and Pons, who went to the press with research that wouldn't as it stood withstand peer review. Their fame is limited to having their names be synonymous with disgraced scientists.
Is it thus plausible that every scientist who believes global warming and climate change are occuring, which is virtually every one not tied to a party with a vested interest in denying these are occuring, is themselves operating solely for their agendas and not science?
Scientists will always be human. If them being human is your reason for disregarding them (as well as every other human, I would presume) then that's just laziness. Engage your brain, use critical thinking, and try to see for yourself what the truth is through the noise caused by everyone's respective bias. And don't be afraid of the common-sense conclusion that one group may in fact be more biased than another.
The enemies of Democracy are
Of course! If he's everywhere that means he's omnipresent. Who else do we know who's omnipresent? Someone who goes under the stage name of "YHWH" and who we have no pictures of.
So obviously James Hansen is God! He uses His omniscience to warn us of the impeding catastrophe! You might ask why He doesn't simply make the US government let him talk. The answer is that the current US government is His doing! He got pissed because His puppy got run over by an SUV and now He wants to punish us by telling us what's going to happen while making sure that the US government will never, ever react!
Whoa.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Voila - diesel fuel at your disposal!
So you just want to burn it again, after going through all that to get the carbon out of the air? Intriguing idea, you'd just have to keep up this cycle though to stay at the same level, unless you were considering burying the diesel somewhere instead of using it.
"22 astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the Earth?" Stephen Colbert
Science is of course very respected in our societey, and therefore dangerous for certain politicians and other with a rigid, fundamentalistic world-view were facts is not of importance. The reason science is so respected is because the scientific method has been increadible succesful to explain the physical world around us and through this made possible the technological advances we all appriciate. Science is not the truth, but it is a proven method to reach trusth-worthy knowledge. I assume all this is self-evident.
The problem with the competing theory you are mentioning above is that these two people are not scientists. In this respect, these two guys are better labeled as politicians or people with an agenda (suggestion, follow the money...), than people producing scientific theories.
If you want a practical definition of science, it is what is done by a scientist. If you want a practical definition of a scientist, it is a person who publish in respected, per-reviewed scientific journals. It can sound like a circular definition, but it isn't really, and I think it is difficult to find a better one (try!). It is also a definition that in principle does not exclude anyone, with any level of education, to call themselves scientists. I am sure the two so-called "researchers" you mention would be happy to publish in say Nature if their work was of any merit, but Nature does not publish quasi-science like this. Though luck, we are not all cut out to be scientists.
Since you clearly do not understand much about the climate, current climate theories, chaos theory (dynamical systems), modelling in general etc, and also base your view on false information (I asume you are not lying to make a point), wouldn't you support that the government actively supported experts from say NASA to go out in the media and inform? That is the question we are talking about. You seem to be somewhat interested in understanding climate science (hopefully not just to support some political view). You should be asking for more inform about what are the current accepted scientific theories about the climate and what are the well-established facts. Why don't you? I do not see why this should be dangerous to you ...
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
From wikipedia
"The nation's forest resources, although abundant, have not been well developed to sustain a large lumber industry. Of the 245,000 km of forests, 198000 km are classified as active forests."
245000/377835(area of japan)= around 65%.
I don't know why you think what you think, but I can't honestly say that having 65% of your land area covered by forests really supports the idea that
"Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not having to import every square inch of wood."
In fact, that statement is just ridiculous.
The fact is that forests in Japan are hard to reach, so logging them is more expensive than importing from somewhere else.
So, my I ask you a serious question? Why would you post something that you hadn't researched? Any search at all would have given you the information I have.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Okay, okay, okay -- this sounds like McKitrick's bluster. I actually READ his book, I read his criticism of Mann's methodology, and I read a few rounds of responses. This doesn't make me educated on the subject, but it makes me more than educated enough to talk about McKitrick. His credentials on the subject are poor, his charges against Mann's work do not invalidate it, and having read his book, I cannot seriously believe that he is working in good faith.
There are valid criticisms of current climate science, and they are coming from within the scientific community, including the IPCC. The field of research is moving fast and the near-consensus from the people who know the most is that we're in trouble.
Did you read McKitrick's recommendations for climate science? Basically this: "Boy, math sure is hard, so let's all give it up and go home and have drinks with our friends." I really wish I was joking.
The documents were proven to be forgeries by Peter Tytell, proof of which was even included in CBS's own Thornburgh-Boccardi report. It's in Appendix 4.
The deferal of procreation is doing more to limit population, than the number of children is. When a couple has 2 kids by 20, then 4 grand kids by 40, then 8 great-grand kids by 80; then the population has increased by 14 people in the span of one generation, waiting till 35 increases the population by 6 people.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Of course not. Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not having to import every square inch of wood.
Actually, Japan has the highest percentage of forestation of any first world country (almost 70%).
As for other imports of Japan, you are more correct: they import much of their food, including staples like rice and seafood. This puts the population of the island at risk in the event of instability of their trading network. The modern economic environment, however, means that the population of Japan is not at risk as long as the world remains somewhat stable and demand for their products remains strong.
The declining birth rate there and in most developed countries is one of the few pieces of good news in the long-term story of human survival on this planet. IMO anyway.
Regards,
Ross
Here's the thing, what you are describing not only isn't censorship, it is called having a job. I know plenty of engineers, researchers, artists and yes, even scientists who have to put their personal opinions about what the work means up on a shelf, because that opinion doesn't agree with the official line of the company/university/agency funding the work. That is why they give you a paycheck and pay your budget, so that they can use your research in whatever way they choose.
Now most of these people just have to suck it up, because 60 Minutes isn't calling them up for an interview about it, and if they did talk to a network, they would be immediately fired, and have to stop their work. These guys at this NASA lab have been incredibly vocal about how they think their research is being misused, and have been actively involved in opposing the policies of the government on this particular issue, yet they still have their jobs! In fact, it was the guy who was rewriting their reports who got fired, not them. I think that is pretty much the opposite of censorship, and a luxury most researchers would love to have. People working in the private sector certainly don't have that luxury. If a researcher for a pharmaceutical company was actively and publicly criticizing his employer, and working against the interests of that employer, they would have a hard time ever finding work again. If you want to maintain your autonomy, and make sure your research is untainted, and independent, then the first simple rule would be not to take money from people who have an agenda counter to the findings of your research. I don't think this is really that hard for most people to understand, so why are these geniuses at the NASA climate lab having such a problem grasping it?
Yes, it is a proven fact that the Bush administration has a penchant for misusing information to forward their agenda. However that was established a long time ago, and people still reelected them. Obviously people get the government they deserve. That doesn't somehow make it anything more than petty whining for these guys at the NASA lab to run all over the place crying because they don't like how the people paying their salary are using their research. If they have a problem with it, they can do what everyone else in the world does, and refuse to take the money, and try to go somewhere else where their research will be presented in the way they want.
Eight hundred thousand years ago, Yosemite Valley was filled with glaciers a mile thick.
They melted before Man had learned to tame fire.
So why should I care about a few tiny glaciers in Montana? Glaciers are always going to be getting either bigger or smaller. Right now they are getting smaller. Big fucking deal.
It's the people who think the Earth is a steady state system, always has been and always should be, who are the real morons in the global warming debate.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Thank you, I was going to point out that according to Thomas Malthus' explanation of carrying capacity, a species does not ease up comfortably to the carrying capacity as a limit graph would show; the species will grossly overshoot the carying capacity of the environment it lives in, and will die off rapidly, dip under the carying capacity, flourish, and overshoot it again. The real graph depiction is something approaching an oscilating sine wave, where as time increases, the modulation decreases, but is ever present.
That's what we're steaming head on for.
It's thanks to the works of people like Norman Borlaug that we are even where we are today. A supremely intelligent geneticist, he actually had the conviction in his ideas to step out of the comfort of a lab and move his family to mexico, where he doubled wheat production of the country in just a few years. He did it again in India, and again with rice production in Asia.
In Penn and Teller: Bullshit!, Borlaug refutes the claims of green activists who claim that genetically engineered crops are going to ruin the world and poison the food. He says that's easy to say when you're not hungry, but without GE crops, we've only got enough food to feed 4 billion people, and I don't see 2 billion volunteers to dissappear. And he's right - If we're going to have the population, we're going to have to feed them. It's estimated by some that Norman Borlaug has saved the lives of over a billion (carl sagan with a "B" billion) people. Greatest human being ever, indeed.
~Will
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