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Politics and 'An Inconvenient Truth'
Frogbeater writes "The producer of 'An Inconvenient Truth' is accusing the National Science Teachers Association of being in the pocket of Big Oil because she can't get preferential treatment for her film. The entire situation is turning into a 'if you're not with us, you're against us' yelling match. Regardless of the viewpoint, is it even possible that science can remain apolitical? Has it ever been?" The Washington Post makes things out to be less than above board: "In the past year alone, according to its Web site, Exxon Mobil's foundation gave $42 million to key organizations that influence the way children learn about science, from kindergarten until they graduate from high school ... NSTA's list of corporate donors also includes Shell Oil and the American Petroleum Institute (API), which funds NSTA's Web site on the science of energy. There, students can find a section called 'Running on Oil' and read a page that touts the industry's environmental track record -- citing improvements mostly attributable to laws that the companies fought tooth and nail, by the way -- but makes only vague references to spills or pollution. NSTA has distributed a video produced by API called 'You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel,' a shameless pitch for oil dependence."
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
-Hypothetical: Let's say you run a business, and people start making what you believe to be baseless accusations about the environmental impact of your business. What do you do? NO, WAIT: You can't fund anyone who tries to scientifically demonstrate the invalidity of the accusations, because that taints the research, right?
-I remember seeing in science class a movie produced by Exxon about the Valdez oil spill. While it was propaganda, I also remember the teacher pointing out all the flaws and telling everyone that it was Exxon's propaganda. "Oh, look at this part, where they act like everything's all peachy now."
-Oh, so *now* you care about teachers' associations getting political. Just not when they oppose any whiff of school choice.
-Should no research into oil be funded by oil companies? Even basic research into hydrocarbon chemistry? That seems to be the implication.
-To answer the question: yes, science can remain apolitical, as long as it rigidly adheres to the scientfic principles of reproducibility and transparency. That's what makes science science: Even if someone refuses to believe you, it doesn't matter. Other people can perform their own corroborating experiments. Even if someone believes it to be all voodoo, you can then go out and continue to make valid predictions that result in useful services. And then anyone is free to propose alternate theories that match the data better.
When the above isn't possible, science can become political. When you can't make a thousand copies of the earth, causally separate them, randomly vary emissions, wait a hundred years, and run a regression, people have all the room the in world to reject your theories since it can't have the repeated empirical validation science relies on. When you can't engineer an entire planet's existence, start a weather system, wait a billion years, and see complex organisms evolve, you again don't have the repeated empirical validation science relies on. BEFORE YOU FLAME ME OR MOD ME DOWN, I'm not trying to dispute global warming or evolution, but rather, just pointing that you can't come up with the plain-as-day prediction and validation you can in other areas.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
"is it even possible that science can remain apolitical? Has it ever been?"
No and No. And IAAS
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
The "Big Oil" companies depend on science to do business. Without geologists, they could never find the pockets of oil and gas. Without engineers to design the drills, and tell them when a hole will or will not collapse, they could never get to the oil and gas. Without engineers, there would be no pumps, no pipelines, and no refineries.
How in the hell can anyone be stupid enough to think that there is a political motive behind "Big Oil" giving to science education? I don't think Welsely Mouch from Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged would be that moronic.
Andy Out!
Where there's money involved, so too will there be politics.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
> NSTA has distributed a video produced by API called 'You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel,' a shameless pitch for oil dependence."
I believe that the video in question shows exactly how dependant we are on oil and gas. That's reality. If you want to change it, criticizing a cartoon is slightly less damaging than criticizing the source of funding for science education, but it's still incredibly stupid.
Andy Out!
...to the known universe. In other words, *everything* has a political dimension to it. Politics is unavoidable.
What needs to be avoided is not politics but the temptation to distort scientific findings and inquiries to match preconceived ideas that support entrenched political interests.
We're pretty terrible at that. But it might not take a genius amount of forethought to understand that putting Al Gore's name on the movie doesn't help to de-politicize the issue.
I mean, duh.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Or just about the left's inability to cope with itself.
... nuclear power. Obviously.
Carbon exhaust is causing climate change. Okay.
1) there is no scientific consensus on this
2) I seriously doubt that consensus will be forthcoming withing less than 10 or 20 years
That's real inconvenient, for a truth.
Also the only viable solution to fossil power is
That's also real inconvenient.
The only "renewable" energy source, hydroelectric, has cost at least 6000% more human lives than nuclear power ever did.
Another inconvenient truth.
Truth :
1) we need energy. Lots of it.
2) 2 economically viable options for energy : a) fossil b) nuclear
This is real inconvenient for left-wing environmentalist nuts (all of them live in cities, obviously, which are the least environmental of surroundings imaginable, but hey, let's just disregard that).
So they cry. They cry for attention. They present problems, but no solutions. So they cry some more.
Truth :
No amount of politics will solve the energy crisis. Yet all they do is politics.
So they cry for attention.
Science just doesn't have anything to offer to the average Joe Sixpack.
Getting a definitive answer to anything takes effort, time, and worst of all, intelligence. And not just any intelligence, good intelligence, one that could explain something complex in simple terms that the average Joe Sixpack can understand. And even with all that, important science doesn't always have profit motive.
Without profit motive, the scientific community doesn't stand a chance of competing against all of the other noise makers that can make billions by getting their junk-science-but-profitable messages out there. Unfortunately, Joe Sixpack's going to hear a lot more about the snap crackle and pop of Rice Krispies than he will about the impending snap crackle and popping of his skin as it blisters and sloughs off as the temperature of the earth approaches 1,000 degrees. (Or however this global warming thing is supposed to work; I'm no scienceologist)
It seems to me that all big business is incapable of being apolitical. It is politicians that make the laws that help or hinder the processes of big business, so therefore, big business necessarily must be political.
/cynical despair
While it is offensive that big oil is trying to shape the minds and hearts of children in school, it is hardly surprising. Did everyone miss the evil masterminds in the James Bond films? Its not like big business is terribly different. Okay, not as destructive, but they are still trying to make more money than anyone of us normal folk can imagine, and to do that it takes some immoral actions.
Having this situation pointed out to everyone should be the call for 'honest' politicians to 'look into the matter' as a part of their responsibility to their constituents... if enough of them care to ask... that is how politics (at least in the US) is supposed to work. If anyone can make an election year issue of it, something might actually get done...
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
A decade ago while I was in highschool I saw the film believe it or not but the teacher had the courage to tell us that Exxon had invested in the movie before we watched it. It went on how great the ecosystems were and despite the oil spill Alaska had the best salmon catch in history the following spring. THe teacher mentioned that this was an actually bad thing as those on the top of the food chain were negatively affected. Also we all laughed while the film had a diagram of most of the oil evaporating and doing little harm in Valdez. What was bad was that Exxon was not mentioned in the credits at all. Only the wetlands coalition as a major sponsor.
For those who do not know, the wetlands coalition is madeup of oil and gas companies despite the decietful name.
http://saveie6.com/
"You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel"? Seems like it gets pretty bloody chilly in places like Canada and Finland in the winter and you get mighty cool if not plain freezing if you don't have any fuel. Damn those oil guys don't know much, do they?
If people just turned out the freaking lights when they left the room, it would cost them essentially zero effort, save them money and make a genuinely useful contribution to the environment, whatever the details of global warming turn out to be. It's like some people can't imagine any useful activity that doesn't involve denouncing someone else.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Make a documentary about it!
I'm not saying they're not right about the NSTA being in Big Oil's pocket, but An Inconvenient Truth didn't have much in the way of science in it as far as hard numbers go. And without numbers, all of Al's pretty graphs don't mean anything. If my body temperature increases .000000001 of a degree, steadily year after year, I don't think it would amount to much. I'm not saying the science in An Inconvient Truth is wrong, it's just that the movie doesn't give any hard numbers to relate it to. I'm sure they're out there, but if I'm a science teacher and I'm going to spend valuable teaching time showing a movie, I want everything to be put together for me.
Sorry for posting AC ...
.. but they are there ).
... fascinating.
Buy a few extra copies, distribute to your favorite neice, nephew, son, daughter, cousin, roommates relative twice removed what have you.
I'd say about six to seven year olds should be a good start to see it. I know, young, but its an approachable topic for them, and this can trigger a discussion.
Ignore the zero sum threads of "oil bad, hug a tree". We do have to get energy from somewhere. However, you can impress on them that energy consumption has consequences ( not all bad
CO2 is something that you can give concrete examples of, and let them mull over.
But to rapidly summarize, you can get in, and plant barriers to one sided thinking.
Over time, imagine fifty million kids growing up recognizing energy production in its current methods may not be sustainable for lots of reasons, and the changes that would bring would be
Enjoy !
The MPAA and RIAA continue to fund "copyright" education programs for schools and have been attempting to stronghold "entertainment" taxes to universities across the country. Propaganda is Propaganda, and whether you agree with the message or not, An Inconvenient Truth fits that mold. You cant strongarm and threaten with one hand and expect people to want to shake the other.
Like it or not you do have to have fuel of some sort to be cool. Exxon and other companies have been funding science programs for decades, concidering school budgets these days they are probably one of the saving graces for science in lower education. Sadly Exxon also leads the pack in being the most hardline against the Kyoto Accord and initiatives into alternative energy sources. Its a Convenient Lie however to ommit the other members while focusing on Exxon. Other companies in the American Petroleum Institute such as BP however are strongly researching alternatives such as wind farms and have gone so far as to publicly admit that fossil fuels are a huge contributor to the problem.
.... Seriously folks, there have been big corporations and governments trying to influence the way schools go with everything from computers to food. Advertising brought into schools to get kids to buy things. Special interest groups spending money on things schools need to get a new generation of consumers interested in them.
Try:
* Discounts from Apple, Microsoft, etc on computers (I'd link, but I'm going to go with this as a given...)
* Coca-Cola
* Book It (Pizza Hut)
* A growing trend of commercialization of sporting events and buildings
* Large amounts of money being spent by religious lobbies to support Creationist teachings in schools....
* Large amounts of money being spent to promote evolution as a science teaching in schools
* Politicians getting involved in the above 2 items
* Politics derailing attempts to get anything done about improvments in materials and course work.
Where there is money and future political mindsets involved, people will spare no amount of money and/or stupidity on all sides of a debate. It's really too bad that politics and ideology wars have to get in the way of doing what schools should be doing, give the kids the ability to think for themselves instead of telling them what to think.
Energy Company Propaganda reminds me of that commerical with the little girl wanting to tell us more about clean coal technology. I've never wanted to punch a girl in my life before I watched that commerical. We have green alternatives to fosil fuels but the truth is were all selfish, lazy, bastards who want everything cheap and easy. And while we probably won't pay the price, our great grandchildren will curse our names for ruining their world for them.
A week ago slashdot had a story about the inconvenient truth DVD was out, and to go buy it, and about how noble Gore is. I realized, the movie was in theaters first, then the DVD came out, and it hasn't been on tv yet. Isn't that how you maximize profits from a movie? If I was all noble and I made a movie I genuinely felt people needed to see to save the earth, wouldn't I just give it to PBS on day 1?
Wow, you really need help if you are using junkscience.com as your reference material.
It's not right that all science teaching is geared to the environemntal message. Yes, the Big Oil companies have done some questionable things, but the nature of our society is that we debate these points. The environmental lobby is hardly a tiny group of zealots these days, and it's not like they're totally without blame for spreading misleading propaganda. We should not allow all our science information to come from any single source. And there's some truth to what the oil conmpanies say. For good or bad, oil is essential to our society. Cars need it to run. Most machines will stop working without oil based lubricants. Oil is used for all sorts of purposes.
There can even be some largely apolitical justification for oil companies to be sponsoring science education. They are the largest employers of geologists, and oil probably account for a substantial portion of professional chemists. It's simply in their direct commercial interests to fund science. And if they do this, it's a good thing for everyone.
Likewise, with the lobbying against environmentla regulations - The adversarial system is not limited to the courts any more. Should politicians enact any and all possible environmental legislation no matter how small the effect without any concern at all for the costs to the oil industry?
Two things I was thinking of while reading this:
1. By passing on some free material, I wonder whether the teachers are trying to promote having a single 'correct' view on things, as opposed to showing multiple different views, to show both differences of opinion, as well as differences in research. This to me seems pretty dangerous, as it makes the assumption that one thing is definitely 'correct'.
2. The author of the article's main problem seems to be that the movie isn't being accepted despite being OBVIOUSLY right. It's this attitude of smug correctness, even when from what I can tell global warming is not universally accepted even among scientists, which hurts their position.
And calling that dependency "cool" is any less stupid?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Just to add and what a cursory review can turn up:
Junkscience.com
The most visible public activity of TASSC [The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) was an tobacco-industry-funded lobby group which promoted the idea that environmental science was "junk science", which should be replaced by "sound science" more favorable to corporate interests] was its support for the Junk Science website run by Steven Milloy, who describes himself as the "Junkman". Milloy denounces research on environmental issues such as climate change, pollution and public health as junk science if it produced results suggesting a need for public intervention or regulation. He promoted the idea of sound science, interpreted in practice to mean science favorable to corporate interests.
Adverse publicity about Milloy's links to Phillip Morris were followed by his departure from the Cato Institute, where he had been an adjunct fellow, at the end of 2005, and the removal of links to junkscience.org from the Cato website. However, Milloy remains influential as the science columnist for Fox News.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advancement_of_Sound
Why would you laugh? An oil slick really will evaporate over time. It happens every day in the Gulf of Mexico where oil literally rises to the surface from the sea floor.
Immediately after the laughter, your science teacher could have made the important point that the results of experiments often conflict with what our intuition suggests.
Allow me for one to say that I am sick of the "Christians are anti-science" bullshit that the left loves to harp on while giving the environmental movement a free pass. You will notice, if you are honest, that the areas where even the most fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible conflict with modern scientific work are in areas that Christians have an **ethical** objection to the way that life is manipulated or ended or in how things came to be on some level. The environmental movement on the other hand is generally wildly antagonistic to everything from GM foods to many promising alternative energy sources to nanotechnology.
If there is any group that can be called anti-human, anti-science, it is the "true believer" segment of the environmental movement. No other politically active group is so thoroughly terrified of every promising area of research and development, so violent in opposing science (animal rights groups bombing research labs, for example) and so quick to limit the quality of life of the majority of the human race.
Maybe because the NSTA themselves admitted it? As a previous poster pointed out: "Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place 'unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.'"
How in the hell can anyone be stupid enough to think that's NOT a political motive? ;)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Wow, vicious capitalists in one industry are mad at vicious capitalists in another industry known for buying out politicians for exercising political clout. Hold the presses!
Is it good? No. Is it unexpected? Certainly not. Is it newsworthy? Depends; do you enjoy reading about people who push their agenda on others and complain when it doesn't work? Do you find that interesting or enlightening? I guess I don't.
That she'd be surprised at this or think she could get anywhere by arguing it is ridiculous. Scientists take funding from anyone who will give it; that they allow themselves to be extorted into professing skewed viewpoints (or, worst case, reaching skewed conclusions) is a product of human stupidity, specifically allowing yourself or your organization to develop a dependency on funds from biased entities when you KNOW you are supposed to work and produce in an apolitical, unbiased manner.
Science in general, just like the average computer, appears to be experiencing user error.
The omnipresence of major corporations is not a bad thing -- it makes things so much better. Imagine if we didn't give corporations the keys to our kingdom. Who would be in charge then? People? Voters?! Pshaw! We need the benevolent hand of Wall Street to guide us to the promised land of low, low prices.
Now, let's all rejoice in Big Oil's concern for the welfare of our children. It's obvious that they know what's best for us, and they obviously have our best interests at heart! After all, they are oil men, and oil men are the most caring, compassionate and kind people ever to walk this green earth (although they actually hover a few inches off the ground).
It is a blessing that corporations care for us so much that they intervene in our daily lives. We can only hope that they will one day bring their bounty to slashdot.
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That's actually what happens, you know. Most of the lighter fractions of crude oil (the majority of the oil, that is) evaporate very quickly leaving behind the sticky tars and such. One of the most ecologically sound methods of getting rid of an oil spill is to light it up (since that's what were going do with the oil anyway), but that can't happen after the lighter fractions evaporate since the tars need 'help' to burn.
This is a good read about environmentalism as a religion, a speech by Michael Crichton to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in 2005.
Before the crowd starts jumping up and down, his speech contains errors. So does An Inconvenient Truth. But his theme has merit - science should stand alone whereas Al Gore asks people to pray for environmental change.
We really need to teach schoolchildren facts, the skills to consider and weigh evidence, and enough wisdom to know when someone is blowing smoke up their dresses. An Inconvenient Truth isn't the right tool for scientific education, though it's a great propaganda piece, artfully assembled, and gets some things right. A proper school curriculum can cover all of the things Gore gets right, and then the things that he's omitted for 'time', e.g. solar activity and global warming on other planets, the effect of water vapor on the greenhouse effect, natural cycles of warming/cooling, etc..
Let's not assume our children are too dumb to learn about science or think like scientists.
They can then spend some time teaching the children about ways to conserve resources, get towards carbon-neutral economies, and cut back on their own energy uses. These things will have real environmental and economic benefits but only millions of small impacts, no big splashes which work out nicely for Big-Media political coverage.
The conspiracy theorists are going to have a heck of a time, though, reconciling the fact that the NEA isn't lapping up the film from a guy who will be a Democratic contender in '08.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"Truth :
1) we need energy. Lots of it."
That's not a 'truth', but a result of choices we made and continue to make.
"Truth :
No amount of politics will solve the energy crisis. Yet all they do is politics."
Politics is PRECISELY the public process that MIGHT lead to a change in our choices.
It IS the main driver for changes in our infrastructure.
Pretending that one has no responsibilites in the face of immutable 'truths' is
certainly not going to solve any problems.
is it even possible that *slashdot* can remain apolitical? This site has turned in to one big bash on the right, and how is that news for nerds?
Regardless of the viewpoint, is it even possible that science can remain apolitical?A first step would be to disallow political parties taking money from corporations. I know this is what US politics is based on, but still, the rest of the world calls that corruption, or at least a conflict of interest... Political parties should never change their ideas or decisions to those of the highest bidder.
Even in times when discoveries exploded in late 1800s, it was a matter of 'national' pride and s/he who got sponsored by governments got the boon and get their names on history annals.
today its even worse with all the private colleges, funded universities, 'foundations', and government projects about.
Science has grown to be an extension of the governing body, just like church was in older times - they are now telling us what to believe, what to not.
Read radical news here
sigh.... <a href.
Using the Preview button this time...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
When I graduated high school years ago, our Chemistry II class used a college-level textbook. The education I got from that class was good enough that I sailed through freshman Chemistry in college.
The year after I graduated, I went back to visit a few teachers I considered to be friends, including the chemistry teacher. She told me with some disgust that the school board had decided to replace the chemistry textbooks for both Chem I and II, and she handed me one of the books so I could see what the problem was. Instead of college-prep chemistry, most of the textbook was filled with text and pictures (rather than equations and homework problems) about protecting the environment. The quality of the actual chemistry education provided in that book was so low that I suspected that many students would have insufficient background for their freshman-level chemistry classes they'd be taking next year.
In other words, Big Oil isn't the only lobbying group that attempts to influence high school education.
Love sees no species.
As a kid in the 80s, I learned all sorts of fun non-fact in science class. I learned when I grow up, I will live on a land-fill unless I stop throwing things away and recycle EVERYTHING. I learned that as an adult, I would have to wear sunblock all day long or else I would die of cancer because the ozone would be completely gone. I learned some stupid social darwinism/organism-based model for evolution which was quite wrong in light of selfish-gene theory.
As an adult, I learned that predictions which assume current trends never change are almost always wrong, and should not be taught to children. I also learned that K-12 science teachers don't really know or care enough about science to have a right teaching it.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
If the oil people decide to cut your funding because of it, then on their conciences be it. I'm sure the organization can survive without it.
Conversely, if you refuse to show this movie soley out of fear of losing oil-industry funding, then remove the word "Science" from your name, since your motivations clearly have little to do with Science.
"The Washington Post makes things out to be less than above board:"
Turns out if you read the article, this is IN NO WAY the Washington Post's view. The Slashdot summary implies that the Washington Post "NEWS" paper is making this statement. This is not from the news section, but an opinion piece written from an interested party, printed in full.
I convinced my dad to see the movie, who had previously admitted to being unconvinced on global warming. He told me that it changed his mind - but that he still didn't like Al Gore. Of course, it no doubt helped that my dad is a scientist as well (retired, but with training in computer science and agricultural engineering). And yes, I've told him about junkscience (so aptly named, but not for the reason they think) and the people who were funding it, and let him make up his own mind about that. Not a big surprise that he was able to find the holes in their arguments as easily as I could.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Does anyone else gag when they see that commercial touting the beauty of burning coal, using a little girl to sell the premise? Our country is run by energy companies. To deny it is tantamount to denying Iraq is in a civil war. Until people start voting, expect more of the same.
Lead, Tobacco, and Oil are all natural products, and bad for you.
Meanwhile, a man-made product, DDT is In (and used, of course, to fight nature).
Let's just pave everything and live indoors. That way we can just set the thermostat wherever you like. Global warming, global cooling - irrelevant with enough styrofoam insulation!
If nature is a circle, science is a square. Everyone knows the opposite of "circle" is "square". That's why we live in boxes.
Learn more here!
And if you don't think I am joking, you're batty!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
...unlike the movie, however, this is actually based on facts.
Global warming does exist... on Mars. And, in fact, on every body in the solar system that we can measure accurately including the Earth. Polar ice caps are melting that aren't terrestrial. Until people realize that whatever human beings are doing to the atmosphere is not and cannot be the whole story, then the "It's all our fault!" environmental movement is bankrupt both morally and intellectually.
Here's some other Inconvenient Truths...
* DDT is not very dangerous to the environment
* One of the founders of Greenpeace supports nuclear power
* The Kyoto Treaty exempts some of the biggest carbon polluters of all
/// Not a super-genius . . . yet. ///
The difference is that climate scientists at the very top of their field - in terms of number of peer-reviewed articles published and positions held - vouch that An Inconvenient Truth is 99%+ accurate in portraying the current state of climate research.
Meanwhile, films that proclaimed the virtues of burning fossil fuels - nothing more than public relations - were distributed in past years under the guise of "science" education.
But I suppose to you a scientist and a Klansman both look the same, what with their white cloths? Except that you figure the Klansman prays to Jesus and the scientist is in league with the Prince of Lies? I'm sure you know your Klansmen; but you don't know jack about scientists. Nor do our students, being raised on crap rather than best data.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
So troll me now, you won't like what I have to say...
"An Inconvenient Truth" is a very political movie. If it wasn't, why is it presented and narrated by a Politician? Not a scientist, not someone who would actually have facts... but a guy who's job has been for the last 30 years to spin ANY news or ideas in the favor of his point of view.
So what's the problem with "Big Oil" donating money to teachers? Last time I checked, teachers were underpaid and schools underfunded. So, we have some organizations willing to give money to help out in our failing schools, and all the lefties complain. Where are the lefties donations? If they donated as much, or more than, "Big Oil" to such funds, then this wouldn't even be a discussion.
So do such organizations have the right to "protect" their funding sources? YES! Is it political? YES! Is "An Inconvient Truth" all fact? No, it's fact mixed in with a bunch of hypothesis, because in reality, no one really knows. What happened to that horrible hurricane season we were supposed to have this year... all the scientists told us it would happen... but yet it didn't!
Twenty years ago science told us we're entering an ice age... today we're "warming"... tomorrow? Who knows! Let's face it, most "science" relies on government funding. If, as a scientist, you say 'well, everything is as expected' or 'well, everything looks okay' then you don't get the next federal grant, because you just said everything was okay. So, you fudge the numbers, you make up things, and say 'ooooh this looks bad, I need to do more research' and the grant money continues to roll in. You write a few papers, get published a few times, do some talks making $10,000 per speech... and drive around in your brand new 7-series. All that doesn't happen when you say, 'I've spent the last 5 years to tell you everything is OK'.
I am not at all surprised that "Big Oil" gives so much money to such organizations. After all, they need scientists, don't they? Aren't scientists - or at least Chemical Engineers - the ones who design and test petroleum cracking processes?
Seems like a big conspiracy theory to me.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Al Gore is nothing if not political. I'm disturbed by many advocates of Global Warming since they often do not adress the objections of their opponents with facts, but more often appeals to authority.
And aren't the shareholders of Exxon entitled to freedom of association (into Exxon) and freedom of speech as that association? If their lies are flagrant, they must be easily disprovable.
Can you guess where the maximized profits are going?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
anyone who would quote ayn rand as if she had a braincell is instantly disqualified from giving their opinion on ANYTHING.
That was their offer to NSTA. RTFA.
...its hype.
Anyone remember all the dire predictions that the east coast was looking down the barrel of a gun for this year's hurricane season, and man was the cause? That global warming was going to be driving a huge hurricane season for 2006? This is the slam dunk.
Facts:
And the biggest fact:
There is nothing we can do to slow it or hurry it along. But, our expenditures of energy and voter goodwill in this arena take attention away from areas where we can be effective:
Not only that, but regulation we are forcing upon other countries actually prevent them from activities that could bring more wealth and aid to their populations.
And, regulations are preventing the building of cleaner solutions.
Can we get off the Global Warming kick and turn our efforts, money, voter action towards something we can change?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
from the parent post:
"History is rife with examples of corporate special interests skewing research about their products through carefully chosen grants and commissioned studies. Lead, Tobacco, DDT, Oil; hell,...."
Why do we have to bring Microsoft into it everytime somebody mentions "big corporations"?
A goal is a dream with a deadline
It seems to me from reading TFA that the producer does have some type of legitimate gripe. Just take this sentence FTA "Still, maybe the NSTA just being extra cautious. But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp."
San Francisco Photographers
Everyone always loves to say how the Big Oil guys keep getting richer by denying global warming, etc. Now, I know *someone* is making millions off of environmental activism. Anyone know which companies or which people? It'd just be interesting to see...
removal of links to junkscience.org from the Cato website.
Wow, if Cato is ditching a pro-corporate interest you KNOW he's gotta be a loon.
However, Milloy remains influential as the science columnist for Fox News.
The proof is in the pudding.
Dear brothers and sisters, we are here today to pay tribute to our brother, Algore, who has brought us a great revelation from the gods of goog: the proven, inescapable facts of the coming disaster of global warming necessitates that we establish communal control of all of our lives for the betterment of humanity. It is now high time that we all give our money to leaders like brother Robert Mugabe because we are guilty of having been productive and he is in so much need to keep his fellow brothers at heel. This teaching is hereby declared infallible and any facts or scientific data to the contrary to be destroyed immediately. Please report those who do not follow this new teaching to the communal protectors of the trooth so they may be dealt with as the non-humans that they obviously are.
Pax communistos!
your BROTHER
You have inside crude a mix of very light organic element, and some downright long chain. Some part of it will indeed evaporate over time (the lighter element). But i think the Tar and most long chains, what most people think when picturing crude, will not evaporate over time. And most probably this is the first to fall down on the bottom of the sea to be decomposed :
how crude behave with time
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'm not sure who you're calling "environmentalists", but I know that I self-identify as one. I also have 3 science degrees, and am working on a fourth. I don't think you could sanely call me anti-science. Also, when it comes to anthropogenic global warming, every single last climatologist who does not receive money from fossil fuel companies is in agreement that it is real, and that it will be a major problem for humanity if something is not done about it.
Of course, I'm not 100% against GM foods (although I appreciate caution), I'm in favor of informed uses of nano-technology, and I think that nuclear power (i.e., fission) is the best option we currently have for dealing with greenhouse gases. So maybe I'm not an "environmentalist" by your definition - but I still recognize that global warming is a real, anthropogenic, threat.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"Science" is completely "apolitical". It's a-everything, because it's an abstract systematic behavior, not a person.
Scientists, on the other hand, can't be apolitical. They're humans, so they're going to be political to some degree, even if negligibly. More than two people in any society means politics. But apathy and disenfranchisement are political conditions, especially useful to those with power who make arbitrary decisions for their own reasons.
American politics does vast amounts of work according to decisions derived from facts about the way the world works. Especially the way that it works physically, as we know from physics, chemistry, biology, even astronomy. Those facts are supposed to determine the decisions we make, and the facts about those facts, to whatever degree of confidence we know we have.
Scientists are obligated to participate in politics. Not just like any other people in a democracy. But because they don't have the excuse that they don't know what will happen when the politicians do what they say.
Certainly scientists are much more appropriate to our Constitutional democratic republic than are, say, religious ministers. The Constitution specifically directs the government to "promote science", and specifically prohibits the government for "respecting an establishment of religion". Our government is crawling with religious establishment professionals. While its scientists increasingly get edited, silenced, ignored, fired, scapegoated. Scientists need to organize better to protect their interests in science. And we need them to do so, to protect our interests in science, and in them.
That's why I recommend people join SEA: Scientists and Engineers for America, even if you're not a scientist (it's free and open). Or join any more specific technical association in your discipline, then vigorously work to make policy hear your science. If you're a scientist, your work is already surely contributing to some corporate political action / lobbying industry. You should make sure that the facts you produce are being represented at least as much as the money you make for them.
Think of it as an experiment, in a lab made of people. Think of a political hypothesis to describe the way your country works best, then test it with the equipment. Share the results with the rest of us.
--
make install -not war
You make this assertion but nothing to show what the fuck you MEAN!
PS al the other things: "solar activity and global warming on other planets, the effect of water vapor on the greenhouse effect, natural cycles of warming/cooling, etc.."
Well
Solar: may manage 30% of the change seen. And doesn't change in the timescales to match the changes we see now.
Other Planets: We don't live there. Mkay? Mrs could be heating up because the solar wind isn't deflected by a magnetosphere. Depending on how you measure teperature, this is a big thing.
Water vapour: Well can we remove the water? No. Can we stop it evaporating? No. If you can't do anything about it, it doesn't matter. Also the change in water vapour is naff all compared with the change in temperature.
natural cycles: well, these natural cycles take 10-100 thousands of years. Not 100 years. So if they are happening now, why so quickly?
etc...: Well list any. the above were bunk.
If you wanted people to see a movie why would you give it to PBS? I mean, aside from during the week they run their Red Dwarf marathon.
And here is data from the previous link showing that there can be rest of crude YEARS after the spill :
lifetime of crude way below the page see the graphs with time
Group Density Examples
Group I less than 0.8 Gasoline, Kerosene : disappear in hours
Group II 0.8 - 0.85 Gas Oil, Abu Dhabi Crude : disappear in days
Group III 0.85-0.95 Arabian Light Crude, North Sea Crude Oils (e.g. Forties) : disappear in week/monthes
Group IV greater than 0.95 Heavy Fuel Oil, Venezuelan Crude Oils : disappear in years
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'd like to ask those of us who actually socially know a number of scientists: Are your scientist friends political? Frankly, of the scientists I know (I'm not one, but I attend some pretty hard-core conferences every year), very few concern themselves any more with politics than they do with religion - which is to say, hardly at all. Oh, there may be the "politics" of their standing within their university departments, which they grudgingly pay some attention to, or the "politics" of writing grants that the NSF or DARPA or whoever will actually fund their research; but they really are much less concerned with the circus of party politics and posturing than are most of us out here in the "real" world - a world they by preference have left behind to concentrate within their own disciplines.
One of my friends conducts research in Antartica each year. His research has been misused by CATO and the like, who like that it shows that more snow is falling in certain regions, and ignore that this is consistent with models of overall global warming, instead making happy talk about "more snow!" But even this misappropriation of research doesn't draw my friend into politics. He just accepts that the daily world most of us live in is tainted by trash propaganda, and takes refuge within the circles of his scientific colleagues, for whom truth matters.
The notion that scientists are all primarily political, slanting their findings for political advantage, is promoted only by those who are trying to deny the findings of science - for political advantage. It comes from both the deconstructionists on the far left, and the neocons on the far right. They'd each love to reduce scientists to their level, so that facts can no longer inconvenience the absolutist ideologies they promote.
So why are we entertaining this slander of scientists her on Slashdot. I know there are more engineers than scientists here, but are that many of us, as engineers, that removed from the purer realms of science?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
"Climate change" is about science. "Global warming" is about a political agenda which is indifferent to the science.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What if they did offer it to them, but PBS declined because it would offend their other sponsors, like Exxon-Mobil? It wouldn't be the first time that has happened.
Edith Keeler Must Die
A lot of people are missing the point. This isn't about choice, or scientific debate, or agreeing to disagree.
The NTSA have themselves stated that they turned this down because they were concerned about their funding, instead showing a movie that is at least if not more bent in the opposite direction.
They said they're afraid of losing money. They never said they thought Inconvenient Truth is a crock of shit or that Gore is a snake oil salesman. They simply said if they do this, they may lose money.
This isn't about principles, this isn't about debate, and it isn't about educating kids. They've been bought and they admit it plain as day.
I don't understand why responses are so cool, and why the article says it is hard to tell if the association is being bad or not.
It looks pretty clear to me. People wonder why U.S. science is beginning to suck, and obviously it has suffered from a long deevolution that has culminated with examples like big oil attempting to control formative environmental education and religion attempting to control formative biological education.
Clearly, even if the association had no clue of reality and decided to cave in to a editorial style where they show both sides of the story, they should show Gore's film.
It is not clear to me why public education requires corporate sponsorship and even allows corporations to inject any type of media into the education of young people.
There is a place for businesses in showing the practical side for example I still remember a trip to the Lamont-Dougherty oceanographic institute and that was maybe 30 years ago.. a high point of my public school education which sucked. Lucky for me I switched to a private high school and bloomed.
How come people aren't outraged? Or is it just a kind of quiet outrage? You know, Bush is still in power and that's his boys there or something? This is the kind of thing that makes the U.S. the utter laughing stock of the entire planet. I cannot imagine another first world country that would allow this, or has public education become even more dismal than I thought? Certainly it was sheer hell for a nerd, but it also sounds like an utter waste of cow-brain level stimulation. Why even bother?
Well, then it would have been aired on a different channel, right? Surely Gore didn't say "PBS turned us down, oh well, let's change the whole game plan and do a theatrical release followed by DVDs instead."
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
That's not from the edit summary, that's from Frogbeater's story submission. Now, the editors may have picked that particular summary in order to piss off Slashdotters because we'd all point out how baldly inaccurate ("preferential treatment"?!) it was, so they'd get scads of comments. It wouldn't be the first time, but it's not quite the same as the editors themselves saying anything quite so stupid.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
This guy is so obtuse that it must be a troll..
What, exactly, did wytcld fail to understand, how did he demonstrate actual hate for this thing he failed to understand, and how did this make him look like a complete tool?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Good point, and thanks for the link. Something I read recently, I think in Sagan's last book, said planting trees is useless unless you commit to burying the trees. If they are harvested and burned (forest fire, firewood, or even after being made into furniture), there's no offset. Sounds like we need to be growing trees now (and burying them in the future) as fast as the oil is coming up, right?
In a sense, hell yeah. Science is about facts not what "should be". Failing to make that distinction makes the science appear shoddy. I am less inclined to trust a scientist or someone claiming to represent scientists if they seem to lack basic knowledge of what science is. Don't lie. Don't distort. Take a deep breath. Start over. THEN, maybe I will give a damn about this movement and its "science". As for the other side of the debate, they don't make a case. They make a sale. Think about it!
NO, it DID NOT. Some newspapers printed stupid stories about that. Not "Science". Read this for the story of how this myth has propagated and been spread by various "warming sceptics".
Science is wrong a majority of the time? Perhaps if you include every tested hypothesis. However, climate change and the extent that humanity is causing a large amount of the current change is not an untested hypothesis. There isn't a single scientific peer reviewed study that contradicts these findings in any way in decades. There have been hundreds that support the scientific theory that man is causing global warming.
If you truly believe that the predictions science makes don't come true a majority of the time, I wonder how you get anywhere. Science is what predicts your automobile, train, or even bicycle will work. The predictions of science make it possible that when I strike a button on my keyboard, a signal is sent through my system (and dozens if not hundreds of other consequences therein) so it appears on my screen and eventually on slashdot. Science predicts that when you take medicine, it will have certain health consequences.
The hostility to science has to stop.
We are all being led by the noses. All of the shouting on both sides takes our minds off the real problem. The real problem that humanity has to defeat is fractionalism. We are given labels to name all that are not us, borders to keep at arms length all that are not us, and wars to instill fear in us against all that are not us. Everything that government does, including allowing the current twisted discourse on the theory of global warming, is a component of the plan to control all of our thoughts and deeds. What we believe is freedom of the press is just the most effective tool for managing us, there are no free thoughts anymore. Everything we believe has been fed to us to blind us to reality( including all of the conspiracy theories I am spouting ). We are slaves
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Regardless of the viewpoint, is it even possible that science can remain apolitical?
Not when the science we are talking about here is really a film by a politician.
(Besides, as we saw with Gaius, scientists don't make good politicians, why would we expect it to work the other way around?)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
That's the sound of another problem that vanishes when there are no more government run schools, government paid teachers, and government employees teachers unions.
Support school choice. Vote with your feet and your dollars.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
The Fear Card has been played by the Bush Administration in destroying civil liberties and has always been a favorite tool of environmentalists. When somebody is trying to scare you, it's time to guard your wallet/Constitution.
One way to look at this is the distribution angle.
Perhaps the producer of 'An Inconvenient Truth' is miffed that the NSTA won't do her classroom distribution for her. She might have to work a little to get those DVDs to 50,000 schools herself.
If education is really what she cared about, she wouldn't put a financially strapped Science Teacher's organization in the position of losing funding. She wants the NSTA to choose sides which puts them in a very difficult position. What benefit does that yield education in general? Might get her film out NOW, but does not benefit NSTA in the long run. Have to question her motives on that one.
You think a science teacher would NOT use the film if it showed up in the classroom? The individual classroom isn't directly funded by Exxon-Mobil (I never get gas from them anymore! stopesso.org). Does the NSTA have stopping power to ban classroom material? Hardly.
Rather than gripe that they won't take care of the mailing list for her, she could note that the NSTA, like nearly all educational institutions, should not have to be in the situation of begging $$$ from corps in the first place. She could then save the NSTA some money (and make a big PR campaign of it) and not risk their future funding by getting the film to classrooms herself. If her motives are education and realistic, why would she do anything else?
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
So, if I am a mathematician with a background in non-linear analysis I have no right to speak, but a "climate scientist" does? Staring at computer models all day and making predictions does not make science, and Al Gore has no right to say who has the right to speak. This whole debate is being framed by the wrong people, and got way too political a long time ago.
The latest dishonest meme is that those who don't believe there is global warming are merely expressing their "valid difference of opinion". We see the same nonsense from the Creationists, as if any crackpot pseudoscience is just a valid in the marketplace of ideas as experimentally validated theory that an overwhelming number of scientists hold in accord.
Further, I've noticed a troubling trend in the community of self-described "conservatives". It now appears that to be considered a conservative, you must predictably hold certain absolute beliefs. For example, if you believe that say, pollution is a bad thing, you are not a conservative. Or, if you believe the Iraq War was a mistake, you cannot possibly be conservative. If you believe that women should be allowed to decide for themselves whether to carry a fetus to term, you're no conservative, yet to be conservative you must believe that all limitations on public smoking or gun ownership are very bad.
The thing that makes this a problem is you will notice some clear conflicts within these beliefs. Absolutely no regulation on guns, but lots of regulation on abortion. No limitations on smoking, but absolutely no naked breasts in video games.
I know liberals who are against abortion, who are extremely religious, who smoke like chimneys and who are against pornography. There are even liberals who are in favor of military action in Afghanistan and the removal of Saddam Hussein. But find me a conservative who wavers from the established dogma established by the National Review (Dems are the "Party of Death"!!!) and I'll show you a person who's being singled out as "not a real conservative".
When you have to hold such dogma in political thought, it means your arguments are weak.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The general scientific method indicates that an experiment should be repeatable. Who does the experiment shouldn't matter. In this case, "independent" means, I think, a lab without connections to the first lab. By doing so, the chance that the experimenter is acting as a non-neutral agent in the experiment can be largely eliminated (as the experiment is repeated more and more times). While this has a side effect of potentially eliminating corporate bias, science inherently calls for it regardless of the source of funding.
Yeah, I've always been a bit skeptical about some ideas surrounding carbon neutrality. Obviously, the best option is to not emit carbon in the first place or to emit as little as possible, with ideas like increased efficiency, solar power, nuclear power, etc. However, planting trees does seem better than doing nothing, as long as those trees are native and aren't stifling diversity.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Ugh, not this Michael Crichton crap again. The man thinks that an underground conspiracy of cackling socialists in lab coats debasing their fields for some vague political reason is way more plausible than moneyed interests debasing science for their own ends, when there are plainly billions of dollars at stake, and there's a demonstrable money trail from said interests to fake science.
I think his sense of perspective is a bit... skewed.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Why not just wipe out around half the population of the planet and start this little society experiment all over. This time around has turned out to be an absolute failure.
WTF?
"If I was all noble and I made a movie I genuinely felt people needed to see to save the earth, wouldn't I just give it to PBS on day 1?"
Did it occur to you that: A, PBS doesn't exactly have the biggest audience of all the networks. Second of all, the people that generally watch PBS are probably educated enough to have a pretty good idea that Global Warming is for real and that man is causing it.
So, let's assume for the moment, that the target audience isn't the people who already know this stuff, but perhaps the people that don't. So, putting it in the theater will help give it a wider audience than it might otherwise get on PBS.
And you're bitching about this not being noble, but they're trying to GIVE AWAY tens of thousands of copies to schools FOR FREE and the schools won't take them.
Look, you say what you want, but Gore truly cares about this issue. He spent about 20 years of his life in congress and the senate doing everything he could to bring it to peoples attention. This has been his #1 issue for just about his entire career. Show me anyone in politics who's tried to do something more noble!
What, if you please, prevents a person who gets into a position where they can get things done from being allowed to "actually have facts"?
If this were true, then there'd be no point in anyone learning anything with a view to making informed decisions.
Your argument is absurd. Your own statements of "fact" are underresearched if not outright false ("all the scientists"). Please think again.
If companies actually started doing this, there wouldn't be complaints.
However the history of companies like the big tobacco companies doing research and then showing it to their lawyers so they could claim it was "priveleged communications" to bury it, rather than publishing it, gives people a bad taste about corporate sponsored research.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Both the dust and the el niño effect were likely caused by global warming
No, the el niño is periodic thing that's been happening for a very, very long time, and is considered a natural coupling of the ocean and atmosphere with a predictable recurrance. Whether any larger change in global temps has anything to do with how it interacts with other weather patterns is a separate issue, and not at all clear. But it is not "caused by global warming." That's complete BS. Likewise, the dust from Africa exists because the Sahara desert has been there for 2.5 million years. Dust storms blowing out to sea are completely expected, and happen all the time. We're just now getting the regular use of imaging tools and computer models that help us to understand how readily that hot bowl of dust impacts Atlantic storms. The Sahara is as dry now as it was 13,000 years ago, but has gone through numerous huge fluxuations in wetness and vegetation unrelated to "global warming" as that phrase is now used. Unless, of course, you consider the last ice age - things were cooler, then, and the Sahara desert was much larger, drier, and dustier than it is now.
What about the 2005 hurricane season? It was also global warming that caused that.
What are you talking about? We have a hurrican season every year, and we're in the middle of a cyclic 25-30 year peak, which has been going on for thousands of years and is most likely tied to solar variation. Further, the number of storms reported in 2005 include storms that never came ashore - seen (and thus counted) by satellites that we've only recently had at our disposal. During a previous cycle (say, 100 years ago?) the dozen or so Atlantic storms that we saw stay out to sea might also have been there (or been more frequent), but they'd never have made it into the statistics that we now generate because they would have gone unobserved.
Take a deep breath, how about.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I am a regular Slashdot reader, so I get to see all the "scares" that fly by on a daily basis. What amuses me most is the juxtaposition of "global warming" and "oil depletion".
Hey - we are running out of oil in the ground. As demand further outstrips supply, the price of gasoline will climb, and climb, and climb, and... Consumption will naturally fall as supplies fall. How can you consume what you cannot get?
Global warming freaks try to get us all in a tizzy about how we are destroying our planet with - fossil fuel consumption? (which I believe is the single largest factor contributing to greenhouse gases, right?)
The global warming freaks can huff and puff about how we're killing ourselves, but:
a) The world can't just STOP using fossil fuel, without a total collapse of modern civilization
and
b) Like it or not, the world cannot continue to consume fossil fuel at increasing rates, and will in fact have no choice but to reduce consumption, eventually reaching zero.
So does anyone really believe that anything meaningful can be done to curb global warming (with respect to fossil fuel consumption) that isn't already going to happen whether we want it to or not?
What I think we should be serious about is sequestering a percentage of fossil fuel production and make sure it is set aside for those industries that produce secondary products that are not possible without petroleum - e.g. pharmaceuticals, plastics, various advanced materials.
You might be able to build a clean-burning coal-fired automobile, given the NECESSITY of doing so (in the not-so-distant future), but can you imagine the difficulty of doing so with no plastics?
whatever....
It seems he could reach more people by making the movie free on TV. If, as you suggest, he's interested in targeting a theater-going, dvd-buying, and money-paying demographic, he could STILL reach more people by making the movie free on TV as well as all the other stuff. Is there ANY downside to making the movie free on TV, other than cutting into profits?
Yes, the great Steven Milloy! Lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute who stuck his name on content provided by RJR Tobacco and Philip Morris, enemy of "special, and often hidden interests" wherever they may be found!
Who, by the way, won't utter a peep against creationism, even when asked. Possibly because the NSF isn't employing him; I don't know.
By golly, if ever there was a man with an ironclad reputation for fairness, honesty and resistance to the encroachment of hidden interests, it must be Steven Milloy!
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Second, it is not equivalent to your body increasing ".000000001 of a degree, steadily year after year." Perhaps greater familiarity with the concept of climate change would be beneficial before commenting. Humanity has existed for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, but lets look at more recent history. Being generous, let's say "civilization" is 6000 years old. In the last 100 years, temperature has increased 1.1 degrees F. If you're a 30 year old, thats in 6 months. It is projected that global temperatures will increase 2.5 to 10.5 degrees in the next 100 years if major energy changes are not made. Do you think a fever of over 110 degree F might amount to much?
Well aren't you lazy? If you're talking about a movie made specifically for science classes, think again. The price would be too much for many districts and the quality would be much lower than "An Inconvenient Truth." If you're talking about teachers materials, you should check your facts. The information is freely available to anyone online. The movie and DVD packaging both point to this website as material can be updated and up-to-date instead of months or even years behind on the ever-increasing scientific consensus.
The TV commercial you describe refers to this site..
How can you argue with this?
an ill wind that blows no good
At least they don't lie in their site name.
Science is sometimes going to get in the way of politics, or vice-versa. It has been ever since Galileo. Sometimes, political desirability is at odds with scientific soundness.
Science usually wins in the end, though.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
[blockquote]quote which is attributed to Friedman goes: "The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders..."[/blockquote] ... within the constraints provided by law.
Those mightn't be the exact words (it's been a while since I read the original text, and I don't have the paper I wrote on CSR on hand), but, taken, to the limit, this means that a company will take any legal action neccessary to secure and guard profits.
So if a (legal) action of the company is morally reprehensible or otherwhise 'wrong', then it is the fault of the lawmakers for allowing it, not the executives of the company for playing within the rules. That's what Friedmann was saying.
The text is a good read, btw. If I remember the title, I'll post it for you.
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
I think most people believe global warming is probably real. After all there is evidence that Mars has been warming up as well over the same period of time. There is also evidence that volcanoes spew out some nasty stuff that can warm up the planet. The question is should we screw up our economies when man is probably not even close to the biggest source?
By your lights, "all known living organisms descend from a common ancestor" is also unproven by "decent scientific standards", as is "HIV causes AIDS", and possibly "the Earth is more than six thousand years old", depending on how charitable we're being. Because not only is the science not unanimous, I can find you plenty of axe-grinders who'll be willing to bend your ear on these topics.
Not to mention that if any of this buys us five or ten years, it's important. It can make the difference between transitioning to nuclear fusion and transitioning back to the stone age. This isn't important to you?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Why not give it away for free on iTunes. By pass the teachers and let the students download it onto their computers or video enabled iPods.
Al Gore is on the board of directors of Apple, I'm sure he can work something out with Steve Jobs. All Apple has to do if foot the bill for storage and download bandwidth.
Regardless of the viewpoint, is it even possible that science can remain apolitical?
No, not in the USA.
Trolling aside, this is really a problem you meet more frequently in the USA, and I think it's because americans are engaged in a big arm wrestling match between the science side and the faith side. That's how such topics as evolution or global warming become disproportionatedly huge debates as in Europe hardly anyone sees these topics as controversial, since even the roman catholic church admitted the theory of evolution, and as no-one can in their right mind question global warming.
Here, we rather discuss the consequences and the possible solutions, no matter the position on the political spectrum, as in the USA, it seems like the debate about whether global warming is due to our industrial activity or even is exists is kept alive in order to avoid having to move on to the next level, which is discussion of solutions and acting up.
If I was a bit more paranoiac than I am, I'd think that anyone having any interests in the oil industry is throwing oil (ha ha, i know, sorry) on the fire of this debate to protect their short and medium term interests.
You just got troll'd!
there is one and only one social responsibility of business-to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
From "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits", The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970
copies here or here (annotated)
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
Consider, for example, a thread about IQ testing. Someone drops a post about how IQ tests have conclusively shown that black people are inferior to white people, and have for many years; it's a conspiracy of liberal race-mixin' scientists who are keeping the results quiet. This guy gets modded troll for posting that.
By your lights, he was modded troll simply for "disagreeing" with the majority. Not for willful ignorance, for baseless assertions which have been refuted a thousand times, but for "disagreement".
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What is a global warming freak?
What is the opposite, earth destroying selfish bonehead?
The fact you pointed out that fossil fuels are going to run out is key. If we don't start to change our behavior in regards to fossil fuel consumption (which we "freaks" are already doing) then the earth destroying selfish boneheads are in for a shock. So are we to provide exceptions for those fools who believe that they deserve to consume more than a fair share of global resources?
Think about how to balance fuel consumption and global warming while you row your boat down fifth avenue to work.
Global warming minimizers are quick to forget that a huge percentage of the earth's population live not far above sea level. And it seems possible that those levels are going to be significantly higher in the coming century at our present rate of consumption.
Do what you can do now. Reduce, recycle, buy more efficient transportation or use mass transit when possible, use renewable energy sources...is this so difficult to do? Make plans for the future, set an example for children to follow. Living heavy with all the toys and the lights on does not set the example.
He was quite clear, the environmental movement is more intolerant than most religions. If you look it it has become a religion to some folk. If you disagree your branded a heretic and should be run out of whatever job you do.
...
Really, whats different than what some people claim religious groups do wrong that isn't being done by many factions in the environmental movement?
Sorry but not every scientist agrees with the claim regardless of who is funding them. That is a simply a standard phrase used by any group to dismiss anyone who opposes them. It is the cliche method... in other words if you use it you are indicating you do not care to debate as you have already decided.
I know there is little debate that anthropogenic global warming occurs, the real debate which you gloss over is that no one agrees on just how much is being contributed by man. Yet why should there be any debate when the only people you see are those pushing that agenda? With comments and believes like you "everyone who doesn't agree is a corporate shill" type crap whats the point of debating?
Sorry, you attempted to portray his post in the wrong by leading off with an argument that had NO BEARING on his post and then you throw out the time tried bogus claims "of everyone"
no dice.
If your argument has merit them argue the point, attacking those who offer the opposing opinion and not the opinion itself shows you have no desire to debate the issue as your hard locked mentally in your belief.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
You can mod that funny, but eugenics was considered a scientific endeavor at during the '30s when the KKK was at it's peak. Many people simply took it as fact that white people were genetically superior to other races. It is an apt comparison, though most people wouldn't agree because global warming is "real" and eugenics is "fake".
What was the last PBS show that got as much press as 'An Inconvenient Truth'? Putting it out as a move got it more attention than a PBS release, if for no other reason than novelty. I mean, PBS shows nature documentaries all the time, but who is crazy enough to do a wide-scale cinema release of a documentary?
LOL, there's a lot of tortured logic in this thread on why Gore might be shunning PBS to avoid the most obvious conclusion. Look, he could put the movie on YouTube, and none of the anti-PBS arguments apply there. You know what is on YouTube? The movie trailer! An AD for his movie!
1) Make a movie about saving the earth
2) Control distribution,
3) PROFIT!!!
I have a question for you environmentalists out there. Do you really believe in evolution? Because your actions profess that you don't. Why would i say such a thing? The phrase "preserve the environment" comes to mind. Extinction and death are a part of evolution. So to "preserve" you are actually attempting to defy nature. Let me define evolution this way:
Preservation is stagnation!! Without death there is no life!! Death allows growth!! Death is a part of evolution!! Whether it is the death of a species or just one member of that species!!
If you can understand this, you can understand the difference between climate and weather. That's a nice soundbite, but it's intellectually void, and you should know better.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If they said that this was because it would threaten funding from their sponsors, then, well, YES. This is not so much an argument, as a tautology.
I agree, leave the strawman out of it. I was attempting to point out that his argument (and yours) is a strawman argument.
Can you find one scientist who disagrees with that claim who is NOT being funded by a fossil fuel company? Should be pretty easy to prove me wrong. I've made a very straightforward claim, and one that only requires one counter-example. I'm more than willing to debate you as I'm quite familiar with the science. I was merely pointing out that the argument that there is no consensus is wrong (as implied by the anti-science comment). There is a consensus amongst all scientists not being funded by fossil fuel companies.
I'm guessing you don't know what anthropogenic means. :D
I was arguing the point - that anthropogenic global warming can't be anti-science when it is supported by virtually all scientists. What point did you think he was making? (Assuming he was making a point, of course.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
You make excellent points about a TV release. I'll rephrase: whats the downside to a free release, other than cutting into profits? I'm sure Gore knows enough about the internet to know what a torrent is. And YouTube.
Did anyone ever prove that smoking causes cancer? I understand that statistically there is a high correlation, but did anyone point at the mechanism where "smoking does this, which makes this happen, ... which causes cells to mutate and become cancer?" I thought this was why it was so hard to win a smoking lawsuit.
I'd love to see some links.
And where did smoking come from? A group of people who were taken advantage of by another group. Some people might call that justice.
There is no "global warming" on Mars. There *have* been some isolated incidences of regions on Mars that are warming up, over the course of 3 Martian years or so, but to infer from that that anything like a global warming trend of the type seen (and predicted) on earth is invalid.
As a reference, see the discussion here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192
The case for anthropogenic global warming is extraordinarily solid, and is based on lots and lots of observations of different effects, combined with modeling based on principles of physics. These talking points are just hot air.
No, no, not bible-beating rednecks, well-heeled industry shills! And that stereotype exists largely because there's a well-documented conspiracy to debase science and muddy the waters on behalf of said industry. (There's an analogue for creationism as well.)
You're welcome to question global warming, just as you're welcome to question the theory of evolution. It gets old when the same tired crap is thrown out time and again, designed not to advance anyone's understanding of anything, but to sow public confusion and doubt.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Believing in gravity doesn't mean you should jump off a cliff, idiot.
I never said that. I said that I thought that nuclear power is possibly the best option for dealing with greenhouse gases. Al Gore agrees with me, of course, as does at least one founder of the Sierra Club, IIRC. However, there are still several people in the "environmental movement" who are anti-nuclear power. And, I'll admit, there are a few wackos in the "environmental movement", but find me a movement without nuts... (pun intended).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
> Regardless of the viewpoint, is it even possible that science
> can remain apolitical? Has it ever been?"
Science is one thing. Science portrayed by a power hungry politician blatantly and obviously using it to try to gain the presidency is quite another. We won't even bother getting into left-wing politicians in the late '60's onwards getting into ecology^H^H^H^H^H^H^H environmentalism because it gives them a secondary argument to massively control business when the usual class warfare rhetoric starts to fail (accurate description regardless of the science, which is what most people put on blinders about).
I support not putting this ad for Al Gore to school children.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Holy cow! A clear thinking, rational human on Slashdot! Must be a sign of the end times!
// This is not a sig.
Do you think that industry-created "think tank" fronts are in any way comparable to scientists working on grants? Have you considered that a scientist who fakes evidence and fudges numbers to garner reputation is taking a tremendous risk of being utterly discredited and never trusted again, while these "think tanks" can do so with impunity, secure in the knowledge that the funds will keep rolling in?
Your attempts at drawing a moral equivalence are feeble, and were I a working scientist, I'd probably be offended.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Summary of discussion:
Blah blah blah Global Warming is true and you're stupid blah blah blah
Blah blah blah Global Warming is not true and you're stupid blah blah blah
www.joshferguson.org
It's classic FUD--an unfounded, unsupported ad hominem attack that draws attention from the substantive issue--the science itself. I could understand it if there were some evidence that scientists had anything to gain by promoting a movie they agree with. For example there is no question that oil companies have a financial stake in maintaining the status quo usage of fossil fuels, just like tobacco companies have a financial stake in the number of people who start smoking every year. But there's no evidence that all the climate scientists will be super-rich in a couple years if only the public would learn about global warming.
Do you think you can get away with totally unfounded assertions just because you used a question mark?
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The producer wants everyone to know that she is SUPER SERIAL about her film. No matter what she tries, no one is taking her SERIALLY!
I don't know about the rest of you, but this is a SERIAL matter.
Chums up, let's do this!
As I said earlier. Preservation is stagnation!! It would be like trying to keep your kid at the age of 8 their entire lives. It doesn't work and it would mess the kid up for life.
DON'T JUST READ THE WORDS. SEE THE IDEA BEHIND THEM.
The entire story is a biased troll!!!
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Science and scientific diciplines are simply avenues to help create knowledge by explaining the world. Knowledge is used and distributed through societies to help shape opinion and world view. Politics is the backbone and organizing structure of all societies, therefore science is simply at its root a tool of politics. The two can never be disjoined, nor is is necessary or benificial. We should be conducting scientific research in areas that have some tangiable benifit for humanity.
I think that was exactly his point. The movie itself was a political movie. He is not saying the claims in the movie aren't backed up by science. Why would he want to show the movie, when he can just talk about all the numbers and make the same point himself? If they wanted to make a scientific argument, then they would've included actual numbers and figures in the movie. It's not a scientific movie, it's a political one. The fact that they slapped Al Gore's name all over it proves that.
Yes, and every day on the Gulf of Mexico beaches are covered with natural tar. All the components do not just vanish.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
It's estimated that 50 million people have died that wouldn't have otherwise if DDT was still in common use.
DDT would need to be pretty goddam harmfull to justify those kinds of numbers, it isn't. The DDT story is the epitome of
the EPA their junk science. DDT
I can't believe anybody would cite Crichton as some kind of authority on science and policy. He's an opportunistic pulp fiction writer at best and a disingenuous propagandist at worst. Biotechnologists have had to defend their work from the unreal dangers portrayed in Jurassic Park. Nanotechnologists have had to defend their careers from the falsehoods of Prey. Non-xenophobes were stuck defending the Japanese in Rising Sun. And now, climatologists are forced to defend their science from the spin and outright lies in State of Fear. Crichton is a one man show in overhyped doom-mongering and crap pseudoscience. Serious people ignore him.
When saying "preserve the environment", we say : don't actively wipe out species. Bio-diversity is the crucial term here.
"Human beings are currently causing the greatest mass extinction of species since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If present trends continue one half of all species of life on earth will be extinct in less than 100 years, as a result of habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and climate change."
http://www.well.com/~davidu/extinction.html
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
9-11 was an inside job and part of a stealth coup by the military/industrial blood profiteers -don't let them get away with it!
7 1483512003&q=9%2F11+mysteries
See this new video, it is *good*, full length movie. Make copies, give them away,share the google link, contribute to the producers so they can make a follow up movie.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-67081900
The question should be:
Can Politics remain Scientific?
Shouldn't our elected officials look at the available data and make the best decision possible?
Oh, or maybe the problem is best for whom?.
Start Running Better Polls
My photo teacher in high school brought in a wall calendar that was sent to her for free in the mail. The twelve photos were excellent commercial nature photography, macro shots of rusty bulkheads, and the last one was a pier lit by moonlight. The moonlit waves were contrasty enough that the ocean was jet black, and it kindof looked like oil.
Everyone in her town got one of those calendars for free in the mail, and on the back in tiny print it said "(c) 1997 Exxon Mobile Corp" or whatever. Exxon Mobile was attempting to open a refinery nearby.
Those fuckers are sharp.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
In other words, if you're rich and you don't donate your money to causes, you're evil.
If you're rich and you donate your money to causes, you're evil.
Seems fair.
As a scientist involved with climate change and energy policy, and a slashdot reader, I am simply amazed at the horrible signal/noise ratios in these climate threads. A few reasonable replies, some folks who seem to know science from propaganda, etc... but mostly a lot of replies that sound like gamers harping on the poor graphics in the new release of their favorite game. Somehow I was naive enough to think that /. was frequented by a smarter crowd. Nope. It is full of bigots and trolls, just like IRL.
The problem with this is...they spread the money so thin to so many different orgs, that NONE of them can do any good. Give it on a every 5 year basis to one org, and let them try to make a difference.
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
The producer and distributors of the video simply want the same treatment that is given to wealthy polluters such as Exxon-Mobil - they want their chance to propagandize our children. As the wealthy polluters are already doing, with NSTA collusion.
At least NSTA is honest about it. They are admitting knuckling under to outside financial pressures... would you rather they pretended they weren't?
Not to say it is anything other than above-board, but the producer of "An Inconvienient Truth" wrote BOTH pieces cited - they are not separate sources that reinforce each other, they are the same argument repeated. There is nothing wrong with the producer sharing her thoughts/opinions as widely as possible, but the original poster seems to have missed they are both by the same author (and the latter is on the Op/Ed pages, not the "news" section.
For those unfamiliar with edited, printed newspapers - there is a difference between the two sections.
Ken
God created animals so that humans wouldn't starve.
Basically, everything you wrote was wrong except for the bit about the Greenpeace founder.
1. There is no global warming on Mars
2. DDT is dangerous to the environment
3. The Kyoto Treaty exemptions are based on CUMULATIVE emissions, not annual emissions. The US and Western Europe have released the most CO2 into the atmosphere by far. That's not even when you factor equity into account on a per capita basis.
I saw a film by the CA power concern PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) where they showed linemen running high-tension wires up the side of a mountain and across a forest using dynamite - they seemed to marvel at blowing the trees away in the name of Electrical Transmission Lines...
PG&E was the producer of the film, and was not hiding behind anything - but this was back in the '70s - things have changed since then.
Ken
Stupid Question: "Is it even possible that science can remain apolitical?"
....
FACT: It is Science (matter). It is politics (Antimatter). They are mutually exclusive where one exist the other cannot possibly coexist.
FACT: It is Science (matter). It is religion (Antimatter). They are mutually exclusive where one exist the other cannot possibly coexist.
FACT: It is politics (antimatter). It is religion (Antimatter). They are symbiotic-parasitic cist-cyst entombing the immortal soul of humanity. When one is inflicting exploitive harm on humanity, the other is oppressively infecting truth and values with Myth, Lies, Allegory (at best)
NOTE: Corporatist can be political and/or religious, profits dependent; However, none of these UnterMenschen (corporatist, televangelist, politicians) are Scientist.
FACT: Many Business managers/leaders, local/community religious leaders, Leaders in Public Service are not UnterMenschen, but far too many are globally UnterMenschen scumbags.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I have heard some of what they have said. Elitist drivel is what it is. How can "ragheads" come up with something so complex? They aren't that smart!! What do you mean they aren't that smart? They have more nuclear scientists than we do!! Their religion spans the world!! They haven't been as superstitious about science as other religions so they aren't afraid of using it! To assume that we as a people are smarter just because of where we come from is the worst kind of arrogance!! And untrue, Americans on average are not up to the standards of other countries. And until we have learning in our schools and universities instead of rote memorization we will continue to be one of the stupidest countries in the world.
Well, then it would have been aired on a different channel, right?
It hasn't been aired on any TV channel.
Edith Keeler Must Die
I was intrigued, so I read the linked article on how politics is "derailing attempts to get anything done about improvments in materials and course work."
The linked article is about altering the school curriculum to be more heavily science and math based, while sacrificing studies in arts, languages, and health. If you feel that such a change is undeniably an improvement, then I do not think that you are seeing both sides of the issue.
My understanding of the proposal is that Algebra II will be required for students to attend any publicly funded post-secondary institution (even in an arts program)... which in my opinion is a bad idea. I know people who have been incredibly successful in science at a graduate level, but could not have completed algebra II.
Yeah, that hasn't been active in a couple of years. I really should do something with that address.
I do encourage you to follow up here. Many people browse with the moderation off, and it's not like we Slashdotters will put down the Cheetos, leave our mom's basement and come after you.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Did you miss the hockey-stick graph? The bit about how temperature changes are distributed more towards the poles? Why melting polar ice is such a problem because it reduces the albedo by rougly a factor of nine?
What sort of hard numbers were you looking for that were not provided? You can't really read tables in a documentary; that's why there's a website and a book that go along with it. What the documentary does do is summarize the data, which you're free to look up yourself.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Why in the world do you think you would sound like a hippy? :D
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
is it even possible that science can remain apolitical? Has it ever been?
Has it ever be otherwise ? Right now you are talking about a film director and politicians. Science is humankind's tool to find a truth independant of politics, religion and points of view of any form. Politicians and journalists have always talked about science subject, but what they do is politics and journalism, both useful and needed job, but their goal is not to make science. Why do people get so easily confuse ?
And why, oh god, WHY do people think that they can't do science by themselves and rely on some "elite" scientists to have an opinion on something ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
One of the problems I have with Milloy's Junk Science is the fact that he uses rhetoric as opposed to hard science to 'prove' many of his points. I occasionally check his stuff out and do a ballpark rating of 'numbers' versus 'spin' to determine what I call a 'Junque Science' rating. If the 'numbers' are lacking and the 'spin' dominates (i.e. use of the word 'enviros') then I consider HIS comments to be 'junque' and not worth considering.
Apparently Laurie David finds the truth inconvenient. According to an NSTA statement (http://www.nsta.org/pressroom&news_story_ID=52959 ), while they did not agree to distribute the DVD directly, THEY DID offer to make the DVD available through other means of distribution (making its mailing list available, through publications, at its conference etc). Apparently, Ms. David and her representatives never replied to this offer. Why would she not respond at all to this offer, and instead choose to skewer NSTA in the national media? Sounds to me like Ms. David was less concerned about getting this movie into the hands of science teachers, and more concerned about creating media buzz conveniently timed with the release of the movie on DVD. Whether or not she ever sees a penny personally is irrelevant. I guess this is the danger of accepting an op-ed piece as truth, convenient as it may be.
I saw a rerun of Commando the other day. It must be a political movie, since they kept talking about Schwarzenegger all the time in the previews.
Learn to love Alaska
You were replying to a poster who claimed that while An Inconvenient Truth is backed by an overwhelming consensus of scientists, the industry films that the NSTA has accepted in the past are nothing more than propaganda. You claimed that scientists have just as much of an axe to grind as industry shills, and would support their own form of propaganda in order to acquire, as you said, "reputations, grant money, etc.".
If your purpose wasn't to discredit the scientists who have endorsed An Inconvenient Truth as just as biased, and therefore morally equivalent, to the fake "science" groups who have been donating to NSTA, what on earth were you saying?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You handwave into existence a vast conspiracy of commie scientists bent on the destruction of western civilization, all for some temporary gain of money or power, demeaning and debasing the actual work that these people do, and when called on it, you whine about how "venomous" the responses you get are?
Well, imagine that. Maybe you should go to Free Republic if you're such a shrinking violet that you can't stand having people disagreeing with you--not to mention that it conveniently prevents you from actually responding to them.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
And how long did it fly with the rest of scientific community?
Not long in fact, and Einstein himself referred to it as his biggest blunder. (Although in fact there is now renewed interest in it because of new observations.)
Your example supports the view that the scientific community cares first and foremost about being correct--not about "fitting in," not kowtowing to famous people, not getting rich.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
the issue is no less political. The fact that North American policy makers have ignored the scientific concensus embodied by the Kyoto Protocol--a global, political endorsement of the truth of global warming--is a deeply troubling political issue. The fact that Gore's film focuses on the science and the consequences of ignoring this phenomenon is a credit to some politicians' ability to leave politics at the door in the service of the public interest, the public interest in this case is to avoid environmental catastrophe.
I remember reading about the "victory" of the pro-science anti-religion crowd, where they got a school board to not only fight back the religious assault on evolution, but to actually prohibit any questioning of evolution in the classroom... I wanted to cry...
Science REQUIRES questioning. Elevating scientific theories to dogma isn't science, it's religion. Prohibiting the questioning of a scientific theory undermines the whole point of science.
While I'm not terribly approving of the Church's historical stands on research that contradicted their religious views, I think that the anti-religion crowd has adopted scientific evidence that undermines a fundamentalist reading. Interesting, in Genesis and the Big Bang Theory and MIT educated scientist and Orthodox Jew, has been working to reconcile the teachings of the Torah with scientific knowledge, based upon the assumption that the two are in-sync, and whenever you think that they aren't, one is being misinterpreted.
The fact is, the religious world isn't as one-sided as Slashdot portrays it, but the anti-religious crowd is risking turning themselves into what they hate, a close-minded society that is as dogmatic as the medieval Church.
All that is needed to sufficate a fish is to have a very thin film of oil on the surface that could coat its gills. Most evaporates overtime but it does alot of damage while this happens and again like another poster pointed out, alot of the heavy compounds do not evaporate and sink to the bottom. There are heavy metals and poisons also found in oil that leak. Also the Valdez spill was huge and evaporation alone could not qwell the damage to the environment.
http://saveie6.com/
Where do you get off lumping together environmentalists and animal rights activists? Oh wait, you are really just talking about "liberals", and treating them as one thing, aren't you? I happen to believe that our geo-engineering is part of our future, and is necessary because of huge imbalance we have created. Global warming is a problem. Science enabled us to do it and will give us the power to "fix" it. I am strongly against wasteful use of resources, SUV's as single-passenger daily drivers, and disposable-everything. I am not scared of nuclear energy. I am the opposite of terrified regarding research. I think that we should be throwing several times the resources we do at alternative energy, regardless of what it does to our precious economy. I don't like the fur trade, or cruel experimentation on animals. I enjoy meat. I consider myself a liberal, but that doesn't make me all things liberal.
It is very easy to argue something when you make up a definition. I'll show you what i mean... the book of Revelations predicts huge global catastrophes before the second coming so true believers should be defined as people who should do everything they can to egage in war, starvation, genocides and any and all global catastrophes culminating in a mushroom cloud over Israel or more specifically: Jerulesum . Jesus shouldn't be too far behind. The true believer doing anything less would be going against the word of god.
I think you're wrong in illustrating the global warming / climate change argument in 'right or wrong' terms.
We can't tell, right now, for certain, whether the scientists are right or wrong. We'll only know that in hindsight. The question is "is there a significant chance that they're right?" and if so "what are the consequences?"
You don't have to be 100% convinced that man-made emissions are causing global warming to believe in reducing them. Heck, I'd say you don't even have to be 10% convinced. If you think there's even a significant chance that the current body of literature and science is right, and that there is any further significant chance of these changes causing catastrophic problems down the road, then you would have to be totally daft to say that it's a good idea to just keep burning coal and petroleum at the rate we are (and moreover, increasing the rate of increase of the rate of consumption).
We're talking about the possibility of whole cities and coastal areas being flooded. If there is any chance at all that we can prevent that, we would be silly not to try. This is not the sort of thing that we need to wait to be 100% sure about before we modify our behavior. All we need to do is look at the worst possible consequences of continuing on our current path, and the worst possible consequences of reducing emissions. If we move away from petroleum and it turns out that the climate scientists were wrong, then the worst thing that happens is we spent some money, effectively diverting some funding from one thing to another, on alternative energy, and probably also reduced our demand for petroleum in geopolitically inconvenient areas. But if we do nothing, and the worst of the models turn out to be correct, we could have massive drought, famine, and refugee problems in many parts of the developed world, leading to severe economic and social disruption.
If the consequences are severe enough, you don't need to be sure that a bad thing is going to happen, you just don't take the chance in the first place.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Asking Google to define:propaganda turns up:
And dictionary.com says that propaganda is:
So, really, by definition, propaganda is any deliberate attempt at advocacy. The format and genre of "An Inconvenient Truth" may be that of a documentary, but it is definitely a piece of propaganda.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
No, the best thing to do is not to eschew all the trappings of a system that you hate. The best thing to do is to blend with it and then subvert it.
The "give it to the people" idea is very noble, but only from the perspective of people that make absolutely no difference whatsoever insofar as what really occurs in the world. This is because you are one of the powerless. Therefore, you find it noble if someone with access to power does not use it or gives it up. This, you think, is a voluntary choice to embrace the truth: the idealistic notion that people are equal.
But people are not equal. And that is why you think equality is noble. Because you are on the side of the powerless, and being too weak to take power and achieve your goals, you glorify the renunciation of power by the powerful as a way to reach equality with the powerful.
This of course, will never work.
True nobility is stepping up to the responsibility of obtaining and using power beneficently. A noble act would be to effectively market a movie within the parameters of our society and use the proceeds (power) to support programs that have the potential for positive change (beneficence).
Feel free to send me piles of cash for elucidating this topic!
Global warming was first proposed in the 1950's and first seriously considered in the 1970's, so you're off by a factor of at least two. http://www.pbs.org/now/science/climatechange.html
Einstein's constant was proposed in 1915 in support of his assumption, based on a philosophical disposition and a paucity of data on star velocities, that the universe was on average static. As you noted it lasted until 1931, but the key point in its topple from grace is not the length of time, but the availability of data to measure against. Once a bare minimum of good data was available, it became it obvious that it was not supported, and even Einstein recanted it.
In contrast, global warming has been under serious study for well over 3 decades, during which time the amounts of directly observed and proxy data available (not to mention the tools for modeling and analysis) have improved by orders of magnitude. Yet today the scientific community considers it even better supported than when it was first proposed.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I really like the hand waving the editors use in saying "The Washington Post" when in fact the author of "The Washington Post" article is one of the DVD's producers. I'm not saying there isn't a story here, but how would you react if the CEO of Exxon Mobil wrote a piece complaining about the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, got it published in "The Washington Post" and then had it not only referenced as a TWP article, but got posted on slashdot as being some authoritative opinion on the whole issue.
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
Let's kill off half the earth's population and revert to a stone age level of civilization before a catastrophe of algorean proportions kills off half the earth's population and reverts us to a stone age level of civilization.
"The entire situation is turning into a 'if you're not with us, you're against us' yelling match. "
Haha, nice try. The problem with divisive rhetoric is that the actual person attempting to make such a division, in this case, is the person making the accusation.
The question posed by An Inconvenient Truth is not whether science should be political, but whether politics should be scientific. Even so, trying to drag politics into a matter of environmental science is a distraction - Al Gore is a politician, but the SCIENCE is the star of the show. Any attempt to shame the film for "politicizing" the issues is either missing the point, or trying to distract you from it.
The question posed by David here is also not whether science education should be political, but whether it should be a BUSINESS.
Since when is a movie designed to promote the political career of a politician proper viewing material in schools? What next, force kids to watch campaign commercials? Why not require them to "volunteer" to support Al Gore's next political campaign (or whoever he endorces) in order to get full credit?
Sorry, even if your propoganda is being pushed out of schools by the oil companies, just because the oil companies are doing it for their own selfish reasons doesn't mean that keeping propoganda out of schools is a bad thing.
I believe the crux of the argument is that, if something as well understood as an El Nino escaped prediction a year in advance, how can we make policy and sacrifice based on models that clearly don't take enough into account?
... but somehow it never really is, somehow we just continue on, and somehow things always turn out okay. After hearing that the Sky Is Falling for so many years, people tend to discount it when it stubbornly remains overhead.
The planet has been around for millenia, survived catastrophic events, and has somehow remained habitable since it was first habitable. There are mechanisms in place that we don't know about, or don't know *enough* about, that may or may not kick in in the event of significant warming.
Alarmists continually fail to see their predictions realized. It's the equivalent of the religious guys on the corner with their bells and their signs proclaiming that The End is Nigh!
All I'm saying is that the alarmists among us are doing grave harm to a science that may have an important point to make. That's what alarmists do. If you want to be taken seriously, develop your models to be able to *consistently* and *accurately* predict the weather and climate for a single decade. THEN ask people to look at your extrapolations, backing them up with a proven track record.
People don't want to hear excuses why the model failed. It just points to an inadequate or flawed model that people will instinctually disregard.
Well it's true oil companies want to do one thing, that is sell oil.
Dont be mistaken they dont like to change their main bussines.
They do give the public the idea they are working on alternative feul.
And hydrogen motors and storage designs have been and real efficient cars have been build.
But then they say each time "the infra structure isn't ready for it."
And they are right on that as they dont do anything on that field.
There by effectively killing this market, and protecting their own oil monopoly.
You might say thats not true but it is.
Ive been in Iceland, a country with lots of free natural energy or rather to much..
There is a shell hydrogen pump, its running as an expirment for years now.
The technology is there, but its not realy used, or exported.
The main car feul is still oil there, thats strange.
As iceland has so much green energy they even use it in aluminium refinment
(electricly melting aluminium requires enormous amounts of energy).
So lots of energy but not much of push there to use it.
Or for example to export the hydrogen.
There exist ships who are made for exporting gas.
But they dont travel from iceland, why is that ???
A breaktrough will come (they know that) as price of oil goes slowly upwards.
most of you will remember the oil crisis in the seventies.
Suddenly we got a popup of all kind of alternative feuls and engines.
It's verry close to that, better bateries are invented all the time it seams
But the only ones who can massivly change this 'energy' market.
Wil not like to change their monopoly money.
So this infrastructure wil not soon be rebuild by them.
What i wonder is we in Europe saw how in America lawsuits started agains tabacao industries.
Is that going to happen also for the oil companies, as a force to change them?
Will they be blamed for their lack of actions on infra structural changes.
Or for poisoning the air of my children, and making a climate disaster?.
Perhaps such lawsuits could be used to force them to create such infrastructures.
The car industry has got limitations on feul, but the main oil industry still lacks any kiind of responsebiliy or regulations on this.
While most people would like to change our world in a bit more green world.
And be less dependent of those mid east 'dangerous oil nations'
If we wouldnt use their oil, they would have less money to fund their warr machinery
And perhaps as a by product, there might come some peace also.
I wonder why we dont follow this path, as we can design our own future.
We design our future all the time, but on this subject we often act like kids.
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
True nobility is stepping up to the responsibility of obtaining and using power beneficently. A noble act would be to effectively market a movie within the parameters of our society and use the proceeds (power) to support programs that have the potential for positive change (beneficence).
I thought the message of the film is that each of us needs to have concern for the environment. This knowledge, when each of us acts on it, creates the 'beneficence'. The way you tell it, Gore could have made Mission Impossible 4, and used the enormous proceeds to lobby for beneficent environmental policies. While this would jive with your idea of 'true nobility' it has the ironic effect of not only failing to educate, but also using the force of power to institute programs the environmentally uneducated don't support. Nice personal attacks, BTW.Global warming is a complicated conglomeration of troubling evidence that is based in sound science (I am a physicist so I at least know what that means). However, I do not believe it is appropriate, to "teach" global warming in the context of an elementary school science class anymore than I think it makes sense to show movies on super-fluidity of liquid helium.
Elementary school science education should be squarely focused on teaching the process of science so that they will have to tools to make the sometimes fine distinctions between what is bulls***, what is possible, what is believable, what is reasonable and what has been firmly established to the best of humankind's abilities. Before children can understand the power and limitations of our most advanced ideas, they must first learn them. They must learn the power of objective measurement, the quantification of error and the consistent framework upon which our most prized beacons of understanding are built. This will prepare them to learn quantum field theory, or search for the justification of a political viewpoint, or supply them with tractable rage to motivate them to change the status quo of smoke-and-mirror obfuscation.
The process of science is NOT political. If teaching the process of science were the true focus of elementary school education, the scouring of politics from science would not be needed. Based on the assumptions underlying Ms. David's plea, the problem with the public perception of science is that it is a collection of "facts" or "truths". There are many facts out there, limited time forces a choice to be made. It is at this stage that result based science education becomes inextricably linked to politics.
If, by funding an initiative to "bring standards-based teaching and learning" Exxon Mobil gets to define the standards there is obviously a conflict of interest. However, if we prepare children in school to see science as collections of "facts" we are opening the door for such abuses. Unless we change the fundamental premise of what science IS, the person/corporation with the largest influence, slickest website and smoothest talkers wins the battle of "facts". In this sense, by begging to be a part of it, Ms. David is further entrenching a deeply flawed system of education, ensuring the battle for the real estate of children's minds is one of power and influence.
The inconvenient truth here is that if the public has the science = collection-of-truths view we are failing miserably at educating our public about science and the increasingly horrible consequences of global warming may be but one of many serious problems we will face in our future.
PS
Of course a career in science is rife with politics of all sorts. Grants get awarded and papers get published that are not consistent with the ideals we should be teaching to elementary school students. Over time the constant fear of being shown to be scientifically incompetent and the constant influx of idealistic youngsters keeps science honest on long time scales.
Are you trying to be an apologist for the fossil fuel industry, or are you just arguing for the sake of arguing? If that latter, I can respect that, but if the former, why?
Are you totally unwilling to look beyond what is said and investigate their motive? Whether or not one can be cool without fuel, one can definitely be cool without fossil fuels (although I suspect you and I disagree about what's "cool"). However, I strongly suspect that this movie suggests otherwise. I'll admit I haven't seen it, so correct me if I'm wrong. (Assuming you have seen it.) Still, even it were true that one can't be "cool" without fossil fuels, what's the point? If it's so obvious, as you seem to believe, why does it need to be stated? What's the motivation?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
How do we know that we are causing mass extinctions? It's only been the last century and a half that we've been able to have the manpower to even begin documenting extinctions. For all we know mass extinctions could have been higher in the past. This is something that many people choose to ignore. What I was attempting to point out was that you accuse people of harming the environment and attempt to take steps to mitigate our influence. Yet managing an ecosystem doesn't do that. To mitigate our influence we need to manage ourselves.
and I got loads...
/. Home to the nut jobs. Always easy to get modded down going after global warming nuts, bush haters, gore haters, etc...
/. is truly run by those who hate anyone more successful than themselves. Dreamers all, but sore losers.
You can't read can you?
For someone supposedly with multiple degrees you certainly parrot the atypical responses commoningly found in those who cannot think for themselves, or worse refuse to think as it would bring doubt into their world.
We don't know the magnitude.
Yes I know what the word means, the key is, why use it? If you have to toss out catch phrases using big words it usually means you have nothing to say yourself. Look, we know man alters the equation, we just don't know how. When one day's fact is tomorrows fallacy, especially in the world of environmental science I can't believe how many people become such rabid supporters.
Then again this is
Sometimes I think
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Again. DON'T JUST READ THE WORDS. SEE THE IDEAS.
I am not a grammatician. I believe that you don't have to be to state an idea. If parsing a sentence won an argument then english teachers would be acknowledged as geniuses. And in this case attempts to preserve the ecosystem can and will result in stagnation. For without death, whether of a species or a single member of that species there is no growth. If there is no growth there is stagnation. Earth has evolved and will continue to evolve whether we like it or not. That evolution has caused both the inhabitants and the environment to change. It is no use trying to change that.
The reason it's useful is because it cuts to the chase. A lot of people like to argue "oh, we don't deny global warming, we just don't think man is responsible for it". The adjective "anthropogenic" thereby allows one to point out that all non-ExxonMobil funded climatologists will tell you that man's contribution to global warming is significant and a problem.
It's neither a "catch phrase" nor that particularly big of a word. If you think that, you probably haven't been paying much attention to the debate - which is probably why you think there's still any reasonable doubt as to man's contribution to global warming.
I'm desperately trying to avoid making another joke here that might offend you, but I'm afraid I've already failed...Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
While the spill certainly had a short term damaging effect, it wasn't the permanent destruction everyone said it would be at the time. Go to the bay now and it's a thriving ecosystem. It did less damage than a forest fire over an equivalent area inland would have done.
I am not defending the drunken piloting of the Exxon Valdez, rather I am attacking the absolutist black/white world of the environmentalists.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Btw, since you seem to be doubting that statement, I'll provide a nice link to my thesis for my Master's in Astrophysics (from Georgia State) as well as a link to my project for my Master's in Computer Science. Naturally, I also have a BS in Physics (from Georgia Tech), and I'm working on a Ph.D. in Computer Science. If you like, you can also read my dissertation proposal for the dissertation I'm currently working on.
This is not meant to impress you - just to point out that your skepticism is ill-founded.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
which one has a wider audience that would reach more people? pbs or a publicized movie?
Eugenics was the "Science" of Political Progressives not the KKK
"Progressives" always deny their advancement of eugenics,prohibition,Indian removal,African repatriation and a slew of other
Progreesive programs (not to mention the mass murder and genocide perpetrated by Euro and Asian "Progressives")
The KKKs notions of racial superiority were based on faith not "science"
and it bears repeating Indiana and Pennsylvania "Yankees" had far more Klan members than Southern States
www.greenspirit.com
You say that it is in their interest to suppress or interfere with certain fields. However from my reading of the linked opinion piece and other sources I could find, it looks like the DVD offer was intended for K-12 teachers to use in their classrooms. My experience in public school was that all students took the same science courses until high school. In high school the students divided themselves into two groups; one which took every science course available (in varying orders and with some students taking AP courses) and one which took the bare minimum required to graduate. The latter group isn't relevant to the point we are discussing, because they likely won't be scientists anyway. Therefore, which courses are required would not be very important to these companies. The segregation of scientists into different fields didn't really take place until students were ending high school and beginning college.
It would seem to me that if they wanted to divert the career paths of scientists away from disciplines which threaten their profits, one of their best bets would be to pump a lot of money into general science programs allowing for a better variety of science courses (and more opportunities to divert potential climatologists). Or they could give donations that allow for more interesting classes (which would probably be easier in physics, chemistry or biology than ecology or climatology due to the abilities to hold demonstrations and allow students to conduct simple experiments). If they are pumping money into science education and it significantly increases the total number of students who pursue scientific careers at the expense of a decrease in climatologists, I don't think I would get angry about that. Especially since it would be nearly impossible to use high school donations to prevent scientists from pursuing careers in alternative energy research.
Besides, if a teacher is angry that the NSTA rejected these DVDs, couldn't that teacher cancel membership and use the saved dues to purchase the DVD?
"An Inconsistent Truth"
Libertas in infinitum
Sure would like to see all these Global Warming folks take this challenge: http://www.junkscience.com/challenge.htm/.
Perhaps if the producers of the movie offered to pay for shipping to all NSTA members there would have been no discussion. Instead of fretting about the injustice of it all, maybe they should offer the movie free ( you pay for shipping and handling) to all teachers. I know that NSTA SciGuides has a guide that is balanced and fair in the treatment of oil, coal and alternative power sources. It is called Energy Resources. No editorial influence was exerted by ExxonMobil in its production.
And in this case attempts to preserve the ecosystem can and will result in stagnation.
But who the hell cares?
That's the problem here - you are combining evolution, which is an observation of things happening as they are, with a strict brand of naturalist moralism, which contends that things that are 'natural' are good. But intrinsicly, evolution works against that because it firmly places us as part of nature, and so implies that there is no division between natural and artificial. Animals can change the environment to favour themselves. And if the environment already favours itself, they can make sure things stay the same.
Evolution works by finding high survivability dna datasets with respect to the present environmental factors. There is no concept of 'stagnation', because that idea implies a global desirability measurement that is independent of the environment. What evolution is about is animals matching up to the environment that they live in, and changing the environment merely changes the target criteria that evolution is trying to meet. It isn't inherently good or bad. Stagnation is only 'bad' because a faster evolving creature can outcompete a slow evolving one, in some situation. It's meaningless to say that the planet is itself stagnating, because it isn't competing with anything.
The only good and bad in the whole scenario is with respect to us. We know that we have an impact on the environment, and that we definitely have an impact on the selection criteria for evolution. If we believe that a certain scenario, a certain mix of environment and environmentally matched organisms are bad for us, then we can to a degree control it - if we think that things are actually pretty good the way they are, then the rational thing to do is to preserve the environmental factors that made it this way.
"What I think we should be serious about is sequestering a percentage of fossil fuel production and make sure it is set aside for those industries that produce secondary products that are not possible without petroleum - e.g. pharmaceuticals, plastics, various advanced materials.
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P HENANTHRAQUINONE.htm
You might be able to build a clean-burning coal-fired automobile, given the NECESSITY of doing so (in the not-so-distant future), but can you imagine the difficulty of doing so with no plastics?"
Not to dispute most of your post but coal is a fossil fuel itself and very similar in composition to oil. If you look about you will find that pharmaceuticals, plastics and many industrial base products can be and have been manufactured from coal as well. I seem to remember that high sulfur coal is the preferred raw material for some pharmaceuticals. My father was a coal miner for most his life, the last company he worked for (Mapco) at one time gave its employees a set of outdoor furniture made from a combination of unburnt coal products and fly ash - a burnt coal product. It looked very much like plastic to me and was extremely tough and durable. The practice of using coal as a replacement for oil is mostly a question of economics. It rests not only on the question of which is cheapest at any specific time, but also on infrastructure costs and the old "who gets to make the money issue". All these questions today favor oil. Two, ten or twenty years from now that might not be the case especially considering the US and Canada have huge coal and oil shale/sand reserves. Despite these facts I do agree that the preservation of certain oil reserves might be a good idea.
Wabi Sabi
Matthew
Some quickly Googled links on this topic:
http://www.heritageresearch.com/manufactured_gas_
http://acswebcontent.acs.org/landmarks/industrial
http://chemicalland21.com/specialtychem/finechem/
I'm a bit surprised she didn't go public with that. Now that she's in another field, it's not like she really cares what her previous boss thinks of her, and clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing like that seems tailor-made for the press. What was her reason for not going to the press? Accountability is how we're kept honest; if that breaks down, we get the situation you described. (It's not surprising that the dean didn't punish the fudger; they have the same vested interest. Accountability comes from people with a different angle on the situation.)
And, of course, I didn't say that researchers motivated by grant money never fudge numbers or fake data; I just said that their motivation to do so is hardly comparable to that of a "think tank".
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Did you respond to anything I said? You appear to have simply flung out a bunch of assertions which you're predicting will have some resonance with my political beliefs, about which you know nothing.
You did make the mistake of making an easily falsifiable claim ("If you say something even remotely positive about anything listed above, you are on the fast-track to being labeled a Troll or Flamebate. It is absolutely predictable and enternaining to watch this phenomenon."), and so I'll do you the courtesy of falsifying it for you, by picking something random from your list.
Non-free software has a purpose. I wouldn't tell a professional photographer to switch from their custom tools to using free software. One uses different tools for different reasons. As I am (a) not a professional photographer, (b) cheap, and (c) inclined to tweak and fiddle with things, I use free software for image editing, stitching and so forth. I can understand why a professional would rather use professional tools. While it's not my choice, I certainly don't hate the concept, and the idea that everyone should be forced to use the same tools is repugnant to me.
We'll see if the firestorm of troll/"flamebate" moderations that you predicted come to pass. I should also point out that you got modded up for your whining about the moderation system and the Slashdot Cabal that hates you.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I should get a damned nickel every time I point this out.
There were no warnings put out by the scientific press on an impending ice age in the 1970s. Stop claiming that there were. It's about as clever as that one about "we can't predict whether it will rain next week; how can we predict the climate in twenty years?".
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You didn't respond to anyone's arguments. You put out an assertion, then disclaimed responsibility for it because you phrased it as a question. You avoided responding to any counterarguments (such as requests for you to back up your claims), and whined about being insulted. Here, I'll reenact it with a different claim, and maybe you'll see what I'm talking about.
A: Is Pentavirate a baby-eating Furry?
B: You're an idiot. Do you have any evidence to back that up? You're just talking smack.
A: How dare you call me an idiot? Why, my delicate sensibilities are overwhelmed. I may faint. All I did was ask a simple question. What a savage place.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca