Slashdot Mirror
Of Diamond Planets, Climate Change, and the Scientific Method
A few weeks ago, we discussed the discovery of a diamond planet in orbit around a pulsar. One of the researchers behind the discovery has now written a followup article about reaction to the news from the media and laypeople. Quoting:
"The attention we received was 100% positive, but how different that could have been. How so? Well, we could have been climate scientists. ... Instead of sitting back and basking in the glory, I suspect we’d find a lot of commentators, many with no scientific qualifications, pouring scorn on our findings. People on the fringe of science would be quoted as opponents of our work, arguing that it was nothing more than a theory yet to be conclusively proven. There would be doubt cast on the interpretation of our data and conjecture about whether we were “buddies” with the journal referees. If our opponents dug really deep they might even find that I’d once written a paper on a similar topic that had to be retracted. Before long our credibility and findings would be under serious question. But luckily we’re not climate scientists."
Not everybody has any gripe with climate scientists because they are climate scientists. However, if a scientist, be they even climate scientists, decide to turn political, then they should expect to be treated just as any other political personality. That includes crap, hate-mail, scorn, etc. Sorry, but such is life. You don't like the smoke, stay out of the damned kitchen.
Well...yea. The discovery of a diamond planet isn't used by politicians to create bad policy that doesn't properly address the concerns created by the discovery, and cost people unnecessary amounts of money.
Really, just because climate science has immediate implications in the real world doesn't make it politics nor the scientists doing that research political. People need to get their heads out of their butts and realize that science is science and if they don't like the implications of that then it is their own tough crap. Not that this will ever happen or that any climate scientists can ever expect to actually be treated in a fair, rational, or even civil manner by the barbarian hordes.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
The difference is that when a scientist says "we believe that there is a diamond planet" people either say "cool" or "I doubt that, but it doesn't really matter". When climate scientists say is often used to justify restricting in various ways things that most people either rely on or enjoy. That's the difference.
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
Tell a man there are a billion stars in the galaxy and he'll believe you; tell him the paint is wet and he'll touch it to find out....
Galileo once "turned political", that is he described scientific facts that had a political impact. No wonder he was treated like a political ! Damned pseudo scientists that go into politics !
The climate scientists are the experts. You're not suddenly compelled to rip apart the latest Computer Science study as an armchair computer scientist because you haven't studied it. Why are people suddenly compelled to call climate scientists -- who are basically the same figureheads in academia that computer scientists are -- into question? When did everyone get PhDs in climate science? Why wasn't I given one? And why are all the major journals publishing and defending global warming studies only to be ignored?
Surprise surprise, no one cares. You can point out the scientific consensus or ask why there are no political witch hunts in other fields and people just don't seem to even respond to my concerns because they just saw a two minute YouTube video and suddenly they're informed and ready to discredit someone who has devoted their life to studying this field and reading papers. CFCs were bad, that was okay, everyone gobbled that up. Everyone saw maps of the ozone layer and totally trusted the scientists that it was CFCs doing it ... not just a regular natural process. Show someone a map of ice coverage on the Arctic Circle and tell them it's greenhouse gases at work. Suddenly the same scientists are lying to them. What the hell is different about these two scenarios? I've pretty much given up the fight ...
My work here is dung.
I am still waiting for the discovery of a planet with a gold counterweight continent.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
The problem is that to climate denialists, once you are a climate scientist you've already "turned political." It's inherent to the profession according to their view (although oddly enough, the few scientists (maybe I should put quotes around that) who put forward theories that suggest that the currently accepted theories are flawed never get this label...).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
What's the deal with these types of posts. I don't care about climate change, politics, or whether the science curriculum in some state is anti-evolutionary. If I want to read that type of news, there are thousands of other websites that I would visit. I come to slashdot for "News For Nerds, Stuff that Matters." Get back to the regularly scheduled programming already.
Nobody's demanding trillions of dollars in infrastructure changes because of the diamond star. Nobody's using the coercive force of law to dictate what mileage automobiles get becaus of the diamond star. Nobody's outlawing 100W incandescent light bulbs because of the diamond star.
I'm pretty sure diamond planets are just an evil scientist plot for wealth redistribution, primarily to put DeBeers out of business. ...there, happy? ;)
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
Great thread !
The reason is that the diamond planet is not being used to advance a political objective. Climate science is. It's always unfortunate to see science politicized, but global warming mongers are abusing science to create an atmosphere of urgency in order to pass legislation to satisfy a leftist agenda. Sorry to say, but that's the truth. All of science suffers, but to global warming proponents it's worth the cost if they win.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It's to be expected when scientists piss off the the billionaire planet-raping fossil-fuel mongers such as the Koch bastards.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
Not sure what the discussion of climate science has to do with the discovery of a diamond planet, except clearly the author is bitter about how the public has scrutinized climate science. Yes, the "method" of science is similar in the disciplines of astrology and climate science - in general - but not even close in practice. Yes, the public has not widely adopted what the majority of scientists believe about global warming (and what the majority of scientists believe depends on which scientist you ask!) But so what? There's good reasons for that.
This whole "If you're not a scientist, then you can't possibly disagree with what a scientist says" mantra is getting really old. It's wrong. Regardless where I stand on man-made global warming, no matter what, scientists and science are not infallible. I don't blindly have to accept whatever Mr. Scientist lists as absolute fact just because I have no degree. More importantly, statistical methods and conclusions from correlated data (as in the global warming debate) just DON'T carry the same logical force as objective, emperical, experimental science - they couldn't possibly.
Besides, the author ignores the fact that the public and media scrutinity occurred because scientists themselves can't agree on the facts. Either side you look at is calling the other side straight up bad scientists. Fake scientists. Or they'll ignore that the other side has scientists at all and say "oh, it's just news pundits and politicians who don't know anything saying we're wrong". However, the media for the most part simply framed debates occurring within the realm of science itself. Scientist vs. scientist, not Stupid Joe Plumber vs. Scientist. Sorry, but scientists brought this one on themselves, and lashing out by calling the public clueless mental midgets like this jerk in the article suggests we've been, that's not going to help you out.
Brilliant.
When climate scientists say is often used to justify restricting in various ways things that most people either rely on or enjoy.
I challenge you to present me one published paper where a climate scientist tells me what I can and can't do. Or even where they merely suggest restrictions of what a person can do. All the papers I read say things to effect of "In X years, the northern ice cap could recede to Y size" or "Greenhouses gases have contributed to a rise in temperatures." What you want to do with that information is up to you. It's not the place of scientists to call for political or even international policy on carbon credits or cap and trade or whatever you want to do to control this problem. So why do the scientists get attacked? Attack the politicians and say "I'm okay with fucking up the Earth for my children because I want the freedom to buy a Hummer that gets 8 miles to the gallon." Use your voice and stand up for yourself, don't attack the scientists. They aren't setting the policies, they're just telling you what is happening. What's that? That sentence makes you sound like an idiot? Well, go ahead and attack the scientists then but be warned you've got an awful lot of targets.
My work here is dung.
We're at war with the Chinese in effect, and they're winning because we insist on playing by the rules...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
The article hints at this but never says it outright: The reason climate change is controversial among those with little or no scientific background or training while diamond planets are not is because climate change research affects many governmental regulation policies. If the diamond planet idea is wrong, then corrections to theories are made, and the field moves on. If it's right, then it may contribute to the development of helpful technologies and discoveries. But if a climate change idea is wrong, then corrections to theories are made, and the field moves on, and either the world economy has suffered for no reason or people are experiencing famines that could have been prevented. Thus, controversial.
The diamond planet created a lot of attention and excitement because people could fantasize about a mining mission to bring back tons of diamonds (even though the reality is that such travel will likely be impossible for centuries, and perhaps forever).
But climate science brings out the naysayers and layman disbelievers in hordes because it invokes thoughts of government regulations and/or taxes aimed at reducing emissions.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
That's like saying a congressman becomes a scientist when he mentions inertia. Your flawed logic does not work here.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
The biggest difference is that we seriously lack any aliens trying to skew things into their own agenda when it comes to astrophysics. The oil industry and much of the rest of the energy sector pours billions upon billions into spin and astroturfing. I do not think this is normal people except for a few vacuum heads that just rolls with the flow.
HTTP/1.1 400
statistical methods and conclusions from correlated data (as in the global warming debate) just DON'T carry the same logical force as objective, emperical, experimental science
Do you really believe that statistical analysis is unique to climate science? What do you think CERN publishes? What do you think its terabytes of storage are for? What do you think biologists, and epidemiologists, and biochemists, and evolutionary biologists, and developmental researchers, and medical researchers publish in their journals? What about chemists? What do you think these guys did to pull the tiny variances in data out that betrayed the existence of a planet made of diamond?
You really have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Besides, the author ignores the fact that the public and media scrutinity occurred because scientists themselves can't agree on the facts.
The fraction of climate science researchers who come down on the side of anthropogenic global warming is over ninety eight percent. You won't find a stronger concensus on a front-line research issue anywhere. There is no scientific debate on this issue. It's settled.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Hey, no mention of the CERN experiments with cosmic rays and cloud cover. How odd...
Anyway, the main difference as far as I can tell is falsifiability. We've all read claims that the Earth will keep getting warmer. And when we actually observed that the warming trend has stalled, then a few articles will come out an admit that. Then they'll blame Chinese air pollution or ocean currents (i.e. an admission that they aren't really sure what's going on).
And after that you'll get articles saying "no, the Earth is still warming."
It's frankly a confused mess.
You throw into the mix that the Earth gets warmer and cooler periodically and that 1970 is not the basis to compare every other year, climate scientists have a difficult problem to sort out. To claim that they are as certain as other branches of science seems odd since there are so many variables that interact with each other.
So when climate scientists produce models about the future AND they accurately predict the future to a sufficient degree with some specificity, then skepticism would be silly. As the articles trying to excuse the last 15 years of non-warming show, they aren't there yet.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The basic "hammer" in every scientists tool-chest. It allows you to see things as they are and simply not give a shit about what anyone "thinks", no matter how many letters they have after their names. Even Nobel prize winners have said some pretty amazingly false things. It's important to focus on where they were right.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If you found a cheese planet, it also would not be important.
However, if you found an evil planet and claimed it was a threat to the earth and needed major funding, ... Then we would question it.
If it makes you feel better, I think you are wrong about the planet being made of diamond. Maybe a mixture of stuff with an average density about equal to diamond?
Even though a diamond planet interpretation might not receive the same popular scrutiny and criticism as a claim made about climate science, it isn't the popular scrutiny that says anything about the underlying science. What he's talking about is the price you pay for doing science that is of broad interest and that has big implications for society. If you play in that field, you should *expect* to be sometimes criticized for ridiculous and bogus reasons. You should *expect* to be accused of some nefarious ulterior motive. You should *expect* the reasons for your funding to be questioned. You should *expect* them to either rage on about the taxpayer dollars being spent or alternatively that you're just an industrially-funded shill (i.e. you can't win with either funding source).
There are always some nutbars out there that don't know how science works and that think anything contrary to their wishes about the world must be some "gigantic global conspiracy to silence the truth", especially if those nutbars could potentially lose a lot of money, respect, or some other psychologically worrisome thing if the science turned out to be correct. It's true, the reaction can sometimes be surprising to scientists quietly and honestly toiling away on a particular puzzle, but it really shouldn't be. Science is a threat to some people precisely because it doesn't respect political boundaries. It searches where the questions are and where the data is. Some people in power are fearful of that, and they bristle at the thought that science might intrude on their power. They'll use any trick they can to tear down the science, no matter how scientifically well-founded the interpretation may be. As a scientist you have to have the courage to say "You can personally believe whatever you want, but all the scientific data indicates 2+2=4, not 5." Sometimes the price paid for saying that publicly can be pretty high (re: Galileo back in the day), and, yeah, you can sympathize if you are a scientist that is working in a field that is more obscure and doesn't draw that kind of attention. But you have to respect the scientists that tough it out and do good science that is relevant to a lot of people regardless of the flak they are likely to endure as a result.
The difference between the diamond planet discovery and climate science is politics. The reason amateurs attack the climate science has nothing to do with the science and everything to do with a political objective. But the same can be said for the supporters. Al Gore is not a climate scientist. He has a significant financial interest in climate science reaching a particular conclusion. He has significant investment in the whole business of climate change.
Now, I'll agree that most who attach climate science are kooks. But that's not the real problem. The real problem is that the whole issue is so incredibly polarized that no legitimate critique of climate science ever gets a voice because it is universally written off with the overwhelming number of idiots on the right. According to "everyone", climate science is 100% settled and there is no questioning it. But once you get past the people pushing the political agendas and talk to the real scientists, you'll find that the attitude isn't so set in stone. They want to keep studying it so they can understand more about it because they don't all believe that it's 100% set in stone.
Scientists want to learn more. They want to understand the incredibly complex system that is our environment. They want to know more about how things work so they can make better predictions about what is coming. They don't care about pushing a political agenda. But they're too busy working on research to tell the general public that the politicians are misrepresenting their findings.
Astronomy - specially when it comes to stellar evolution - is one of the few sciences where almost all we know is not directly observed, yet highly accepted as fact. Perhaps is because it doesn't really matter, but is fun and does help us understand the universe, even if some details may be proven wrong someday. Climate change science on the other hand, is still mostly theory, but has been taken over by a few who mean to get rich off it all the while using it to increase their power and control over others (and I'm talking about the scientists, here). That the scientists either fail to understand this, or have bought into the agenda (perhaps to ensure their grant $$$$), means they deserve to have their findings examined closely.
His logic is not flawed at all. It's your analogy that's broken. To be more apt, your comparison would need the politician mentioning inertia and demanding all of science do something differently that is also costly right now. Remember when someone from Indiana tried to change the value of Pi, think more along those lines.
And yes, that is what some climate scientists are/where doing in the name of their science. James Hansen comes to mind directly, but the CRU climate research unit had some similar models of political punditry. The IPCC was pretty much a political organization with the intent of showing a connection between global warming and humans. Only the true believers refuse to see that most of climate science has been politicized when it comes to global warming
They assume an ulterior motive for anyone who doesn't believe them. Skeptics are labeled as "deniers," purposely invoking the Holocaust.
This whole article is nothing but flamebait. C'mon, /. You're better than that.
GOD DAMNIT READ HIS POST.
You're the third person to claim he's attacking the scientist(s), and you even quoted the freaking sentence!
Often used? By the scientist(s)?
Nope! Turns out he said absolutely nothing about whether or not the scientist(s) is(are) wrong, or right, or ordering you around, or simply providing information. He said that the information provided by the scientist(s) in question is used by *someone* to justify restrictions. You are attacking the OP for saying the exact same thing you yourself are saying.
All clear?
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
And if they did, would this affect the quality of their research, or their expertise, or their credibility in their field?
Your point is of course that nobody cares what scientists waffle on about, until those conclusions might affect them personally, and possibly in a negative way (positive conclusions are readily accepted, of course). At which point, these people will vigorously shoot the messenger in their efforts to cling to their precious status quo.
We know that nobody likes change or uncertainty, but when a few thousand highly experienced & credible climate scientists get back from doing their jobs and almost unanimously conclude that change is upon us, and that the costs of ignoring the coming change dramatically outweigh the costs of preparing for it - it's time to pull our heads out of the sand and start listening to these particular scientists, just like we listened to all the others over the last 500 years.
Reality does not care about our beliefs or wishes. Adapt, or suffer the consequences.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Yes, Galileo turned into a political persona, and that is what brought him to the inquisition. His own scientific work was not the cause of his troubles with the church. Him advocating the Copernicus ideas, and, even more, him writing a book, which alienated his most powerful protector, the pope, resulted in the famous trial. Luckily, being sentenced to house arrest left him with a lot of time to write the books that began modern physics. Incidentally, Galileo could not take fire well, he actually publicly denounced the heliocentric system.
In what part of his post does he so much as imply that any science, study, or related is wrong?
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
Fail. Scientists discover a diamond the size of a planet, which is cool. What do they do next? Figure out its mass in carats, which would be cool? Nope. One of them asks their girlfriend to marry them and instead of giving her a ring, names the diamond planet after her, which would be really cool? Nope. Lots of things the could have done that were cool. Instead, they attack people that think global warming, global cooling, global man-is-responsible-for-everything-so-we-need-to-stop-all-economic-development-as-a-front-to-freeze-population-growth, etc. is a crock of crap. Not cool.
They can't predict the climate next week, next month, next year. All you ever hear about is "weather this {week,month,season,year} has been {better,worse} than predicted." With all due respect to climate scientists, we've had a few dozen years with computers powerful enough to even come close to modeling the weather, and that's assuming there aren't long-term seasons based on the tilt of the earth, gravity changes as planets revolve around the sun with us, mini black holes, solar flares, less fish in the oceans, cows farting, or a thousand other things. Personally, I'm all for a shift to clean energy, clean everything--I like my house clean so why not my planet? What I'm not for is grandstanding politicians predicting the end of mankind where the only proposed solutions make most of mankind into serfs dependent upon the whims of the lords for transportation and energy.
Cadillac built a thorium-powered concept car that **never** needs its gas tank filled. The military has extracted energy with net-positive results by harnessing twists in spacetime that the earth causes as it spins. Sunchips makes potato chip bags that decompose into compost in a few weeks. Trees consume massive amounts of "greenhouse gases" and produce lots of oxygen. Then there's the really radical concept of making *shock* durable products that don't need to be recycled or decomposing a few months after you bought them. All around us is free energy and ways to make everything biodegradable and clean. But the people with money and power from selling *limited* energy realize that although there would be massive profits selling *limitless* energy in the beginning, eventually prices will fall to barely if anything above cost, i.e. zero or close to it. And instead of finding some middle ground where they can keep their profits and power while benefiting everyone, they propose ways to gain more profits and more power that screw everyone over and hijack science to try to justify it. And when people doubt the legitimacy of their claims, they resort to doing things like claiming space aliens will attack us if we don't reduce our carbon emissions, which just makes the whole thing seem like a joke whether it's serious or not. (Seriously, Google "global warming aliens attack" and see.)
N Rays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_ray)
Geocentric worldview
Flat Earth
All models accepted by the majority of scientists and right-thinking people. "Climate Science" with respect to AGW is mostly computer modelling and about as accurate as our economic models. I'll believe the dire predictions and the causality relationship when they manage to forecast 5 years of global trends correctly, without having to rebrand themselves.
I'd also like to point out that most people who accept AGW don't have the necessary background either. They simply choose to trust the conclusions made by others whereas the "deniers" choose to distrust them. No real difference in smarts.
"Let me give you a lesson in practical politics." Senator Burt looked at his wristwatch, leaned back and smiled. "It is a mistake," he said, "to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort.
"Now then, young man, don't ask me to stop the Pumping. The economy and comfort of the entire planet depend on it. Tell me, instead, how to keep the Pumping from exploding the Sun.
Lamont said, "There is no way, Senator. We are dealing with something here that is so basic, we can't play with it. We must stop it."
"Ah, and you can suggest only that we go back to matters as they were before Pumping."
"We must."
"In that case, you will need hard and fast proof that you are right."
"The best proof," Lamont said stiffly, "is to have the Sun explode."
Isaac Asimov 1972.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
The scientists HAVE NOT TURNED POLITICAL, it was the likes of Inhofe, Miloy, Watts, Morano and a host of other NON-SCIENTISTS who found that their status-quo would be adversely affected by any policy changes if the SCIENCE were acted on are the ones who turned climate science in a poltical battle. Exactly the same strategy followed by the tobacco industry to discredit those scientists whose work showed the link between lung cancer and smoking. Indeed Steve Miloy, who devised the tobacco strategy freely admits he suggested using the same strategy for climate science to the oil/gas industry. Thus you get Dennis Avery who worked for the tobacco industry via the Hudson Instititue suddenly becoming a climate scientist even though he has NEVER done any work or even taken a course in either meteorology or climatology. Given that "distinguished scientists" were need to back the disinformation/politicalization campaign they tried people Fredrick Sietz. Unfortunately Sietz said in an interview in May 2006 “‘They didn’t want us looking at the health effects of cigarette smoking,’ but it nevertheless served the tobacco industry’s purposes. Throughout those years, the industry frequently ran ads in newspapers and magazines citing its multi-million-dollar research program as proof of its commitment to science—and arguing that the evidence on the health effects of smoking was mixed.” Unfortunately Sietz didn't serve either the tobacco or the science deniers very well. In a 1989 internal memo from tobacco company Philip Morris explaining that Seitz “is quite elderly and not sufficiently rational to offer advice.” Then Arthur Robinson and Sietz got into further trouble with the Oregon Petition. Arthur Robinson and Sietz along with the Exxon-backed George C. Marshall Institute, co-published the infamous “Oregon Petition” claiming to have collected 17,000 signatories to a document arguing against the realities of global warming. The petition and the documents included were all made to look like official papers from the prestigious National Academy of Science. They weren’t, and this attempt to mislead has been well-documented. Along with the petition there was a cover letter from Seitz. Also attached to the petition was an apparent “research paper” titled: Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. The paper was made to mimic what a research paper would look like in the National Academy’s prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy journal. This was just the first salvo in the politization of science in order to stall off any policy changes. When the oil/gas industry started dumping metric buttloads of money into the science denial project all sorts of "climater scientists" came out of the wood work. People like Ian Pilmer, washed up and retired geologist, Tim Ball, who has not published a single research paper in 11 years in ANY TOPIC, Tony Watts who isn't a meteorologist, but claims he is, Gerhard Gerlich, a physcist who says the first and second laws of thermodynamics are wrong
Given that science's purview is the study of how the world works(whether purely theoretical, basic research, or applied), it is almost inevitably going to overlap with the "political" at some point.
You can make virtually no substantive claims about the workings of terrestrial objects without being "political" in some sense. Biology? Nope. Geology, not bloodly likely. Climateology? Maybe as a smiley TV weather guy.
From Galileo's Wiki page:
Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which appeared to attack pope Urban VIII and thus alienated him and the Jesuits who had both supported Galileo up until this point.
So you may go ahead and remove the "quotes" from "turned political" because Galileo really did TURN POLITICAL.
As for this topic, those that pay for the research get the answers they want. When oil companies pay for climate research, the results usually favor the oil companies. When governments pay for research, the results favor expanding government's power. This is a reality of life and it works both ways. For example, if a scientist were to release seven papers calling all industrialized nations pay for the development of third world so they could skip the inefficient phase of industrialization, it is unlikely that he will receive much government funding (from industrialized nations anyway). Likewise, don't expect scientists that contributed to "An Inconvenient Truth" to get much funding from oil companies.
But for comparison purposes, Exxon spent $23 million for climate research in 10 years. The US government spent $79 billion on climate research and technology since 1989 - to be sure, this funding paid for things like satellites and studies, but it's 3,500 times as much as anything offered to sceptics. (Source) Exxon also spent $600 million on biofuels research.
It's not a matter of dishonesty. When considering who funding entities want to give their money to, they are not going to give it to someone who has consistently disagreed with them in the past. They are going to find someone who has already agreed with their position and fund that guy. Just as companies that support politicians are probably not doing it to sway a politician's position. It makes more sense to fund a politicians that already agrees with your position (with the exception of companies that support both sides). Government are no different. Just look at the board of the National Science Foundation and research the names on that list. You will find that many of them come from either "environmentally conscious" organizations or have been favorable to left causes in the past. For example, let's look at the very first guy on the list:
Mark R. Abbott is Dean and Professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University (OSU). He received his B.S. in Conservation of Natural Resources from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1974 and his Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis, in 1978. ...
Abbott was appointed by the governor as vice-chair of the Oregon Global Warming Commission. The commission was established by the Oregon Legislature to oversee the state's efforts in climate change mitigation and adaptation.
So he graduated from Berkeley and was vice chair of the Oregon Global Warming Commission. Remember, this guy is one of the leading voices in deciding who gets government research grants.
But, are scientists biased? Yes! If they were not, you would not see climate change alarmists releasing paper after paper saying climate change is a problem and you wouldn't see climate change deniers releasing paper after paper saying that it is not a big deal. Scientists perform experiments that support what they believed before the experiment started. A scientists won't form hypothesis prior to an experiment that he doesn't believe.
The Good People of DeBeers would like to remind you that, while "A Diamond is Forever"(tm), any extraterrestrial diamonds that may or may not have been discovered by astronomers, likely just making things up in an attempt to grub for telescope time, are not a worthy substitute for DeBeers Genuine Diamonds, harvested by hand from the heart of Our Home.
A xeno-diamond says "My love for you is cold, alien, and almost unimaginably distant, just like this diamond."
A good, old-fashioned terrestrial diamond, however, "My love for you is worth dying for, like the poor sucker who mined this thing may just have..."
Make the right choice, or die unloved and alone!
A few settled psychological facts :
Settled psychological facts? This should be good
1) violent tv causes people to act violently, whether we're talking adults or kids, low or high iq, ... the smaller the kids, the more pronounced the effect, but there is a definite effect even on 50-year-olds
This isn't settled at all. The best anyone has done is correlate violent media with violence (not causation) which can easily be explained by saying "violent people like violent media". And until someone proves causation, it's the only conclusion that can really be made. If you think this is settled, show evidence.
2) violent computer games are much, much worse than tv, and also cause violent behavior. Including adults
Even less settled than above, several studies have proven that violent video games aren't any worse than other violent media. Surprise, surprise, still no one has proved causation. Millions of people enjoy violent video games and the violent crime rates have gone down. There's a correlation shown between the violent games and aggression, but this doesn't prove anything about violent behavior nor causation. Sorry, try again.
3) the basic principle of communism "to each according to need, from each according to ability" doesn't work. At all. In every conceivable test, everybody finds ways to improve their needs and decrease their abilities ... A majority of people will lie to claim more entitlements, in some studies up to 90%.
This one I can agree with, that a majority of people will lie to claim as much as they can. It's a basic human nature to be greedy, and finding people who won't lie for greed is hard to do.
So how can one possibly defend the claim that something like climate science isn't massively influenced by societal pressure ?
On the same note, how can one possibly claim that the detractors to climate science aren't massively influenced by societal pressure? The difference is that the climate science has been repeatably tested over and over. By hundreds of thousands of scientists. Not only that, but it makes sense to an observer of the way things work too.
Galileo did not turn political. Rather the political regime at the time decided what was doing was political. Big difference.
I agree, and would like to add that most of the bad publicity and lies are coming from the folks who have the most to loose if we use more renewable energy sources and the folks they pay to put out their lies. Fox News is a good example of the propaganda machine.
Wether there is a diamond planet doesn't really matter. However, global warming (oh I'm sorry "climate change") requires huge economic implications, such as lucrative carbon taxes. It's healthy to be mistrustful of scientists who have a vested interest in proving a particular outcome. Ignoring the changes of the sun completely in global warming studies is idiotic.
A lot of money stands to be lost by companies if governments intervene based on the climate scientists' projections. Diamond planets, though valuable, and more interesting than saying we discovered even more carbon in the universe, cannot be harvested in a reasonable time frame with current technology. No large sums of money lost now by this observation is what it comes to.
As the two ACs noted, Gally was in fact a very political motherfucker. Truth be told, guy was an asshole. He assumed he was right even in areas he was utterly wrong(comets) and pretty much managed to alienate all the other major astronomers of his time, which is why when he was put on trial none of them really tried to defend him.
The discovery wasn't going to change anyone's life nor call for anyone to make changes in their life. Since it was non-threating, there wasn't any cost to accepting the discovery. People that heard of the discovery made an intelligent decision to accept this based on the cost of not-accepting it means they would have to learn more about the subject and the research. They just weren't willing to do that.
Eh, could it be that perhaps climate scientists are already aware of the problems of chaotic systems given that weather is one of the prime examples of chaotic system or would that not fit into your nice little theory that it is all bogus?
I tried googling this, and lo and behold, the first hit is this which patiently explains the problem of chaos and the difference between weather prediction and long-term climate prediction:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/chaos-and-climate/
Please do not spread misinformation. You are a good example of what the OP is objecting too, someone who doesn't know anything about the field at all but still think he/she is qualified to discredit it.
Yeah, it's weird. I heard an analogy yesterday on TV from a politician, AKA one who has to make a decision on what to do from a government point of view.
You go the hospital and have no less than 100 trained doctors examine you, 98 say you're sick with a certain illness, but 2 say you're fine and should stop worrying. Now what do you do?
The low impact is because that argument is dumb. It is inconsequential that this group may have found a planet made of diamond. It received a lot of attention because people place a certain significance on diamond, and a diamond that large is particularly interesting. No other reason. Seriously, imagine if they had found a crystalline planet made of silicon or germanium.
Most people - including scientists, sadly - assume a scientific conclusion implies some public policy. That's the hang up. In its entirety.
46 & 2
There was a time when, based on their observations, scientists thought there were canals on Mars. The reception of that news was probably mostly positive too.
One of the reasons this kind of news might be positively received, is that its veracity is of no consequence to anyone. Other than providing fodder for science fiction stories, it had little impact on peoples' lives. No one demanded that something be done about the Mars "canal" situation.
The topic of climate change is a different matter. The public perceives that climate observations are not conclusive, are somewhat subject to interpretation, and are hampered by the fact that no one can predict, with 100% accuracy, what the weather will be like next Tuesday, let alone next year, or even fifty years from now. Despite this, the public are asked to make sacrifices, and spend huge sums of money, based on interpretations of data that only a few can understand.
When scientific discoveries are benevolent, irrelevant, or beneficial, it is no surprise that they are positively received.
Proverbs 21:19
This has to be one of, if not the, biggest piece of tripe ever posted on /. and that's quite an accomplishment. If reality is nothing but a 'consensus' then we can simply wish for mana to fall from heaven, eh? What sort of bullshit mumbo jumbo is this?
Let me point out a few inconvenient FACTS for you. That "Ivory tower education-fascist complex" (talk about over educated buzz-word laden ivory tower technocratic BS speech right there) brought your ass all the modern conveniences of life you count on and without which your ass would be sitting naked in a cave. Let me also point out that you have SOME BALLS telling anyone who is and isn't a "Real American". You might want to get out a bit more, your little narrow minded world view is pathetic.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
But for comparison purposes, Exxon spent $23 million for climate research in 10 years. The US government spent $79 billion on climate research and technology since 1989 - to be sure, this funding paid for things like satellites and studies, but it's 3,500 times as much as anything offered to sceptics. (Source [abc.net.au]) Exxon also spent $600 million on biofuels research.
... which is dishonest by itself. Most of the money goes to weather monitoring and weather forecasting. Some of the largest computer clusters in the Top 500 list are purposebuilt for weather simulation and weather prediction. Many civilian satellites are weather satellites. The weather modelling got pretty good in recent years. While about 20 years back weather forecasts very valid only for about 24 hrs to 36 hrs, today's models are good at predicting the weather for the next three days, and the week forecasts are often correct.
So the infrastructure to collect weather data, to process it in simulations and to build models which resemble real weather processes is there - built for weather forecasting. And if someone starts to take all that raw data, processes it with all the dirty tricks and adaptions weather forecasters have developed to overcome faults and systematic errors, and which proved themselves in thousands of weather forecasts in the last 30 years, and then applies the same models that are so successful for the foreseeable future, to longer periods of the past and finds out that they work remarkably well even for runs over 50 years or 100 years and resemble the raw data results for those last 50 or 100 years, and then let the same models run 50 or 100 years in the future, he suddenly is a dishonest liar, whose only purpose in life is to get grant money from an overreaching government in its quest to control everybody?
Most climate scientist run experiments all the time - they try to predict the weather for the next days or weeks or months. They are pretty good at it. But a large share of the U.S. population (AGW deniers are much less in other countries) doesn't like the conclusions they come to, if they run their models for a longer period, and suddenly climate scientists are an evil bunch.
AGW deniers should stop believing the weather forecasts. It's pure hypocrisy to believe weather forecasts to be mostly correct and at the same time AGW to be a conjured scheme to funnel government money to climate scientists pockets. Because in fact they are the same people responsible for both, and the same theories backing their predictions.
Looking outside. Now. I see above average rain and I feel below average temperatures.
So obviously we should be concerned about global cooling and increased rain- so no water shortages. Right?
The problem with you half-witted advocates of a dubious pseudo-science is that you seem completely incapable of coherent argument.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Galileo was never politically motivated --powerful people threatened by his findings made it political. Unlike modern climate iconoclasts, he wasn't being bankrolled by Exxon-Mobil to contradict mountains of evidence.
Ask me about my sig!
Climate science has policy implications: Every bit of new pro-climate change science that comes out aids the government in justifying its own expansion: New laws, new regulations, new or expanded bureaucracies, new taxes. Exoplanetary research has none of these policy implications. In a word, people don't care enough to pick apart the research.
Worse, climate science is very often done by scientists either directly working for governments or being funded by governments via grants, so when the conclusions of these scientists benefit said governments -- providing them with justifications for expanding their powers -- there's a clear conflict of interest. Any thinking person should see their conclusions as suspect, just as suspect as when research "denying" climate change is funded by the oil companies. Exoplanetary research suffers from no such conflicts of interest.
That's the difference.
Liberty in your lifetime
But, are scientists biased? Yes! If they were not, you would not see climate change alarmists releasing paper after paper saying climate change is a problem and you wouldn't see climate change deniers releasing paper after paper saying that it is not a big deal. Scientists perform experiments that support what they believed before the experiment started. A scientists won't form hypothesis prior to an experiment that he doesn't believe.
Um... Wow... Such a misunderstanding of the scientific process.
Yes, a scientist does form a hypothesis prior to doing the experiment.
No, a scientist does *NOT* "perform experiments that support what they believed before the experiment started".
A scientist forms a hypothesis, and then performs an experiment in an attempt to *disprove* the hypothesis. Falsification of a hypothesis is one of the cornerstones of science, if your hypothesis can't be proven false, it has no value to science. If it *can* be proven false, but well designed experiments and independent data consistently fail to do so, that's evidence that your hypothesis is valid. If that hypothesis also allows you to make predictions which can be tested and found correct, then you've got a nice scientific theory to work with.
It's sequestered carbon.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Not being a climate scientist myself, I'd say that it's better to listen to the majority among those who are climate scientists when making important decisions in this regard. Unless I know something that they don't know -- something that I'm very, very sure of -- then I simply have to assume that the odds would not be in my favor if I were to oppose their wisdom. Yet many people, politicians especially, don't seem to understand this. Why?
It's similar to some of the most intractable problems involving our beloved Internet. While most of us would probably agrees that its birth marked a revolution in the development of our civilization, it seems that if it were up to the telecom and media industries, the clock would be turned back. It sounds crazy. Yet many people, politicians especially, seem to agree with them. Why?
In both cases the answer is the same: money talks, no matter how persuasive reason may be (let alone bullshit).
The problem is that the industries involved in these examples are extremely conservative. They know very well how things are and how they used to be. They also know that making any changes to their old and relatively successful business strategies is expensive and risky. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Unless they can think of a good reason for doing so on their own, that attitude always makes them inclined to resist changing their behavior. Lucky for them (and unfortunately for the rest of us), money has always been able to buy influence, of both the popular and the political kind.
Thus, reasoning and progressive people everywhere will always be forced to contend with the unreasoning and conservative influence of money and all of the ridiculous arguments that it causes.
Here is the CRU Date plotted against time.
http://www.io-solutions.com/WorldTemps1700-2011wAnoAveCount.jpg
That is all the data mind you. The gray dots are station data. The GISS Anomaly Temp is in red. The Simple Mean is in Orange. The black on the bottom is the number of measurements taken. The darker the gray dot the more stations reported that temperature.
Yes this is sophomoric, but basically it tells me someone is playing Charting games to make this look terrible.
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
Problem: Too cold
Homo sapiens solution: Put on herbivore fur!
Problem: It's getting warm again
Proposed HS solution: Turn down the thermostat! WTF?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
They don't have an image of the planet in question, nor any spectrographic data, not to mention physical evidence. The claim that they've found a diamond planet is really pretty silly. It's more of a guess than a scientific conclusion. The conclusion that it must be diamond is a hypothesis, which fits the data they've found so far. They haven't done any scientific experimentation at all, as far as I can tell.
When did formulating a hypothesis to explain an observation become sufficient to be called science? Isn't that just the second step of the scientific method? This is no more science than forensic "science".
It was actually a pretty good job, though I should have gained a clue from the combination of "Ivory Tower" and "Real American" in the same post, lol ;) I tried hard. Blame my stupid insane client of the week that is trying to cheat me out of $15k. The world is a rotten egg this week, for sure, lol.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Explaining the trends in temperature change and sea level over time is non-political.
Predicting future changes in temperature change and sea level, and predicting the impact on the environment, human settlement and human civilisation is non-political.
Saying "so we must do X to stop this" is political. It presumes that a response is required, it presumes the nature of the response, and it presumes that the response is appropriate in all contexts.
Scientists need to stop making such statements if they expect to be treated as politically neutral seekers of facts. Leave the "we should do X" to the economists and the politicians, then bring science in against to predict the likely effects of the proposals without interpreting the predicted effects ("sea level rise will displace 100,000 people" is science, "which is bad" is philosophy or politics).
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
Two comments:
First, contributions to science in almost every field have been enriched by individuals with no formal educational background. I find a statement that degreed individuals are uniquely qualified to make contributions to the field of science, technology, engineering, and discovery but the hobbyist or amateurs are not. Seems the author (Bailes) doesn’t understand the history of astronomy—often lead by amateurs. Astronomy has advanced due to the participation of amateur astronomers to an almost immeasurable degree. Does then name David Levy ring a bell.
Two, the article itself gets the scientific method wrong; “We make observations, run simulations, test and propose hypothesis, and undergo peer review.” This does not come close to accurately describing the scientific methods. Authors such as Bailes do so much damage to the field of sciencethis discourse damages the view and integrity of all fields of science. I contend that there is no method to verify the results to any degree of certainty. Look at the ‘linearized, pragmatic’ scheme list on the wiki entry for the procedure. What everyone seems to miss here is “reproducible” as an outcome......testing multiple software-based simulations is not verification of a phenomenon.
Galileo wasn't suggesting we need to take cold showers due to his discovery. Galileo wasn't suggesting new taxes due to his discovery. Galileo didn't suggest We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion either.
When climate scientists say is often used to justify restricting in various ways things that bring high profit to some corporations
FTFY. Replacing fossil fuels for renewable energy sources wouldn't harm society in general. The problem is that it would create a new caste of corporations and limit the profitability of some of the largest corporations now existing. That's why those corporations feel threatened, so they hire these shills who are spreading so much disinformation about anthropogenic global warming.
There are no ulterior motives in an astronomical discovery of something so distant that it can have no effect on mankind. That’s not the case with AGW. There are a lot of ulterior motives and hidden agendas at work in AGW. To name a few, there are unscrupulous scientists (think East Anglia) looking for notoriety and grant money. There are the charlatans who are in it strictly to make a buck (think Al Gore), and there are those who see AGW as a way to get their political agenda enacted (think Socialism). AGW isn’t about science anymore (if it ever was); it’s about money and power.
The author of this piece engages in the sophistry of false analogy.
The climate scientists use computer models whose code has been obscured and incompletely archived, and data which has been kept hidden from the public in an attempt to cherry-pick the "right" results. Claiming this is even remotely similar is nuts.
Dog is my co-pilot.
This one I can agree with, that a majority of people will lie to claim as much as they can. It's a basic human nature to be greedy, and finding people who won't lie for greed is hard to do.
Not actually true, peoples' greed is related to a variety of factors, this experiment in which cheating is about as easy as possible and practically condoned, still only 69% of students cheat. In real-life situations with more risk, less reward or that are socially closer to home the percentage will be much less.
Which scientist is proposing the things you say Galileo didn't?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Scientist should stop answering "CLIMATE CRACKPOTS" with the indignant "Why are you question the science?" reply. Simply reply with the facts please. Science is all about questioning the data. THAT IS WHY IT IS DIFFERENT THAN RELIGION.
He seemed to go out of his way to insult the Pope, rather than just advocating his views. That's political.
I wonder how many he purchased or shorted?
You know, it is a fact. The more carbon credits you purchased the better off the global climate will be.
Yep. There it is.
-Hackus
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
I think my observation would basically be that 'denialism' of any ilk will tend towards the same sort of rhetorical forms. After all, if you are going to ignore the fact that science has revealed a vast array of objectively verifiable predictive descriptions of the natural world, then you need to attack its epistemic foundations. There are only so many ways you can do that. They can be clad in a wide variety of terminology for consumption by different audiences, but they all in the long run come down to "Nyaaaaahhhhh! You can't really do what I can see you consistently doing!" followed by some variation of sticking ones fingers in one's ears.
Not that science is unassailable at an epistemological level of course. It is just hard to take people seriously who try to extend that to the practical implications of systematized knowledge. Perhaps we cannot know anything in some sense. Nor can we ascertain certainty in anything fundamentally, but CO2 absorbs and reradiates long wave radiation at specific frequencies, and increasing its concentration in the atmosphere can be objectively proven (and was so proven 100 years ago) to raise the surface temperature of the Earth. Anyone betting against that process happening, and anyone betting that what we see today is 'happenstance' is simply taking a sucker bet. The least they could do would be to go move to some other Earth and not try to force the rest of us to play their losing odds.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Its not that science is decided by the consensus of the majority, but that the lone-wolf granted convincing evidence can change the mind of the majority. I've seen old paradigms turned over many times in my lifetime. Sometimes this takes decades, even waiting for the stubborn blockheads to die off, but it happens.
You don't need to be a "scientist" in order to apply logic and common sense to data. Many people do it all the time in their various endeavors in life.
And even though one might not be a "scientist", you cannot take for granted what some scientist or study proposes as a finding.
An example of this.
About a year ago I read a headline something like "Organic Food No More Nutritious". I read on, as I am interested in this, for the health of my family and I.
In the study they grew tomatoes or something in identical soil with and without pesticides. Then what they tested for was nutritional content of the tomatoes.
Now anyone who knows much about "organic" foods knows that there are at least two facets to the whole idea. One is to reduce the potential toxins, like pesticides. The other would be to maximize the nutritional value of food.
To study if pesticides alone affect nutritional content is sort of like a study to see if you kick your dog does your goldfish swim faster. Maybe sort of useful, but really missing the point.
Now if you wanted to study if different farming practices (like types of fertilizer, soil types) affected nutrition, now that might be useful to somebody somewhere.
To conceive, design, fund, perform, analyze, publish, and broadcast a study like that seems to me like a big waste of time, money, tomatoes, and the paper the study was published on.
Was it politically motivated? I don't know. But it begs the question.
Using emotion in the argument to tie the opponent to an almost universally despised group.
It's all too common among the AGW evangelicals.
You forget it's a political and ideological movement as much as, or more than, a scientific one.
If you read the previous slashdot topic on this subject, there were at least two up-rated posts pointing out that the planet wasn't/wouldn't be diamond. Knowing what I do of chemistry, astrophysics, and materials science, I'm actually inclined to agree with them that it isn't diamond. Given the comments were rated up, there would appear to be a sizable number of us.
Apparently that makes us "diamond planet deniers" ignorable to them and their belief that they are right about this diamond planet. That's not science. And ironically this example ends up confirming the accusation of the AGW deniers. The AGW deniers claim data is being manipulated to make the science appear to support a politically motivated agenda. In this case the "diamond planet discoverers" are scientists who manipulated data ("100% positive feedback") to make it appear to support their politically motivated argument (that the diamond planet discovery had no critics, while climate science does).
Not everybody has any gripe with climate scientists because they are climate scientists.
That was the POINT. It's not the science bit that bothers people. It's not a question of credibility or skepticism either. People like scientists and science and will eat their findings up without a trace of hesitation. Right up until they say something the people don't want to hear for religious, economic, political, or other non-scientific reasons. Then the response is various degrees of "Shoot the messenger."
Climate science - when you look at the implications - ATTACKS YOU, on an ethical, and moral level.
When you have children. When you drive to work. When you flip on a light switch to read a book. All the things that you were taught were "good and proper and right" things to do. Maybe things that GOD wants you to do, or even things that are just "good" for people, in general to do, even if there is no such thing as GOD. . . you now must face the fact that the act of living a comfortable modern life, is destroying the planet, and causing life for future generations to become unsustainable.
In psychological terms, for many people, the basic reaction to an attack like this, is guilt. But many people feel such deep personal pain, that they have defense mechanisms to deflect from this. They blame others. They deny that its happening. They transfer the guilt to anger. They project their guilt onto others. They rationalize. These are common defense mechanisms. Not all healthy. (in adults, of course). But they are common. Especially in our culture.
So the natural response for MOST emotionally stunted and unhealthy people is to try to rationalize that this message is somehow a lie. They attack the politicians. They attack the scientists. They attack their brothers and sisters who are concerned, and want to come to a mutual understanding about civilized behavior. (ie. we clean up after ourselves, we don't pollute, we contribute, we work, etc.). Look at some of the exact attacks they make against Liberals, Al Gore, Climate Scientists, and plans to mitigate carbon: "they are lazy and want to take my stuff", "he spews all kinds of carbon just jetting around the country making his speeches, he's a hypocrite.", "they're trying to scam us to get rich", "it's a scheme to limit our freedom and steal our money". All of these attacks are a form of "projection" because they very much apply to: Conservatives (who typically are not in favor of equal rights, want to preserve social inequality, because it promotes entrenched exploitation, and upper-class laziness), Rush Limbaugh (who emits plenty of his own carbon, as a counterexample to Al Gore - but instead isn't even trying to solve any problems, other than the problem of "people don't hate each other enough"), Climate Deniers or - let's say, promoters of Free Market Theory, as a superset (Economists have been observed publishing "scientific papers" on their Free Market theories - while failing to disclose affiliations with private employers and professional organizations which pose ethical conflicts of interest - yet these same economists, and promoters of "Free Market" theory, inform our government policy without open peer review - as a scientific community, Economists lack anywhere near the same scrutiny of Climate Scientists), and finally, the Lassez Faire approach to mitigating "bad solutions" to our economic requirements for clean energy: if we FUCK our planet, there is no way to UN-FUCK it.
So basically - this is all the result of our culture, raising generation after generation of emotionally stunted, and unhealthy children, who grow up to be adults who are incapable of rationally dealing with serious life-threatening problems without resorting to the tried-and-true emotional coping-skills of an alcoholic or heroin addict: When life gets hard, dive into a bottle (or a barrel) to avoid the hard problems.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
See, the phrase is "if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen." Conversely, "if there's smoke, there's fire."
Oddly enough, there is both smoke AND fire in the global warming kitchen, and those guys you're telling to STFU and GTFO -- yeah, they're the fire fighters. Sure, its a nice turn of phrase "oh toughen up whiny political scientists" but doing so is both (a) an ad homonym having nothing to do with their arguments, and (b) ignores the fact that the only "political" aspect of their research is that it requires action -- action which certain wealthy individuals DO NOT WANT.
-GiH
I like your post Dog +1 Insightful. Sorry I don't have mod points. What everyone on here seems to be missing is that the debate is not scientific it is political or perhaps sociopolitical in nature. High IQ thinkers are often frustrated by those with high social IQ's. Because their arguments make no sense to us and are almost always full of logical fallacies. Then everyone follows them. Unfortunately they still outnumber us and for various reasons likely always will. Until we perfect space travel/living in space or other planets we have to live with them. They will most likely try to follow us even then. Hopefully someone will have the foresight to set that ship on autopilot to the sun. I kid :0) all in fun.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
In related news, petroleum engineers are far away the highest-paid college degree:
http://thedailycougar.com/2011/08/22/engineering-degrees-bring-in-green/
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
This is the one of the highest moderated comments? Really? Back to reddit.
You mean THIS data?
"Now CEI is trying to go after the UK temperature record because the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, used by the Hadley/Met Office, has abandoned some bad data. Climate Science Watch (CSW) has the background, “CEI global warming denialists try another gambit seeking to derail EPA endangerment finding.“ Ironically, as Prof. Phil Jones, CRU’s Director explains below:
Almost all the data we have in the CRU archive is exactly the same as in the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) archive used by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center [see here and here]. The original raw data are not “lost.”
A small amount of data, which could be easily reconstructed if one wanted to waste a lot of time, was abandoned for reasons such as the following:
Station series for sites that in the 1980s we deemed then to be affected by either urban biases or by numerous site moves, that were either not correctable or not worth doing as there were other series in the region."
WOW, that's critical, the whole concept of doing climate science is undermined!
Honestly, fact checking and using less than completely idiotic biased sources is a good idea.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
If an email leak showed you were doctoring your data about your planetary discoveries like the UNCC did, we'd thereafter doubt you too. If you were closing certain telescopes that didn't support your diamond planet theory expecting everyone to accept your skewed data like Nasa did with their rural data collection sites, we'd not just doubt you, you'd be convicted of fraud in public opinion - just like the climate "researchers" are.
If you were proposing to actually mine the planet, we'd assume you ARE a climate "researcher" trying to glom onto more funds.
If the scientists recommended to the policy-makers that the Earth was in trouble and we needed to increase R&D toward moving to other planets, I'd be all for it. But really? My Hummer?
The IPCC was pretty much a political organization with the intent of showing a connection between global warming and humans.
Which would be downright impossible if the connection wasn't there in the first place. The IPCC doesn't do research. It was created to dig through heaps of third party research results and compile a summary for politicians. If they were feeding us bullshit, the climate scientists would be the first to stand up and complain. Hundreds of thousands of climate scientists across the world. Did they? No. The only people who stand up and claim that IPCC feeds us bullshit have degrees only in fields completely unrelated to climate science, if they have any at all.
Only the true believers refuse to see that most of climate science has been politicized when it comes to global warming
I have a question for you: How do you distinguish good science from bullshit in a topic which has been intentionally politicised by people who want the good science buried because there's an awful lot of money in burying it? Or do you think that we should completely give up all research on the whole topic just because somebody launched PR campaign against good science?
Climate scientists are saying we have a controllable/modifiable effect on our climate. Certain politicians are using those claims justify numerous changes to our society (both national and global).
Like any science (including astronomy), climate science has had it's missteps. It happens, it's part of science (yes, it is science) to be wrong. When you're wrong as a scientist, generally, you figure out where you went wrong, figure out what's right and move on. The fact is that politics is now heavily involved in "climate science". The problem isn't necessarily that politics is involved, it's that money is involved. The fact that politics is involved is a prime indicator that an extremely large amount of money is involved. Once you get to that stage, it's very difficult for the current state of climate science (the real stuff) to be wrong anymore. It has to be right, whether or not it is. Climate scientists claim to be vilified, treated like pariahs. Yet, at every turn, any of their skeptics are equally vilified.
It's become too hard for most of us (including some of the loudest proponents of climate science's current state) to see where the money ends, and the science begins. If that gargantuan obstacle weren't enough, we have some obvious problems. First and foremost, the climate changes on its own. It does, really. We've had (at least) two full-on ice ages, plus a mini ice age only a 150-ish years ago. Any guesses on what happens between ice ages? Wait for it ... global warming. Ice melts, oceans rise, species die out, mass hysteria. Except no people were around to cause it, or hell, even care.
Oh yeah, Mars is warming too. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
These are huge obstacles to proving the veracity of the science itself. And while claiming they're being marginalized, they in turn are marginalizing any and all skeptics. Just watch, if any "climate science" proponent actually reads this far, just for bringing up already "refuted/explained" facts, I'll be shouted down, insulted, and asked for my "proof", or described as an ignoramus for not knowing/believing the existing "proof". And thus the public arena of this science has devolved into a global shouting match. Which only really benefits the people set to reap huge profits from legislation being proposed.
Climate science has some valid points, and getting the research done right is hugely important. But, if it's no longer possible (politically) for climate science's current state to be wrong, then almost assuredly, it will never be (scientifically) right. And, for the last 15 years (probably more), it doesn't look (to me) like it's allowed to be wrong anymore. I tend to rebel against that, simply on principle.
Now, back to the problem at hand. Astronomers don't appear to have hordes of women (or worse, the De Beers corporation) demanding we increase taxes and fund mining expeditions to this diamond planet. So, my reaction to their claim is a random "cool", and I'm done with it.
I've already seen numerous ways that $3.50+/gallon gas affects my life (besides filling up my car). My food costs have gone up, my honey-do list costs have gone up, anything that relies somehow on petroleum products anywhere in the pipeline sees a larger number out of my wallet. Now, based on "massive accumulated scientific evidence", which corporate greed, via politics, has _nothing_ to do with, legislation is being proposed that can increase my electric bill substantially (most notably, cap-and-trade). Yet, based on what I've seen of gas prices (oooh, a real trickle down effect), my electric bill isn't the only hit my wallet is going to take.
Discover something, that may or may not be true, but nobody else really cares about? Whatever. Discover something (again, may or may not be exactly as stated) that creates a vast legion of (nearly religious) believers, a vast potential source of income for certain corporations (at everyone else's expense, of course) and (via the first two) a significant power base for political players. Expect a few skeptics.
Don't you think it is possible that James Hansen's political activism is informed by his alarm at what the science tells him and what that means for his children and grandchildren? Does being a scientist mean you have to resign from being human?
The conjecture that scientists develop should not be called science - until it is observable/repeatable/etc.. In my opinion. It cuts both ways - professional scientists and amateur thinkers are allowed to conjecture but it should not be called science, regardless of the person's profession. Scientists themselves, that is, those who observe and experiment and use a rigorous form of scientific method, do not have a monopoly on who is allowed to hypothesize something. They do, however, have the obligation to admit that any "unresolved" hypothesis is not truly a scientific work until it has been resolved.
Climate science can be scientific if, when acting in repeatable controlled experiments, conclusions can be drawn. However, the actual global climate, and the study thereof, is fraught with so many variables, chaotic inputs, and still undiscovered unknowns, that I don't believe that climate modeling is a science. Parts of it are, but in its entirety its nothing more than a model - with the acknowledgement that the model is imperfect, incomplete, and has very wide confidence intervals to just about any answer you want to get out of it. In fact, I would rather we call it Climate Research that is being done by scientists. But someone who is predicting the ocean's algae levels in 2100 is simply conjecturing, and that conjecture does not fall in the science category.
Comparing the usage of global climate models to direct observation is naive at best, and intentionally misleading on the other end of the spectrum.
What other fields are we so welcome to call science when they are completely based on simplified inputs, models, and results? Psychology? Political Science? Economics?
Of course I could be wrong. I'm just a math guy, and we lean on proofs a lot more than most fields of science.
Do you think it's possible that he is motivated by political ideals and exaggerate his case to further those ideals?
Here is the problem, when he enters the realm of politics and starts pushing opinion, unlike science, you cannot verify those opinions nor can you validate them. What you can do is accept them or deny them and base that decision on all sorts of observations concerning him. I would say with his initial refusal to disclose his numbers and methodology, how he was in one democrat staffers rigging the AC before he spoke to congress, how Hansen himself admitted to exaggerating claims because he felt the ends justified the means, and one of the people who was refused access to the data and methodology finding a flaw in his calculations, says a lot about him politically.
Like the parent said, when you take science into the realm of politics, expect politics to be the realm you are in.
Linking to some nutjob doesn't support your argument. The guy is just an activist, not a scientist. He's not basing his arguments on science either. You're not making any point here.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Which would be downright impossible if the connection wasn't there in the first place. The IPCC doesn't do research. It was created to dig through heaps of third party research results and compile a summary for politicians. If they were feeding us bullshit, the climate scientists would be the first to stand up and complain. Hundreds of thousands of climate scientists across the world. Did they? No. The only people who stand up and claim that IPCC feeds us bullshit have degrees only in fields completely unrelated to climate science, if they have any at all.
If all they reported was where the connection is, then who is going to stand up and bitch? but hey, don't take my word for it, the IPCC itself says role is defined in Principles Governing IPCC Work ."to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation."
You tell me. I mean seriously, when scientific work and criticisms of peer reviewed works are dismissed because of some 20 year old connection to an oil company or because someone isn't a climate scientists even thought analytic and statistical study is what they are qualified with and nit picking over. How about when an entire research team purposely leaves out data that throws their preconceived theory into question and causes numbers and crap not to line up. How do you weed out the bad science and keep only the good science when modelling to date has not been able to accurately predict the state of climate change without going back and modifying the models to make historical data relevant- yet still isn't capable of an accurate forward looking prediction?
Good science where i am from is capable of standing on it's own merits. it doesn't need to be dismissed because of character assassinations or protected by doing them. the science is either legit or it is not.
I think there's a strong one.
I think to most religious people, science is essentially another form of magic, where the strength of belief overrules the weight of the evidence. They can't see it, they can't touch it, they can't really understand it, therefore, much like faith in a deity, it's just magic.
I don't recall an entire political class of eco-marxists being validated by an astronomer's theory (after being wrong so very many times about their eco-eschatological predictions regarding DDT, fresh water, oil, landfill space, population, food, etc.)
I don't recall ever reading emails from astronomers colluding to manipulate the peer-review process. Nor do I recall astronomers hiding their algorithms, or threatening to delete files in case of a FOIA inquiry.
I don't recall astronomers ever making extraordinary claims...and then "accidentally losing" the raw data, yet still insisting that they be taken seriously.
I don't recall that if someone did disagree with an astronomer's interpretation, that he was immediately pilloried as some sort of shill for some vague 'corporate interest'.
I don't recall that a leading European lab tested a major critique of an astronomer's theory, and when finding the critique was in fact spot-on, the lab's director suddenly instructed the scientists involved "not to draw conclusions".
-Styopa
Science is an imprecise art of choosing a winner from competing theories and weighing them based on how well the predictions are useful. If a theory fails to predict the future, it's basically useless.
The problem with climate science is that it has in the past, many times, made predictions about the future regarding global warming trends and rates based on greenhouse gas concentrations, and they've been totally wrong. Despite the greenhouse gas predictions being accurate, the warming numbers have never agreed with models. Therefore we have yet to find a theoretical model that accurately predict the future. Our latest and greatest model is claimed to be wonderful, but until it is proven accurate, it's just a theory competing for attention and validation.
The further problem with climate science is that those weak theories are siezed upon to justify very very expensive policy choices, that are only worth it if the models are accurate. In the mean time, we will have some people who believe the scary predictions and choose to pay ridiculous proces to attempt to solve the supposed problem, and other people who don't believe the scary predictions and continue to consume the cheapest energy they can, spoiling any effort of the first group to accomplish change.
It's a crappy situation, but it won't improve until some climate scientist can create and popularize a theory that accurately predicts future events well enough to be useful as a policy guide, and prove it with years of successful model validation. Today we have mostly climate scientists who update the model every year to postpone the point in their theories where verifiable results are demonstrable.
Looking back 20 years, the sorts of predictions from that time that agree with the last 20 years of history are the theories that show carbon dioxide has only a minor impact on overall climate. No climate model that predicted catastrophic warming has ever been shown to be accurate when put up against the cold hard observational data. I am a scientist, and I do not believe global warming is a catastrophe, a tipping point, or a crisis in need of policy solutions. But I'm open to evidence as it comes in.
"publicly denounced", or "proved wrong and thought people should know they were believing a lie"?
Does a person go into a climate science career if is he is not already very convinced climate change exists? That's like going into Astronomy despite believing there are no planets or stars in space.
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If all they reported was where the connection is, then who is going to stand up and bitch?
Those who did good science but were left out for no good reason, apparently. That is, if there was a significant number of such climate scientist, which there apparently isn't.
You tell me.
I'd tell you, but you wouldn't like that answer.
I mean seriously, when scientific work and criticisms of peer reviewed works are dismissed because of some 20 year old connection to an oil company or because someone isn't a climate scientists even thought analytic and statistical study is what they are qualified with and nit picking over.
Show me one example where climate scientists dismiss scientific paper on any other basis than flaws in its methodology. Analytic and statistical study are necessary but not sufficient qualifications to do climate science. There's a ton of stuff that one has to learn on top of that to actually do any meaningful work in climate science. You wouldn't trust engineer who designed car engines for most of his career to build a jet engine. You wouldn't trust a dentist to do surgery anywhere else but in your mouth. So why do you expect that scientists from fields unrelated to climate science would get climate science right at their first attempt? Those scientists from other fields who were asked to review climate science and spent a better part of a year learning it came to the conclusion that the evidence for man-made global warming is solid. Even those who were initially praised by deniers as the only impartial scientists "who will uncover the conspiracy for sure".
How about when an entire research team purposely leaves out data that throws their preconceived theory into question and causes numbers and crap not to line up.
There are valid reasons to leave out some data sets. For example when there's too much noise in it (garbage in, garbage out). Or when the data set is irrelevant because the paper focuses on specific geographic area and the data in question were taken too far away. Show me one example where a research team left out data they had without a valid reason.
How do you weed out the bad science and keep only the good science when modelling to date has not been able to accurately predict the state of climate change without going back and modifying the models to make historical data relevant- yet still isn't capable of an accurate forward looking prediction?
Just a second here. There's a difference between modifying algorithms in the model and running the same model with more accurate external inputs (solar power output, volcanic activity, CO2 levels). Even a perfect model will make wrong predictions when you feed it inaccurate inputs (again, garbage in, garbage out). And as far as I know, current climate models, although far from perfect, are actually pretty good when you feed them correct inputs. But predicting those inputs is a whole another story for other fields of science.
A number of positions held by Economists are rejected out of hand by most outside the discipline.
Free trade is beneficial on net. Price floors cause shortages (and the minimum wage is a type of price floor). Bangladesh has as much to fear from rising energy prices as from rising sea waters.
Please argue with any of these (intentionally provocative) positions, so as to illustrate my main point: there are plenty of experts you disagree with too.
(Yeah, but those experts are WRONG!)
Says you. We all pick and choose.
Hansen has been at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981. As far as I'm aware their data and methodologies have always been available. Before this last decade it wasn't online of course. Rigging the AC is a new one on me. Have you got a reference? It's not a crime to have flaws in your calculations, just to not correct them once they are discovered.
I've seen no evidence that James Hansen was politically active until the past 5 or 6 years. As I said, maybe as his career is winding down (he's 70) he decided he had to do what he could for posterity based on his knowledge and prestige.
Your point would be nice if i limited my statement to just data. But as we know, hansen's data is not the raw data available, he had manipulated it and refused to disclose how or why when it was requested of him until he was ordered to do so by the government after the so called y2k problem with his numbers..
As for the rigging the AC, they rigged the entire day. http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/17534/stagecraft/chris-horner
Then you either have not been paying attention, or are just didn't notice,
Climate science is not advanced calculus. The theoretical basis for predictions of human-caused climate change is comprehensible to a smart 5th Grader. Go to RealClimate.org and do some reading. You will find out exactly what the truth is. In detail.
You do realize that there was no such thing as a climate scientists until the IPCC came about and global warming activists wanted to restrict who was commenting on it right? Go ahead and show me some degree information on becoming a climate scientists from before 2000 or so. i would be really surprised if you could come close to it.
The climate scientists we have today are invented specifically for climate change and i would suggest that the first thing they are going to do is not publish something contradicting it and lose the rest of their career being blackballed.
lol.. This is the entire problem with global warming, it's all "trust me", I know what 'I'm talking about". You don't see a problem there? How about if a used care salesman had that attitude?
are you dense or something? The CRU emails were full of it. They blatantly dismissed research because it didn't fit into what they wanted.
the models are broken and do not work for predictions. That's a plain and simple fact. They can only validate historical information if tweaked enough and have not even come close to accurately predicting future climate.
According to "everyone", climate science is 100% settled and there is no questioning it
You fabricate a complete bullshit misrepresentation in order to make skepticism look reasonable.
Obviously an entire scientific field isn't 100% settled, duh. Just go to the global warming Wikipedia page, climate models don't agree whether the low emission world results in a 1.5 to 1.9 C warming in the 21st century., or whether the high emission scenario results in a 3.4 to 6.1 C of warming. The intense debates about climate sensitivity, the role of polar ice sheets, heat storage of the oceans, etc. are very real, but pretty boring. They tend to only get reported in the mainstream press when denialist assholes twist them. For example, the german researchers saying the the sun has been burning more brightly and its influence on climate has been undervalued got mangled in an Investor's Business Daily editorial into the utter lie that "researchers at the Max Planck Institute report [this accounts]for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth’s temperature over the last 100 years."
What's missing from the scientific process is a scenario, model, theory, ANYTHING that doesn't predict warming. When scientific popularisers say "the debate is over", that is probably what they are referring to. Or maybe they're saying the greenhouse effect is based on basic physics that's not sensibly open to question, so increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases WILL lead to warming. Or maybe they're saying the only credible explanation for the observed warming in recent decades is the increase in anthropogenic greehouse gases. Just because people make vague low-content statement doesn't mean they're untrue.
There are some very specific statements in support of the 100% solid set in stone idea. From the 2010 report of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and Engineering (the second one on climate change ordered by Republican bozos in Congress to delay action), Advancing the Science of Climate Change:
=S
Absence of *RESULTS BASED FUNDING*.
When next year's budget is determined by this year's popularity, the quality of the science becomes suspect.
Consider Galileo, Darwin, Lysenko, ...
--
Sometimes boldness is in fashion, at other times, italicism.
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"...and then is torn to pieces by the carbon haters and the carbon lovers without ever hinting at which side of the argument he sits on."
I can't tell if you are talking about Climate Change or Diamond Plants now.... :)
I think this is more a factor of shitty science journalism.
Look at the whole Diamond Plant topic on Slashdot. I wouldn't say it was "positive". I think most people came out and said, well I guess that really depends on what you consider a diamond, and most would not. Highly compressed carbon perhaps... Likely very unstable. I think the best post I read said something to the effect that if you took a handful of the stuff out of the excessive gravity, and somehow managed to teleport it to our Earth gravity, it would explode quite violently.
In any event I think it is funny it is being compared as a model showing how unfairly people bash climate change. I think I would argue that this sort of thing is exactly why. However the poster made a good comment in the point that no one cares, because the effect on them is effectively nil. "Ha Ha bet my wife would want that!" So of course the response is generally positive. However if the issue made you lose your job, or decrease the quality of your life, then ya, you might care a bit more (being right or not being somewhat irrelevant).
In any case, sounds like the scientist in question is either a douche, or more was said in the actual article I didn't bother to read... :)
You do realize that there was no such thing as a climate scientists until the IPCC came about and global warming activists wanted to restrict who was commenting on it right? Go ahead and show me some degree information on becoming a climate scientists from before 2000 or so. i would be really surprised if you could come close to it.
I see you didn't do your homework then. Here you go, a brife history of Climatology as a Profession. Climatology formed as a separate field of science in 1960s from several related fields where research on the topic was going on since early 20th century. A lot of important breakthroughs for climate science took place during 1930s and 1940 but it took a few more decades before those results from separate fields of science were pieced together into a comprehensive theory of the climate.
The climate scientists we have today are invented specifically for climate change and i would suggest that the first thing they are going to do is not publish something contradicting it and lose the rest of their career being blackballed.
Bullshit.
lol.. This is the entire problem with global warming, it's all "trust me", I know what 'I'm talking about". You don't see a problem there? How about if a used care salesman had that attitude?
No. You wouldn't like the answer because it involves a lot of research-related work on your part. There's no "trust me" in it, quite the contrary.
are you dense or something? The CRU emails were full of it. They blatantly dismissed research because it didn't fit into what they wanted.
Ok, but I'm still waiting for a specific example. Mind you, I've already seen a lot of alleged examples from the CRU emails but all of them were either deliberately misquoted or innocent scientific jargon misunderstood by laymen bloggers and journalists.
the models are broken and do not work for predictions. That's a plain and simple fact. They can only validate historical information if tweaked enough and have not even come close to accurately predicting future climate.
Really? I'd say that IPCC AR4 did pretty well forecasting the past decade and hindcasting 20 more years before that. And what do you mean by "tweaking"?
"Only" 69% ? (btw in this test subjects were aware that they were being tested, this matters. Still that 69% of people are dishonest in the wide open, while knowing full well that they're "caught" (the person in front of them knows), just because there are no consequences. An incorrect, but nice way of putting this is that, if possible, 69% of billionaires would claim unemployment benefits with their limousine parked in front of the social security office)
Strange however, how scientific consensus doesn't appear to be an argument on these points. Strange indeed ...
They were aware there was an end-of-year test, but not aware that the email was fake according to the article. And the results is in the maximal situation of anonymity, no consequences, high pressure to succeed, no possibility to peer-group judgement and an email practically encouraging them to do so.
Did they say the diamond planet was "settled science"?
Does a person go into a climate science career if is he is not already very convinced climate change exists? That's like going into Astronomy despite believing there are no planets or stars in space.
That makes no sense at all. I'm pretty sure everyone knows we have a climate. Whether you believe climate change exists or not, there is plenty to study, and many more answers to find. There's also the potential to find and correct flaws in our current understanding, and to further refine it.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Scientists need to stop making such statements if they expect to be treated as politically neutral seekers of facts. Leave the "we should do X" to the economists and the politicians, then bring science in against to predict the likely effects of the proposals without interpreting the predicted effects ("sea level rise will displace 100,000 people" is science, "which is bad" is philosophy or politics).
They happen to be just about the only people that seem to understand the issues involved and what the likely impact will be. I don't want a bunch of dipshit politicians that can't even explain the difference between climate and weather to be making decisions that can have a massive impact on the entire world. Seriously, have you ever listened to these guys give their speeches on CSPAN? It's quite obvious that most members of congress are idiots whose only talent seems to be getting other idiots to vote for them.
I want the scientists to be explaining what our options are and making recommendations to mitigate the impact on us. Who else is qualified to do so? The politicians will have to implement these ideas, but they certainly aren't qualified to figure any of this out themselves. I'm not sure how some of them even manage to dress themselves.
I see this comment all over this page, and while it is right for some people, it's flat out wrong for the most ardent science deniers. In my comings and goings, I usually hear the politics (or policy) line for disagreeing with climate science from my more libertarian friends. They are wired to dislike it when people tell them what they should or should not do, so they figure climate scientists are in it to change their behavior. But, these people are largely not anti-science, they are just anti-climate science. Give them an evolution textbook and they generally don't have any complaints.
The other group who is most opposed to climate science seems to be the people who believe that the earth was set up by God for us to live on, and there is essentially nothing we can do to irreparably screw it up. You don't have to be a 6000 year old earth believing creationist to hold this opinion either. For these people, the problem isn't politics, but rather that you are in essence taking some sense of the divine from them.
And he calls you foolish. Who goes into climate science if they think there is no climate change? Nobody? Stop being obtuse. The field itself is an example of institutional bias.
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