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Lamar Smith, Future Chairman For the House Committee On Science, Space, and Tech
An anonymous reader writes "Lamar Smith, a global warming skeptic, will become the new chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Someone who disagrees with the vast majority of scientists will be given partial jurisdiction over NASA, EPA, DOE, NSF, NOAA, and the USGS. When will candidates who are actually qualified to represent science or at a minimum show an interest in it be the representatives of science with regard to political decision-making?"
Please vote them in to office.
I hope this caused some synapses to fire.
Hall's opposition was even more pronounced. One could even say that by appointing Lamar Smith, who only attacked "one sided coverage" (vs the 88 year old Hall's direct attack on the science), that Texas may be slowly warming up to the idea... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/12/ralph-hall-speaks-out-on-climate.html
Gently reply
If he were merely a skeptic, that's ok; a skeptic is a person who's willing to look at the data and see what they say.
However, far too many of the people who call themselves "skeptics" are in fact not skeptics at all, but global-warming deniers: they don't care what the data is, and aren't really interested in learning. They're not really skeptical, because they already have their conclusion, and are only interested in arguments that support it.
To quote S. Fred Singer, "The deniers are giving us skeptics a bad name."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
To all of Slashdot's out-of-US readers: On behalf of the United States of America, I apologize for this event. I do not live in Smith's Congressional district; nor would I have dare voted that anti-freedom, anti-technology SOPA author and professional monster to Congress (let alone this apparently influential committee position) if I did.
Smith has left great bruises on the certainty of a free internet and will now leave a great and lasting scar on Science and the Useful Arts. He will not endanger the science of "climate change" or "global warming", he will endanger knowledge itself.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
You can't disagree with facts. You can be ignorant of them, but you can't disagree as they are not matters of opinion. Sometimes there are not two sides, the earth is round, the sun is the center of the solar system, the earth is billions of years old.
At least he is replacing the "lies from the pit of hell" moron.
You have to account, though, for the truth that not all things claimed to be facts, particularly in politicized subjects, are actually facts. For example, temperature measurements are facts, though their accuracy can be questioned. Global temperature, though, is not a fact: it is an extraction on facts (the temperature readings) filtered through assumptions and patches (like assuming that temperature changes smoothly and uniformly between places where temperatures are measured). On top of those extrapolations, people have layered conclusions, some of which are reasonable (which does not make them facts but inferences), some of which are not. But it's pretty clear that just arguing that AGW is a fact won't get you anywhere, because the totality of what is commonly meant by that term is not a fact or set of facts, though it does include some facts, even if it later turns out to have reached a correct conclusion. "Shut up" is rarely an effective argument.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
"If a scientist, or a vast majority of scientists, say something is true, it is considered heresy to even dare to question it.".
Heresy is an interesting concept. Maybe I've not been around the right people, but the only people I've seen to cry heresy are the anti-global-warming folks. Most of the pro folks tend to quote facts and studies, while the anti folks say things like "I've seen that weather changes, so therefore, though I've never studied it I am pretty sure that all of the people who *have* studied it are wrong." Now to me that sounds an awful lot like Copernicus being accused of heresy because he tried to use evidence to convince people of something they knew nothing about but desperately wanted to be wrong.
You should question scientists. That is good. That is science. But if you walk up to someone who has spent their life studying something and accuse them of being wrong with no facts to back you up, you are not questioning. You are denying. And that's why nobody takes you seriously. It's not an question of heresy and orthodoxy, it's a question of making up your mind without going through that tedious fact-collecting step.
They laughed at Einstein. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. And you, sir, are no Einstein.