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The Canadian Government's War On Science
FuzzNugget writes "A contributor at ScienceBlogs.com has compiled and published a shockingly long list of systematic attacks on scientific research committed by the Canadian government since the conservatives came to power in 2006. This anti-scientific scourge includes muzzling scientists, shutting down research centers, industry deregulation and re-purposing the National Research Council to align with business interests instead of doing real science. It will be another two years before Canadians have the chance to go to the polls, but how much more damage will be done in the meantime?"
What are you doing? You were my escape plan all during the Bush years - where am I going to go when the right finally tanks the US?
If there is one thing that conservatives all agree on, it's that you should change the facts to match your agenda, not the other way around.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
There, fixed it for ya...
A large portion of that list doesn't look anti-science. Business deregulation? Firing regulatory officials for "lack of leadership"? Discontinuing a mandatory census? Rolling back environmental regulations? Withdraw from Kyoto Accord? Changes to fisheries regulations? Procedural changes for public hearings on pipeline work? And so on... These are not "anti-science" changes. They are anti-liberal, anti-environmentalist, and pro-business political moves. Think there might be some political bias by the author of this list?
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Go read the list, and see if you think more than a small minority of those items affect real science in any real way.
There are a few, to be sure, but most of them are trimming of non-science paper-shuffling jobs, a shocking number
of which seem to only employ journalism majors.
Closing a Downtown Vancouver coast guard station? Really?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
This is just a liberal laundry list masquerading as an 'objective' assessment of the conservative government's attitude toward science.
What is actually happening here is called "balancing the budget". The funding of many programs have been cut --from sports to science. Why scientists feel their programs should be immune to budget cuts when governments the globe over are practicing austerity is a mystery.
The article did not list all the "scientific" research projects that the government started funding since they came to power. I see and hear these research projects all the time on TV telling me that oil sands are good for the environment and good for the economy. Opps, I confused scientific research projects with ad campaigns.
While a good portion of the events listed genuinely hurt publicly-funded science, there are also many of them which were just removing useless, wasteful government spending. Although most of these committees and organizations have sciency names, a good portion were so mismanaged that they simply employ people to chat and browse the Internet all day, as is very commonplace in the Canadian bureaucracy, as anyone who has worked for the Canadian government knows.
If a committee is supposed to be conducting real research or studying science policy but is wholly dysfunctional, there are two appropriate courses of action: either attempt to make them useful (often prohibitively difficult in Canadian bureaucrat culture), or cut them off because they're simply a waste. I'd say a good 30% of the cuts listed fall into the latter category.
IMO this was a long time in coming; the government provides billions in support for pure research at universities through other programs (NSERC); the NRC was set up for the whole purpose of commercializing and helping industry, not doing pure research.
I don't see a war on science, I just see a lot of people upset that the status quo is changing. I also hear from a lot of people who should make sure to go vote next time, unstill of bitching about things later..
after public funds. The author uses the word science, but in reality what this boils down to is a political viewpoint not popular with the current politicians controlling the purse strings. I'm sick of seeing the removal of public funding for something being called a "war".
Well at least they wont have the tea party complaining about a "war on religion"...
The conservatives in power at the federal level in Canada have been figuratively rounding up all the intellectuals, scientists, educators, and scholars who do not toe the line. It is disgraceful and eerily familiar to historians, who BTW are about to undergo a government investigation of how Canadian history is to be taught since the conservatives do not much recognize anything but their own mythology.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
This statement assumes that canadians will not re elect the conservatives again. Unfortunately, most of my fellow countrymen only care about one thing - the economy. Witness the recent election in BC where the BCliberals (really conservatives, just liberal by name) were super corrupt (head of party resigned in shame) and most people agree are doing a bad job, were re-elected. Why? They ran on the platform of creating more industry jobs, ignoring the effects of climate change, and selling off resources to china which they say will make us and our children rich.
Unless the housing market collapses, and takes the broader economy with it, before the next election, the conservatives will most likely win again. There are many theories as to why this is, but the fact is people have been led to believe that the government having closer ties to business equals a better economy. Thanks in no small part to the shit ton of propaganda (economic action plan = propping up construction sector) that reinforces this belief and glosses over reality. Science is facts, and the conservatives hate fact based policy. They base policy on ideology and authoritarianism. Its stupid and backwards, but thats been the state of canada since 2006.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Industrial deregulation is not anti-science. Science can show us that industry has consequences while we simultaneously chose to accept those consequences. Characterizing industrial deregulation as anti-science reveals an assumption that no consequences of industry are acceptable. Unfortunately for that mindset, citizens will only tolerate so much decline before they push back and elect people that don't automatically preclude all industry just because science reveals consequences.
What's "real science"? Something which no one needs and therefore such "scientists" can only do their "valuable" "real science" at the expense of the taxpayer? REAL real scientists do not need to burden the taxpayer as the value of their work is recognized by businesses and is rewarded accordingly.
In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir. -- Stuart Keate
This "war" rhetoric is getting old. The government is not outlawing science. It isn't rounding up scientists and shooting them. The government is simply saying that it is not the national government's job to pay for every scientific program that comes along, to over-regulate business, and to fund endless discussions and committees that have no ultimate value. You may disagree with those assessments, but that doesn't mean that this is a "war on science". It's a war on how to spend money. That's a whole different issue.
Bingo. Eisenhower warned about the Military-Industrial Complex, but everyone seems to forget his other warning in the same speech about the government-science complex.
At least 90% of the results I see from government-funded 'science' look to be a total waste of my tax dollars.
in favor of their own clear and true vision of paisley pink skies and money trees in the gardens of "job creators."
facts frequently are at odds with their vision/religion.
I use the terms "fact" and :"science" here in the dictionary sense, that which has been proven through rigorous and repetitive testing and discovery.
falling off your barstool after a night of swilling "Old Reaganomics" and getting an epiphany, or something, when your butt hits the tiles is not a fact.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Science doesn't have to stop when the government stops paying for it. There are other was to fund scientific research.
Who let Canada do Science??
Not paying for every environmental or science-related pet project is "anti-science" according to this list. Unlimited funding for everything, or you hate science. Environmental groups and leftist foundations have lots of donors and extremely deep pockets. Pay for your own science if it's so important.
Bingo. Eisenhower warned about the Military-Industrial Complex, but everyone seems to forget his other warning in the same speech about the government-science complex.
At least 90% of the results I see from government-funded 'science' look to be a total waste of my tax dollars.
The other 10% form the foundation of our economy. Most of them were unintentional. Which is why anyone who responds with the above just looks like an uninformed fool.
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
Then the evidence must be suppressed.
- *sigh* this got ranty and unfocused, not goint to fix it now -
Example#1
This governments plan is to "solve crime" with a "hard on crime" agenda that is being acknowledged in Texas as not being the correct solution. The government also claims to be fiscally responsible.
So if you claim to be fiscally responsible yet want to setup and plan that is expensive and has been proven not to work you must deny the science.
The Harper Government has many many plans that ran counter to science. They slashed the census program which gathered data that was used for planning by all levels of govenment. Why they claimed it was because people complained, on file about 2 complaints in 15 years. Really it was if you want to throw money at pet projects you don't have to validate it against actual facts if the facts don't exists.
So yes this is a deliberate attack on science and it is required because they want to "govern from the gut".
In Canada our Government is Psychotic, and the general question is why have people lost faith in government? Well is because the government operates on faith and not facts.
Ever been in an ICU recently? All that remote monitoring technology was "government science" developed for space travel. This internet? Yup, More government science money. Use a microwave oven? Yup, government money!
Basic science research is needed to develop ideas and test theories that could later be developed into mass use products!
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Far be it for me to defend the current government, but to be fair they're not attacking science. They're simply getting out of the science business and eschewing it for the purpose of policy formation. They're not persecuting scientists or preventing science from being done outside of government circles.
I would propose this solution:
Show that the Canadian conservatives are just following what the American conservatives are doing.
If there's one thing that Canadian politicians don't want to be accused of, it's acting like (or taking direction from) Americans.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
That I say "religion is poison".
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Just because those projects began with government money does not mean they wouldn't have been produced without it. It's like saying there would be no roads if the government didn't build them. Yes, there would be, because roads are useful, so people would get together and build them.
It's amazing to see the conservative circle jerk happening above this. Claiming scientific understand while denying facts and evidence. It's just sad.
I got here through a series of tubes
I see a list of programs that Canada has decided to stop funding. I see nothing about a "war" on science. They've simply decided that the money is better spent on other things, like healthcare and college. Maybe the US should take a hint and finally balance that budget.
It's been decided that ignorance and superstition is the best way to control a population... our keepers can't keep their ego intact when they're constantly being harassed and reminded how wrong they are..
You can count on canadian monies (wealthy beyond what a person can dream (low population-huge landmass) to lobby the US government if it isn't being done already.(canada is very much an aristocracy. The rest is fluff)
Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, idiocy, or politics. Unless lawyers are involved, then it is definately malice.
A big one that is missing is AECL, or the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.
Back in 2011 they sold off most of it to SNC-Lavalin. For 15 Million. They might as well sold it for 1$ dollar.
Hundreds of engineers and nuclear scientists.
Official:
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/media-room/news-release/2011/57/2138
CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2011/06/29/aecl-sale.html
In case you are wondering who SNC-Lavalin is, Google them and see how many scandals they have been in the last few years, most of them to do with corruption and governments.
Ironically some of the scandals were in India, and guess where we sold most of our Candu reactors over the years.... India!
Anyway this isn't about Lavalin, its about Harper basically dumping our national atomic R&D. Remember Chalk River and the international shortage of radiological isotopes for medical use because it had to shut down? Yeah we kept the liability of that, but are not doing any research or design as to how to replace those 50+ year old facilities.
And on the tinfoil hat side of things: Despite what all the touchy feelies might think, we need atomic energy for our electric grids. Guess what the only replacement is for those things? Solar, wind, puppies, and positive thinking? Nope. Oil and Gas. Funny that. Alberta should like that.
The NRC has never been about basic research. It exists for industry focused research. NSERC is the Canadian body responsible for basic research.
You are just looking at the other side of the coin. Is Harper Pro-Business? Well of course he his. He would also argue in the media that he is "pro-jobs". It just happens that a big chunk of the business he is so pro about has a bit of a twichy environmental record. Particularly the tar sands, err I mean the oil sands... :)
Anyway I am sure the way he sees it is making more jobs, and bring in corporate capital to Canada by giving the companies an "environment" that they like. Namely one that doesn't worry so much about the real environment. The difficulty here is that most of the environmental science that goes on is done nationally, and because a lot of that hogwash gets in the way of his primary objectives, and he has the power, and why should government be paying people to say things to other people that he doesn't want them to say as they would go against his ideology and his attempt to do what he clearly thinks is the thing to do (idealistically I sort of hope that he thinks it is best for Canada, which he probably does, rather than just corruption, favorites, cronyism, etc...).
Does that make him anti-environment? Sure, he is trying to diminish one to improve the other. He is hardly the first to do that. Does it make him anti-science. Indeed it does as in order to shut down the environmental back talk, he has to stamp down on how that comes about, which is science.
I get his angle. I mean I suppose if I thought that way (I don't), that might seem the most inexpedient way to get what I want. What kills me however, is that it is one thing to "muzzle" scientists. Again, not a new thing, not nice, but not new. They are paid by government, if they say shut yur mouth smarty, ya shut it. Of course you could leave also, but then again if your specialty is in environmental science, you may have some limited opportunities outside of government. No what kills me, is the dismantling of the means to do science. I mean let these guys go on collecting their data, keep the observation stations open, etc... That way in 25 years you don't have a huge black gaping gap in your data called the "Harper Years". That bugs me. It is like destroying history to me. The only excuse I can think of for doing so is either a feeble attempt so that years from now it can't be said that he was wrong, or that he actually knew it was wrong. Plausible Deniability as they say. Other than that, I guess it might make balancing budgets easier, I mean if all they do is collect data you do not want, then might as well save a few bucks I guess.
The first four paragraphs of the second linked story consists of the author basically rationalizing her terrible journalism. She makes a terrible error in misquoting a Candian official: “Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value.” instead of: “A new idea or discovery may in fact be interesting but it doesn’t quality [sic] as an innovation until it’s been developed into something that has commercial or societal value.” which is closer. Never mind though, the author doesn't skip a beat and goes directly onto jumping innocent conclusions in a dark cyber-alley.
Why is this article one of the (just) two lemmas in the submitter's argument that Canada's current government is trashing publicly funded research?
--"You are your own God"--
Certain individuals have planned their lives around wasteful government spending. The sole difference between them and the average Visible Minority Ethnic Public Assistance Princess® are those $DEITY_CONDEMNED Plaques On The Wall® creating artificial scarcity.
Is the economy more important than general happiness? Canada's crime rate is mich lower than that of the US. People live on average about 3 years longer. And, from my own completely not-scientific view, based on visits, folks up North seem a lot happier, on average. The government resources required to pay for that stuff are a drain on the economy, true, but safer and longer lives seem to be a pretty good trade-off.
>Yes, there would be, because roads are useful, so people would get together and build them.
*facepalm* If only there was a way for people to democratically organize and pool their money together...
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Because, you know that science can't exist without taking money from people against their will to fund it.
Because, you know that removing the force from science really impairs the curiosity of man and suddenly all science stops.
Because, you know that when a government wants to scale down in order to survive fiscally, it's definitely a war on whatever they defund. War. Like some kind of horrible battle where people die. Government not funding people causes people to die. Because science never happens without government and without government people die.
Gee, how would we all live without government? Oh, probably happily and painlessly..
Evolution is selfishness. You'e already lost. Far from being an anachronism, it's why you are here.
Conservatism may impede progress, but sometimes "progress" needs to be impeded. And by "progress" I mean unrestrained jumping on the "new" and "different".
The one thing that conservatives will always have going for them that so-called progressives do not is that in the past, things did work, because if they didn't, we wouldn't be here today. The past is the reason we are here, for better or worse, and so while you can suggest that things could always be better, you can never state that a conservative policy can't work, because we already know it does work, however imperfectly.
The nice thing is that while your idea would probably doom humanity, conservatism would probably be the reason you'd never succeed. Thus saving humanity.
I suggest you stick with figuring out flying cars and fusion power. Those are much more useful ways to spend your time.
Don't think Quebec would fit in Jesusland. Maybe fifty years ago, but it has changed.
And which results do you see? A random sampling of all scientific work? Or just the weird outliers that make it into news reports?
I bet I know the answer. And that answer makes you look like a fool.
Sorry but you're talking to a hard core evolutionary psychologist so i agree, evolution does make people selfish and therefore we have no reason to wonder *why* conservatives are selfish. But like any other normally distributed trait, some some people are MORE selfish than others, and some people are so selfish that their innate impulses are maladaptive, given their environment.
Thus, we agree, the selfish conservatives are a genetic phenomena.
The fact is that conservatives cannot cope with the rate of change that technology is delivering. Just like they cannot cope with equality for women.. Or equality for the races. Or economic equality. Or any other egalitarian notion.
But the world cannot survive by oppressing most of the people for the benefit of the few. Society can't survive by appealing to Bronze Age notions of reality and morality.
Once a long long time ago it was adaptive to bash your neighbor's brains out, take his stuff, enslave your enemies and live to gain power in a power hierarchy, all the while controlling others by appealing to a Sky God and indeed believing in that Sky God yourself. That kept things going, if only miserably but it kept societies together, which was better than being conquered or eaten .
Those times are gone.
Now conservatives are completely maladaptive in their appeal to ancient Sky Gods and their endless appetite to advance themselves and their genetically mediated indifference to the suffering of people not in their tribe or, in the case of global warming, their generation.
It's like saying there would be no roads if the government didn't build them.
YEAH, it's not like we'd have a series of irregular roads that are speed traps at every damned podunk town with god-knows what on the road around every bend if we didn't have the Interstate system!
For a popularization of some scientific studies on this matter, see The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer.
Unfortunately most of Canada seems to think its OK that science is getting brushed off, because most Canadians are rednecks. The big cities are an exception; elsewhere its rodeos, hockey and beer, and that is about as good as it gets.
At least 90% of the results I see from government-funded 'science' look to be a total waste of my tax dollars.
Yeah.... just look at the Internet... 90% cat viewing... and 10% wasting time on slashdot or other worthless sites.
The whole right, left perspective is an illusion. When are you people going to wake up?
That is so lazy intellectually. Some politicians are power hungry pathalogical liars (e.g., Issa). Some politicians are plain old cranks (e.g., Inhofe/Bachmann). Some politicians really believe in things and fight for them, and are often indistinguishable from cranks (e.g., Rand Paul). Some politicians really believe in things and fight for them (e.g., Paul Ryan).
The trick to understanding politics is sorting out the grand-standing from what people really believe in. The GOP is currently defined by hatred of all things Obama. They don't care about deficit/debt reduction (they could have it if they wanted it). But you gotta believe that if Obama supported traditional marriage, a ban on stem cell research, or tax cuts of the super wealthy, then the GOP would be all over it in no time.
So you see, they do believe in things, and there really are differences.
If you're pro-life, or a homophobe, tax-cuts-for-the-rich, then the GOP will represent you. If you pro-choice and pro marriage equality, and want a progressive tax system, then the Dems will support you.
So what do you support?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Exactly. Altermeyer shows that authoritarians, which in the UIS are conservatives, literally do not process information like other people. They reliably take longer to recognize ambiguous stimuli , they can reliably be counted on to not live according to the dictates of reason. When put in charge of an army in a game of conflict / negotiation, they implement policies that lead to a nuclear holocaust.
If you want to read a book by a research psychologist whose studies and conclusions which will change your mind about your fellow human is capable of and what they will do if given the chance,, then read The Authoritarians- it's a life changing event.
I should say that Altermeyer does not assert that conservatism is genetic in its genesis.. That's coming form ethnobioology and sociobiology.
It's pretty ironic that the level of evidence you have to support your assertion is actually less than some of the evidence the conservative government likes to present while pursuing their ideologically based agenda.
The AECL/SNC-Lavalin point mentioned above is quite a good one however: not mentioned by the author. This was technology that actually made money. Lots and lots of money, just not for the government. But was blundered away largely through govenrnment incompentence at running a business.
At least 90% of the results I see from government-funded 'science' look to be a total waste of my tax dollars.
Given a randomly selected tax-funded scientific research project, 99% of us aren't qualified to say whether it is or isn't a waste of tax dollars.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Society can't survive by appealing to Bronze Age notions of reality and morality.
Why can't it?
And let's be clear, I am not trying to suggest that the Bronze Age is good enough for me. However, since no conservative that lives today has ever lived in anything but what we might call the Modern Age, I'm just going to assume that you're sniping at particular concepts that either have truly continued since the Bronze Age, or that you are characterizing them as Bronze Age as a hyperbolic expression of how "outdated" you believe them to be.
So, you're an evolutionary psychologist. How do Bronze Age notions make it from the Bronze Age, which would now be anywhere from two to five thousand years old now, and survive to the present day, and yet so obviously imperil the survival of humanity? Should not these Bronze Age notions have caused the extinction of humanity in the millennia since?
Of course, I understand that times change. Perhaps circumstances change. The point I'd like to make is that even the Amish use tools and maintain attitudes that would have been current long after the Bronze Age, or Late Antiquity, or even the Early Medieval periods. To the Catholic Church of the 18th Century, they would have been the tip of a dangerous vein of radicalism. Today, they're a quaint anachronism. What is "conservative" today, was often pretty radical in its own time. The notion that somehow conservatism cannot countenance progress, or that it even impedes it to a dangerous level is simply not true.
You may not like conservatives, you may laugh at the dumber things that some of them say, but removing them does not remove the world's problems. They are not what is standing between the world and utopia. At worst, they might delay it by a few years, but that's not so bad either. Revolutions sound great after the fact, but they're rarely healthy when they are your present. All a conservative represents is a radical who actually had a line in the sand that even they would not cross, and then society started to cross that line around them.
Being conservative does not make you right, but it does not make you wrong, by definition. If your heart is set on that idea, pray that you don't live long enough to find yourself a conservative, whether you like it or not.
Translations:
muzzling scientists
ignoring the global warming scam
shutting down research centers
shutting down the theological seminaries of the first church of climate apocalypse
industry deregulation
it is not obvious why this is an attack on science; i suspect that in plain english it means something like "not extorting companies to tithe the first church of climate apocalypse"
re-purposing the National Research Council to align with business interests instead of doing real science
by "real science" i suppose what the OP means is "global warming research"; i imagine that "align with business interests" means "doing applied research"
It is not a conservative gene that is the problem - the left is not immune (ie: USSR). The main issue is Authoritarians, a psychological subset of us that has difficulty reasoning and is bitter and aggressive. In the west, most conservative parties are overflowing with Authoritarians (simple-minded and agressive followers, but hard workers) and led by Authoritarian leaders (dishonest, manipulative, selfish, but caring to close friends).
There is a lot of research to back this up. Under political simulations, Authoritarian-controlled nations often lead to complete worldwide devastation and social collapse within 50 years, as their leaders push us towards world war, in complete contrast to non-authoritarians who tend to create a prosperous world with lots of trade.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
So, you're an evolutionary psychologist. How do Bronze Age notions make it from the Bronze Age, which would now be anywhere from two to five thousand years old now, and survive to the present day, and yet so obviously imperil the survival of humanity? Should not these Bronze Age notions have caused the extinction of humanity in the millennia since?
You're leaving out the force multiplier that is modern technology. It's what Einstein said- the bomb has changed everything but our thinking.
If Hitler had had the bomb, the world would have been destroyed via nuclear winter before they could have figured out what was happening . It's just an accident of history- not a form of historical inevitability- that Hitler didn't get the bomb first and starting using it.
You're making the same mistake in thinking that people who cite the improbability of life itself as evidence of divine creation. The fact is, if we weren't here - by accident- then we wouldn't be talking about why we're here. Being here- for whatever reason including just chance- is a prerequisite to talking about why we're here.
So also with our lucky continued existence under the influence of Bronze Age ideas of God and Heaven and Hell and the supremacy of Biblical and Islamic or Hebrew law which is, how many people in the world live and evaluate morality still to this day, especially in America where half of all people reject evolution in favor of creationism and vote that way. If we had gotten unlucky in, we wouldn't be here to talk about it. Being here to talk about itself proves nothing about the current efficacy of those ideas.
So today we are facing a timebomb called global warming. It's going to go off, it IS going off and once it reaches past a certain point - a point which may be as close as 20 years hence, then there will be no turning it back, no magic technology is going to save us. 20 years is not enough time to change a conservative's "mind". We need to have started acting in a concerted manner yesterday. So this is how the conservative mind represents a clear and present danger not just to the US but to everyone in the world. It's the intersection of the rapid pace of change and the magnitude of change that technology confers on us and conservatism being conservatism.
Another way conservatism threatens humanity is the threat of conservatives in other nations getting a hold of something more deadly and far reaching than just airplanes. As nanotechnology progresses, as home fabrication becomes a reality, as our command over nature increases on the genetic level and microscopic level, as higher education spreads it increases the probability that well integrated, seemingly intelligent fundamentalists will appear in labs, in positions of power in research institutions and next time it won't be pressure cookers at marathons but germ warfare everywhere or worse.
None of this is taking into account the heedless, reckless actions of non-terrorists within our society who are motivated by pure greed and hubris who may accidentally release a pathogen or a genetically mutated organism which kills hundreds of millions before we can even understand what's happening. Or something more pervasive like the destruction of the ozone layer, which has the power to wipe out the bottom of the food web through over exposure to UV. In fact, that almost happened.
The conservative / insanely greedy and selfish mind and modern society are fundamentally incompatible. We cannot continue to permit the greedy and the religious head cases loaded down with sociopathic indifference to others to continue to exist on this earth. Full stop. Those are genetically mediate traits and it's at the level of genetics where ;we need to acquire knowledge in order to eliminate them.
I read one of the "long list" references. Blah blah this union claims that the gov't is anti-science. Blah blah that union says the conservatives are stifling research. Hoo hah yet anther union complains that the environment is being threatened.
Anyone see a pattern here?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Take a look at some of the assine budget items they are willing to throw big money at while penny pinching on small items that do things like save lives.(closing the Vancouver coastguard station versus advertising "Canada's Economic Action Plan" )
The left always attacks the right with one of two false charges: [1] dumb [2] anti-science
With Reagan championing many scientific and engineering projects, they pushed the theme that he was a Hollywood dummy. The anti-science left at the time claimed missile defense was impossible, nuclear energy was evil and dangerous, etc. When Bush43 was president, he was continually painted as dumb (even though he'd been a jet interceptor pilot and had a better academic record than his supposedly "smarter" political opponent). Democrat Jimmy Carter was portrayed as a genius, as is Barack Obama (even though nobody has ever seen any of his academic records... not a "birther" thing, just a fact). Indeed, when the more-conservative Sarkozy was elected in France, the press immediately labelled him dumb and anti-science.
This is all about ideology and who controls the press. With the left firmly in control of the press (so much so that these bubble-boys of the left do not even know how far left they are) anybody who disagrees with them is obviously dumb. Given that most in the press are secular (and therefore embrace evolution as an anti-religious position) and pride themselves on being "green" (therefore embracing all the global warming stuff) they see it as obvious that anybody on the right who is religious or who questions AGW is "anti-science". Nobody is supposed to notice all the insanity of the "dumb" lefties. Nor is anybody supposed to notice that mush of the opposition to any large scientific/engineering project comes from the left (who will launch all manner of eco- lawsuits, chain themselves to fences, lobby for government prohibitions, and so-on to stop them).
Anti-nuclear? Left-wing anti-science people
Anti-Supersonic Transport? Left-wing anti-science people
Anti-Missile Defense? Left-wing anti-science people
Anti-desalination plants? Left-wing anti-science people
Anti space program? Usually a lefty who wants to use the money on the poor (but by the rules of this game , clearly anti-science...
The list goes on-and-on-and-on
Even in areas like archaeology and human evolution, where lefties block some research (like Kennowick man) because it undermines some of their left-leaning political biases (which they wrap in a liberal cloak of "multiculturalism" and "tolerance"
Fighter Planes, how much were those suppose to cost again?
Not attacking science ? Do you really prefer to let industry take care of the information you and I get ? As a Canadian i need to know a certain number of things , What is the state of stocks , how the resources are being exploited and hundreds more things we Canadian Citizens need to know to make informed choices . We need to know what goes on out there ! The government is not about government in itself ! The government is about each and everyone of us Canadians getting the best and our right to know ,to have fair assessments, clear pictures of situations and justice. It does include the right to know if we are getting screwed , how , and by whom , it's not good policy to say the private sector will now furnish data or rely on them for fair unbiased information. As example If you stop counting fish in the rivers , can you trust a private company to make sure that they do not fish over a certain threshold of population to insure the stocks are renewed and the exploitation sustainable ? No ? Good So you need to count fish . Fish is just an example . You need to have a solid monitoring on the country's resources .Same goes for mines , Same goes for the tar sands that was about to be classified as polluting more than std crude today by the Europeans. What is the status over there in Alberta ? How are they fucking up the environment ? There's a big lake just north of the tar sands, What's the pollutants there ? How is population downstream affected by the pollutants moving north of the tar sands ? These are dumped right in the Indians primary source of water and fish. How do they react to the new pollutants ? That's pretty much important . Think the private industry will give us access to the real numbers for that one ? ROFL there has to be serious assessment work. We need not less but more science and their findings made more easily available and accessible. It's so many different little things that taken separate makes little sense to call a war on science , but as a whole, all those little details , because of the sheer number of them it makes the situation very serious.Shutting off the scientists like they been doing , not incorporating or using their recommendations , ( these guys are hired because they know what they talk about ) adopting policies and positions that go against these recommendations is simply not good government. Furthermore We Canadians need access to fair , unbiased information to help us make good decisions and choices ( and yes those choices may affect the outcome of elections and votes on various matters ). We need a clear picture , a fair assessment and no one trusts the private sector to furnish us with accurate unbiased information. When they stop counting fish in a river it affects our public right to know .There is a price to a good government, science is something we all agree we need to invest massively in for it to perform it's task and bring us all forward as a society and as a People. Relying solely on the private sector is a big obvious mistake. We need also a number of scientific institutions for wartime. Got to keep that reality in mind. Think Atomic Energy Thinking only in terms of tax cuts and balance sheets and how it affects your wallet in the immediate rather than what it does for the common good in the long term is missing the point. We need to have a strong science , vigorous and alive , working for us and one we can trust .We simply cannot leave it up to the private sector We have a right to know and a need to know. We need to have access to fair unbiased appraisals of the state of our Country , it's science and we need that science to be a reference and a strong authority in it's matters ! The private sector is not a viable source of information.They are the wolves we try to protect ourselves and our Canadian resources from .Trust a sheep to a wolf . I mean PUUUHLEASE ! Every time a government ignores the recommendations of it's own scientists , like they do pres
he's up against a hostile senate, and he needed almost a billion dollars to beat the worst challenger I think I've ever seen (Rhomney). Don't like it? Vote left. Vote for the most left wing candidate you can find, and keep doing that until the country moves left. You can't do it overnight.
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It's true. What I am really talking about is authoritarianism to a degree. The thing about the conservative movement s is it's NOT populated by only authoritarians. There's also people who are effectively oppositional defiant personality types, which is a kind of diseased form of contrarian. These are the so called libertarians. They're going to get theirs and nothing is going to stop them, least of all the thought of future generations. It's a kind of hedonism whereby their value system is a thinly disguised form of primitive self-gratification and their reasoning is nothing more than an ongoing process of rationalization, an ongoing narrative of strung together , disjointed and self contradictory justifications.
I know these people. I have an uncle like this and in the public eye, of Murdoch fits this bill as does Steve Forbes. It's a pure self0-gratification play, a long form process of self seeking without regard to anything- truth, consistency, reality, other people, nothing. These aren't authoritarians. I wish all anti-social behavior came down to a single pathology. What they all are are conservatives.
What people sometimes mix up is the STATED PHILOSOPHY of an authoritarian (or other) personality type with their actual actions. No progressive advocates for mass murder or forced relocation or anything of this nature.
No progressive advocates for coerced anything and notice I am not doing that here- I am saying they should not be created in the first place. .
Mao and Stalin were quite obviously NOT progressives whatever their stated philosophies about "community" and the good of the people. They were both obvious authoritarians- just like the heavy handed science murderers in Canada today.
Ditto all the fascists of the 20th century. Pol Pot hated intellectuals and progressives and used l;language which was eerily similar to that used by conservatives today. He hate progressives and intellectuals like conservatives hate them in America today, and for much the same reasons. He thought intellectuals (professors and "libs" in American conservative talk) had led people away from a "wholesome and natural" existence they were meant to live, which centered around farming and traditional ways ("family values and tradition") and what was needed was to turn the clock back to Day Zero (Tea Party translation - The American Revolution) and start all over again bringing everything back to a time before intellectuals (liberals) had screwed everything up (Tea Party translation - "The Founding Fathers and the American Revolution).
This is why conservatives are always talking about "2nd amendment remedies" and implying violence against "libs" . Pol Pot's "second amendment remedies" consisted of luring the intellectuals back to Cambodia, then gunning them down right on the tarmac as they debarked from the plane at the airport.
Conservatives will merrily take this earth and all it inhabitants down the road to total ruin, denying science and attacking scientists every step of the way, at first denying that AGW is going to happen, then blaming it on liberals, then finally deciding it was all foretold in the Bible.
You can't reason with them because they explicitly distrust reason science and evidentiary based reasoning, the later they see as a liberal trick and can never be used to serve their personal greed. When you have a group of people who are attempting to engage in policies which our best science has explicitly stated will destroy the world and who cannot be reasoned with , then that's where civilization ends and war begins.
The most humane thing to do is to quietly stop creating this class of people. To use science to improve humanity instead of just humanity's tools, which at this point is just giving the worst kinds of people more and more power.
The private sector pays for all the research anyway, so bully for them.
-- Jimtown Kelly
It goes on for fifteen paragraphs about how George Orwell would love it, the government is awful, this is an attack on science. Eventually they included a paragraph to give at least some information:
I didn't check out the large number of links, but a large number newsbending links does not a journalist make. Don't use blogs to get your news.
"people" getting "together" is just another level of government! Where do you think governments come from? And where would people getting together get the money to build the road? They would all have to pitch in a fee (tax) or labor and resources to fund it.
The other 10% form the foundation of our economy.
Or at least, look to the uneducated observer like they might. And I see the order of magnitude drop in scientific productivity when you go from the private world to the public, unaccountable one.
Bingo. Eisenhower warned about the Military-Industrial Complex, but everyone seems to forget his other warning in the same speech about the government-science complex.
At least 90% of the results I see from government-funded 'science' look to be a total waste of my tax dollars.
The other 10% form the foundation of our economy. Most of them were unintentional. Which is why anyone who responds with the above just looks like an uninformed fool.
All he's saying is that we should only fund the research that at some point in the future will show a pay-off. And I can't see what's wrong with that at all.
The 1930s happened and easy interstate transport meant cross border criminal gangs taking advantage of uneven law enforcement and juristictions. Now it's today, and for some reason people have forgotten that lesson and think it's unlikely that criminals will drive for an hour to get a gun.
Consider just these two points:
In the first case, comments from unions and disgruntled employees in newspapers in affected small towns are exceedingly biased. In the second case, a challenge: pose as a media representative, call up a random someone in any Forbes company, and ask them for an on camera interview. 99.99% chance you will be directed to the company Public Relations Dept. And that is what the Government of Canada is requesting its scientists to do. Period. Hardly muzzling.
The fact is, the Government is behaving like a proper business. They are being accountable and that includes making sure that those in positions of responsibility are aware of what their staff are doing. They have to be accountable. Why? Because the citizens of Canada, and the Opposition parties, stridently insist on it.
Besides, at the pay rates of government scientists, they should be generating a lot more research and spending less time fretting about whether they stroke their egos with a press interview. Do this research: number of papers per year published by a Canadian Defence Scientist @ $120K/yr versus an Assistant Professor at say University of Toronto, U Waterloo, or Memorial University (choose any Uni really, Assist profs are not making $120K/yr). It becomes apparent that having government do science is inefficient and expensive.
As for shutting down research areas: if industry or academia are doing research in an area, the government should rightfully ask why it should be involved as well. The Government shouldn't be participating in science, it should be encouraging industry and academia to pursue it. And it does although, sadly, here in Canada industry and academia don't really do research unless there's government money sent their way.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
...on your assimilation into the American Culture. It is now complete. Please hand over your keys to the latest two-faced liar we've nominally elected!
"This anti-scientific scourge includes muzzling scientists, shutting down research centers, industry deregulation and re-purposing the National Research Council to align with business interests instead of doing real science."
I am Canadian and know people working in climate science research and we have heard about the control of publications and the muzzling of scientists. This is a really scary.
The fact is, if we weren't here - by accident- then we wouldn't be talking about why we're here. Being here- for whatever reason including just chance- is a prerequisite to talking about why we're here.
How many times does this argument need to be beaten like a baby seal before people stop using it?
Suppose you are to be executed by a firing squad of 100 trained marksmen, all of them aiming rifles at your heart. You are blindfolded; the command is given; you hear the deafening roar of the rifles. And you observe that you are still alive. The 100 marksmen missed!
Taking off the blindfold, you do not observe that you are dead. No surprise there: you could not observe that you are dead. Nonetheless, you should be astonished to observe that you are alive. The entire firing squad missed you altogether! Surprise at that extremely improbable fact is wholly justified - and that calls for an explanation. You would immediately suspect that they missed you on purpose, by design.
Such amateur philosophy like yours won't fool anyone who ihas been given into a basic understanding in the subject. In fact, your objection is often one of the first things covered. The theist intellectual response to the new atheists has been brutal, Dawkins has been running like a scared puppy when intellectual heavyweights like Bill Craig challenge him to debates. They continue to pretend that their arguments have not been answered a hundred times. Their movement is slowly grinding to a halt.
So today we are facing a timebomb called global warming. It's going to go off, it IS going off and once it reaches past a certain point - a point which may be as close as 20 years hence, then there will be no turning it back, no magic technology is going to save us.
Might want to go back and check the science you claim to care so much about. No statistically significant warming over the last decade or so. It is the computer models that predict catastrophe and yet never match reality.
The conservative / insanely greedy and selfish mind and modern society are fundamentally incompatible. We cannot continue to permit the greedy and the religious head cases loaded down with sociopathic indifference to others to continue to exist on this earth. Full stop. Those are genetically mediate traits and it's at the level of genetics where ;we need to acquire knowledge in order to eliminate them.
So you're advocating genocide I see. 100+ million corpses produced by the beliefs you advocate in the 20th century alone. Militant Atheism and Humanism has done more damage to the people of the world than Religion ever could. It promises only death and despair and delivers on those promises. Further up in your post, you fear that it would be the conservative and religions people who would use those advances for evil. Quite frankly it is your kind that would be the ones using it for such purposes. What you advocate would not eliminate the greedy and selfish, it would only entrench them at the top like in The Soviet Union.
The worst thing I could wish upon you is for you to get the world you want. Problem is we only have one.
I think it's time to form a new party where Science, Health Care and Engineering are promoted above all other subjects. Not saying this new party wouldn't support them but it would make the sure the focus is in the right place.
He even started out pro-life before giving in to Democratic pressure (part of your point).
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Bob Altemeyer says there are both left-wing and right-wing authoritarians. See also G. WIlliam Domhoff on similarities among left-right extremists: ..."
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/left_and_right.htm
"Although the [extreme] Right and Left have major differences that make it almost impossible for them to agree on anything, they also have certain -- if not immediately apparent -- similarities as well. In fact, they are remarkably similar for how different they are. Since these similarities are of a type that tends to make them blind to any other view, these similarities further reinforce the dichotomy between them: that is, the similarities I am about to discuss make for more differences.
First, they share the same high degree of moral outrage and anger. This strong moral outrage makes them into absolutists. They become True Believers in their cause, with no doubts whatsoever. They see everyone else as sell-outs and trimmers. This includes many people who share their sympathies, but not their fanaticism. This disdain for less fanatical friends who share their general beliefs also reveals to us what the tamer versions of Rightists and Leftists, that is, conservatives and liberals, have in common: they are more pragmatic, tentative, and experimental in their beliefs. As might be expected, then, and as everyday observation makes apparent, there is often tension between moderate conservatives and Rightists on the Right side of the divide and between liberals and Leftists on the other side.
As Manuel De Landa says, we need both meshworks and hierarchies in our society. As others say, life exists at the interface of order and chaos, in the boundary area between fire and ice, or somewhere between altruism and selfishness.
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
Your past few posts on this issue seem to me to come across as tending extreme Left, given you seem to be implicitly calling for either essentially exterminating millions of people (or their potential offspring?) or at least chemically altering them because you claim they have some variant of some gene you don't like (with the variant expressed somehow in, say, suggesting that global climate change might be more a function of changes in solar output or soil erosion than burning fossil fuels, or perhaps, say, arguing we may be overall better off with a warmer global climate since plants will in general grow better,etc.). You are afraid such people with this gene variant will destroy humanity, and so you have expressed an implicit desire to either kill them first or perhaps just turn off that gene version somehow by forcing them to ingest medication? Hitler argued the same thing about the Jews -- that Jewish blood would weaken Aryans and destroy the world, and they needed to be destroyed or contained or sterilized. As Domhoff says, there seems to be an unexpected and not yet fully explained tendency of why extreme Leftists tend to resort to violence readily because they feel it is morally justified -- more so than extreme Rightists who tend to be somewhat more rule-driven and following a chain of command. Perhaps that tendency is "genetic" and people expressing such a Leftist inclination should be identified somehow and their genes suppressed? :-) [Ironic sarcasm in case it was not clear.]
All people have a mix of characteristics, inclinations, talents, and preferences that can be strengths or weaknesses depending on the situation. It's also true there are some real stinkers in the bunch. I hope you can find a way to make the most of yours to contribute to a healthy diverse society. Human intelligence (both the reasoning part and the emotional part) are so complex and so influenced by experience that it is unlikely everything about someone's world view will come down to having one variant of some gene instead of another. And in any case, natural
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It seems as though that list contains a lot of redundancy. How many groups, committees, organizations, agencies, bureaus, offices, institutes, networks, departments, centres, "teams", stations, and offices -- all doing essentially the same or similar work, most of them promoting a leftwing agenda -- does any country really need? and how many can the taxpayers afford?
The US government needs to do what the Canadian government is doing. Too bad it will most likely have to wait till 2017 for that to begin.