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Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study
Lasrick writes "Nebraska researchers say they refuse to be used as political pawns: 'The problem, according to members of the governor-appointed Climate Assessment and Response Committee, is that the bill behind the study specifically calls for the researchers to look at 'cyclical' climate change. In so doing, it completely leaves out human contributions to global warming.'"
Why do we not need a study on cyclical climate change? Recognizing how much of global warming isn't due to humans is also important.
Name one other country with a political party who is so hellbent on reality distortion to do such silly things with tax payer money? Name one other country who will purposedly ally themselves with corporate interests agaisn't the will of the people to do such silly things like publish these studies?
America is turning into the laughing stock of the world. It is truly embarrasing. Conservative Americans might be mad at my post or the suggestions we should all start voting for democrats, but at least they are somewhat sane and do not deny reality.
http://saveie6.com/
. . . Scientists refuse to carry out a pedophile-glorifying study for NAMBLA.
In forums all across America, pedophiles complain about "Damn scientists, damn eddekashun, and their political biases."
Good lord, what the fuck is wrong with the commenters here? It's for the same reason that biologists wouldn't consent to researching intelligent design as a 'falsifiable alternative' to evolution, without evolution being a part of the study. The study is framed in a way that ignores the overwhelming weight of the evidence and lends credibility to crackpots.
You can't selectively investigate one possibility while completely ignoring the other.
How do we keep politics out of this?
By eliminating all taxpayer funding of 'science'.
As Eisenhowr said, in the paragraphs everyone ignores just after he warned of the growing Military-Industrial Complex:
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
So long as politicians fund science with taxpayers' money, it will be politicized.
> the study specifically calls for the researchers to look at 'cyclical' climate change
It's almost as if someone has proposed a hypothesis to be either validated or rejected by examination.
Except that it would have to be either demonstrable or falsifiable to be a hypothesis. There's no point to "study" the existence of something someone just pulled out of their ass to try to make a political point, especially when there is every indication that the person defining something as ephemeral as "cyclical climate change" will simply claim the study didn't add enough epicycles.
The deniers will believe whatever their masters tell them. Jumping through hoops to satisfy them accomplishes nothing, and only lends credibility to the false notion that this is still being debated by scientists. It's not.
They need to be minimized, ignored, shoved aside. Lives depend on it, and only a fool would think that another study would satisfy them.
Indeed, it should be entirely privately funded. Thus we can focus on the research that matters: only that which can be monetized within the next 4 quarters or sooner!
No one has RTFA it seems ... (I know, I know, /.)
The scientists are being asked to study the effects of climate change on Nebraska, not climate change itself.
in that context restricting them to studying the effects of cyclical changes only is stupid, and the reason for their protest.
See also the longer article here http://www.omaha.com/article/20131024/NEWS/131029338/1707#state-climate-change-study-may-go-begging-for-scientists
Of course you can. Does smoking cause cancer? That doesn't deny that radiation causes cancer, it just looks at whether smoking causes cancer.
wow
Everyone has an agenda. Government is the most powerful entity in our mixed society. It is (and has amply proven itself to be) capable of corruption, graft, and political pursuit of goals contrary to the interests of those who are taxed to fund it.
Concentration of power is the problem. Politically, big corporations and big government are a difference without a distinction. They both pursue their own agendas in service to the elites who are stakeholders, and then use propaganda to claim otherwise.
I Disagree. Publically funded research is essential because there are many fields that private companies would not research (ironically, like climate change) and where monetary interests influence the results. The main problem here is that it seems that there are no checks in place to prevent (obvious) influence from eg. lobbying groups, or prevent bogus research from being funded (like the "only cyclic" climate change that is the topic here)
We have mountains of evidence supporting AGW, and we know that AGW will result in widespread suffering and death if left unchecked. We do not, and cannot, have "mountains of evidence" against religion in general, and religion in general doesn't kill people.
We do have mountains of evidence against certain religious beliefs, such as faith healing, and in those cases we DO intervene, e.g. by forcing parents to take their kids to a doctor.
People can believe what they want, but when we as a society are making life-and-death policy decisions, we should rely on evidence and scientific consensus.
Taxpayer funding of science has *not* produced politicized science; not during the period, say, from the end of WW2 to the end of the 20th C. Yeah, it *sounds* plausible that federal funding should produce politicized research, but if you ever worked in a science lab or with researchers on Federal grants you'd know that it just didn't happen.
So what has changed? Thus far, for the majority of researchers, not much. But there have been two big issues. One is the rise of political concern over climate change research. The second is the shift of the Republican party from a industrial state based, business-oriented party to a Southern regional party driven by social and religious issues. 52% of Republicans believe in creationism in a recent Gallup poll, as opposed to 34% of Democrats (still shocking). Having a majority membership of a major political party has given religious ideologues political influence they haven't enjoyed since the 1920s.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
By eliminating all taxpayer funding of 'science'.
As Eisenhowr said, in the paragraphs everyone ignores just after he warned of the growing Military-Industrial Complex:
Using Eisenhower's warning about the influence of politics on science to reach the conclusion that all taxpayer funded scientific research should be eliminated is about as sensible as taking his warning about the military industrial complex to conclude there should be no taxpayer funded military.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
First, you have entire industries dedicated to profiting off of the idea that the world is about to explode unless we start going green. Solar panel manufacturers, raw materials recyclers, electric vehicle manufacturers, and much much more. Those groups alone profit from studies predicting a bad future.
That is utter crap. Solar panel manufacturing is not that profitable, if it was why is BP winding down its solar division:
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9025019&contentId=7046515
Recycling is also not exactly a sure fire route to buckets of cash. Somethings it is cost effective to recycle like aluminium and maybe steel but most stuff is cheaper to just throw in a hole in the ground. The problem is that nobody wants a landfill next to their house and so the only money is in making rubbish go away as nobody wants to deal with it. Most stuff is simply too damn hard to split out into its raw materials in order to recycle it without serious government grants.
As to electric vehicles it might be trendy but it is nowhere near as profitable as making good old fashioned gas guzzlers. The US auto industry did not need to be bailed out due to everyone buying electric cars, they needed a bailout because labour costs were too high and because more and more people were choosing to buy foreign cars. Most other countries auto industries have done ok.
The reality is that without government funded research coming out of other countries the huge corporations and oil companies would have just out spent everyone else trying their damnedest to sweep climate change under the table.
I dont read
So you're saying nobody anywhere ever, other than the government, would fund climate research?
Let's rephrase to remove that objection.
Publicly funded research is essential because there are many fields where private funding would be somewhere between insufficient to non-existent, especially those with low potential for obvious commercial application (ironically, like climate change). Additionally there are many fields where monetary interest raises questions about the reliability of industry based research (eg. the efficacy of glucosamine in the treatment of osteoarthritis), which reliability can be assessed only by comparison with publicly funded (as close as we can practically get to independent) research.
To blame the nature of government funded research itself, for the gross attempt at state intervention described in the present article, is not only to misunderstand the nature and ignore the importance of public research, it is to underestimate the transgression contemplated by this intervention. Instead of attacking science funding we ought attack the administrator who fails in their duty to respect independence in publicly funded research. With pitchforks if necessary.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
So you're saying nobody anywhere ever, other than the government, would fund climate research? That just makes no sense at all.
The university system is the USA's last beacon of exceptionalism, and is systematically being eroded by turning professors into professional grant writers. Momentum is mostly what is really keeping it going. The public funding of research also supports education of the entire population. Only a radical would propose undoing such a successful system based on some intellectual theory on how societies and economies work. A theory that most academics disagree with. See Hayek's Fatal Conceit.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right