The Problem With Congress's Scientific Illiterates

Lasrick (2629253) writes "Brian Merchant at Motherboard examines the March 26th House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology's 2015 budget request hearing. White House adviser Dr. John Holdren addressed the committee to defend funding for science programs. Video clips show comments that are difficult to believe, when you hear them. From the article: '"So, when you guys do your research, you start with a scientific—what do they call it—postulate or theory, and you work from that direction forward, is that right?" Representative Randy Weber (R-TX) said. "So, I'm just wondering how that related, for example, to global warming and eventual global cooling." He paused to make a joke about getting the scientists' cell phone number so he could call to ask when to buy a coat, before concluding that science just isn't up to the task.'"

Comments

Don't bother.

[Petersko]

All you can do with somebody like that is just look them over, wince, be perplexed for a moment, and then move on. They aren't interested, nor would they listen to any attempt to aid their understanding.

It's not a winnable battle, so don't start the fight.

Re:Don't bother.

[Berkyjay]

And this is why we fail. We get so defeated by ignorant politicians and just throw up our hands and say "what can you do?" But we get the government we deserve and most of this country is horribly undereducated and ignorant of how the world actually works.

Re:Don't bother.

[JohnVanVliet]

"All you can do with somebody like that is"
is to do EVERYTHING possible to have them removed from office ASAP!!!!

Re:Don't bother.

[MickyTheIdiot]

I think you're maybe half right.

We have a little less than half of the people that throw up their hands and give up because it is just so dumb.

We have another group at a little less than half that are so worn out with work, the 3 kids society said they should have, the junk they spend their money on, etc.. etc.. that they don't have the time to pay attention.

So you have 2% that are pissed off that our leadership is dumb as hell and are willing to fight the idiocy. And that's not enough.

Re:Don't bother.

[lonOtter]

It's not even that they're tired, or that they give up. It's that most people are apathetic and unintelligent, all in one convenient package.

Re:Don't bother.

[Anonymous Coward]

The point isn't to fix them.
The goal is to ridicule them, shut them up, use them as an example that scares students into paying attention in school and then actually voting, and then to replace them in future elections.

It's not going to turn into a better world without large-scale attempts at education, so don't give up just because this particular turd is un-flushable.

Re:Don't bother.

[Jason Levine]

The problem is that these people aren't just ignorant. People who are ignorant can be educated and then they're fine. These people are willfully ignorant. They are purposefully ignorant. They take pride in their ignorance and will do everything in their power to stay ignorant. Trying to educate these people is a losing proposition because they won't listen no matter what you say or how much proof you show them.

It would be tolerable if these people were just conspiracy nuts ala the "moon landing were faked" folks. We could laugh at them and move on with our lives. These people, however, are in seats of power in the government and are making big decisions about scientific funding. Again, perhaps we could laugh at them if we knew that the educated populace would toss the ignorant politicians when the next election rolled around. Unfortunately, the purposefully ignorant politicians are representing purposefully ignorant people who keep voting them in and who actively oppose educated politicians. To make matters worse, the willfully ignorant politicians gerrymander their districts so that it is nearly impossible to get them voted out of office. They might be purposefully ignorant about science but they are very intelligent about how politics works - a very dangerous combination.

You can't reason with these people. You can oppose them, but it can be very frustrating when you are derided for wanting someone who is educated to make these decisions instead of someone who thinks God *poofed* everything into existence 10,000 years ago as proved incontrovertibly by a book that they take literally. In the end, I can understand why some people throw their arms up in frustration.

Re:Don't bother.

[Jason Levine]

There's also the group that see idiocy all around and, knowing they can't fight it all, fight some battles and toss their arms up on others.

For example, my wife and I are fighting against EngageNY, Common Core, and the high-stakes testing that New York State has implemented. Without going too much into it (since it is off-topic), let's just summarize to say that New York's Board of Education is highly corrupt and this was rushed into to benefit politicians and funnel money to corporations, not students or teachers. In fact, it is actively hurting students. So we're fighting this fight.

Unfortunately, we can't fight every fight. I doubt anyone could. Even if you were single, with no kids, and were able to fight these fights every day, I doubt you would be able to battle all of them. At some point, you need to pick and choose and people are more likely to pick the battles that affect them immediately (schools) and less likely to pick battles that might affect them later on (science funding). This isn't to say that science isn't important - I definitely think it is, but you can't fight all the fights all the time.

Before you judge someone for throwing up their arms in frustration at this instead of fighting, take a closer look and see what other battles they're fighting.

Re:Don't bother.

[ComputersKai]

Just look at this. The representative here is spouting around claiming that his assumptions, essentially, flout the experiments of numerous scientists. During the Bush administration the government came up for some bright plan for fuel-cell cars, and essentially decided to kill off electric cars in favor of fuel cells. Guess how many hydrogen stations you see across to country now? And the Kevin Mitnick case. The ignorant justice officials in the court case apparently were so paranoid about giving a computer to the defendant, they wouldn't even let him review the evidence on a computer disconnected from a network. The prosecution also pressed for this, citing that the evidence was so much they couldn't print it all out. Is that constitutional to not allow the accused to review the evidence with an attorney? And the "oh-global-warming-climate-change is a joke" attitudes? Well, go ask the Chinese. I'm pretty sure they would have some choice things to say about that. And why the f**k do 'mericans elect these guys to office in the first place? Do we really need to shove everything in our politicians' faces to get them to understand?

Re:Don't bother.

[flaming error]

This is about science in general, not AGW in particular.

But if you want to make it about AGW, the science is not based on surveys, nor is it based on computer models.

It is based on old school physics that's been developing over centuries.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Not the most potent, but the primary driver.

Since the industrial revolution began,
a) Atmospheric CO2 has gone from 280 ppm to 400 ppm (40% increase)
b) ocean pH has gone down 0.1 (30% increase in acidity).

What each upcoming season's weather will be we aren't sure.

But we are sure our changes to the atmosphere are warming the planet, acidifying and enlarging the oceans, and displacing and killing living things.

All your denialist microquibbles, character assassinations, and FUD are red herrings.

The core science is not in dispute. It is accepted by every established scientific association on the planet, for every branch of science.

It's basically accepted by everyone except one political faction in one scientifically illiterate country.

Re:Don't bother.

[meerling]

Considering the positions of power and influence those fools hold, your statement is pretty much the equivalent of being somewhere lost at sea with a navigator that won't let anyone else navigate despite the fact that he has no idea how to do it, and thinks the compass is some kind of fancy combination lock on a secret stash of fairy dust. The idiots are going to sink the F-N ship and there are NO LIFEBOATS !

It's generally considered unwise to ignore the creep with the gun to your head, no matter how stupid and irrational he is.

Re:Don't bother.

[al0ha]

>> most of this country is horribly undereducated and ignorant of how the world actually works.

Yep and that is part of the cloaked Right Wing agenda that is turning the US into an oligarchy. Every politician since time imemorial has stated education is their top priority, but the facts of the state of the educational system in America proves they are liars, every one of them. Now the worst of the Bush II Presidency has just been revealed with the latest Supreme Court ruling on money in politics.

In the government and in politics it's far worse than simple ignorance of scientific fact, there is active anti-truth campaigns funded by big money Super PACs. Now with the recent Supreme Court folly the Tea Party and other scientific denier whackos will have even more Super PAC money to continue their dirty work in the name of the 1%.

Our only hope to continue as a true Democracy is to figure out how to use the Internet to get money out of politics completely. That is what every brilliant mind should be working towards if we want any hope for the future generations.

Re:Don't bother.

[flaming error]

" I can keep shooting you down all day"
Perhaps you could. Shoot down Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I'll join your team.

Re:Don't bother.

[thunderclap]

e planet, for every branch of science.

It's basically accepted by everyone except one political faction in one scientifically illiterate country.

You do realize that this

\a) Atmospheric CO2 has gone from 280 ppm to 400 ppm (40% increase) b) ocean pH has gone down 0.1 (30% increase in acidity).

Has happened at least 12 times in the last 100000 yrs? Thats from the core samples pulled from Antarctica. So how many of them involved humans? Hmm.. this one. People who believe that global climate change will lead to floods and lost land and changing weather are right. It will. Its called a living planet. While we might have accelerated the process, the problem is the fact people want to stop it. That's scary. No, you get the right to alter planetary weather because you put a city on a coast. You move the city. (or protect it). The planet won't have runaway greenhouse because its doesnt have the trigger that Venus has. Also we have to accept that 98% of all species of animals have died and we have nothing to do it. Its part of a living planet. Seriously, though we need to stop electing people who are clueless about certain fields. (like science)

Re:Don't bother.

[msobkow]

Possibly because, given the nature of the committee, and the presumption that people appointed to it would have at least some vague idea about the subject matter, the politician's questions was akin to your mechanic asking you where to put the key in your car. :P

Re:Don't bother.

[pitchpipe]

The real question here is why a politician is actually asking perfectly legitimate questions, but is being labeled stupid on Slashdot for doing so.

It's so fitting that your username is Jane Q. Public. You are an excellent representative of the general public and their ignorance on all things scientific.

Re:Don't bother.

[bill_mcgonigle]

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Not the most potent, but the primary driver.

Except for water vapor. That's why it's so important to get the cloud response models right. CO2 molecules last longer than water vapor molecules, but if the amount of water vapor increases permanently then that distinction becomes less important.

Since the industrial revolution began,
a) Atmospheric CO2 has gone from 280 ppm to 400 ppm (40% increase)
b) ocean pH has gone down 0.1 (30% increase in acidity).

Indeed. One unanswered question is why the current spike started in 1830 (see Scripp's sea bed sediment research). That's the year the first train service started in the UK, but Faraday wouldn't discover electromagnetic current until the next year. The next few decades would see the invention of gasoline, concrete, steel, and electrical generation on a large scale, but there just wasn't that much new emission happening in 1830 as compared with the preceeding decades. This kind of increase should be very linear and the ocean response should be similar. Yet we have this spike that's yet to be properly explained.

The core science is not in dispute. It is accepted by every established scientific association on the planet, for every branch of science.

Some people claim to know exactly what's going to happen and why. Others claim to know when. But nobody really knows how the atmospheric system works fully yet - none of the models are great predictors yet. We still need better models - even the people who think they have the best models are still writing grants to build better ones!

It's basically accepted by everyone except one political faction in one scientifically illiterate country.

What's accepted? Surely not that we're done with the science! Be careful of people who have religion at either extreme of such debates.

Re:Don't bother.

[rnturn]

Take a look at the authors of those papers. The same names keep showing up in paper after paper after paper. Looks pretty fishy. Makes you wonder just who the "peers" are who are reviewing those papers.

Re:Don't bother.

[umafuckit]

It would be tolerable if these people were just conspiracy nuts ala the "moon landing were faked" folks. We could laugh at them and move on with our lives. These people, however, are in seats of power in the government and are making big decisions about scientific funding.

And they're there because they were voted in by people who sympathise with these views. We get the government we deserve because, as a nation, the bulk of the US is scientifically illiterate. There will continue to be illiterates in power as long as the people are illiterate. Somehow we need to find a way to promote science as a way of thinking and do so without hurting the feelings of the religious right.

Re:Don't bother.

[cyn1c77]

We have another group at a little less than half that are so worn out with work, the 3 kids society said they should have, the junk they spend their money on, etc.. etc.. that they don't have the time to pay attention.

Oh, we pay attention. But there is no one to vote for who will fix the problem since all of the parties collude to keep themselves in power.

What do you expect us to do? What are you doing other than complaining on /.?

Are all the childless people really making more of a difference? I didn't know that clubbing, going to the movies, and trying to get laid really was that effective at motivating political reform!

Re:Don't bother.

[Anonymous Coward]

How was this list generated? I took a quick look at a couple of the more recent papers toward the end. This paper, "The Pacic sea surface temperature,
Physics Letters A, Volume 376, Issue 2, pp. 128-135, December 2011, doesn't mention AGW at all. And this one, "Hydroclimate of the northeastern United States is highly sensitive to solar forcing, Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 39, February 2012, has an implicit acceptance of "anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing" in the final sentence.

Re:Don't bother.

[The Grim Reefer]

It's that most people are apathetic and unintelligent, all in one convenient package.

It's more efficient that way.

Re:Don't bother.

[The Grim Reefer]

I may not be the only one who thinks having three kids and a house in the suburbs either indicates a serious IQ issue or some sort of mental illness is at work. If one can get sold on the yuppie way of life one has already been lost.

Yuppie = Young Urban Professional, usually childless

The GP is so smart and mentally balanced that not only didn't he get sold on the yuppie way of life. He doesn't even know what it means. ;-)

Re:Don't bother.

[canadiannomad]

Wolf PAC

Re:Don't bother.

[pla]

Are all the childless people really making more of a difference? I didn't know that clubbing, going to the movies, and trying to get laid really was that effective at motivating political reform!

We also vote, and have the disposable income (that in your case goes to crap like paying for all those antibiotics you keep ruining as placebos to treat viral ear infections) to contribute to our preferred candidates. And hey, the USSC actually just raised we mere humans to the level of corporations as far as "money as free speech" goes!

That said, let's not get sidetracked by the breeder-vs-DINK arguments. We have one very simple, fundamental problem with getting scientifically-literate people in office:

None run.

We have, as a nearly unanimous pool of candidates, complete fucking morons (with nice hair, oh and "ironically" enough, a median net worth in the eight digits). So whether we vote for Tweedle-dee (D) or Tweedle-dum (R), we still all lose.

Re:Don't bother.

[SuperTechnoNerd]

People think that politicians on committees are by default, advocates of what that committee represents, in this case science. However in government, it is a powerful tactic to form a committee with the sole purpose to subvert, control, or even destroy that which it supposed to support and represent. What better way to change something that you don't like than to be in a position of making important decisions about that thing. There is a calculated reason why there are no scientists on such committees. That explains why they make no attempt to even have a high school level of understanding about science and it's methods. Because it's not about the science to them - it's about control. They already have their opinions formed and the rest is just window dressing. As you said they are very intelligent about how politics works. Why else would people so out of touch with science, who even hate it, want to be on a science committee if not to throw a wrench into the works and control it, and to use it to support their political (and religious) agenda.

Re:Don't bother.

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit. Oh yes, let's not argue with Science Guy here who shows REAL EVIDENCE that because heating in a box appropriate for a fucking real greenhouse, you know, with plants and shit, seems to be dominated by convective heat transfer, that this THOROUGHLY DISCREDITS the whole fucking fields of observational and theoretical chemistry, and THOROUGHLY DISCREDITS real fucking measurements of in-welling and out-welling radiation measurements. Oh my fucking God, are you that fucking stupid, or that fucking arrogant that you actually believe that you understand this shit? You know (well, YOU probably don't know) that we've sent stuff up into space, measured the amount of radiation coming down onto the earth, measured the radiation that makes it to the earth's surface, and measured the radiation that leaves the earth, and you know what?? It all can't be explained by some fucking air-filled cardboard boxes with plastic film stretched on them. Imagine that!

There is nothing wrong with not understanding something, but do yourself a favor and don't try to sound like you understand something when it is clear you have no fucking clue what you're talking about. Parroting technical shit to browbeat someone who doesn't understand something is bad enough, but don't try it on someone who actually understands basic physics and chemistry and expect to not be held in ridicule. The link you provide looks like a nice experiment that seems to have been well thought out and executed. I could even offer some opinions on the way it was done, how it could be improved, and the conclusions drawn (exercise for the student: look up the transmission spectra of CO2 and silica windows and polyethylene, and look up the emission spectrum of CO2 and see if you can find one issue to be addressed). But then to take that and run with it because it THOROUGLY DISCREDITS the whole concept of what is referred to colloquially as "greenhouse gases" makes you sound like a complete fucking tool who can parrot all that great "science" and "facts" and shit from other dumbasses with blogs.

And another thing, your list of refereed papers is pathetic. What is the point, besides AGAIN trying to overwhelm the unaware with a long list of references. Big fucking deal. I read papers like that, so I looked a bit through your papers. First off, a list of random references is completely meaningless if you don't provide context. What is the fucking context here? Why were any of these papers put on this list, because most of them you can't tell from their titles. So let's look at a few of these papers: The Knorr paper, where he says "I expect atmospheric concentrations to have increased, but my modeling suggests it has been relatively flat. We need to understand this better." HOLY SHIT! Tear down the walls! What is the point of this paper on your list? This sounds like a real science paper, not some shocking expose that the emperor has no clothes. Oh, here is one from Iron and Steel Technology. As fine a journal I'm sure that is, I'll think I'll look to another source for climate science related issues rather than one that uses the term "alarmist" so frequently. How about the 2009 Essenhigh paper? Oh, look, as I was googling for it, one of my first links came up with a paper that points out that Essenhigh is repeating a common misconception (and the author thanks Essenhigh for useful comments on his paper to boot). Or how about that 2001 Essenhigh editorial, yes, editorial (even in peer-reviewed papers, editorials don't follow the peer review process).

Look, learn some basic science, look at the research going on, get involved (intelligently) in the discussions, and leave your pathetic armchair science distortions with the bozos on the radio where you get your other opinions.

Re:Don't bother.

[artor3]

Somehow we need to find a way to promote science as a way of thinking and do so without hurting the feelings of the religious right.

No, see, that's the problem. You're aiming at the wrong group. These congressmen aren't ignorant because they're religious. They're ignorant because certain entrenched interests pay them ENORMOUS SUMS OF MONEY to remain ignorant. You can never, ever compete with that. No education, no promotion of science, will ever make a dent.

If you want it to get better, you need to get serious campaign finance reform. And that can't happen until you get rid of the current SCOTUS. Which means that our one and only chance to fix this is in the next presidential election, since the winner might, maybe get to replace a conservative justice. If we get a Republican president, Scalia and Kennedy will retire, and we will be damned to another 20 years of oligarchy.

If we manage to get a Democratic president, Scalia and Kennedy will try to hold on as long as they can.

Absolute best case scenario (barring a miracle heart attack), we might be able to start fixing this around 2025.

It will probably be too late by then.

Re:Don't bother.

[spitzak]

You do realize the change is happening literally HUNDREDS of times FASTER than any of those "12 previous times". Or perhaps you just want to ignore that because it makes your whole argument bogus.

Re:Don't bother.

[Uecker]

The core science is not in dispute. It is accepted by every established scientific association on the planet, for every branch of science.

Some people claim to know exactly what's going to happen and why. Others claim to know when. But nobody really knows how the atmospheric system works fully yet - none of the models are great predictors yet. We still need better models - even the people who think they have the best models are still writing grants to build better ones!

It's basically accepted by everyone except one political faction in one scientifically illiterate country.

What's accepted? Surely not that we're done with the science! Be careful of people who have religion at either extreme of such debates.

You are right about open questions, but this is just distracting from the only important thing: GP is absolutely right: The _core_ science is not in dispute. All important national academies of science and many scientific societies have issued statements in support of the IPCC. It does not get clearer than this.

Also I am wondering what a statement such as "Be careful of people who have religion at either extreme of such debates" is supposed to mean. Setling for a moderate point of view will certainly make your life easier, but if you search for the truth, you have to accept that the truth might turn out to be something extreme. A much better advise is: Always question your own beliefs. In times of the filter bubble, this seems more important than ever.

Re:Don't bother.

[Electricity Likes Me]

Pro-tip: to someone else, so are you.

The reality is people are really stupid when they go outside their field of expertise. Some people have a lot fewer of these then others.

Re:Don't bother.

[lonOtter]

Pro-tip: to someone else, so are you.

And? To some ignorant person, Einstein might seem stupid. Someone's going to be wrong. The mere fact that someone else might deem me unintelligent is not something that makes my observations incorrect.

The reality is people are really stupid when they go outside their field of expertise.

It's not just that they're ignorant; they're unintelligent and have almost zero critical thinking skills. Examples of this are people who buy into the "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" nonsense, accept the TSA or NSA surveillance, keep voting for 'the lesser of two evils', or do any other such thing, and (this is the important part) continue to support these things even after it's explained why it's a bad idea.

That and most people don't even seem to have the ability to truly understand (not just memorize) even trivial math makes it seem extremely likely that most people are unintelligent.

Re:Don't bother.

[BoberFett]

Ah yes, it's a right wing conspiracy. Nothing the left wing could be doing might be even remotely possible for damaging education in science.

"Little Bobby and Suzy are special snowflakes, they don't need to answer the questions correctly, as long as they tried we'll give them gold stars and boost their self confidence."

Pretty sure that's not a right wing attitude.

Re:Don't bother.

[Electricity Likes Me]

More importantly, whether the climate changes doesn't really matter when you have a scattered population in the millions, which is reasonably nomadic with no long term infrastructure.

We have today a population that will be 9 billion or so (the expected stabilization level in 2020), with vast static infrastructure requirements to support it, in highly unmobile cities.

It takes 100+ years of social policy to relocate people away from the coast due to highly predictable natural forces (erosion retreat policies for beachfront areas for example). We absolutely can't afford to move whole cities on that timespan, nor put up adequate retaining walls. And that's just considering the coastal flooding/weather change issue. It's not diving into fisheries damage, marine ecology changes, drought and inland rain changes etc.

Re:Don't bother.

[NeutronCowboy]

Since you clearly never took logic 101: an appeal to authority is only wrong when your appeal to authority does not involve an actual authority. Which the two people referred to, are. In which case an appeal to authority is actually the right course of action.

Asimov said it best: our greatest failing is that we believe that my ignorance is as good as your knowledge.

Re:Don't bother.

[Namarrgon]

greenhouse gas theory is not based based on a the kind of heating that occurs in real greenhouses

Well yeah. So why do you seem to think an experiment about how real greenhouses work has anything to do with the physics of CO2 blocking radiative transfer in the infrared spectrum? (Leaving aside the question of how one unpublished, non-peer-reviewed experiment can be considered to have "thoroughly discredited" anything).

You really do have a weird idea of science, don't you?

Re:Don't bother.

[sjames]

It's called learned helplessness. Put a rat in a cage and shock his feet. Provide different colored areas on the floor, lights, buzzers and levers. No matter what he does, shock his feet.

American voters are that rat.

Re:Don't bother.

[tragedy]

Greenhouse gas theory is completely different, having to do with trapping of radiation. Which has been thoroughly discredited. [principia-scientific.org] (Just one example of said discrediting.)

I think you're going to have to do a lot better than a paper about actual greenhouses that doesn't address the atmospheric greenhouse effect at all. Not to mention that cardboard box experiments, while great when you don't have anything else, don't really hold up against satellites with sensitive instruments that measure the radiation leaving and entering the atmosphere and similarly sensitive ground stations. Here is a much better experiment for the atmospheric greenhouse effect.

Re:Don't bother.

[flaming error]

You seem to have the impression I conceded defeat, and that I was challenging you to next beat someone else.

My point was only that I am an anonymous layman, and if you managed to defeat me in a debate it would prove nothing. This isn't a frivolous political argument at a donut shop.

If the science is wrong prove it on scientific turf. Show NASA where they got their physics wrong, teach NOAA how the climate really works, show the field biologists where all the specimens they couldn't find are hiding.

You haven't disproven a thing. All you've discredited with your lie ("Greenhouse gas theory... has been thoroughly discredited"), esoteric microquibble (" the experimental apparatus..."), and innuendo of bias ("Fourier's conclusions about his friend's experiments") is yourself.

Re:Don't bother.

[fyngyrz]

No. The way to tell if someone is fighting is to check and see if the system has invested the effort to squash them. If not, they're having no effect, even if they *think* they're fighting.

You will not beat the establishment. Ever. It may beat itself out of sheer lumbering stupidity, with which it is copiously oversupplied, but you won't have had any hand in it. Not in the USA, in any case.

Re:Don't bother.

[DamnOregonian]

I think you are very confused about Fourier's theories on the greenhouse effect...
Fourier always knew that his friend's experiment formed a real greenhouse. His postulation was that the atmosphere, and "greenhouse gasses" within it could function to similar end, with various gasses of various levels of opaqueness to light wavelengths forming the stable barriers that the glass did.

That theory is in fact not discredited one bit. Space is the glass. It very efficiently prevents the convection of the atmosphere with the non-heat conducting void beyond. What you cited as being discredited is the theory that physical greenhouses retain their temperature because glass blocks long-wave radiation. I'm not really familiar with this theory, but it's pretty ridiculous on its face. Anyone with elementary understanding of thermodynamics can tell you that the lack of air exchange will greatly outweigh the radiative energy. But the best part is- that has *nothing* to do with the greenhouse effect. It's some kind of weird red herring straw man to distract someone from looking up what the greenhouse effect really is, and to see that you have absolutely no clue what the hell you are talking about.

The basic physics behind the greenhouse effect are so damn settled, that you have to undo our entire knowledge of the universe, relativistically, and quantum mechanically to alter them. The spectral absorption lines of various molecular gasses are *known*. Some simple thought experiments will lead you to the correct conclusion. Short-wave solar radiation hits something, say the ground. The ground absorbs it, heats up, and emits appropriate black-body radiation (long-wave). In a happy, greenhouse effect-less world, that emitted black-body radiation goes back out to space, and the Earth is a very fucking cold place. In our (thankfully obeying the laws of physics) world, a percentage of those long-wave photons hit something that is opaque to long-wave radiation on its way back out to space. Let's call this substance a greenhouse gas, since its existence will make the Earth retain heat- like a greenhouse retains heat. It is then refracted, with some of the incident photons going back to space, and some going back to the ground for re-absorption. The Earth just netted some thermal energy. It's a good deal for us, and it's entirely necessary in order for this planet not to be a spherical skating rink.

To call the "greenhouse effect" discredited is to claim that thermodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics are all wrong, and everything we know about heat transfer, photon absorption and emission and energy are all wrong. You must be some kind of fucking genius. I can see why you don't appeal to authority- you *are* the fucking authority.

Re:Don't bother.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Has happened at least 12 times in the last 100000 yrs?

Nope, global CO2 has never been as high as 400 ppm in the past 800,000 years at least, and it's only been this high a few times in the past 20,000,000 years.

Re:Don't bother.

[VortexCortex]

Then there are those who grew up as scientists then wondered why the scientific method wasn't used for all policy and law, then looked into the systems of governance and found them defective by design largely due to gerrymandering. That's a process whereby your votes do not matter anymore because whomever draws district outlines selects the winners (Protip: don't register as a party [they ask at the DMV] nor answer political surveys unless your population is nomadic). Some places are trying to fix this particular blatant exploit of our democratic-republic, but found the powers that be one step ahead so our vote tallies themselves have been hacked. And now that we don't have paper ballots to verify the insecure digital tally with, we might as well just ask the NSA or CIA or FBI to appoint people they like.

Speaking of which, if you apply a bit of observational power you'll discover those secret agencies answer to no one and have a long history of silencing any form of activism -- you know, because protest was the only avenue left to affect the government. It's hard for a scientist to survive mentally in a country that's hell bent on leveraging disaster capitalism regardless of public benefit: Humans will do whatever it takes to survive the disasters our government plans for us -- including compete for lower wages offered by immortal corporations.

Some of us have taken a step back, done some calculations and realized that some fights are entirely unwinnable: We've got to the point where the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment allows a senator to read a passage from the bible and declare it as proof man can't change the climate -- only god can. Listen up, newbie, that's corporate oil interest speaking, leveraging religious fundamentalism against science from the very panels addressing climate change -- What can you do? Replace them and get a new panel bought off? It's not just congress, your executive and legislative branches are sock-puppet parades too. The government fights wars at the behest of corporations and Habeas Corpus has been revoked, FFS. It's not that everyone is stupid and we're "getting what we voted for"; The 'republic' part of our democratic-republic is designed to fix that: The dumb elect folks who are smarter, but our forefathers didn't count on the majority of congress being corrupt so the whole system became utterly broken. They did leave us the option to call an emergency session of congress and wield a vote of no-confidence, so next time you see the "fire congress" carousel go round, hop on board (not that it'll fix anything, but it'll scare some straight).

So, what? Organize some activism and try to fix the illegitimate rulership system that has benefited the powerful all too well for well over a hundred years? Then you're an "anti-government extremist" / terrorist, and the plan to silence that disastrous shit is already so firmly in place they can keep the worst of it even if PRISM is leaked to the public. To me the innefectual occupy movement was a test to see how quickly the elites and FBI will work their magic on the police to silence dissent, and to see how effectively the news is controlled by corporate statist interests. There were protesters shoulder to shoulder filling a large swath of Wall Street one day of the protest and the local news in my southern town mentioned nothing. Days later I had to pull up video and images of the event to convince my clueless friends and neighbors it even happened. They scratched their heads, "Why wasn't this on the news then?" -- indeed. Can you

Re:Don't bother.

[N1AK]

The reality is people are really stupid when they go outside their field of expertise.

No. People are uninformed about things outside their expertise. They are only stupid when they try and comment on other fields. I'm not stupid when it comes to combustion engines. If someone asked me if a V8 or V10 were better I'd say I had no clue, stupid would be going V10 on the basis that 10 sounds better and I heard of a good V10 car once. In a way it's our own fault that our representatives express uninformed opinions: the politician who regularily says "I don't know" would be judged as ignorant or stupid.

Re:Don't bother.

[tsa]

Very good point. But then again: the IQ i the only way to quantify 'intelligence.' The problem is of course that there isn't even a good definition of intelligence so what exactly does an IQ test measure? The ability to do IQ tests, that's for sure.

Re:Don't bother.

[LynnwoodRooster]

What happens when the authority's theories and models do not match reality, and yet they stand by their theories and models? Does that discredit the authorities, the models, and theories, or do we simply ignore reality and those who ask about the disparity?

When models and theories clash with data, it is the data that wins - every time.

Re:Don't bother.

[TapeCutter]

More depressing clips: A guy called ClimateBrad has a large collection of clips from US politicians doing their very best to make up their own facts and rules of logic.

Up until I reached my 40's I thought people like Senator Inhofe in the US and Tony Abbot here in Oz were uneducated, stupid, or more likely both. They are none of those things, they're just plain immoral by normal western standards when it comes to honesty (even the good ones). To paraphrase Shaun Micallef - "The media is called the fourth estate but behaves like a fifth wheel", like the political system it revels in conflict and is trained in the (in)humanities. If it can't find controversy in a story then it invents some (say) by equating a "one jump away" lobbyist's press release from one of their major sponsors to a meticulous scientific report. The Iraq war and "Climategate" are both prime examples of commercial media being worse than useless in clarifying a complex issue, particularly in the US.

The honest self-skepticisim required to be successful in the scientific and engineering world is a career killer in the political world. They have a different worldview that says everything boils down to an opinion, and all opinions are equal. Therefore social skills are more important than evidence and manipulation is more useful than reason. OTOH we have way too many Phd's in the hard sciences who have never stepped foot in a "Ph" class in their life and would not know Popper from Popoff.

Thing is, the political worldview is our natural behaviour, it's instinctual and we all do it to some degree because...well..it almost works. Critical thinking is a learned behaviour that basically refines "common-sense" using agreed rules of evidence and logic, it is the foundation of The Enlightenment, a radical shift in human behaviour barely 500yrs old. It's unsurprising that it hasn't permeated to everyone in the modern world that the "age of reason" created with extraordinary speed over the last 50-100yrs.

"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..." - Sagan, Demon Haunted World (Science as a candle in the dark)

Re:Don't bother.

[PvtVoid]

There's also the group that see idiocy all around and, knowing they can't fight it all, fight some battles and toss their arms up on others.

For example, my wife and I are fighting against EngageNY, Common Core, and the high-stakes testing that New York State has implemented.

Sure, that makes sense. Fight scientific illiteracy by opposing any attempt whatsoever to improve education. Way to go.

Re:Don't bother.

[mrchaotica]

That said, let's not get sidetracked by the breeder-vs-DINK arguments. We have one very simple, fundamental problem with getting scientifically-literate people in office:

None run.

That's because, for the most part, they're well aware of the fact that they're unelectable. I myself would be interested in running for local office, but

1. a) my platform would be too logically-consistent (and therefore "non-mainstream" compared to the standard Democrat or Republican platform),
2. b) I'm not charismatic enough to get sufficient funding in using grass-roots campaigning,
3. c) as a consequence of both previous points, I wouldn't be able to get endorsements or funding in the "traditional" (party-backed) way either, and
4. d) solving any of the previous issues -- not to mention, doing the "wheeling and dealing" required to be effective after getting into office -- would require altering my character in a way that I am not able, let alone willing, to do.

I strongly suspect most scientifically-inclined people run into the same problems. Even if one were to overcome them, the best one could hope for is to match Jimmy Carter. He managed to make it to the Presidency, sure, but the widely-held view (deservedly or not; it doesn't really matter) is that he kind of sucked at it...

Re:Don't bother.

[doggo]

One of the huge problems in the geek community is the propensity to assume other people are stupid. Despite it's being true in many cases.

This is, typically, a coping method for self-esteem. That is, if you assume everyone around you is an idiot, then you feel better about yourself. Which is fine, as far as it goes.

It becomes a problem when it causes you to become blind to your own ignorance.

Technological and scientific expertise does not make one a whole person. How many of us bemoan our lack of dates? How many of us have issues with social interaction?

Elite coders often are completely ignorant of law (and vice-versa). A psychologists may not know his browser from his OS, but he, or she, may know how to help you cope with the loss of a loved-one. Etc.

The point is, think carefully before pointing your finger at someone and crying, "Stupid!"

Re:Don't bother.

[lonOtter]

One of the huge problems in the geek community is the propensity to assume other people are stupid. Despite it's being true in many cases.

I am not assuming anything. I have observed the world we live in and came to a conclusion that is almost certainly true.

That is, if you assume everyone around you is an idiot, then you feel better about yourself.

Not necessarily. Even if you think everyone around you is unintelligent, that doesn't mean you think you're particularly intelligent. If you think your level of intelligence is underwhelming, it may not make you feel better to think that most other people are idiots, although it might.

It becomes a problem when it causes you to become blind to your own ignorance.

I am by no means blind to my own ignorance.

How many of us bemoan our lack of dates? How many of us have issues with social interaction?

I bemoan neither of those things, and am not interested in them.

The point is, think carefully before pointing your finger at someone and crying, "Stupid!"

Ignorance is not the same as lacking intelligence. You can cure ignorance.

And I do think carefully. When I see people supporting the TSA, the NSA surveillance, DUI checkpoints, and other such things that violate our freedoms, they are almost certainly unprincipled and unintelligent. There are many people like that, but those are by no means the only sign that someone is unintelligent.

Re:Don't bother.

[serviscope_minor]

Do you really think you will be taken seriously if you put the f-word in every one of your sentences?

Fuck yes.

Re:Don't bother.

[cusco]

The author of TFA assumes that the congresscritters don't act because they are uninformed, that perhaps with the adequate education they would change their minds. He's wrong. It's not that they don't understand the science, it's that they don't CARE what the long-term affects would ever be. Climatologists say things like "within a century" and "in 50 years", which clues the pols that they don't HAVE to give a shit since they'll be out of office and maybe dead by then. They are, as a herd, immensely self-centered and short-term thinkers. The only way to get them to act is to somehow demonstrate to them the IMMEDIATE value of action, how either they're going to get a lot more money or a lot more power by acting. Want Inhofe to act? Promise him the presidency if he does, or offer him the chairmanship of a bank. No other incentive would ever work, and he wouldn't give a flying fuck whether he understood the science or believed in the climatologists' conclusions.

Re:Don't bother.

[Jason Levine]

I don't oppose improvements to education, but New York state's implementation of Common Core is worse than the old way, not better.

I didn't want to get into this here, but...

First off, it gives teachers scripts that they must follow. For this ten minutes, you need to say these words to the students in this manner and ask them this exact question using this exact example. They must answer you in this exact way. Next, you must move on to this topic in this manner. There's no room for teachers to adjust their teaching techniques to either assist kids who'd learn the material in a different way or to help advance kids who are ahead of grade level. All kids *MUST* learn in the exact same way.

Secondly, EngageNY is idiotic with math. There's no more working with numbers. If you have 1.62 divided by 0.27, you don't actually do the math. Instead, you draw 162 little boxes. Then you circle them in groups of 27. Then you count how many circled groups there are to get your answer. This doesn't teach kids how to do math and, even worse, it doesn't scale. What if the problem was 1.625 divided by 0.25? Would they need to draw over 1,600 boxes?

Thirdly, the high stakes tests are tied to teachers' jobs. If their kids do poorly, the teacher could be booted. So any chance the teacher would stray from the provided curriculum is reduced. The teacher MUST teach to the test because any time spent on non-test preparation increases the chance that their kids will fail. Add in the fact that the content of the tests is super-secret. Nobody is allowed to see them except the students taking them. Not parents, teachers, administrators. Nobody. The tests are taken, mailed to Pearson where they are graded and destroyed. Then the scores are released. How does knowing that Johnny had a grade of X help the teacher teach Johnny if you don't know what he got right and what he got wrong?

Finally, this constitutes an attempt by corporations to take over and profit from education. The big supporters of this curriculum are big corporations who will profit quite nicely over it. (Bill Gates Foundation, Pearson, Wal-Mart, etc.) I don't trust big corporations to write a "one size fits all" curriculum that will help my boys succeed. In fact, since they make more money off a kid who fails than one who passes (additional books, courses to help students/teachers/administrators, etc), they have a monetary interest in kids failing.

Don't mistake change for improvement. There are plenty of ways you can change education to improve it. Common Core/EngageNY/High Stakes testing is *NOT* one of those ways.

Re:Don't bother.

[Artifakt]

Right now, as the very end of the tax season looms, I have exactly 20 clients scheduled who I know are engineers. 10 of them are my usual clients, and 10 of them did their own taxes last year and assumed that they were smart enough to figure it out, and got an IRS letter for their trouble. I've already heard three rants about the stupid, stupid government designing forms that the smart engineer can't use, and have two clients who are swearing they will go to prison for life rather than yield an inch on their interpretation of the regulations. One of those last has the soon to be ex wife's lawyers to deal with over what he tried to do last year and they already have a court order restricting his filing times and methods so they can get copies in time to file their own cleint on time. He's actually argued with an IRS agent on the phone, telling him that being required to divulge to his wife whether he has taken itemized deductions or not is unconstitutional and he has half a mind to punch the agent in the snoot, and because of that, I have already gotten a formal letter requesting I disclose any information I have indicating if he poses an actual threat before he goes in for an in person hearing. This guy is the first to brag about how much smarter he is than these dummies who make up most of my customers, and of course, the IRS.
          I get these persons referred to me because they usually ask something along the lines of whether anybody at the firm has a science or engineering degree or experience. I usually work corporate, and only take a few individual clients a year outside my old regulars. This has been an unfortunate year where I've wasted many of the spare slots on people I don't partcularly want as regular customers.We will be refusing service in the future to some of these people before this is over (and the firm's only actual lawyer partner is strongly recommending we should refuse service to a certain one this year despite what will obviously be a lawsuit if he stays out of prison long enough to file it - we are not real big about one of our phone numbers being used to make a threating call).
          When you say "one of the huge problemss...", I don't think it's hyperbole. . .

Re:Don't bother.

[microbox]

I don't believe that stupidity comes from "not knowing", as you suggest. It is more a case that moral values drive a world view that "facts" are shoe-horned into. And if you're wrong about the facts, then that is like being a bad person -- and almost everyone thinks of themselves as a good person.

Examples: patriarchy is socially constructed, because otherwise women will be oppressed for ever. (Obviously fallacious.)

Whether or not vaccines cause autism, they are unnatural, and harm the body's natural ability to fight disease. (Obviously fallacious.)

Global warming must be wrong because it is immoral for the government to interfere with the economy. (Obviously fallacious.)

Every hot button issue I've ever encountered has this quality to it. And the very same psychological defense mechanisms are always present. For example, we all see ourselves as "nuanced" and "reasonable", so it must be the other guy who is an ideologue. Projection, denial, externalization and intellectualism all derive from the need to resolve this type of cognitive dissonance, and at the heart of it all is the notion of what is "right" and "sacred" and must be protected -- which itself seems to be quite arbitrary.

Just my 2 cents.

Re:Don't bother.

[microbox]

They are none of those things, they're just plain immoral by normal western standards when it comes to honesty

They really don't know that they are making this stuff up. It's not that they are immoral, but that their mind is interpreting things in a very self-serving way, and also censoring information that they don't want to know. Morality itself is at the heart of the cognitive dissonance that drives this madness.

Re:Don't bother.

[pnutjam]

sign my petition to prosecute NSA leaders: https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

Re:Don't bother.

[PvtVoid]

As far as I can tell, the extremely shrill, extremely ideological opposition to Common Core is the educational equivalent of NIMBY-ism: reactionary opposition to change of any kind, supported by robot-like repetition of a set of rote talking points like "high-stakes testing", and accompanied by mob-like behavior at public meetings. Reason and debate end when this kind of total ideological certainty prevails.

EngageNY is idiotic with math. There's no more working with numbers. If you have 1.62 divided by 0.27, you don't actually do the math. Instead, you draw 162 little boxes. Then you circle them in groups of 27. Then you count how many circled groups there are to get your answer.

The more I see parents bringing up stuff like this as to how "stupid" the Common Core math curriculum is, the more I realize that the fundamental problem is that the parents aren't educated well enough to understand why this is a good way to teach math. Which is a great argument for a new way of doing things: the old way of doing things apparently utterly failed with these parents, who don't even understand that they don't understand.

Re:Don't bother.

[Jason Levine]

My wife holds an educational degree with a specialization in reading. She is licensed to teach elementary and middle school and has in the past. (She's not in the classroom now because, when our second son was born, it actually would have cost us MORE for her to work and put our son into daycare than for her to be a stay at home mom.) She has looked all of this stuff over and agrees how horrible it is. I'm a web developer and a math geek. I can understand where they are going with some of the problems but scratch my head at WHY they choose methods that are hard for kids to understand and seem purposefully confusing. Some of the people opposing this include very educated folks like engineers. So don't think that the only people who oppose Common Core are people who are uneducated.

Re:Don't bother.

[Reziac]

It can be a good way to =start= teaching math. It's not so good if the student is not subsequently taught how to extrapolate it to ordinary long division without needing to draw a pile of boxes first.

By the time I finished 2nd grade (this was in 1962) we had the abstract concept of numbers down pat; we didn't need visual examples any more, and we didn't need them when we went from the times tables we learned in 2nd grade, to the new (to us in 3rd grade) concept of long division. Funny thing, we had nowhere near the level of basic-math illiteracy that I see in today's kids, either.

Re:Don't bother.

[PvtVoid]

Some of the people opposing this include very educated folks like engineers. So don't think that the only people who oppose Common Core are people who are uneducated.

Pretty much the very last people on the planet who should be deciding how young children are taught math are people with engineering degrees. Engineers are taught an especially mindless point of view on what math is and how it is important, and walk away with an entirely undeserved sense of superiority about their insight. This is precisely what I mean about people "who don't even understand that they don't understand." It often actually gets worse with higher levels of education, ironically enough.

Re:Don't bother.

[hondo77]

To some ignorant person, Einstein might seem stupid.

Ah, I see you've been to Conservapedia.

Re:Don't bother.

[McFly777]

As far as I can tell, the extremely shrill, extremely ideological opposition to Common Core is the educational equivalent of NIMBY-ism: reactionary opposition to change of any kind,

...

The more I see parents bringing up stuff like this as to how "stupid" the Common Core math curriculum is, the more I realize that the fundamental problem is that the parents aren't educated well enough to understand why this is a good way to teach math. Which is a great argument for a new way of doing things: the old way of doing things apparently utterly failed with these parents, who don't even understand that they don't understand.

I understand the use of math visualization as one of a number of tools to teach math, and I have seen it used very sucessfully, but the small bit of the "common core" implementation of teaching math is not done well at all. I have also seen the "traditional" method done poorly, so at some level I have to blame the education of our teachers. (i.e. we don't know how to teach teachers to teach).

My example of poorly done traditional method actually leads to my example of well done math visualization. My son had been able to perform basic addition since kindergarten (I had done many math-game type activites, so I knew he was capable.) However, in second grade, his teacher required each student to finish a page of 30 addition problems within a minute, before they could then progress to the next page of 30 addition problems. Easy enough right? this gives you one second to parse the problem, and one second to write. About half way through the year we were informed by the teacher that my son was still on the first page of problems, and was now refusing to even attempt to do them, choosing to put zeros in, or nothing, for every answer. What we didn't realize at the time was that my son was slightly disgraphic (hand-eye writing coordination issue). After another quarter of the year, and many conferences later, my wife thought to ask my son to write the numbers 1 to 30 on a page. Guess what, it took him just slightly longer than 60 seconds to do it. The end of this half of the story is that my son was completely put off of learning math by this teacher.

That summer I saw an ad for Mathnasium, a math tutoring franchise which claimed to "make math fun". We thought it worth a try, and indeed they were able to help with the math self-image/attitude that my son had acquired from the second grade teacher. A big part of Mathnasium's approach involves developing math visualization techniques. The thing is that they don't stop there, they continue on to the more traditional computational methods, which scale much better as the math becomes more complex. ( I highly recommend this franchise if it is available near you.)

Fast forward a couple of years.... math is one of my son's best subjects. The school switches to a new text-book/curriculum across the district. We attend presentations by the publisher. The teaching method presented is to be to introduce multiple ways to do the calculations, such that the student can use whichever method works best for them. Sounds good right? The problem is that when the teachers present it, they insist that all the students learn all of the different methods presented, and they specify that each set of problems is to be performed with a particular method. This doesn't work well, of course, because few students become good at all of the methods. I admit that several of the multiplication and long division methods are interesting shortcuts, but they don't seem lead to a good understanding of how the processes work at a more general level. (ie. they don't scale well). My son manages well enough, anyway.

Another few years, and my younger daughter is now going through the schools, except now it is common core. Instead of multiple methods, there is one method which MUST be followed, and that is the visualization "boxes" that others here have described well. It do

The symptom, not the true problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is AMERICA's scientific illiterates. How do you think the idiots get to congress? I'll never vote for anyone that speaks out against evolution.

Re:The symptom, not the true problem.

[arth1]

Indeed. I shouldn't be, but am quite amazed with how people abuse their votes, and WILLFULLY put ignorant imbeciles in congress. And then don't even have enough shame to rectify the mistake.
Congress should have our very best people, not dregs.

Re:The symptom, not the true problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

But you'll gladly vote for someone equally anti science just because they have a D in front of their name.

Re:The symptom, not the true problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

They do this because the buy the lie that to vote for anyone other than Imbecile #1 or Imbecile #2 is to throw away their vote.

Captcha: disobey

Re:The symptom, not the true problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to eat a dog shit sandwich and the only difference is the breed of dog, does it really make a difference?

Re:The symptom, not the true problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

look, he may be an idiot, but he's not that idiotic. he's trolling. same
as what bush jr did. classic bullying, pretending to be so unbelievably
stupid just to get a rise out of your target

the problem isn't the the electorate is putting idiots into office,
its that they've decided that the entertainment value of
putting a bully into office is more important than governance

Re:The symptom, not the true problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Congress should have our very best people, not dregs.

It does. It has our people who are the very best at lying through their teeth to accumulate more power and wealth for themselves.

Yeah, we should probably be aiming for those who are the very best at other things, but unfortunately the voters don't seem to agree with me.

Re:The symptom, not the true problem.

[arth1]

If you're going to eat a dog shit sandwich and the only difference is the breed of dog, does it really make a difference?

If given a choice between a Teacup Yorkie sandwich and an Irish Wolfhound sandwich, I think you would be able to state a preference.

I think voters who live in an area where all they have is a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee might want to consider moving when the first good opportunity comes along. I sure wouldn't want my children to grow up in a place where science is considered a swear word and obvious fairy tales are considered truth.

Re:The symptom, not the true problem.

[Xyrus]

Every time I think congress can't lower the bar anymore, yet another complete fucking moron in Congress finds a new way to do so. Well played Mr. Weber.

Yet another day of watching Rome burn.

Re:The symptom, not the true problem.

[meerling]

Of course, the way the system is rigged, not-an-imbecile #1 doesn't get on the ballot in the first place.
It's almost as bad as the old USSR elections, you can elect any member of the communist party that the communist party tells you that you can elect.

The saddest thing isn't that he believes this.

[rmdingler]

It's that the Congressman is so sure his remarks will be lauded widely within his District that he doesn't care whether they're accurate or not.

Typical politician... say what you think they want to hear.

Lest we forget....

[DKroos]

Takes the crown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Blame the rise of dominionism in fundamentalist...

[Assmasher]

...Christianity.

Please note that I didn't say blame Christianity, or fundamentalists, I said blame dominionism.

Their goal is to subvert and abuse the very words people use to describe things like 'science' (i.e. 'historical science'), 'liberty', and 'freedom.' They want nothing to do with science and they're spending amazing amounts of money electing people who are willing to espouse their causes - anything to get elected.

Re:AGW Jihadists are the culprit

[bunratty]

If you look at the latest IPCC report, I don't think you'll see a single instance of "we're all gonna die!" So nice strawman. You can see some of the highlights of the report here: http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/...

what stuns me

[confused one]

What stuns me is that someone that ignorant of the process and so critical of science in the first place, can get themselves put on the Science Space and Technology committee in the first place. You couldn't have picked a worse group of persons to make budgetary decisions about our countries science future. They might as well just go ahead and deny all science spending, kill NASA, DOE, NSF and NIH, and call it a day.

Re:what stuns me

[Nimey]

It's because these people speak Party orthodoxy and can be relied upon to keep politically-inconvenient science tied up.

Re:what stuns me

[confused one]

I'm all for the balanced opinion. Not everyone is going to agree... However, you can't have a "balanced opinion" if members of the committee are completely ignorant of what they're making decisions about and rather than put effort into learning and understanding, they spend all their time denigrating and belittling.

Re:what stuns me

[dbIII]

they spend all their time denigrating and belittling.

That's what they got themselves put onto the committee to do. They are deliberate saboteurs put in place so that this administration has less positive examples to point to when elections come up. However, for some reason such people call Snowden and similar traitors without a hint of irony.

economics

[jafac]

These guys have no problem accepting the validity of an economic theory based on an "Invisible Hand" - yet when it comes to actual solid science based on actual method and process (as opposed to expensive silk suits), they start looking for conspiracy theories to explain the results.

Re:economics

[Tablizer]

have no problem accepting the validity of an economic theory based on an "Invisible Hand" - yet...

It's not invisible:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/imag...

He let them know what He thinks of Trickle Down theory.

Twain

[McGruber]

"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself." - Mark Twain

Obligatory xkcd

[mjvvjm]

http://xkcd.com/154/

America is the new Roman Empire

[Ogre332]

It's only a matter of time before we collapse.

Re:America is the new Roman Empire

[hey!]

I was making just this point about the Supreme Court striking down limits on campaign contributions. The Romans never quite admitted to themselves that their republic was defunct. They remained deeply attached to republican forms and institutions, even when those things had withered to ceremonial appendages of a corrupt imperial state. It was necessary for people to go through the motions of democracy; the ambitious plutocrats needed to maintain the fiction they were serving Rome, when in fact Rome was serving them.

Re:AGW Jihadists are the culprit

[by (1706743)]

As a theory, AGW is in many respects similar to evolution: they're both lousy theories, but they happen to be right. By "lousy theory," I mean that they fail to make quantitative predictions. Evolutionary theory cannot say exactly how many centimeters longer the teeth of some species living on island X relates to its kin on mainland Y. However, it can say, "the teeth will be better suited to the environment."

I'm certainly no expert on either evolution or AGW, but a similar claim for AGW might be something along the lines of, "if you do something to a chaotic system, stuff will happen." Clearly there are published papers that try to make more quantitative models -- some successfully, some not so much. But I would be interested in reading a paper -- published in a legitimate journal -- with the phrase, "we are all gonna die!!!!!" I'm just not so sure the editors of Nature or Science would let that many consecutive exclamation marks get by...

In pre-Newton/Galileo/etc. times, as far as I know the theory of gravity was basically, "things tend to fall." It's a terrible theory, sure, but it happens to be right.

Re:Sure the comment was stupid but ...

[arth1]

Just to remind you: most of the people who created and built those things are also 60 or 70 yeras old, with many of them still busily teaching you young'uns how they work.

In my experience, the young ones in general don't want to know. They want magic boxes running magic programming languages,so that pesky "understanding" thing doesn't interfere.

And a lot of older people don't want them precisely because they're marketed as magic boxes for dummies.
That leaves too few that actually understand or want to understand the technology. And yes, most of them are older.

Re:AGW Jihadists are the culprit

[flaming error]

Translations from Byese to Sciencese:

"theory that produces quantitative predictions" = Law
"theory that happens to be right" = Theory
[theory that happens to be wrong] = Falsehood

Re:Idiocracy

[Gavrielkay]

The problem is more fundamental than that. It is us as Americans. The politicians know their market very well, and in fact pay lots of money to mold the market into ever more gullible sheep. Most Americans have a cursory education in science at best. We've got it drilled into us to treat everything we don't want to hear with skepticism and to think elections are pointless because they're all losers so we may as well vote for the one with the most TV ads.

Until Americans stop considering educated people to be elitist and stop voting for the guy they'd want to sit next to at an outdoor bar-b-que, you aren't going to get anything fixed.

Forest, not Trees

[mutantSushi]

This article is just missing the point. There is nothing shocking that such people exist, or that some of them may even be elected to the national legislature. What is shocking is that they are crucial to the balance of power in that legislature. And that comes down not to them or their co-believers, but much broader aspects of American political structure. Normally one would expect the US House of Representatives to be MORE representative than the US Senate, as the Senate is all elected by the plurality winner takes all vote of entire states, while the House is elected by smaller numbers of citizens. That is in fact exactly the opposite of the case, with the US House of Representatives returning strong Republican majorities despite Democrats winning the popular vote in House races over-all. That is due to gerry-mandering of districts, which creates electoral 'ghettos' with super-concentration of support for one political party, which ends up being "wasted votes" (since having more than a majority or plurality in a district doesn't gain any more representation in Congress): In many states, one party needs from 1.2 to 1.6 times as many votes to get the same number of representatives in Congress, again reflecting the "wasted vote" phenomenon, even while the official paradigm is "one person one vote". Each state is allowed to re-district as it pleases, de facto according to the balance of power in that state), in other words tending to serve the majoritarian group in that state... i.e. exactly counter to the apparent purpose for having a larger number of more granular smaller-population districts vs. state-wide votes for Senators. Now one can expect Republican-majority states to gerrymander to their own favor, and Democrat-majority states to do likewise (and they both do so), but that doesn't account for all of the discrepancy. In fact there are 6 states that return Democratic majorities on Presidential votes, and over-all popular vote for House seats, yet return majority Republican House Representatives. One of these, Pennsylvania, in fact depended on Democratic votes in their State Congress to achieve the majority needed to confirm the gerrymandering. If you Google that topic, you will see the rationale given by those Democratic State Congressmen to be about as coherent as these Anti-Science Representatives quoted in the article. If ONLY those 6 states returned Representatives in line with their over-all popular vote, there would basically be a permanent US House Democratic majority. Not even all 6 of those states would be needed to switch in order to achieve that majority. Several of those states allow for citizen referendum, so there is no impediment to a popular referendum changing the representation/districting formula, yet that is not done. There is even the possibility to impose a nationwide change having consistent standards to avoid wasted votes, via Article V nationwide constitutional convention, whose requirements to convene have already been met, so such a Convention should go ahead to create Amendments which 3/4 of states then need to approve, by popular vote or their legislature. Yet that is not done. There are nutsos and science deniers all over the world. They are not the problem with the US' political system, the US' political system is the problem. So to blame this narrow sect of ignorants is absolving the larger body politic of it's responsibility for allowing such a system to persist. This system makes many votes simply not count in terms of final outcome, not to mention side-lining any parties outside the "2 parties of power". A system of Open-List Mixed Member Proportional Representation retains the link to local district which all members chosen because of their popularity in that district (either by plurality/majority, or as the highest level of support that party received), and can accomodate independent (non-party) local candidates and splitting support for parties at local and over-all levels (to avoid supporting a hated local candidate whose party over-all is attractive). The path is open to change that system, such a process is exactly allowed for in the US Constitution, and by using a national convention expressly called for the purpose, can side-line the 2-party representatives who are married to the existing system.

Re:Common core manufactures them

[Gavrielkay]

While I agree the left isn't doing a good job, the right is no more interested in a scientifically literate populace. Our two party system has nicely carved up the population and will continue to trade power back and forth while nothing really changes. And people like you spouting partisan nonsense are part of the reason they get away with it.

Re:Common core manufactures them

[Osgeld]

these guys were out of school several decades before common core was even a thought, if anything it should show you what kind of bumble fucks our states were producing on their own

Re:Sure the comment was stupid but ...

[TubeSteak]

I'm sure with 438 men and women in Congress, stupid things get said everyday.

And most of them are 60 or 70 years old and don't understand things like the internet, cell phones and haven't been in college or highschool in 50 some years to know what science is.

These particular idiots are members of Senate/House Committees responsible for Science.
Of all the people in the Congress, they should have some basic understanding of how science works.

anti-science pols always Republican

[globaljustin]

I object to the false dichotomy presented by TFA and general media...

Sure, **absolutely** Congress does things that are anti-science...but that's not the end...**who votes for these anti-science policies**???

ITS ALWAYS REPUBLICANS

climate change denial? Republicans
creationism in schools? Republicans
defunding research? Republicans

there is a solution to this...don't vote for Republicans & call out their BS every time

Re:anti-science pols always Republican

[the eric conspiracy]

I wish it was always Republicans. It isn't. We have plenty of liberals running around contesting mature science in things like vaccine effectiveness and GMOs.

Ignorance and stupidity is bi-partisan.

false dichotomy_we can solve this problem

[globaljustin]

this isn't a "two party system issue"...that's a Red Herring...all systems in gov't across nations have two factions, even Europe (majority/minority groups of parties)

we can know who votes for things like Creationism in schools...you can look it up...its ****always Republicans****

saying one group is always wrong doesn't at all excuse any other group...but unless you look at ****policy votes**** this discussion is worthless

always Republicans

[globaljustin]

look at the actual votes on policy...it's always Republicans doing anti-science policy

creationism in schools? Republicans
climate change denial? Republicans
defunding research? Republicans

Congress isn't "all idiots"...for every bullshit anti-science law Congress passes there are Democrats/Progressives who vote against it

Any discussion that does not take these facts into account is pointless and will continue infinitely

Re:always Republicans

[Maritz]

Real Christianity has always been about choice. Its the other religions (including greed and self worship) that are the ones indoctrinating.

I can't tell if this is a genius wry, sarcastic comment. I hope so.

On the off chance it isn't I suggest a quick glance at years 100-2000 or so and see just how much 'real choice' was offered by the Church..! I suspect 'recant or burn' was a common one.

Re:Idiocracy

[Anonymous Coward]

In business, if a manager doesn't know their product, their market, the employees and the job - they are junk.

A few weeks back I was talking with a reasonably famous scientist about the problem of administrative overhead: that it's increasingly common for scientists to be a situation where it would be technically feasible to perform some interesting experiment on a time scale of weeks but that getting the necessary administrative approvals can easily take months or even years. And he said, yes, that it often happens that the administrators forget that they work for us (the scientists).

I actually watched some of the hearing and what was striking to me is that the politicians were doing a lot more talking than listening. Real science is about exploring the unknown - like a maze of paths through an unexplored forest. Sometimes you really want to go forward but the way forward is blocked. Other times you discover easy paths to exciting new discoveries that you didn't expect. If the leaders aren't listening to the scientists on the ground then the process will be incredibly inefficient - efforts focused on paths that are obviously (to the scientists) blocked while ignoring exciting new directions.

For example, this year the price of whole genome sequencing has fallen to about $1,500 and all you need is about a milliliter of saliva that can be mailed to the sequencing facility at room temperature. Now the best sequencing facility is in Korea and the best tubes are made in Canada . So the USA isn't exactly out in front on this. But it's now technologically possible to sequence every newborn at birth. This is an incredible opportunity to detect all kinds of rare genetic disorders at birth - what's needed is the software analysis pipelines. And I wouldn't necessarily expect the general public in the USA to be aware of this.

But in an ideal world, the political leaders would be sufficiently tuned into (listening) to the scientists to know what's going on. Instead you have Obama's FDA shutting down 23andMe with all kinds of inane bureaucracy. If some kid was suspected of having a brain tumor and the parent wanted to do some exporatory surgery on the dining room table with a set of power tools and instructions provided by 23andMe then I'd say, sure, shut 'em down. But what if some kid is suspected of having a genetic condition and the parent wants to look through the kid's genome on his personal computer with some tools provided by 23andMe? I mean, yeah, the parent probably isn't going to be successful and, in the ideal world, it would be easy for the parent to get some help from someone with a PhD in molecular genetics. But where's the harm?

If the fundamental problem is lack of access to the PhD in molecular genetics then listen to the scientists and solve that problem! Don't just crush the (USA's) future with inane FDA bureaucracy.

link is about GMO crops

[globaljustin]

Again, AC has posted that link saying it somehow is evidence of Democrats being "anti-science"....ITS NOT...

the link is a Nytimes article about GMO crops...opposing or regulating GMO crops is not anti-science in any way...maybe anti-factory farming...but not "science"

link above is not counter-evidence

Re:Cosmos

[lonOtter]

There is more faith in science's belief than there ever will be in religion.

The very same science that's responsible for the technology you're using right now to communicate with others? The very same science that's responsible for just about everything in the modern world that improves people's qualify of life? Betting on something with that kind of track record is nowhere near the same as the kind of "faith" you're talking about.

And that's putting aside your ignorance of the actual science and what the actual scientific theories are about. You go on to talk about how science says that "Nothing created something." as if cretins like you haven't said that same sort of nonsense millions of times already, to no effect.

Which is easier to believe: Nothing created something. Truly absolutely vast quantities of nothingness. No atoms, no quarks, no foam. Just emptiness. And that created something. OR A immortal being who existing in a different reality created this one and because he created it, he is omniscient and omnipotent in it.

Which is easier to believe? Any explanation that doesn't involve all-powerful, infinitely complex magical beings creating entire universes.

There are gaps in our knowledge, yes, but that doesn't mean you can make up bullshit about all-powerful sky daddies, claim it's the real answer simply because we lack knowledge at this point in time, and expect to not get laughed at by anyone who is even remotely intelligent. You will get laughed at, and rightfully so. You are the problem.

Until that day, they must be able to have open, frank and honest discourse without arrogance.

So, you're saying that you expect intelligent people to take whatever nonsensical garbage you can make up seriously? Good luck with that.

Water as a greenhouse gas

[turkeyfish]

Water vapor is a red herring as far as long term green house warming is concerned for the obvious reason that it so quickly precipitates out of the atmosphere that it has little chance of influencing long term trends except locally. Yes there will be more water vapor in the atmosphere as the atmosphere warms but it is locally in constant equilibrium.

It is also important to remember that the temperature at which this equilibrium point at which water vapor removes itself from the atmosphere is directly influenced by the surface temperatures. Over oceans there will be proportionally more water vapor as the oceans heat and hence more storms and more intense rains over coastal areas. Over continents, in contrast, higher surface temperatures will dry the atmosphere and drought will be more common. Because the effect of carbon dioxide forced warming will be greatest over the poles, this will slow the jet stream since the temperature and pressure differential between air above and below this zone of mixing that drives the speed of the stream will decrease. Given that topography and elevation affect patterns of geostrophic flow, this will also mean that various highs and lows on either side of larger amplitude Rosby wave will create more relatively temporally standing waves that will move East-West more slowly as the stream speed slows creating alternating patters of more rainfall/snowfall on the low pressure side and more drought on the high pressure side. Consequently, the effect of water vapor will be more highly localized.

Reconciling the Irreconcilable

[turkeyfish]

"Somehow we need to find a way to promote science as a way of thinking and do so without hurting the feelings of the religious right."

The religious right are NEVER going to accept science, since science inconveniently exposes the inconsistency and irrelevancy of religion to understanding the natural world and hence this makes the scientific method a threat to the religious right.

The outcome is pretty clear, either science wins or humanity looses. The reality is that there is only one of these two outcomes to choose from. Take your pick and take your stand. One can either be for science and survival or against science and for human-sustaining ecosystem collapse. One cannot stand on a fence made of razor wire as there is no middle ground.

Re:Reconciling the Irreconcilable

[locofungus]

The religious right are NEVER going to accept science

I'm in the UK and we don't really have a "religious right" here. I don't think we have as bad a problem as the US but the impression I get is that scientific illiteracy is something that people in the UK are less ashamed of than say people in Germany.

But the fundamental problem isn't the "religious right" it's that people are very emotionally tied to opinions they hold and it's very hard to accept that you are wrong.

(Good) scientists fight this natural human tendency all the time. I'm sure everyone who has ever done any sort of statistical analysis has got a result they didn't like (expect) and then pored over the calculations for hours looking for the mistake. Ditto, they've got the result they expected and then had to eat humble pie when someone else points out that they've slipped a decimal point somewhere.

Scientists, with all their training to look at things objectively and derive conclusions from the data, find this hard to do. How much harder must it be for people who can't repeat the calculations and just have to accept it when a scientist says "you're wrong".

Because science (nature) is brutal. It doesn't care what your opinions, hopes, beliefs are. It will trample over them as effortlessly as it will support them and with as little feeling.

Re:Reconciling the Irreconcilable

[Jason Levine]

There are plenty of people who are religious but don't take the bible literally. I actually happen to be one of them. My personal belief* is that the bible is an allegorical text meant to teach moral lessons, not to teach history. If God wanted to teach us history, Genesis 1:1 would have started "In the beginning, there was a Big Bang...." (It would also be a LOT longer to read ala "How It Happened" by Isaac Asimov.) If anything, I think religion is enhanced by science. Sure, you need to give up the "God magically poofed the world into existence 10,000 years ago" belief (then again, that should have gone away over a hundred years ago), but the "God of old" ruled over Earth and a sphere that essentially had stars painted on it. The "God of people who embrace science" rules over an unimaginably vast Universe.

* I think that all religion should stay as personal beliefs and I wouldn't think of trying to force someone else to follow my religious beliefs. So long as your religious beliefs don't hurt anyone else, I say go for it. I happen to be Jewish, but if you think Christ is the savior that's fine by me. If you follow Budda or Islam or Wicca or any other religion, I'm ok with it. I only take issue when some people - e.g. the Religious Right - think it is their religious duty to force me to follow their religious rules (to "save me").

Re:Sure the comment was stupid but ...

[confused one]

It won't go down like that.... It'll be more like

.

scientist: Oh no! there's a 5 km asteroid going to hit us in 150 days."

Politician: How do I know you're right? You've been wrong in the past. Earth has never been hit by an asteroid, not in my lifetime or the lifetime of my father's father's father. I don't believe you."

one week later

Scientist: We've projected the orbit and can confirm with 99.99% certainty the asteroid will strike the Earth on the west coast of Africa in 139 days at exactly 10:43pm EST. It's 4.2 km and when it strikes it will be a civilization ending event, killing a projected 83% of the human population unless you fund the rocket we need to stop it.

Politician: So, you're not 100% certain? And you're saying it might strike Africa. And I thought you said it was only 5 km. Now you're saying it's 4.2km. You all don't even know how big this thing is... How much is the rocket going to cost? Do you have any idea what percentage of the U.S. GDP that is!? That's U.S. taxpayer money you're talking about. I think you might be wrong about the collision. You all were wrong about that asteroid... Apo something, right? Why should we agree to spend American taxpayer's money to stop a rock that may strike Africa. That's on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, half a world away. You scientists just don't know what you're talking about with your heads in the clouds looking at your stars all the time. You need to get down to Earth with the rest of us regular folks and do something useful.

We shouldn't bother, we are not the experts

[dbIII]

Except for water vapor. That's why it's so important to get the cloud response models right

Which is why the students of the guy that said 30 years ago one thing about clouds that the deniers keep rolling out are saying that the refined model says no such thing.

What I find immensely funny is from one end there are idiots saying it's not science because the models "don't change" and from the other there are people saying it's not established science because the models are changing. It all comes down to the equivalent of professional ditch diggers arguing about how best way to do an oil painting.
You don't know shit about the subject and I only know enough to recognise that, so we are both better off letting the experts discuss it instead of pretending that experts are in some way worthless. There's no point moving goalposts to esoteric fields that are minor contributors to a larger system.

Re:Blame the rise of dominionism in fundamentalist

[artor3]

You're so close to the truth, you even tripped over it and didn't notice.

They want nothing to do with science and they're spending amazing amounts of money electing people who are willing to espouse their causes - anything to get elected.

Where are they getting that money? It ain't coming from the church collection dish.

This isn't about religion. This is about the robber barons trying to squeeze the last few drops of life blood out of this country before they retire to their private paradise. The country, even when it was at its most religious, was not anti-science in the past. People loved science in the 50s. They only became anti-science when certain very rich individuals realized they could become richer by spreading anti-intellectual propaganda.

not counter-evidence the GOP is anti-science

[globaljustin]

LOOK AT POLICY VOTES...that's all that matters to this discussion...Republicans oppose science and prop up Oligarchy

the only time the GOP cares about science is when it can enrich their corporate donors

the GOP votes to:

> put creationism in textbooks
> defund research
> deny global warming

You have no answer for these and the countless other ways Republicans are anti-science

Nope

[fyngyrz]

Video clips show comments that are difficult to believe, when you hear them.

No. This is just what I expect; all the evidence points this way on every other subject, why not on science as well?

The Scientific Method eliminates poor hypotheses

[Overzeetop]

On the contrary - you come up with a hypothesis and then you test to see if that hypothesis is true.

You make guesses from observations, such as "God strikes down the unworthy" and then you attempt to find worthy people and unworthy people and follow them to see whether the unworthy are striken down in supernatural events at a statistically greater rate than those who are worthy. By using a second set of scientists or clergy who are unfamiliar with your research, you can sort into various forms of unworthiness to see if there is a type bias - sexually deviant, unfaithful, unrepentant, vanity, boastfulness, and others. Your belief that certain unworthiness will result in smiting by a deity is then tested and you review your data.

You may find that God's wrath is not statistically biased towards the unrepentant sinner. Being wrong isn't a problem in science - it's just a path to being right. So, for instance, if you find that your original hypothesis that God strikes down the unworthy is not just incorrect, but backwards. If it seems the virtuous are more likely to get stricken down, and that those of greatest natural virtue are our youth, you can then present this. It may, in fact, then be used to change behavioral patterns and encourage participation in activities. The great researcher into this particular effect, Billy Joel, was instrumental in bringing this research to light, indicating in one of his more widely distributed papers "only the good die young."

Re:Blame the rise of dominionism in fundamentalist

[Assmasher]

It is coming from the church dish, and their broadcasting stations and their "universities", and the "Faith Based Initiatives" funding, and from corporate giants like Tyson - it's scary how badly these people (adherents of dominionism) want to remake America into "Christian America." They absolutely despise the separation of church and state. They re-invent phrases like "secular humanism", "liberty", and "freedom" to mean things that those words do not actually mean.

There is a river of money at these people's fingertips and they, unlike most Christians, believe that not only should they tie politics to their religion but that they must ingrain the two. They believe in a Christian sharia. The irony is that many of them disagree theologically, but are united by a hatred of the separation of church and state.

They're just as crazy as those who want to impose Islamic sharia.

Malice

[DarthVain]

As the saying goes, don't attribute to malice, what could be incompetence (or something like that, I am paraphrasing, can't be bothered to look up actual quote).

However I think the inverse holds true for Politicians. You might think they are making decisions like stupid morons, but very likely it is a calculated response, usually one that is A) going to win votes among the stupid that believe that drivel, B) ideological which will win them points within their party by towing the party line, or C) simply to be partisan to make your opponent fail and you don't care much as to how.

Never mind E) about budget and money. Killing science budget and applying it to something else that can further your interests, or making or taking positions that are friendly to those interests that funded your last political campaign or potentially your next one.

All very cynical I know, but the truth usually is.