U.N. Me is an eye-openning movie. It brings many of the UN related headlines of the past decades to a personal level that a two-minute news segment cannot. Everyone should see it.
I can see from where you are coming on this, but I have some thoughts to add. I have faith in the meaning of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, but I have zero faith in our elected leaders to abide by it. Much of the US code that exists now violates the principals of our founding documents, but that hasn't stopped them from coming into existence. I, like you, don't like labeling this as an Internet Bill of Rights, but I agree with the precedent Issa aims set in terms of making digital legislation individual-centric as opposed to collective-centric. I do fear a potential pitfall in the use of the word, "right," because so many in this day and age consider a right as something somebody else must provide for them as opposed to the simply freedom to pursue it for oneself. "I have a right to use the internet, so somebody should give me a computer and an internet connection for free. After all, it is my right; isn't it? Just tax the rich!" Believe me, that lies just around the corner, most sadly.
I would never suggest or try to talk somebody into doing something that violates his or her ethics. If you aim to live as a 100% pacifist, that's your own choice and your own beliefs. If I may offer a point that I think is worth considering, I image that in your extended network of friends and family, you probably have some loved one serving in our armed forces. Having the best technology at their disposal only betters the chance that conflict ends expediently and our military personnel come come safe.
On the medical side, the only way you can truly avoid making any contribution to animal testing is not participate the health care industry at all (which the new health care law will not permit you to do unless SCOTUS strikes down the individual mandate) and consume no product that requires FDA approval. Unless you're minimally abstaining from those things, you're not contributing to animal testing any less by not writing source code for a biotech company.
Many (myself included), do not see the theory of evolution and and the bible in conflict with one another. My education has lead me to subscribe to the theory of evolution, and my faith has lead me to accept that God exists. For example, I don't really believe God created the Earth in six days and "rested" on the seventh. I think, like many other parts of the Bible, it serves as an analogy to simplify what would be a complex idea for people of times when education and common knowledge of science did not exist. My faith is not science, so it would be out of place to make it part of a science class. But those are just my opinions, there are others, and I'm able to respect them. I think my high school science teachers took the best route of saying that in the classroom we're studying science, which is an investigative process, and if you're going to truly exercise the scientific method, you must be willing to challenge what you already believe.
On to climate change, the data, climate simulation models, and research methodologies have been largely kept behind closed doors. Only those who indicated they are part of the club that subscribes to the notion that humankind is causing climate chance get full access to such information. Whistleblowers have given us some insight into those methods, and that has revealed sloppy and conclusion driven efforts. None of the findings have undergone a truly open and Independent Verification and Validation process. This isn't science, and it's not consensus. Teaching students something that the scientific community has yet to truly validate is not responsible, and if we're going to allow it to be present in the classroom, then we should insist upon the presentation of the counter-arguments. True science embraces the contributions of dissenters, even from the other side because it often helps them refine what they believe. That is, after all, responsible and ethical science.
I think it is news that somebody is gaining notoriety on the topic of getting more engineers and scientists into politics for several reasons.
First, our legislators are far too populated with lawyers. That's why we live in regulatory world that only lawyers can understand. Ask anyone who wants to begin a startup. He/she has to practically become an legal expert in several areas almost to a point that leaves insufficient time to do the actual work of the business. Thinking back to their startup days, the founders of Home Depot, Best Buy, and Staples all say they could not have started those businesses in today's regulatory climate.
Second, I think engineers and scientists are less likely to make themselves into career politicians. I think they would more likely serve as representatives, keep some small part of the technical and scientific life going on the side, and finally return to private life as the framers of our governmental system originally envisioned. That would mean less legislators who want to make a career out of repetitively trying to find problems to fix, fixing them, and breeding a slew of new problems in the process.
Lastly, engineers and scientists think in ways that others don't. They approach problem solving in ways others don't. Our founders created the representative system we have today to make sure the legislators represented a broad sample set of the population across locales and professions. When our government capped the number of representatives in the House to 435, that to some extent maintained the sampling across locales, but it has vastly eroded the sampling across professions.
I hope this effort is successful, because we all would benefit with engineers and scientists involved in public policy formation, especially in an age where the discussion of governmental restraint is all too rare.
I think it's interesting to draw the comparison between the Wi-Fi data harvesting to the News of the World --a Murdock owned news media outlet-- hacking controversy. The two aren't apples to apples comparisons, but at a basic level they both have the similarity of large companies accessing information for which they did not have authorization. Many have called for an outright boycott of Murdoch media, even in some cases a ban thereof. On the other hand, while we've seen a lot of criticism of Google's actions, we haven't seen the same volume of public outcry of boycotting Google or restricting the operations of Google enterprises. Most of the action discussed enters the realm of penalties and fines. I wonder if two forces are at play here. One, have too many become so dependent upon Google that they hesitate to support any action that would make Google services unavailable? Two, has intense dislike of Murchoch media reached a level where the application of a different standard is acceptable to many? Full disclosure, I'm a user of gmail and a viewer of Fox News, not exclusively thereof for either.
Boost is generally the R&D cutting edge of C++. As mentioned in other posts, it generally serves as the testing ground for what becomes part of the C++ ISO. You can see much of this in C++11. Some of the boost developers actually sit on the standards committee. In my professional work, Boost has provided some very vital functionality that my teammates and I didn't have to create, but could simply use. And in all cases it worked very well for us and continues to do so.
Do you have specific reasons for describing it as an unholy mess? If you have encountered genuine pitfalls with the libraries, would you share that info?
First, I will admit my first reaction to this is a sentimental one, but that doesn't make it irrelevant. A currency's appearance --the artwork people, places, and events depicted-- demonstrate the identity of a nation. Canada's $5 bill has hockey players on it. Another bill has the queen of England for historical and even current international relations reasons. We in the US have our dearest founding fathers on our monetary notes. (Side Note: I'd really like to have some bill introduced with Frederick Douglass on it.) I'm not opposed to the idea of digital currency. Heck, we pretty much have it with our banking system now.
Second, I wonder if a 100% digital currency in the US would make it easier for the Fed to engage in quantitative easing. My first guess is that it would. And if keeping paper and coin notes in circulations at least slows down the Fed's ability to do so, I'm all for maintaining physical currency.
I think if your company is basically asking its employees to voluntarily "like" the app in the spirit of trying to help the company, I find that completely in bounds. Of course, each person who "like"s it, to preserve the perception that he/she genuinely likes it should probably have at least some experience with it. On the other hand, if you company is expecting this as a condition of working for them or treating employees who do or don't do this differently, I think that's crossing the line from professional life into personal life, and hence not in bounds.
I'm not sure how this relates to preventing businesses from requesting facebook passwords of personal accounts, as the law Maryland has passed, because they don't need that information to necessarily see what you as an employee "like". They do, however, have to have you "friend" them, assuming that's information you keep private. And requiring that is definitely crossing the line that divides professional life from personal life. So at this point, since such a law is about passwords, my best guess is that a judicial court would interpret the intent of the law such that it would prevent a business from requiring that employee or perspective employee "friend" the business.
On those grounds, I think you could take a fairly strong case to your HR department that a requirement. However, I'm neither a lawyer or a judge, so keep that in mind.:-)
Again, more baseless assumptions. There's a lot more media that calling these conclusions into question beyond those under the Murdoch umbrella.
So why hesitation to post a citation? Afraid you may expose your predisposition to biases sources? But really, your tone is that of a 12 year old, not an adult, and certainly not of a scientist.
A belief system is not an excuse for admitting ignorance. Your use of the Christian creation story (it's no longer a myth) as an answer to the big why question is irrelevant.
I'm not sure where you're going with this and "admitting ignorance".
Left-leaning thinkers do not dominate academia, academia dominates left-leaning thought. Think on this. In the realm of human endeavour recognised and self-avowed as pursuant of wisdom (philosophy, all else follows) practiitoners are _forced_ to continually re-evaluate their thought and their assumptions in the face of evidence and the often harsh criticism of their peers. That's how it works so well. Left-leaning thinkers, those who do not think the old ways are necessarily the best and are willing to embrace new thought and deed to improve the lot of not only themselves but their neighbours, are pretty much required to be influenced by academia.
I'm not "forced" to continue re-evaluate my thoughts, I pursue it. If every person were forced to do so, all of these threads would be intellectual discussions rather than some of the smug, confrontational, and insecure lambasts I've had directed at me. Just being a new idea doesn't make it a better idea. Science must provably demonstrate an advance by some measure. For instance, no conservatives have ever favored continued use of the vacuum tube over more advanced technology, right?..unless we're talking about guitar amps. As for your academia comments, I see both of those to be true.
As part of the scientific process there is a requirement that all points of view be considered when facing the unknown. Sometimes extreme ideas take hold as "correct". Relativity is one such. However it must be admitted that in still new fields such as environmental science there is still a need for outliers of opinion and model generation. This stuff is new. The up-down-side of the benefits of continuing academic development is that we can all share in this great debate, sadly mediated by the extremist tendecies of the media. Hence the silly arguments. I beg you read more on the subject of human-influenced climate change, for the scientific consensus, even in this early stage, is clear, well reasoned, and amply justified by the evidence. It is not utterly incontrovertible, but it is accurate.
You've put your finger exactly on the point I'm trying to make. You don't know much about me, so if you're going to take the time to read my post, I'm taking it on face value that you'll believe me when I say I have read on this subject. The facts are that dissenting opinions have met great hostility for simply being dissenting opinions, and that's not science.
Your last paragraph is both beautiful and sad. You speak of scientists as the most unfeeling of engineers and they are not. Every scientist I've ever met, and I've met a few, are deeply sincere, compassionate, context-aware people, humble in their inability to effect the changes.
"I think it's too easy for scientific based public policy makers to forget that and consequently dehumanize the problems they are trying to solve."
I beg you study Science. Please. Don't give up your Catholicism, as you rightly state it is open-minded with regard to the role of Science and is a model of its kind as such. Catholicism offers much more than generosity of thought, a clarity of ethics (sadly unpracticed), a depth of history. Catholicism holds a special place as a theistic belief system of great utility. But stop claiming Science is inhumane, it ain't. Stop claiming caution, skepticism, and efficiency as conservative, they're scientific. Stop seeing Science and scientists and science users as contrary and wasteful and remote. We're quite the reverse. And we're not liberal or conservative, we're honest.
What I've written in that paragraph is a summary of what I have seen via my own experiences and study where the roads of enginee
My "precious ideology"? Excuse you, but you don't have any more insight into my personal ideology beyond a single slashdot post, so spare us all from your foregone conclusions. (side node: pattern here?)
If you think something critical is missing from this discussion, share it or don't bother to get involved. If you're posting to one-up somebody else to inflate your ego, I beg you to consider posting somewhere else, because slashdot isn't the venue for you.
A very typical attack on conservatism. All insults. No facts. No intellectual discussion.
Just a hint, your smug attitude isn't lending credence to your statements.
Understood. Evolution is a theory, not proved, and I don't mean to suggest somebody isn't smart for not believing in it.
I, on the other hand, do subscribe to it.
Would you speak to my points about denials of FOIA requests?
If an open an transparent IV&V process happened, why --for example-- did the CRU withhold information from Stephen McIntyre and subsequently prevent him from contributing his research in climate science related journals and IPCC reports? Why did the CRU destroy raw data that underwent preprocessing for their simulation and analysis?
Good science welcomes all points of view, and the CRU is not practicing good science.
As a conservative and a catholic who has spent 14 years working as a software engineer and has some limited public policy background, I think I have a perspective worth sharing on this topic.
The headline doesn't surprise me at all, but I think some of the conclusions about why stem from speculation on stereotypes rather than a comprehensive understanding of conservatism. As a practicing catholic, I accept the teachings of the church in the Bible; however, I also accept the theory of evolution based on my studies of bioinformatics related subjects. My interpretation of the Bible does not stand in conflict. For instance, the Bible says God created Earth in seven days. Since so much of the Bible's teaching comes in the form of metaphors, I interpret seven days a metaphor for people of ancient times with no access to education so they could easily relate concepts they understood to the formation of a planet. Many of my fellow catholics and conservatives express their beliefs in similar fashion.
In coming to where the distrust of science arises, I consider several data points. First, Left leaning thinkers dominate most of academia. Polls show this overwhelmingly, and I'm pretty sure most reading this don't disagree. Second, causes of environmental extremism frequently only present a partial view of science to justify an agenda. Consider the claims that man made CO2 emissions are causing the planet to warm. Much of the research upon which scientists have based these claims is not public. They have taken steps to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests, even to the extent that a frustrated whistleblower dumped a series of emails that blew up into the scandal now known as Climategate. For instance, proper simulation analysis undergoes a process called Independent Validation and Verification (IV&V). This involves third parties reproducing results against known outcomes, and anyone wishing to challenge the assertions may openly participate. However; this is not what's happened. Rather than openly engaging skeptics, even those with scientific backgrounds, the proponents tarnish, ridicule, and exclude such people from the process. Given the substantial financial gains some stand to make with the implementation of CO2 emissions policy, conservatives not welcoming such changes will naturally express a high degree of skepticism. Efforts such as capping CO2 emissions, elimination of DDT, etc. span back as early as the 1970s. Third, it's natural for conservatives to distrust anyone with the power of public policy making. There are exceptions, but not many.
On the other side, I think some of my fellow conservatives sometimes fail to look at the whole picture of an issue. For instance, the US energy sector stands to gain a great deal of efficiency with the implementation of SmartGrid technology. However, it has an Orwellian aspect to it in that a central office can manipulate the amount of power applied at the point of consumption. Conservatives, myself included, don't want somebody in a central office controlling what happens within their homes, and this sentiment sometimes overshadows the other benefits of SmartGrid technology, such as synchrophasers. So rather than simply opposing the single invasive aspect of SmartMeters, they oppose the entirely of all SmartGrid technology.
Lastly, I think that scientists naturally tend to drift towards Left leaning ideology because of their problem solver mentality. When an engineer builds something, a car or rocket or software application, he/she aims to develop it in such a manner that it functions in the most optimal way possible, time and money permitting of course. The building blocks are mechanical parts, 0's and 1's, or other types of inanimate objects. They don't have consciousness, feeling, dreams, desires, or rights. When science enters the realm of public policy, however, those building blocks are individual persons. I think it's too easy for scientific based public policy makers to forget that and consequently dehumanize the problems they are trying to solve. That's what I consider the essence of conservative based skepticism of science in today's world.
Slashdot Mirror
U.N. Me is an eye-openning movie. It brings many of the UN related headlines of the past decades to a personal level that a two-minute news segment cannot. Everyone should see it.
I can see from where you are coming on this, but I have some thoughts to add. I have faith in the meaning of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, but I have zero faith in our elected leaders to abide by it. Much of the US code that exists now violates the principals of our founding documents, but that hasn't stopped them from coming into existence. I, like you, don't like labeling this as an Internet Bill of Rights, but I agree with the precedent Issa aims set in terms of making digital legislation individual-centric as opposed to collective-centric. I do fear a potential pitfall in the use of the word, "right," because so many in this day and age consider a right as something somebody else must provide for them as opposed to the simply freedom to pursue it for oneself. "I have a right to use the internet, so somebody should give me a computer and an internet connection for free. After all, it is my right; isn't it? Just tax the rich!" Believe me, that lies just around the corner, most sadly.
No kidding. I don't know what Gnome was thinking. The new interface is horrible. I've found KDE to be a nice Gome 2 surrogate.
I would never suggest or try to talk somebody into doing something that violates his or her ethics. If you aim to live as a 100% pacifist, that's your own choice and your own beliefs. If I may offer a point that I think is worth considering, I image that in your extended network of friends and family, you probably have some loved one serving in our armed forces. Having the best technology at their disposal only betters the chance that conflict ends expediently and our military personnel come come safe.
On the medical side, the only way you can truly avoid making any contribution to animal testing is not participate the health care industry at all (which the new health care law will not permit you to do unless SCOTUS strikes down the individual mandate) and consume no product that requires FDA approval. Unless you're minimally abstaining from those things, you're not contributing to animal testing any less by not writing source code for a biotech company.
Many (myself included), do not see the theory of evolution and and the bible in conflict with one another. My education has lead me to subscribe to the theory of evolution, and my faith has lead me to accept that God exists. For example, I don't really believe God created the Earth in six days and "rested" on the seventh. I think, like many other parts of the Bible, it serves as an analogy to simplify what would be a complex idea for people of times when education and common knowledge of science did not exist. My faith is not science, so it would be out of place to make it part of a science class. But those are just my opinions, there are others, and I'm able to respect them. I think my high school science teachers took the best route of saying that in the classroom we're studying science, which is an investigative process, and if you're going to truly exercise the scientific method, you must be willing to challenge what you already believe.
On to climate change, the data, climate simulation models, and research methodologies have been largely kept behind closed doors. Only those who indicated they are part of the club that subscribes to the notion that humankind is causing climate chance get full access to such information. Whistleblowers have given us some insight into those methods, and that has revealed sloppy and conclusion driven efforts. None of the findings have undergone a truly open and Independent Verification and Validation process. This isn't science, and it's not consensus. Teaching students something that the scientific community has yet to truly validate is not responsible, and if we're going to allow it to be present in the classroom, then we should insist upon the presentation of the counter-arguments. True science embraces the contributions of dissenters, even from the other side because it often helps them refine what they believe. That is, after all, responsible and ethical science.
First, our legislators are far too populated with lawyers. That's why we live in regulatory world that only lawyers can understand. Ask anyone who wants to begin a startup. He/she has to practically become an legal expert in several areas almost to a point that leaves insufficient time to do the actual work of the business. Thinking back to their startup days, the founders of Home Depot, Best Buy, and Staples all say they could not have started those businesses in today's regulatory climate.
Second, I think engineers and scientists are less likely to make themselves into career politicians. I think they would more likely serve as representatives, keep some small part of the technical and scientific life going on the side, and finally return to private life as the framers of our governmental system originally envisioned. That would mean less legislators who want to make a career out of repetitively trying to find problems to fix, fixing them, and breeding a slew of new problems in the process.
Lastly, engineers and scientists think in ways that others don't. They approach problem solving in ways others don't. Our founders created the representative system we have today to make sure the legislators represented a broad sample set of the population across locales and professions. When our government capped the number of representatives in the House to 435, that to some extent maintained the sampling across locales, but it has vastly eroded the sampling across professions.
I hope this effort is successful, because we all would benefit with engineers and scientists involved in public policy formation, especially in an age where the discussion of governmental restraint is all too rare.
I think it's interesting to draw the comparison between the Wi-Fi data harvesting to the News of the World --a Murdock owned news media outlet-- hacking controversy. The two aren't apples to apples comparisons, but at a basic level they both have the similarity of large companies accessing information for which they did not have authorization. Many have called for an outright boycott of Murdoch media, even in some cases a ban thereof. On the other hand, while we've seen a lot of criticism of Google's actions, we haven't seen the same volume of public outcry of boycotting Google or restricting the operations of Google enterprises. Most of the action discussed enters the realm of penalties and fines. I wonder if two forces are at play here. One, have too many become so dependent upon Google that they hesitate to support any action that would make Google services unavailable? Two, has intense dislike of Murchoch media reached a level where the application of a different standard is acceptable to many? Full disclosure, I'm a user of gmail and a viewer of Fox News, not exclusively thereof for either.
Boost is generally the R&D cutting edge of C++. As mentioned in other posts, it generally serves as the testing ground for what becomes part of the C++ ISO. You can see much of this in C++11. Some of the boost developers actually sit on the standards committee. In my professional work, Boost has provided some very vital functionality that my teammates and I didn't have to create, but could simply use. And in all cases it worked very well for us and continues to do so. Do you have specific reasons for describing it as an unholy mess? If you have encountered genuine pitfalls with the libraries, would you share that info?
You forgot one caveat: strip clubs now have to affix digital card readers to their employee's legs. "Please hold still, miss." :-)
First, I will admit my first reaction to this is a sentimental one, but that doesn't make it irrelevant. A currency's appearance --the artwork people, places, and events depicted-- demonstrate the identity of a nation. Canada's $5 bill has hockey players on it. Another bill has the queen of England for historical and even current international relations reasons. We in the US have our dearest founding fathers on our monetary notes. (Side Note: I'd really like to have some bill introduced with Frederick Douglass on it.) I'm not opposed to the idea of digital currency. Heck, we pretty much have it with our banking system now. Second, I wonder if a 100% digital currency in the US would make it easier for the Fed to engage in quantitative easing. My first guess is that it would. And if keeping paper and coin notes in circulations at least slows down the Fed's ability to do so, I'm all for maintaining physical currency.
I'm not sure how this relates to preventing businesses from requesting facebook passwords of personal accounts, as the law Maryland has passed, because they don't need that information to necessarily see what you as an employee "like". They do, however, have to have you "friend" them, assuming that's information you keep private. And requiring that is definitely crossing the line that divides professional life from personal life. So at this point, since such a law is about passwords, my best guess is that a judicial court would interpret the intent of the law such that it would prevent a business from requiring that employee or perspective employee "friend" the business.
On those grounds, I think you could take a fairly strong case to your HR department that a requirement. However, I'm neither a lawyer or a judge, so keep that in mind. :-)
Again, more baseless assumptions. There's a lot more media that calling these conclusions into question beyond those under the Murdoch umbrella. So why hesitation to post a citation? Afraid you may expose your predisposition to biases sources? But really, your tone is that of a 12 year old, not an adult, and certainly not of a scientist.
A belief system is not an excuse for admitting ignorance. Your use of the Christian creation story (it's no longer a myth) as an answer to the big why question is irrelevant.
I'm not sure where you're going with this and "admitting ignorance".
Left-leaning thinkers do not dominate academia, academia dominates left-leaning thought. Think on this. In the realm of human endeavour recognised and self-avowed as pursuant of wisdom (philosophy, all else follows) practiitoners are _forced_ to continually re-evaluate their thought and their assumptions in the face of evidence and the often harsh criticism of their peers. That's how it works so well. Left-leaning thinkers, those who do not think the old ways are necessarily the best and are willing to embrace new thought and deed to improve the lot of not only themselves but their neighbours, are pretty much required to be influenced by academia.
I'm not "forced" to continue re-evaluate my thoughts, I pursue it. If every person were forced to do so, all of these threads would be intellectual discussions rather than some of the smug, confrontational, and insecure lambasts I've had directed at me. Just being a new idea doesn't make it a better idea. Science must provably demonstrate an advance by some measure. For instance, no conservatives have ever favored continued use of the vacuum tube over more advanced technology, right? ..unless we're talking about guitar amps. As for your academia comments, I see both of those to be true.
As part of the scientific process there is a requirement that all points of view be considered when facing the unknown. Sometimes extreme ideas take hold as "correct". Relativity is one such. However it must be admitted that in still new fields such as environmental science there is still a need for outliers of opinion and model generation. This stuff is new. The up-down-side of the benefits of continuing academic development is that we can all share in this great debate, sadly mediated by the extremist tendecies of the media. Hence the silly arguments. I beg you read more on the subject of human-influenced climate change, for the scientific consensus, even in this early stage, is clear, well reasoned, and amply justified by the evidence. It is not utterly incontrovertible, but it is accurate.
You've put your finger exactly on the point I'm trying to make. You don't know much about me, so if you're going to take the time to read my post, I'm taking it on face value that you'll believe me when I say I have read on this subject. The facts are that dissenting opinions have met great hostility for simply being dissenting opinions, and that's not science.
Your last paragraph is both beautiful and sad. You speak of scientists as the most unfeeling of engineers and they are not. Every scientist I've ever met, and I've met a few, are deeply sincere, compassionate, context-aware people, humble in their inability to effect the changes.
"I think it's too easy for scientific based public policy makers to forget that and consequently dehumanize the problems they are trying to solve."
I beg you study Science. Please. Don't give up your Catholicism, as you rightly state it is open-minded with regard to the role of Science and is a model of its kind as such. Catholicism offers much more than generosity of thought, a clarity of ethics (sadly unpracticed), a depth of history. Catholicism holds a special place as a theistic belief system of great utility. But stop claiming Science is inhumane, it ain't. Stop claiming caution, skepticism, and efficiency as conservative, they're scientific. Stop seeing Science and scientists and science users as contrary and wasteful and remote. We're quite the reverse. And we're not liberal or conservative, we're honest.
What I've written in that paragraph is a summary of what I have seen via my own experiences and study where the roads of enginee
My "precious ideology"? Excuse you, but you don't have any more insight into my personal ideology beyond a single slashdot post, so spare us all from your foregone conclusions. (side node: pattern here?) If you think something critical is missing from this discussion, share it or don't bother to get involved. If you're posting to one-up somebody else to inflate your ego, I beg you to consider posting somewhere else, because slashdot isn't the venue for you.
A very typical attack on conservatism. All insults. No facts. No intellectual discussion. Just a hint, your smug attitude isn't lending credence to your statements.
Understood. Evolution is a theory, not proved, and I don't mean to suggest somebody isn't smart for not believing in it. I, on the other hand, do subscribe to it.
Would you speak to my points about denials of FOIA requests? If an open an transparent IV&V process happened, why --for example-- did the CRU withhold information from Stephen McIntyre and subsequently prevent him from contributing his research in climate science related journals and IPCC reports? Why did the CRU destroy raw data that underwent preprocessing for their simulation and analysis? Good science welcomes all points of view, and the CRU is not practicing good science.
The headline doesn't surprise me at all, but I think some of the conclusions about why stem from speculation on stereotypes rather than a comprehensive understanding of conservatism. As a practicing catholic, I accept the teachings of the church in the Bible; however, I also accept the theory of evolution based on my studies of bioinformatics related subjects. My interpretation of the Bible does not stand in conflict. For instance, the Bible says God created Earth in seven days. Since so much of the Bible's teaching comes in the form of metaphors, I interpret seven days a metaphor for people of ancient times with no access to education so they could easily relate concepts they understood to the formation of a planet. Many of my fellow catholics and conservatives express their beliefs in similar fashion.
In coming to where the distrust of science arises, I consider several data points. First, Left leaning thinkers dominate most of academia. Polls show this overwhelmingly, and I'm pretty sure most reading this don't disagree. Second, causes of environmental extremism frequently only present a partial view of science to justify an agenda. Consider the claims that man made CO2 emissions are causing the planet to warm. Much of the research upon which scientists have based these claims is not public. They have taken steps to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests, even to the extent that a frustrated whistleblower dumped a series of emails that blew up into the scandal now known as Climategate. For instance, proper simulation analysis undergoes a process called Independent Validation and Verification (IV&V). This involves third parties reproducing results against known outcomes, and anyone wishing to challenge the assertions may openly participate. However; this is not what's happened. Rather than openly engaging skeptics, even those with scientific backgrounds, the proponents tarnish, ridicule, and exclude such people from the process. Given the substantial financial gains some stand to make with the implementation of CO2 emissions policy, conservatives not welcoming such changes will naturally express a high degree of skepticism. Efforts such as capping CO2 emissions, elimination of DDT, etc. span back as early as the 1970s. Third, it's natural for conservatives to distrust anyone with the power of public policy making. There are exceptions, but not many.
On the other side, I think some of my fellow conservatives sometimes fail to look at the whole picture of an issue. For instance, the US energy sector stands to gain a great deal of efficiency with the implementation of SmartGrid technology. However, it has an Orwellian aspect to it in that a central office can manipulate the amount of power applied at the point of consumption. Conservatives, myself included, don't want somebody in a central office controlling what happens within their homes, and this sentiment sometimes overshadows the other benefits of SmartGrid technology, such as synchrophasers. So rather than simply opposing the single invasive aspect of SmartMeters, they oppose the entirely of all SmartGrid technology.
Lastly, I think that scientists naturally tend to drift towards Left leaning ideology because of their problem solver mentality. When an engineer builds something, a car or rocket or software application, he/she aims to develop it in such a manner that it functions in the most optimal way possible, time and money permitting of course. The building blocks are mechanical parts, 0's and 1's, or other types of inanimate objects. They don't have consciousness, feeling, dreams, desires, or rights. When science enters the realm of public policy, however, those building blocks are individual persons. I think it's too easy for scientific based public policy makers to forget that and consequently dehumanize the problems they are trying to solve. That's what I consider the essence of conservative based skepticism of science in today's world.