Pilots were already in lofty isolation from much of the battlefield in World War 1, as were long-range artillerists.
Although you reference WWI, it isn't true that pilots were isolated, just not as muddy. In WWII, we lost ~160,000 airmen, and 33,700 planes. Kenneth K. Hatfield (2003). "Heartland heroes: remembering World War II.". p.91 (wiki reference)
Current UAV operators in the AF actually suffer PTSD. http://www.military.com/news/article/predator-pilots-suffering-war-stress.html?col=1186032310810&wh=news. While there is the typical response of "there's no crying in war", etc, most of these guys are fighter pilots with combat experience who were kicked over into the Predator world against their will. They are not the ones who couldn't hack being shot at in the first place.
As for the parent poster, I'm glad we're mechanizing the battle field. I'd rather have every possible advantage over the bad guys that I can have. War is not about fair fights, it is about bringing so much pain and suffering to bear that the enemy simply loses the willpower to continue. It would be good for Congress to remember that before declaring war in the first place, and for the President as he executes the war. If that philosophy were brought fully to bear, then hopefully no one would want to start a fight in the first place, because the consequences are too high. (Now, let the down modding begin)
heh, didnt the israeli use early UAVs with radar decoys that made them look like high priority bombers to trick SAM sites into revealing themselves?
Battle of the Bekaa Valley, 1982. Israelis used UAVs to get the Syrians to light up their radars. To be followed shortly after by HARMs from the F-16s loitering just out of range.
I don't see where your link says anything about giving highly technical raw data to bloggers who know nothing and couldn't care less whether what they say is actually true.
So you advocate for scientists to be the gatekeepers of all knowledge and only share with those who are "in the club"? Let me guess, they get to choose the criteria of membership too.
Science is based on debate whether you like it or not. If your work is so complicated that you are the only one who can understand it, then you are likely working on something that you invented for your own ego. Scientific history is littered with theories that were soundly refuted by people who looked for the data and were unable to reconstruct the results. That is the nature of science. To say that Jones is the only guy who can read his data, or that he and his friends on the e-mail list are the only ones, is sheer arrogance and instantly warrants skepticism. If you are right, prove you're right by releasing the data, the analysis, the methodology, etc and let your detractors fall on their swords trying to disprove you. The onus is on the scientist to develop a body of work that is as irrefutable as possible, and then to defend his work as necessary. By simply refusing to play, Jones is only proving that he does not stand by his work. As a scientist, I find that highly suspicious.
Climate science is somewhat abstract in that it takes place in scales larger than most people can handle: the world over millions of years.
Clearly that is a scale well beyond your understanding since climate science only attempts to study a few thousand years back at best (tens of thousands still count as a few in my book). Beyond that and you are now in the field of geology.
Look, there's proof that evolution happens *everywhere*. You can make your own experiment proving its existence in your own backyard for God's sake
I'd be interested to see the experiment in your back yard yielding a new species over tens of thousands of years. There's plenty of observable evidence of changing traits in a given genotype, but that doesn't exactly get us from one species to another, it just provides proof that the theory may hold water.
Peer reviewers don't, in general, try to disprove the thesis.
As a peer reviewer, I have to agree with this. When reviewing a paper, you ask yourself questions such as: "Do the experimental results support the conclusion?", "Has the author clearly stated the problem?", and "Does the paper make sense based on the current body of knowledge?". You don't ask the author for all of their data and attempt to reconstruct their work.
There is a presentation by Dave Patterson on "How to have a Bad Career in Academics". The first half of the presentation gives practical suggestions for how to sink your academic career. Interestingly enough, the climate sciences seem to have taken all of this advice to heart without realizing that it was given in sarcasm. There are suggestions such as "Don't ever share your results", "Claim that your field is too complex for anyone other than yourself to understand it", "Work on problems with 20 year time horizons, that way you have 19 years of being right before you have to prove anything".
The fundamental question that should be asked of climate scientists is, "Do your models support the current temperature record, to include the current flat trend?" and "If not, why not?". I've searched quite a bit to see if any model actually predicted the last decade's temperatures, and thus far have not found anything. At a minimum, that points to a hole in the theory and makes me question the iron-clad conclusions that are based on models that, at best, have a few major flaws.
The subtext here is: A mission statement with integrity.
Of course, since md5 is deprecated, it actually comes out as "A mission statement with compromised integrity". Go Cyber Comm!
Slashdot Mirror
Pilots were already in lofty isolation from much of the battlefield in World War 1, as were long-range artillerists.
Although you reference WWI, it isn't true that pilots were isolated, just not as muddy. In WWII, we lost ~160,000 airmen, and 33,700 planes. Kenneth K. Hatfield (2003). "Heartland heroes: remembering World War II.". p.91 (wiki reference)
Current UAV operators in the AF actually suffer PTSD. http://www.military.com/news/article/predator-pilots-suffering-war-stress.html?col=1186032310810&wh=news. While there is the typical response of "there's no crying in war", etc, most of these guys are fighter pilots with combat experience who were kicked over into the Predator world against their will. They are not the ones who couldn't hack being shot at in the first place.
As for the parent poster, I'm glad we're mechanizing the battle field. I'd rather have every possible advantage over the bad guys that I can have. War is not about fair fights, it is about bringing so much pain and suffering to bear that the enemy simply loses the willpower to continue. It would be good for Congress to remember that before declaring war in the first place, and for the President as he executes the war. If that philosophy were brought fully to bear, then hopefully no one would want to start a fight in the first place, because the consequences are too high. (Now, let the down modding begin)
So when do the land based killer units get going?
Already there. Just need to load a cannon on the front, scale up a bit and redesignate it as an AT-AT. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww
heh, didnt the israeli use early UAVs with radar decoys that made them look like high priority bombers to trick SAM sites into revealing themselves?
Battle of the Bekaa Valley, 1982. Israelis used UAVs to get the Syrians to light up their radars. To be followed shortly after by HARMs from the F-16s loitering just out of range.
I don't see where your link says anything about giving highly technical raw data to bloggers who know nothing and couldn't care less whether what they say is actually true.
So you advocate for scientists to be the gatekeepers of all knowledge and only share with those who are "in the club"? Let me guess, they get to choose the criteria of membership too.
Science is based on debate whether you like it or not. If your work is so complicated that you are the only one who can understand it, then you are likely working on something that you invented for your own ego. Scientific history is littered with theories that were soundly refuted by people who looked for the data and were unable to reconstruct the results. That is the nature of science. To say that Jones is the only guy who can read his data, or that he and his friends on the e-mail list are the only ones, is sheer arrogance and instantly warrants skepticism. If you are right, prove you're right by releasing the data, the analysis, the methodology, etc and let your detractors fall on their swords trying to disprove you. The onus is on the scientist to develop a body of work that is as irrefutable as possible, and then to defend his work as necessary. By simply refusing to play, Jones is only proving that he does not stand by his work. As a scientist, I find that highly suspicious.
Climate science is somewhat abstract in that it takes place in scales larger than most people can handle: the world over millions of years.
Clearly that is a scale well beyond your understanding since climate science only attempts to study a few thousand years back at best (tens of thousands still count as a few in my book). Beyond that and you are now in the field of geology.
Look, there's proof that evolution happens *everywhere*. You can make your own experiment proving its existence in your own backyard for God's sake
I'd be interested to see the experiment in your back yard yielding a new species over tens of thousands of years. There's plenty of observable evidence of changing traits in a given genotype, but that doesn't exactly get us from one species to another, it just provides proof that the theory may hold water.
Peer reviewers don't, in general, try to disprove the thesis.
As a peer reviewer, I have to agree with this. When reviewing a paper, you ask yourself questions such as: "Do the experimental results support the conclusion?", "Has the author clearly stated the problem?", and "Does the paper make sense based on the current body of knowledge?". You don't ask the author for all of their data and attempt to reconstruct their work.
There is a presentation by Dave Patterson on "How to have a Bad Career in Academics". The first half of the presentation gives practical suggestions for how to sink your academic career. Interestingly enough, the climate sciences seem to have taken all of this advice to heart without realizing that it was given in sarcasm. There are suggestions such as "Don't ever share your results", "Claim that your field is too complex for anyone other than yourself to understand it", "Work on problems with 20 year time horizons, that way you have 19 years of being right before you have to prove anything".
The fundamental question that should be asked of climate scientists is, "Do your models support the current temperature record, to include the current flat trend?" and "If not, why not?". I've searched quite a bit to see if any model actually predicted the last decade's temperatures, and thus far have not found anything. At a minimum, that points to a hole in the theory and makes me question the iron-clad conclusions that are based on models that, at best, have a few major flaws.
The subtext here is: A mission statement with integrity. Of course, since md5 is deprecated, it actually comes out as "A mission statement with compromised integrity". Go Cyber Comm!