It seems like five seconds after you tell them anything it becomes international news.
Remember that pakistani group that wanted to form an alliance with the US to squeeze out the military faction? Well, they're all running for their lives now because the instant they told the US State Department it was all over the nightly news.
Forget the issue of the moment here, what we're looking at is a state department leaking everything they're given.
That means it's impossible to conduct diplomacy with the US. THAT is a much bigger problem then some stupid MPAA conspiracy to create a precedent in Australia.
State Department needs to get their shit together now. I don't know who's fault this is and I don't care. It doesn't matter. Fix it.
If they don't know there is encrypted information they can't ask you to reveal a password.
Hide it. Bury the data in meta data. Bury it in unwritten space on a partition. Then there is always the cloud. Bury your login and password and connection history in the machine somehow and then put the real meat of hte data in the cloud somewhere. Almost impossible for anyone to find it out there.
Finally... there is the science fiction notion of a "data haven"... sort of like a tax shelter for data. Places where you can store information and it can't be summoned without the authorization of the user. Compelling someone to reveal the data again would be problematic because the authorities won't know what the right user name might be... Ideally have more then one... one that has nothing in it and another that has everything.
Legality aside... people will find ways to hide information and keep it secret. So if a password protected partition doesn't work... then they need to come up with another system.
I like security through obscurity... The trick is to always have enough novel ways to hide the data that the authorities don't get expert in your means.
As to michael mann, the programs he supported, and the obvious cost... I'm going to just pass.I've learned not to argue against people that deny the sun in the sky.
As to scientists providing solutions... they always do to scientific problems. Just as doctors or medical scientists provide solutions to medical problems. Or Engineers providing solutions to engineering problems.
Do not lawyers provide solutions to legal problems? If not the scientists then who? Politicians might propose a solution but it won't be worth anything unless a scientist was at least consulted to form it.
In any case, I'm not going to play coy games with you if you're going to deny the sun. Type in Mann's name into google... he's on record.
And as to the cost... play devil's advocate for just ONE second. Just for a moment for the sake of argument... make a good faith effort to calculate the costs of any of these programs... not specifically.. just to the nearest order of magnitude. It's trillions. Annually.
That's a lot of money. That's empire money. That's enough money to not only build a moon base but a moon city. Every year.
So are you shocked we want more information? Be shocked. That isn't going away until the price tag comes WAY down.
This is an ancient entertainment form that goes back to the camp fires of pre history. You're not going to replace them with interactive media.
If you want to kill hollywood, then take over their distribution and funding mechanism. Everyone loves to hate hollywood but they spend millions on movies. IT's something a lot of people feed their family participating in... is it becoming outmoded? MAYBE. But if it is then you have to take over the development, advertising, publishing, and distribution costs. Can you do any of that?
Because so far all the internet movies I've seen have costed nothing... because everyone worked for free. THat isn't an industry... that's a charity.
Find out how to finance all this stuff without hollywood twisting the knife to get people to pay and you've got yourself a replacement. Fail... and hollywood reigns supreme.
as you wish.. we'll just dust off your germ warfare lab that we shut down in the 60s... think of all the super plagues we could have created in the last 50 years!
So... Michael Mann, who is a scientist... didn't campaign in favor of these bills and in favor of various programs that would cost hundreds of billions?
I don't know how to have a discussion with you on this if you going to start by telling me that it's 1802 and we all live in a blue pineapple.
Who do you think is paying for this campaign? And if the scientists aren't endorsing this then why do all the politicians and international groups claim they are doing this not only with the endorsement of scientists but at their recommendation?
Come now... They are asking for this money.
And if you ask for that kind of funding then you can damned well expect some very stiff auditing before we hand over a check for trillions EVERY YEAR.
And worse, we're told that if we do EVERYTHING they ask and pass over trillions a year... then the best we have to look forward to is a slightly less crappy problem.
So... maybe we're skeptical in part because we don't like that answer. Maybe that's inconvenient. Maybe we're being silly. But in the end, right or wrong... we'd rather keep our trillions and face the rising seas then piss it all away basically for nothing.
Give us affordable solutions that you think will actually fix the situation.
The science doesn't really matter if we can't afford your solution.
Deadly refers to how likely you are to survive if infected where as contagious simply relates to how likely you are to get infected.
So a very deadly virus that isn't very infectious would not be dangerous. But if you were injected with it... you would die.
A very contagious virus such as the common cold would not be dangerous even if you got because it doesn't really hurt people.
Taking contagious diseases and then weaponizing them is not responsible or acceptable.
We stopped doing that research in the US in the 1960s. Want us to start up again? The EXACT same technology we developed in the 1960s to make super plagues is what these people are doing. They reverse engineered the same system.
That doesn't raise any red flags for you?
yes it does or no the US should start making super plagues again?
If it's just another port that combines audio then it's fine. But if they start combining all sorts of copy protection schemes it's going to be annoying. I'm not too worried about it because I think even if MS or Apple puts that on their machines there will be driver hacks. So it won't matter. But it will also be one more thing that can go wrong.
I also think businesses won't appreciate this... I don't know... I suppose HDMI to DVI converters might become really popular.
I see no reason for an experimental virus to be both highly contagious and deadly at the same time. Couldn't you learn the same thing from two viruses. One that was very contagious but not dangerous and another that was very deadly but not contagious?
Why put the warhead in the missile if you don't intend to kill people? if you want to test the missile, put a dummy warhead in it. If you want to test the warhead, then detonate without the delivery mechanism.
Viral researchers do this sort of thing all the time. They test contagious viruses with harmless strains to watch how they get into the body. Deadly strains are typically injected. They're not airborne.
Maybe I don't understand what they're doing but the whole thing smells like a germ warfare lab if they're combining the two and trying to make them more deadly. That's a weaponization program.
My mistake, none of the scientists or politicians or the overarching political movement that supports AGW has ever asked for billions or trillions of dollars.
I must have hallucinated the Kyoto treaty which will of course mean nothing to you because it's apparently all in my head.
Seriously, if you're not going to argue in good faith then there's no point having this discussion. Try again later if and when you're prepared to be honest. I have no patience for this double talk.
First, they look for people that don't have pride in their personal honor and integrity. Ideally, you're looking for people that will not violate their oaths because they have deep seated principles. This is detectable.
Second, you disqualify anyone that has weaknesses. Drunks, drug addicts, gamblers, womanizers, people with family in countries where pressure could be put on them, connections to organized crime, any connection to fringe political organizations, membership in weird religions, odd personal beliefs of any kind... etc.
And that's just the start of it. Do background check and don't be afraid to simply bump people out for not meeting them. It's not like you've said they're bad people. You've just disqualified them from that position. Get lax about it and you're going to have problems. Simple as that.
Seems every other day we're hearing about some chinese scientist or programmer that steals US proprietary secrets of some kind. Why does this keep happening? I thought the whole point of a background check was to avoid this sort of thing. Review where you f'ed up in the background check. See what you knew at the start that should have been a red flag and then add it to the disqualified list. If you were fooled at that point or didn't get enough information then see to it that you're harder to fool and gather more information. This is just sad.
Really? They were able to get access to the CRU's raw data and find a 1:1 match with data that it was drawn from?
What what we have here is an audit. That is in large part why the data is important.
It needs to be understood where every bit of data came from. Every bit of it needs to be verified. Then every process, filter, then calculation from that point to the final conclusion has to be documented in order.
If you want TRILLIONS of dollars a year in AGW spending then why is it unreasonable to ask for that? It isn't unreasonable. If you were asking for a few billion and then you'd go away. Then we might just throw that at you and be done with it. But you want trillions every year.
For that, you need more. We need to know. We can't just trust you. If you don't appreciate that, then you don't know what a trillion dollars is in the first place. That is strategic money. That is the sort of money that wins wars, feeds continents, and builds empires. You don't ask for that without a lot more.
So... you can either reduce what you're asking for by a factor of a thousand or you can start providing all the documentation that is being asked for without the attitude. Because the attitude isn't helping.
Berkley Earth claims to have reacquired the data from scratch. That is, they claim to have taken it from the initial weather stations. If they're just taking data from Michael Mann then it won't be admissible.
I'm not saying the data doesn't exist anywhere. I'm saying it's been very hard to get the scientists to actually release all their raw data. If someone else goes around and collects it all over again then that's different. I am not referring to ice cores or anything else that would difficult to redo. I'm just talking about querying weather station records.
My understanding is that the Ukraine is more a target then a source for such things and that source is actually Russia.
You do have a point... though both Russia and Ukraine have information economies. There are fairly large software companies and industries in both countries.
Again, possibly Iran has one too. I really don't know that much about their economy. Though it would surprise me.
In any case, I'm pretty sure Israel's information economy could stomp Iran's... so I'm not too worried about it.
the very first link under raw data that supposedly shows all the weather stations and most of the ground data doesn't work. I've never been able to get that link to work... let me try on a different computer... okay, seems to work there. So it's just this computer that has an issue. My fault. I'll give it a look, verify some of the data by checking it against it's supposed source, and then import the whole thing into excel... I'm not totally helpless.
As to the FOIA, you're not pretending that was all smoke and no fire. If that's your argument then we're going to have to agree to disagree. Several scientists have been admonished by judges for failing to disclose data and cited for sloppy record keeping. This is not just some band of quacks making things up.
As to the BEST data, I'm still patiently waiting for them to release data. I thought it was supposed to be out last year? Again, I do not accuse anyone of anything that hasn't been proven yet. So in fairness I won't say there has been any corruption or unethical behavior. I will say there has been some sloppy behavior but that again is a matter of court record... and not merely my opinion.
I eagerly await full disclosure. I think you're aware of the problem to some extent though you seem loath to admit it. For example you cited the issue iwth not owning the data or it belonging to various suppliers. That's fair. But then the pressure needs to be put on them to release it. If it's a matter of money, then just pay the idiots. They have every right to demand compensation for their data. But its important that it become public domain. So if we need to cut some checks to some weather stations to make this happen the price is cheap.
Anything that doesn't result in that data being available in it's complete and unedited form is a waste of time. That is non-negotiable. Full disclosure. All the data prior to any modification and the full methodology used to turn the data into the conclusions. If that means computer code, then upload the full source code. If it means long descriptions of their process then that's fine too. Its like being asked to show your work in math class. You can't just cite the answer and say "done." Even if you're right it doesn't matter. It's very important that we see the process in full. And one thing that will of course happen is we'll see what happens if we enter random data into the methodology. "IF" we get a hockey stick curve out of random data then that will make us very uncomfortable with the methodology because it will suggest a bias to given results.
This is not unreasonable. The amount of money being asked to fund GW research is at least hundreds of millions and if we include the propaganda spend on it then we're talking about billions. And as to the proposed solutions we're talking about spending TRILLIONS of dollars. No one is signing off on year over year trillion dollar spending packages without a LOT of backing. And so far it just isn't even close to enough to get anything through.
If you want action on climate change... you need to have enough information out there to make stupid novices like me happy because it's my money in part that you're talking about spending. This is less an ideological or a republican vs democrat problem. This is a very simple money problem. It's a LOT of money and these numbers can't be justified unless we're made very certain. We're also quiet paranoid because we've been lied to by many con artists and charlatans over the years. Look at all the people in wall street that just got away with ripping the whole country off. So we assume someone MIGHT be lying to us and we're not going to just take any of this on faith. We need the data made public... and the full methodology. If you say "trust me, I'm a scientist" we're going to check our wallets to make sure our pockets haven't been picked. Call that cynical but you have to see it from our perspective... people stick their hands in our pockets all the time. And very often they're able to run away with our wallet despite our
Have you actually ever tried to click on those links? The most important one is broken. I've been to that site many times. That first link is always broken. The raw data isn't there. I'm not saying it isn't somewhere else. Maybe I'm wrong. But your link leads no where. Try it yourself.
There wouldn't be FOIA requests over this issue going back years if the data were open. These requests are ignored, rejected, and in one case I know the scientist said they had destroyed the raw data.
Furthermore, were it available then the Berkley Earth program wouldn't have happened. It did happen because the previous studies were not releasing their data. One of the primary things the Berkeley earth program promised was that they would release their data. So far the raw BEST data has not been released and there is already controversy over the early releases.
I'm not saying AGW is right or wrong. I am not a scientist. I am not saying that any of these scientists have committed ethical violations. I really am in no position to form such an opinion. However, they have not done a good job of releasing data. Again, if they had there would not have be the FOIA issues or the Berkeley project. As those in fact happened there are issues with scientists in this field releasing data. I'm flexible on anything else on this issue. But that much I know. I am not so much a fool that I can't tell at least that much.
Out of curiosity, which field of science do you study?
GMO doesn't scare us. A fair amount of our food is GMO already. And as to making food more expensive, farmers don't use GMO unless it makes more food cheaper. Otherwise it isn't in their interest to make it.
This is econ 101.
As to how despirate we are for jobs... depending on estimates we may be looking at near 20 percent unemployment if you include all the people that are under employed or have simply given up. We don't have the luxury of saying no anymore.
Beyond that, these are great jobs. They're high paying, skilled labor, in a growth industry. These are fantastic jobs. And even if you don't work for the company all those high paying workers in your town will be good for the local economy. They'll eat at your restaurant, buy things from your store... it's money into the community.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like five seconds after you tell them anything it becomes international news.
Remember that pakistani group that wanted to form an alliance with the US to squeeze out the military faction? Well, they're all running for their lives now because the instant they told the US State Department it was all over the nightly news.
Forget the issue of the moment here, what we're looking at is a state department leaking everything they're given.
That means it's impossible to conduct diplomacy with the US. THAT is a much bigger problem then some stupid MPAA conspiracy to create a precedent in Australia.
State Department needs to get their shit together now. I don't know who's fault this is and I don't care. It doesn't matter. Fix it.
If they don't know there is encrypted information they can't ask you to reveal a password.
Hide it. Bury the data in meta data. Bury it in unwritten space on a partition. Then there is always the cloud. Bury your login and password and connection history in the machine somehow and then put the real meat of hte data in the cloud somewhere. Almost impossible for anyone to find it out there.
Finally... there is the science fiction notion of a "data haven"... sort of like a tax shelter for data. Places where you can store information and it can't be summoned without the authorization of the user. Compelling someone to reveal the data again would be problematic because the authorities won't know what the right user name might be... Ideally have more then one... one that has nothing in it and another that has everything.
Legality aside... people will find ways to hide information and keep it secret. So if a password protected partition doesn't work... then they need to come up with another system.
I like security through obscurity... The trick is to always have enough novel ways to hide the data that the authorities don't get expert in your means.
Survival of the weirdest.
can't find anything?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=michael+mann+climatology
Please.
As to michael mann, the programs he supported, and the obvious cost... I'm going to just pass.I've learned not to argue against people that deny the sun in the sky.
As to scientists providing solutions... they always do to scientific problems. Just as doctors or medical scientists provide solutions to medical problems. Or Engineers providing solutions to engineering problems.
Do not lawyers provide solutions to legal problems? If not the scientists then who? Politicians might propose a solution but it won't be worth anything unless a scientist was at least consulted to form it.
In any case, I'm not going to play coy games with you if you're going to deny the sun. Type in Mann's name into google... he's on record.
And as to the cost... play devil's advocate for just ONE second. Just for a moment for the sake of argument... make a good faith effort to calculate the costs of any of these programs... not specifically.. just to the nearest order of magnitude. It's trillions. Annually.
That's a lot of money. That's empire money. That's enough money to not only build a moon base but a moon city. Every year.
So are you shocked we want more information? Be shocked. That isn't going away until the price tag comes WAY down.
I'm reminded of Blagavitch. The man so corrupt he didn't think it was against the law to sell a senatorial seat.
This is an ancient entertainment form that goes back to the camp fires of pre history. You're not going to replace them with interactive media.
If you want to kill hollywood, then take over their distribution and funding mechanism. Everyone loves to hate hollywood but they spend millions on movies. IT's something a lot of people feed their family participating in... is it becoming outmoded? MAYBE. But if it is then you have to take over the development, advertising, publishing, and distribution costs. Can you do any of that?
Because so far all the internet movies I've seen have costed nothing... because everyone worked for free. THat isn't an industry... that's a charity.
Find out how to finance all this stuff without hollywood twisting the knife to get people to pay and you've got yourself a replacement. Fail... and hollywood reigns supreme.
as you wish.. we'll just dust off your germ warfare lab that we shut down in the 60s... think of all the super plagues we could have created in the last 50 years!
Don't worry... we're doing it for SCIENCE!
Shopping list
2000 lab monkeys
10,000 lab rats
Genealogically frozen plague cultures
oh and we need to get one of those doors that makes the woosh sound from startrek.. .those are fun.
It's for science!
So... Michael Mann, who is a scientist... didn't campaign in favor of these bills and in favor of various programs that would cost hundreds of billions?
I don't know how to have a discussion with you on this if you going to start by telling me that it's 1802 and we all live in a blue pineapple.
Who do you think is paying for this campaign? And if the scientists aren't endorsing this then why do all the politicians and international groups claim they are doing this not only with the endorsement of scientists but at their recommendation?
Come now... They are asking for this money.
And if you ask for that kind of funding then you can damned well expect some very stiff auditing before we hand over a check for trillions EVERY YEAR.
And worse, we're told that if we do EVERYTHING they ask and pass over trillions a year... then the best we have to look forward to is a slightly less crappy problem.
So... maybe we're skeptical in part because we don't like that answer. Maybe that's inconvenient. Maybe we're being silly. But in the end, right or wrong... we'd rather keep our trillions and face the rising seas then piss it all away basically for nothing.
Give us affordable solutions that you think will actually fix the situation.
The science doesn't really matter if we can't afford your solution.
Relevant if you want a weapon.
If you want to study a disease then you don't need to combine the two qualities.
They don't have to be both.
Deadly refers to how likely you are to survive if infected where as contagious simply relates to how likely you are to get infected.
So a very deadly virus that isn't very infectious would not be dangerous. But if you were injected with it... you would die.
A very contagious virus such as the common cold would not be dangerous even if you got because it doesn't really hurt people.
Taking contagious diseases and then weaponizing them is not responsible or acceptable.
We stopped doing that research in the US in the 1960s. Want us to start up again? The EXACT same technology we developed in the 1960s to make super plagues is what these people are doing. They reverse engineered the same system.
That doesn't raise any red flags for you?
yes it does or no the US should start making super plagues again?
either/or.
If it's just another port that combines audio then it's fine. But if they start combining all sorts of copy protection schemes it's going to be annoying. I'm not too worried about it because I think even if MS or Apple puts that on their machines there will be driver hacks. So it won't matter. But it will also be one more thing that can go wrong.
I also think businesses won't appreciate this... I don't know... I suppose HDMI to DVI converters might become really popular.
I see no reason for an experimental virus to be both highly contagious and deadly at the same time. Couldn't you learn the same thing from two viruses. One that was very contagious but not dangerous and another that was very deadly but not contagious?
Why put the warhead in the missile if you don't intend to kill people? if you want to test the missile, put a dummy warhead in it. If you want to test the warhead, then detonate without the delivery mechanism.
Viral researchers do this sort of thing all the time. They test contagious viruses with harmless strains to watch how they get into the body. Deadly strains are typically injected. They're not airborne.
Maybe I don't understand what they're doing but the whole thing smells like a germ warfare lab if they're combining the two and trying to make them more deadly. That's a weaponization program.
My mistake, none of the scientists or politicians or the overarching political movement that supports AGW has ever asked for billions or trillions of dollars.
I must have hallucinated the Kyoto treaty which will of course mean nothing to you because it's apparently all in my head.
Seriously, if you're not going to argue in good faith then there's no point having this discussion. Try again later if and when you're prepared to be honest. I have no patience for this double talk.
Background checks scan for both qualities.
First, they look for people that don't have pride in their personal honor and integrity. Ideally, you're looking for people that will not violate their oaths because they have deep seated principles. This is detectable.
Second, you disqualify anyone that has weaknesses. Drunks, drug addicts, gamblers, womanizers, people with family in countries where pressure could be put on them, connections to organized crime, any connection to fringe political organizations, membership in weird religions, odd personal beliefs of any kind... etc.
And that's just the start of it. Do background check and don't be afraid to simply bump people out for not meeting them. It's not like you've said they're bad people. You've just disqualified them from that position. Get lax about it and you're going to have problems. Simple as that.
Seems every other day we're hearing about some chinese scientist or programmer that steals US proprietary secrets of some kind. Why does this keep happening? I thought the whole point of a background check was to avoid this sort of thing. Review where you f'ed up in the background check. See what you knew at the start that should have been a red flag and then add it to the disqualified list. If you were fooled at that point or didn't get enough information then see to it that you're harder to fool and gather more information. This is just sad.
Do your damn background checks.
Really? They were able to get access to the CRU's raw data and find a 1:1 match with data that it was drawn from?
What what we have here is an audit. That is in large part why the data is important.
It needs to be understood where every bit of data came from. Every bit of it needs to be verified. Then every process, filter, then calculation from that point to the final conclusion has to be documented in order.
If you want TRILLIONS of dollars a year in AGW spending then why is it unreasonable to ask for that? It isn't unreasonable. If you were asking for a few billion and then you'd go away. Then we might just throw that at you and be done with it. But you want trillions every year.
For that, you need more. We need to know. We can't just trust you. If you don't appreciate that, then you don't know what a trillion dollars is in the first place. That is strategic money. That is the sort of money that wins wars, feeds continents, and builds empires. You don't ask for that without a lot more.
So... you can either reduce what you're asking for by a factor of a thousand or you can start providing all the documentation that is being asked for without the attitude. Because the attitude isn't helping.
If this is the standard of debate and dialog to which you've been trained then that might be your problem.
Childish insults do not gain you the high ground.
If you're not arguing in good faith then we're done.
I think it involves throwing women and children to a gulag to starve...
Well you've unmasked yourself as an ultra partisan.
We'll just have to agree to disagree, comrade.
Berkley Earth claims to have reacquired the data from scratch. That is, they claim to have taken it from the initial weather stations. If they're just taking data from Michael Mann then it won't be admissible.
I'm not saying the data doesn't exist anywhere. I'm saying it's been very hard to get the scientists to actually release all their raw data. If someone else goes around and collects it all over again then that's different. I am not referring to ice cores or anything else that would difficult to redo. I'm just talking about querying weather station records.
My understanding is that the Ukraine is more a target then a source for such things and that source is actually Russia.
You do have a point... though both Russia and Ukraine have information economies. There are fairly large software companies and industries in both countries.
Again, possibly Iran has one too. I really don't know that much about their economy. Though it would surprise me.
In any case, I'm pretty sure Israel's information economy could stomp Iran's... so I'm not too worried about it.
the very first link under raw data that supposedly shows all the weather stations and most of the ground data doesn't work. I've never been able to get that link to work... let me try on a different computer... okay, seems to work there. So it's just this computer that has an issue. My fault. I'll give it a look, verify some of the data by checking it against it's supposed source, and then import the whole thing into excel... I'm not totally helpless.
As to the FOIA, you're not pretending that was all smoke and no fire. If that's your argument then we're going to have to agree to disagree. Several scientists have been admonished by judges for failing to disclose data and cited for sloppy record keeping. This is not just some band of quacks making things up.
As to the BEST data, I'm still patiently waiting for them to release data. I thought it was supposed to be out last year? Again, I do not accuse anyone of anything that hasn't been proven yet. So in fairness I won't say there has been any corruption or unethical behavior. I will say there has been some sloppy behavior but that again is a matter of court record... and not merely my opinion.
I eagerly await full disclosure. I think you're aware of the problem to some extent though you seem loath to admit it. For example you cited the issue iwth not owning the data or it belonging to various suppliers. That's fair. But then the pressure needs to be put on them to release it. If it's a matter of money, then just pay the idiots. They have every right to demand compensation for their data. But its important that it become public domain. So if we need to cut some checks to some weather stations to make this happen the price is cheap.
Anything that doesn't result in that data being available in it's complete and unedited form is a waste of time. That is non-negotiable. Full disclosure. All the data prior to any modification and the full methodology used to turn the data into the conclusions. If that means computer code, then upload the full source code. If it means long descriptions of their process then that's fine too. Its like being asked to show your work in math class. You can't just cite the answer and say "done." Even if you're right it doesn't matter. It's very important that we see the process in full. And one thing that will of course happen is we'll see what happens if we enter random data into the methodology. "IF" we get a hockey stick curve out of random data then that will make us very uncomfortable with the methodology because it will suggest a bias to given results.
This is not unreasonable. The amount of money being asked to fund GW research is at least hundreds of millions and if we include the propaganda spend on it then we're talking about billions. And as to the proposed solutions we're talking about spending TRILLIONS of dollars. No one is signing off on year over year trillion dollar spending packages without a LOT of backing. And so far it just isn't even close to enough to get anything through.
If you want action on climate change... you need to have enough information out there to make stupid novices like me happy because it's my money in part that you're talking about spending. This is less an ideological or a republican vs democrat problem. This is a very simple money problem. It's a LOT of money and these numbers can't be justified unless we're made very certain. We're also quiet paranoid because we've been lied to by many con artists and charlatans over the years. Look at all the people in wall street that just got away with ripping the whole country off. So we assume someone MIGHT be lying to us and we're not going to just take any of this on faith. We need the data made public... and the full methodology. If you say "trust me, I'm a scientist" we're going to check our wallets to make sure our pockets haven't been picked. Call that cynical but you have to see it from our perspective... people stick their hands in our pockets all the time. And very often they're able to run away with our wallet despite our
Have you actually ever tried to click on those links? The most important one is broken. I've been to that site many times. That first link is always broken. The raw data isn't there. I'm not saying it isn't somewhere else. Maybe I'm wrong. But your link leads no where. Try it yourself.
There wouldn't be FOIA requests over this issue going back years if the data were open. These requests are ignored, rejected, and in one case I know the scientist said they had destroyed the raw data.
Furthermore, were it available then the Berkley Earth program wouldn't have happened. It did happen because the previous studies were not releasing their data. One of the primary things the Berkeley earth program promised was that they would release their data. So far the raw BEST data has not been released and there is already controversy over the early releases.
I'm not saying AGW is right or wrong. I am not a scientist. I am not saying that any of these scientists have committed ethical violations. I really am in no position to form such an opinion. However, they have not done a good job of releasing data. Again, if they had there would not have be the FOIA issues or the Berkeley project. As those in fact happened there are issues with scientists in this field releasing data. I'm flexible on anything else on this issue. But that much I know. I am not so much a fool that I can't tell at least that much.
Out of curiosity, which field of science do you study?
GMO doesn't scare us. A fair amount of our food is GMO already. And as to making food more expensive, farmers don't use GMO unless it makes more food cheaper. Otherwise it isn't in their interest to make it.
This is econ 101.
As to how despirate we are for jobs... depending on estimates we may be looking at near 20 percent unemployment if you include all the people that are under employed or have simply given up. We don't have the luxury of saying no anymore.
Beyond that, these are great jobs. They're high paying, skilled labor, in a growth industry. These are fantastic jobs. And even if you don't work for the company all those high paying workers in your town will be good for the local economy. They'll eat at your restaurant, buy things from your store... it's money into the community.
It's a good thing.