The 97% is based on scientific polling of actual climate scientists. It is fair to say that about 19 out of 20 people actually doing research and publishing papers in the field of climatology have concluded that the buildup of greenhouse gas caused by human activity is becoming the driving force behind global warming.
On the other hand, your claim is based on anecdotes about "physicists" and "biologists" who very well may not even do active research in climatology being "skeptical". But the fact is, denialism is not skepticism and genuine climate skeptics are few and far between. One would suppose that some of the 5% minority of climate scientists are genuine skeptics while the rest are paid by industry to pretend to be.
Also, the idea that climate scientists rely on computer models to reach their conclusions is simply untrue. The conclusion would be valid even based on back of the hand calculations that any undergraduate scientist could do. There are only three major factors that affect the total retained heat of the planet:
1) Solar radiance. 2) Albedo 3) The Greenhouse Effect
You don't need a supercomputer to calculate the change in solar irradiance in the past 100 years and how much heat it has added or removed from the planet. Overall, it is a pretty null force.
And, you don't need a supercomputer to calculate how much extra heat the small reduction in the albedo has retained due to us cleaning up our atmosphere.
And finally, you don't need a supercomputer to calculate the large increase in heat energy added to the atmosphere by the increasing greenhouse effect.
What you do need a supercomputer for is to predict how all this extra heat is going to effect the climate on a year-to-year basis. Which parts of the earth are going to get wetter, how much energy will be siphoned off by the oceans, how much less rain will Phoenix get.
But none of these supercomputer models are necessary to figuring out what the primary cause of the temperature increase is, and that is the buildup of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
A university is an ISP for students and faculty and university email accounts are little different than for-profit ISP email accounts.
Most universities have a privacy policy that protects the contents of the email of students and faculty and only allows viewing of contents for reasons similar to why an ISP would be allowed to view customers' email, like in compliance with a court order. Students, professors, and people who send them email have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
And, in this case, it is irrelevant. If something is subject to the FOIA or the State equivalent, it is going to be subject to disclosure regardless of whether it was sent from a personal or government email account. Likewise, if something is not subject to the FOIA, then it will not be subject regardless of whether it was sent from a personal or government account.
Privileged information is privileged information and public information is public information. The email account used is irrelevant. Most universities hold their faculty and students responsible for policing their own email.
No, national security letters are just used to investigate. In the US, the first amendment protects you if you publish classified information so long as you were not the one with privileged access and you do not impede the investigation into how the information was leaked.
The Ivy League was basically a formal gentleman's agreement (you know, back from the good old days where they banned women and blacks from campus and had strict quotas on Jews) that they would mutually agree to be terrible at sports in order to maintain high academic standards.
Everyone who attends an Ivy League school to play sports is someone who would have been a serious consideration for admission without their athletic ability.
. . . then impersonating a public official is not going to either. The Supreme Court basically ruled that you can outright lie about serving in the military because that is your first amendment right.
Now if someone is trying to lie about being a public official to get into a restricted area or hell, lying about being a veteran to get a free lunch at Denny's on Memorial Day, that might be a crime, but this guy defrauded nobody.
The best case scenario for the mayor is a civil lawsuit for libel, but it is so blatantly obviously a parody account that it would just be a waste of everyone's money. But why use your own money to sue someone when you can send the police to unconstitutionally harass them?
Pretty much ANY research he is doing is proprietary unless the university is funding it or has specific rules about research while on the faculty, in which case, it is proprietary research subject to the rules of the university.
A professor's primary job is to teach. Research is an opportunity he is afforded to pursue as it makes him a better instructor and brings prestige and funding to the university. So, the State equivalent of the FOIA is not going to necessarily apply to faculty research in the first place, only to their job as instructors.
Now, if he is receiving government funding for his research, there may be some FOIA expectation, but the public certainly does not have a right to demand all email. For one, the person making the FOIA needs to be specific about what they want and it has to relate directly and substantially to a specific facet of government funded research. Secondly, it does not cover any communication where the sender or receiver has an expectation of privacy. If he is emailing someone who is not being paid to work on that particular project, such as a graduate student or another person in his field or department, that information is not going to be covered by the FOIA as it violates the expectation of privacy of the person outside the project sending or receiving the email, unless the person is specifically informed that their email may be subject to public disclosure.
Now, does email to other people on the project, to the agency that is funding it, and to others who have no expectation of privacy fall under a FOIA? It is possible, but only if it specifically relates to published data. Anything that is a work in progress is not subject to the FOIA because it is being actively managed by whoever is funding the project.
So if he texts, "I'm sorry I am not going to be in for work today I am receiving medical treatment from my mental health provider," that should be public records?
If he emails, "I am sorry Mrs. Channing, but there is no work you can do in Physics 102 to avoid a failing grade," that should be public record?
Releasing the first email would be a violation of federal law (respecting medical confidentiality) and the second one would likely violate State law or university code on student confidentiality.
The Supreme Court has ruled that American citizens have a reasonable expectation that the contents of their email will be kept private, just like their phone conversations.
The expectation of privacy is a legal concept that exists regardless of any boilerplate click-through agreement.
The courts have generally ruled that there exists no expectation of privacy on certain parts of email, like the routing information (recipient for instance), total traffic volume, and other such information.
On the other hand, they have generally upheld that there exists an expectation of privacy on the actual contents of emails (i.e. message and subject line), the same way that telephone users expect that their conversations, but not their dialing information, be kept private.
Does your daughter work an on-campus job? Does she ever use a university email account? Does she use university networks?
These all are public resources, and as a creepy stalker, I demand to be allowed full access to the email and browsing history of all attractive undergraduate students. I want to know who their professors are, which websites they visit using university networks, and any other private information that I can find out.
I demand full access! The government should not be able to hide the information from me. We don't want to be forced to go back to the dark days of rooting through trash and peeking through windows!
So if your daughter works at a student job at the university, can I request access to all of her university email? How about any records of her internet activity, like the websites she visited using university networks? After all, she is a public employee using government resources and as a creepy stalker, I certainly have a right to know what classes she is taking, where she hangs out, what websites she visits, and any other information I might be able to learn through a FOIA request.
People have an expectation of privacy in email. It is as simple as that. In addition, they have some duty to not release certain information to the public, for instance, anything involving students' work or the work of others (who also have an expectation of privacy), anything regarding privileged information (such as medical) or of a purely personal nature.
Does the public have a right to email that directly involves publicly-funded research? Possibly. They certainly do not have a right to ask an individual to turn over all his personal corresponance anymore than they have a right to tap the phone in his office.
What we know about the universe is a tiny drop in a potentially infinite ocean of ignorance. The fact that scientists, like everyone else, have picked the lowest-hanging fruit bare does not mean that they have made a dent in the boundless orchard of knowledge of the natural world.
Is some genius working in a patent office or holed up in a dormitory at Cambridge, without the aid of even a scientific calculator going to discover anything as fantastic as relativistic mechanics or Newtonian mechanics? Probably not. A lot of big science requires teams of really smart people, trillions of man hour equivalents of supercomputer time, and perhaps, one day, particle accelerators the length of Pluto's orbit. But all that knowledge is still out there for the taking. When we only have a vague idea of what dark matter or dark energy might be, when we really do not understand the brain on a biochemical level, when we really have no understanding about they WHY of quantum physics or how to reconcile it with gravity, there is certainly a lot of big questions left unanswered, and those are just the questions we know to ask.
Now you are equivocating. Mozilla taking action against him because of his donation is potentially a violation of California's labor laws. It is quite possibly illegal. It certainly would violate the letter of the law.
Private citizens boycotting Mozilla because they refuse to violate California labor laws is not an illegal act in itself the same as boycotting McDonalds because they will not fire all their Hispanic employees is legal.
And your position is a position of equivocation, not ethics or morality. If I were to believe it was my moral duty to oppose same sex marriage and homosexual behavior (because of my religious beliefs), then by your position, I should attempt to shame every practicing homosexual I ever see, maybe call gay people at work and attempt to preach the "good word", and whatnot.
My position is a little different. It respects that people have a right to their beliefs and that a response to bad morals or ethics should be PROPORTIONAL. If someone speaks out against same sex marriage, speak in favor of it. If someone makes a political donation against it, make a political donation for it. Trying to ruin someone's professional life because of a $1000 donation they made to a cause you disagree with is completely out of proportion with their behavior.
That is a non sequitur. It was never an issue of rights. It was an issue of responsibilities and ethics.
If I see a baby abandoned in a dumpster, I have a right to just keep on walking. If I see someone leave their wallet on a bench or an ATM card in a machine, I have a right to say nothing. If I see a stranger walking down the street, I have a right to accost them and start using all sorts of ethnic, racial, or sexist slurs.
The discussion was never about what people have the right to do. It was about their responsibilities as ethical people.
You cannot "boycott" behavior, and these activists certainly are not.
What they are doing is trying to get him fired.
Do you think it would be ethical for thousands of Christians to get together and try to get a same sex marriage proponent fired for his "immoral" behavior?
If I had made a donation to oppose Proposition 8 and thousands of Christians were calling up my boss every few minutes and trying to enter my workplace every day to tell my employers what an "immoral" person I was, I would be quite upset at their behavior, and rightfully so.
I am saying that by firing him based on legal activities that occurred outside the workplace (in this case, making a small donation to proposition 8), they would be violating the letter of the California Labor Code and he could sue for tens of millions of dollars of damages.
As for how the lawsuit would actually turn out, that would be up to the courts. No doubt, it would be a long and costly battle. However, what is clear is that forcing him to resign would be a clear violation of the text of California's Labor Codes, since his donation occurred outside the workplace, outside of work hours, and was legal.
The protestors are essentially asking the board of directors to violate California Labor Law.
Under California law, the board quite possibly has no legal right to use his support of proposition 8 in any decision to hire or fire him.
But the protestors do not believe that he should have been appointed CEO and they do not believe he should remain CEO due to legal actions outside of work in his private life. Essentially, the protestors are claiming that the board should have violated California labor law by refusing to appoint him CEO because of his private donation and they are claiming that the board should fire him because of his private donation.
It would be akin to a group of protestors asking a CEO to be fired because he was black or Jewish. Being black or Jewish is protected by California labor laws and employers are not allowed to use someone's ethnicity or race to determine whether they are hired, fired, or disciplined. Similarly, California employers are not allowed to use someone's legal private activities.
Let's say I walk up to you with a gun in my hand and say, "I think you should give me your watch, your phone, and all of your money." You might decide it was in your own best interest to comply. It would be a "voluntary" action. I did not directly threaten you or fire at you.
But it would still be an act of intimidation, and in this case, an unethical act and almost certainly an illegal one.
To say that him stepping down would be "voluntary" would be a prevarication. He would be stepping down due to threats of economic and reputation damage to his company.
So, if a Christian found the blog post of a anti Proposition 8 activist and got 1000 of his friends to bombard his place of work for a month with dozens of calls to his boss per hour and daily attempts to gain access to the premises to explain to the poor blogger's boss that his employee was a person of "immoral" character and behavior, that would not constitute harassment?
In the legal sense, perhaps not, just like legally Fred Phelps and his ilk were entitled to harass soldier's families at funerals. But in the larger sense, yes it would be harassing, and no it would not be ethical behavior.
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The 97% is based on scientific polling of actual climate scientists. It is fair to say that about 19 out of 20 people actually doing research and publishing papers in the field of climatology have concluded that the buildup of greenhouse gas caused by human activity is becoming the driving force behind global warming.
On the other hand, your claim is based on anecdotes about "physicists" and "biologists" who very well may not even do active research in climatology being "skeptical". But the fact is, denialism is not skepticism and genuine climate skeptics are few and far between. One would suppose that some of the 5% minority of climate scientists are genuine skeptics while the rest are paid by industry to pretend to be.
Also, the idea that climate scientists rely on computer models to reach their conclusions is simply untrue. The conclusion would be valid even based on back of the hand calculations that any undergraduate scientist could do. There are only three major factors that affect the total retained heat of the planet:
1) Solar radiance.
2) Albedo
3) The Greenhouse Effect
You don't need a supercomputer to calculate the change in solar irradiance in the past 100 years and how much heat it has added or removed from the planet. Overall, it is a pretty null force.
And, you don't need a supercomputer to calculate how much extra heat the small reduction in the albedo has retained due to us cleaning up our atmosphere.
And finally, you don't need a supercomputer to calculate the large increase in heat energy added to the atmosphere by the increasing greenhouse effect.
What you do need a supercomputer for is to predict how all this extra heat is going to effect the climate on a year-to-year basis. Which parts of the earth are going to get wetter, how much energy will be siphoned off by the oceans, how much less rain will Phoenix get.
But none of these supercomputer models are necessary to figuring out what the primary cause of the temperature increase is, and that is the buildup of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
A university is an ISP for students and faculty and university email accounts are little different than for-profit ISP email accounts.
Most universities have a privacy policy that protects the contents of the email of students and faculty and only allows viewing of contents for reasons similar to why an ISP would be allowed to view customers' email, like in compliance with a court order. Students, professors, and people who send them email have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
And, in this case, it is irrelevant. If something is subject to the FOIA or the State equivalent, it is going to be subject to disclosure regardless of whether it was sent from a personal or government email account. Likewise, if something is not subject to the FOIA, then it will not be subject regardless of whether it was sent from a personal or government account.
Privileged information is privileged information and public information is public information. The email account used is irrelevant. Most universities hold their faculty and students responsible for policing their own email.
No, national security letters are just used to investigate. In the US, the first amendment protects you if you publish classified information so long as you were not the one with privileged access and you do not impede the investigation into how the information was leaked.
See: Pentagon Papers.
Don't get me wrong, the US is not perfect, but it is one of the few western democracies that does not have hate speech laws or a state secret's act.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
The Ivy League was basically a formal gentleman's agreement (you know, back from the good old days where they banned women and blacks from campus and had strict quotas on Jews) that they would mutually agree to be terrible at sports in order to maintain high academic standards.
Everyone who attends an Ivy League school to play sports is someone who would have been a serious consideration for admission without their athletic ability.
. . . then impersonating a public official is not going to either. The Supreme Court basically ruled that you can outright lie about serving in the military because that is your first amendment right.
Now if someone is trying to lie about being a public official to get into a restricted area or hell, lying about being a veteran to get a free lunch at Denny's on Memorial Day, that might be a crime, but this guy defrauded nobody.
The best case scenario for the mayor is a civil lawsuit for libel, but it is so blatantly obviously a parody account that it would just be a waste of everyone's money. But why use your own money to sue someone when you can send the police to unconstitutionally harass them?
Pretty much ANY research he is doing is proprietary unless the university is funding it or has specific rules about research while on the faculty, in which case, it is proprietary research subject to the rules of the university.
A professor's primary job is to teach. Research is an opportunity he is afforded to pursue as it makes him a better instructor and brings prestige and funding to the university. So, the State equivalent of the FOIA is not going to necessarily apply to faculty research in the first place, only to their job as instructors.
Now, if he is receiving government funding for his research, there may be some FOIA expectation, but the public certainly does not have a right to demand all email. For one, the person making the FOIA needs to be specific about what they want and it has to relate directly and substantially to a specific facet of government funded research. Secondly, it does not cover any communication where the sender or receiver has an expectation of privacy. If he is emailing someone who is not being paid to work on that particular project, such as a graduate student or another person in his field or department, that information is not going to be covered by the FOIA as it violates the expectation of privacy of the person outside the project sending or receiving the email, unless the person is specifically informed that their email may be subject to public disclosure.
Now, does email to other people on the project, to the agency that is funding it, and to others who have no expectation of privacy fall under a FOIA? It is possible, but only if it specifically relates to published data. Anything that is a work in progress is not subject to the FOIA because it is being actively managed by whoever is funding the project.
Most universities have a very specific email privacy policy that guarantees the privacy of employees except in very specific situations.
So if he texts, "I'm sorry I am not going to be in for work today I am receiving medical treatment from my mental health provider," that should be public records?
If he emails, "I am sorry Mrs. Channing, but there is no work you can do in Physics 102 to avoid a failing grade," that should be public record?
Releasing the first email would be a violation of federal law (respecting medical confidentiality) and the second one would likely violate State law or university code on student confidentiality.
The Supreme Court has ruled that American citizens have a reasonable expectation that the contents of their email will be kept private, just like their phone conversations.
The expectation of privacy is a legal concept that exists regardless of any boilerplate click-through agreement.
The courts have generally ruled that there exists no expectation of privacy on certain parts of email, like the routing information (recipient for instance), total traffic volume, and other such information.
On the other hand, they have generally upheld that there exists an expectation of privacy on the actual contents of emails (i.e. message and subject line), the same way that telephone users expect that their conversations, but not their dialing information, be kept private.
See the case of US v. Maxwell.
Does your daughter work an on-campus job? Does she ever use a university email account? Does she use university networks?
These all are public resources, and as a creepy stalker, I demand to be allowed full access to the email and browsing history of all attractive undergraduate students. I want to know who their professors are, which websites they visit using university networks, and any other private information that I can find out.
I demand full access! The government should not be able to hide the information from me. We don't want to be forced to go back to the dark days of rooting through trash and peeking through windows!
So if your daughter works at a student job at the university, can I request access to all of her university email? How about any records of her internet activity, like the websites she visited using university networks? After all, she is a public employee using government resources and as a creepy stalker, I certainly have a right to know what classes she is taking, where she hangs out, what websites she visits, and any other information I might be able to learn through a FOIA request.
So do I have a right to access the university email records of good looking undergraduates at public universities?
People have an expectation of privacy in email. It is as simple as that. In addition, they have some duty to not release certain information to the public, for instance, anything involving students' work or the work of others (who also have an expectation of privacy), anything regarding privileged information (such as medical) or of a purely personal nature.
Does the public have a right to email that directly involves publicly-funded research? Possibly. They certainly do not have a right to ask an individual to turn over all his personal corresponance anymore than they have a right to tap the phone in his office.
. . . the last time I checked, the Economist was not a US publication. Does the BBC World News have a, "US centric perspective," too?
What we know about the universe is a tiny drop in a potentially infinite ocean of ignorance. The fact that scientists, like everyone else, have picked the lowest-hanging fruit bare does not mean that they have made a dent in the boundless orchard of knowledge of the natural world.
Is some genius working in a patent office or holed up in a dormitory at Cambridge, without the aid of even a scientific calculator going to discover anything as fantastic as relativistic mechanics or Newtonian mechanics? Probably not. A lot of big science requires teams of really smart people, trillions of man hour equivalents of supercomputer time, and perhaps, one day, particle accelerators the length of Pluto's orbit. But all that knowledge is still out there for the taking. When we only have a vague idea of what dark matter or dark energy might be, when we really do not understand the brain on a biochemical level, when we really have no understanding about they WHY of quantum physics or how to reconcile it with gravity, there is certainly a lot of big questions left unanswered, and those are just the questions we know to ask.
That is very commonly a shibboleth for "asked to leave" in executive level jobs.
Now you are equivocating. Mozilla taking action against him because of his donation is potentially a violation of California's labor laws. It is quite possibly illegal. It certainly would violate the letter of the law.
Private citizens boycotting Mozilla because they refuse to violate California labor laws is not an illegal act in itself the same as boycotting McDonalds because they will not fire all their Hispanic employees is legal.
And your position is a position of equivocation, not ethics or morality. If I were to believe it was my moral duty to oppose same sex marriage and homosexual behavior (because of my religious beliefs), then by your position, I should attempt to shame every practicing homosexual I ever see, maybe call gay people at work and attempt to preach the "good word", and whatnot.
My position is a little different. It respects that people have a right to their beliefs and that a response to bad morals or ethics should be PROPORTIONAL. If someone speaks out against same sex marriage, speak in favor of it. If someone makes a political donation against it, make a political donation for it. Trying to ruin someone's professional life because of a $1000 donation they made to a cause you disagree with is completely out of proportion with their behavior.
That is a non sequitur. It was never an issue of rights. It was an issue of responsibilities and ethics.
If I see a baby abandoned in a dumpster, I have a right to just keep on walking. If I see someone leave their wallet on a bench or an ATM card in a machine, I have a right to say nothing. If I see a stranger walking down the street, I have a right to accost them and start using all sorts of ethnic, racial, or sexist slurs.
The discussion was never about what people have the right to do. It was about their responsibilities as ethical people.
You cannot "boycott" behavior, and these activists certainly are not.
What they are doing is trying to get him fired.
Do you think it would be ethical for thousands of Christians to get together and try to get a same sex marriage proponent fired for his "immoral" behavior?
If I had made a donation to oppose Proposition 8 and thousands of Christians were calling up my boss every few minutes and trying to enter my workplace every day to tell my employers what an "immoral" person I was, I would be quite upset at their behavior, and rightfully so.
Trying to make your opinion become law is what is known as. . . democracy.
The way to oppose bad speech is with good speech.
I am saying that by firing him based on legal activities that occurred outside the workplace (in this case, making a small donation to proposition 8), they would be violating the letter of the California Labor Code and he could sue for tens of millions of dollars of damages.
As for how the lawsuit would actually turn out, that would be up to the courts. No doubt, it would be a long and costly battle. However, what is clear is that forcing him to resign would be a clear violation of the text of California's Labor Codes, since his donation occurred outside the workplace, outside of work hours, and was legal.
The protestors are essentially asking the board of directors to violate California Labor Law.
Under California law, the board quite possibly has no legal right to use his support of proposition 8 in any decision to hire or fire him.
But the protestors do not believe that he should have been appointed CEO and they do not believe he should remain CEO due to legal actions outside of work in his private life. Essentially, the protestors are claiming that the board should have violated California labor law by refusing to appoint him CEO because of his private donation and they are claiming that the board should fire him because of his private donation.
It would be akin to a group of protestors asking a CEO to be fired because he was black or Jewish. Being black or Jewish is protected by California labor laws and employers are not allowed to use someone's ethnicity or race to determine whether they are hired, fired, or disciplined. Similarly, California employers are not allowed to use someone's legal private activities.
Let's say I walk up to you with a gun in my hand and say, "I think you should give me your watch, your phone, and all of your money." You might decide it was in your own best interest to comply. It would be a "voluntary" action. I did not directly threaten you or fire at you.
But it would still be an act of intimidation, and in this case, an unethical act and almost certainly an illegal one.
To say that him stepping down would be "voluntary" would be a prevarication. He would be stepping down due to threats of economic and reputation damage to his company.
So, if a Christian found the blog post of a anti Proposition 8 activist and got 1000 of his friends to bombard his place of work for a month with dozens of calls to his boss per hour and daily attempts to gain access to the premises to explain to the poor blogger's boss that his employee was a person of "immoral" character and behavior, that would not constitute harassment?
In the legal sense, perhaps not, just like legally Fred Phelps and his ilk were entitled to harass soldier's families at funerals. But in the larger sense, yes it would be harassing, and no it would not be ethical behavior.