Quoth TFA: "... that... AMS revoke their "Seal of Approval" for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that..."
Now correct me if I'm wrong but nobody screams "censorship" when an incompetent doctor is kicked out of the AMA....
You suggest that expressing skepticism is incompetence, and yet you still continue to defend this as non-censorship?! Wow, that really takes some cast-iron cajones.
Yes, silencing skeptics is censorship. Yes stripping someone's professional certifications because they don't agree with you is censorship (and just plain wrong on every level). Yes, there is no such thing as "consensus by force". And yes, you are dismantling the scientific method.
If you think producing controversial science ends your career, I'd like to introduce you to my friend Albert. He got a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect despite having this crazy theory about space and time.
Yep, and if he were alive today, and working in the field of climate, I suspect he would have already been hounded out of a job. Being brilliant and inquisitive aren't enough of late... you also need to be "correct", and correct is a word whose definition is carefully defined by a set of mantras that you must not contradict. It's not that some other scientists won't still respect you, it's just that funding is inversely proportional to how controversial you are seen to be, so someone as controversial as Einstein would be hard-pressed to find grant money for his crazy theories. He would be told that he had to demonstrate that he was correct before anyone would fund such work (the exact opposite of how the scientific method works).
Now, let me play my own devil's advocate. Lots of folks, since the days of Usenet, and before, have made claims that sound like the above, but with one important difference: that they feel that some particular crackpot idea is being "surpressed". I want to be clear in that I'm not advocating anything other than the science. I just want to see political organizations like UCS and realclimate start to ratchet down their shrill advocacy and remember that not everyone who tries to disprove a theory is "the enemy". I'd like to see funding organizations move to fund strong efforts to disprove existing climate theory because it is some of the most important theory that we have today, and it needs to be made rock-solid if we're to change the way we live as a result.
On the political side, I have other opinions, but those aren't nearly as important as the science and the fact that we've been damaging the process with all of our grandstanding.
I'm just covering my bases here. I seriously doubt that you trust junkscience over realclimate, but there are those who do.
I trust neither, as they are both poltical organizations, and politics has had far too strong a hand in climate of late.
What I find bothersome is that boilerplate arguments are had in lieu of actuall science because heaven forbid you should produce the "wrong results" and become controversial... that would end your career overnight.
That phrase is a play on words involving a science fiction book called "State of fear"
Actually, while I'm not a big fan of that book, I think it's perfectly valid political SF. But that's NOT what I was refering to. I was talking about the essay titled "climate of fear." You can find it via google. Interestingly, it's not about the right or the wrong of the argument, but about how we go about arguing (using political or scientific approaches). Face it, not everyone who tries to prove relativity is wrong thinks Einstein was an idiot. It's just that assailing a theory is how you demonstrate that it's solid. We, the few who aren't happy with the current form of global warming debate, aren't saying that this is all bunk. We're just saying that the scientific method should be guiding our actions here, not floor debates in the senate or an ex-VP grandstanding in a movie that plays to the masses, and makes claims that aren't even remotely supported by the science (someone else in an earlier thread pointed out that Gore's movie claims that sea levels will rise dramatically, and demonstrates the impact that would have, but the UN's climate group predicts a tiny fraction of that sea level rise over the next 100 years, just by way of example).
Don't get emotional about it, just let the scientific method play out. Fund the people who want to tear down established theory in the same manner you support those who wish to build on it. That's how it works, and that's how you find the truth.
Of course climate change is real. All you have to do to verify that is look back in the temperature record for the last 100million years. When you do so, you will quickly see that all of human history (including this year) is a relatively flat line, and a drop in temperature that is much like the grand canyon when plotted over time is "right around the corner," geologically speaking.
Climate changes. Get over it.
That said, the current warming period is on a scale that, when viewed in the context of human history only, is quite impressive. We've known that for a while now. Also no debate.
The problem is that we're not exactly sure why. We have some models that say that everything but CO2 that we know of (and feel we have decent measures for) can't quite account for the warming. We have some theories on how a relatively small amount of CO2 (and keep in mind that compared to all atmospheric CO2, human emmisions are very small indeed) might have an impact that's disproportionate. This is a perfectly reasonable theory, and I'd like to shake the hands of the people who did that very important work.
The problem that I and many other people have is that any work that goes into supporting or opposing this theory (both of which are valid approaches) get politicized, and the result is that anyone trying to support the theory is seen as "good" and anyone trying to oppose the theory is seen as "evil". Instead, people like myself suggest that the scientific method shoud dictate our actions, here. We should assail theories, not because we have a moral investment in topling them, but because theory that stands the test of such assault is stronger for it.
Instead, those who work in the field operate under an understanding that their work must not become "controvercial". That is, if anyone ever holds your research in their hands and supports the political position that global warming isn't human induced or that changes to cars won't make a difference (be they right or wrong), your career will be finished. In that climate (pun intended), science doesn't have a chance. Even if the theory that "must be true" is true, that's darts, not science.
Some days, I feel like making a "support our climatologists, stay out of it," bumper sticker....
Oh the irony, your "problem of funding" is an "insinuation of tainted motives" on a global scale.
The saddest part is that I don't think that's the case. If there were a "bad guy" here, I might feel like there was a hope of putting the scientific method back on track, but no. I think it's just a cycle of failure that started the first time someone got worried about funding a "controvercial" climetologist or solar astrophysicist.
A lot of it has to do with media attention and the bad choices that that brings, but I don't think anyone WANTED this outcome.
It's not that those controling funding were trying to swing a debate, it's just that they were worried that they WOULD swing the debate, and they let that color their choices. In retrospect, I'm sure those choices are all justifiable, but each one inched us closer to a failure to do scinece and as one person calls it, a "climate of fear" surrounding results that might call into question the "consensus."
I'm not even saying that the consensus is right or wrong, just that there's no way to call it science when it's not attacked from every angle. Can you imagine how little respect we'd have for general relativity if it remained unassailed for fear of losing funding? Could we possibly accept it as "consensus," or would we just think of it as a "best guess?"
ExonnMobil and some in the coal industry have been clear about the rewards for scientists to distort science in their favour.
And there it is... we need go no further to see the gross abuses to which the scientific method is subjected than to read that statement.
First, research doesn't distort unless it's false, and false data tends to show itself over time. What you're talking about, though, isn't really false. What you're talking about is people who do research that shows that there's doubt about a particular set of theories. Now, you may be familliar with the way the scientific method worked pre-global-warming. In that golden age you just had to focus on what you wanted to prove or disprove and construct experiments to do so. Now, you have to think about the political ramifications of proving or disproving a particular bit of theory and steer clear of anything that might make you too controvecial to fund.
After all, you might end up having to turn to oil companies for funding, and at that point, you wouldn't be able to get a 13 year old to read your papers no matter how valid they might be.... There are so many things wrong with that that I don't even know where to start.
Can we stop being pro-X and anti-Y and just do some science for Euler's sake?!
What is the motivation for all other scientists to distort science in the other direction?
I'll just have to pretend that that wasn't asked, since it implies a magnitude of unethical behavior that I hadn't even considered....
As someone who gives grants has pointed out, grants are given to answer the plethora of genuine scientific questions that still remain.
For certain values of genuine, you are correct. But once someone's research is used to support a theory or oppose a theory that it "should not have," they become "too controversial." Then it's over. You just don't get funding.
Lindzen conspiracy of oppression rings hollow since he himself has been invited to give evidence to political commitees on both sides of the Atlantic
There again, the scientific method goes out the window. We look to one guy who says, "let's do more real science and fund the work that assails theory because that's how the scientific method works," and ask him to prove that the contrarian case is correct. That would be like denying Issac Newton funding until he proved that Calculus could get a man to the moon. You fund research on the basis of its merits, without regard to the researcher's political standing or the political implications of the research. You don't ask someone to proove that they've solved a problem before funding them. That's how we got in this mess.
unfortunately he did not come up with anything new and spent most of his time labeling anyone who does not agree with him "alarmists".
Anyone who's honest with themselves will admit that the scientific community have been alarmist over global warming. I submit to you that that's not a BAD thing, it's just something that we need to be aware of. Yes, we pushed this issue hard because it was important. Yes, it was important. Yes, we needed to have the debate and do the scinece, and it needed to be funded. Yes, yes, yes. Now, we've done a lot of work, and there's much left to do. What we need is to pull some of the hounds off of the media and the politicians. We need to convince people like Gore that no matter how good his intentions, he's just making it HARDER for good scientists to do good work, and turning the field into more of a sport than a science. We need to just go back to basics and fund the research that will help us understand the world we live in.
I put it to you that Lindzen has his conspiracy theory back to front. As for the congressional debate you mention, it wouldn't happen to be linked to Lindzen or a certain science fiction writer gi
Good stuff. I'm glad that you're level-headed, and I'm glad that you seem to be approaching the science with an open mind.
On the issue of reducing pollution, I think most people agree. My major concern with the global warming alarmists is that pollution in all other forms has dropped off the radar. We predict that life might be impacted by CO2 in the future, and yet thousands of people are made sick or die from other pollutants every day NOW. I'm much more interested in dealing with the pollutants that kill today than those that might cause waterfront cities to have to relocate in a 100 years. I know cities. I know they'll cope. Children in the third world who breath the toxic fumes of industrial solvents aren't doing so well. Choose your battles.
Realclimate, the site you pointed to, is a den of folks who enjoy trolling anyone who says that the climate is a more complex system that a big box with a hole it in labeled, "insert CO2 here to destroy the earth."
They usually resort to name-calling, insinuations of tainted motivations, etc. without actually responding to the points being made, epsecially with respect to the problem of funding.
Funding is key, and I've never understood why someone would respond the way you do. For example, you say that extraodinary claims require extraordinaty proof, and yet for 30 years we've been chasing the people who wish to provide that truth out of climate science. Everyone who I have ever spoken to who worked with the Sun or climate and did NOT agree that we understand the climate well enough to be making grand, sweeping conclusions, has said the same thing, "I work in tech now because it's the only way I could pay the bills." That's just not right, and it's got to change. We need to support scientists who have valid work to do, even if they're coming up with hypotheses and data that we don't like. Otherwise science is broken.
Of course. You can get access to money from biased sources, but your research is then ignored as "tainted" (even if your data is useful, it's discarded). It's not a problem of getting money, it's a problem of relatively unbiased money drying up for anyone who says, "there's no actual certainty here, and many variables to account for." That's not the "correct" answer and hasn't been for about 30 years, so you either get out of the business of climate research (as one sibling poster mentioned he had) or you toe the line by studying specific, narrow areas that won't be controvercial. I'm not saying you lie... most scientists have too much of a respect for the truth to lie about their research. No, you just work in an area that isn't likely to get your funding removed. You avoid controversy, and leave the grand-standing to those who have an agenda to push and slightly less ethics.
Understand that the current "consensus" is, "the Earth is warming more recently than it has in a long time and we have a set of computer models that account for every other variable that we can think of in ways that we think are correct, and the warming is left unexplained... human-produced CO2 could explain the difference." That's the consensus. That's the extent of the consensus. Of course, we don't yet understand the climate of our solar system (yep, that airless void has weather, and we're just learning how much of an impact that has on earth, causing things from C14 levels to lightning). We don't yet understand the full impact of the sun on the Earth. We don't yet even know how the ocean and atmosphere work together enough to tell you how strong next year's hurricanes will be (we got that horribly wrong in 2006 which was supposed to be one of the worst years on record). We just don't know, and that's all people like me want to hear. We don't want to hear, "SUVs are killing the planet," and we don't want to hear, "A glass of crude with breakfast will cure the clap." We want to hear the extent of what we really do know, and what we really don't and we want honest research to tear down established theory when it needs tearing down because that's how the scientific method works.
This is the best part of the debate. Someone like me (a liberal, as it turns out, but that really doesn't matter) announces that they think the politics of science have gotten out of hand, and we're immediately told, "what you read on Free Republic does not count as experience" (as if I read any such publication, but hey it makes for a great straw-man) and the vauge "loopier and loopier ideas" concept, which isn't even a refutation.
As for real-world examples... it began long ago. For example, the primary author of "Sun, Weather, And Climate" (1978 NASA special publication), John R. Herman was subsequently shunned by his peers as, during the early 80s, the data from that book was used as a counter-point in the greenhouse gas debate.
Any solar observatory these days sees this. They either talk about other topics, or only publish data that fails to contradict the "facts" as accepted by the current consensus. Violating that has one observatory mentioned in the congressional floor debate record as, "an enemy of the planet," I kid you not.
There's also a great article about the modern implications of the "climate of fear" surrounding climate research, but of course, you can't listen to Richard Lindzen because he takes money from those people... but of course, that's self-perpetuating because anyone who speaks up in Lindzen's defense is branded with the same iron, and must seek funding elsewhere... which further invalidates their voice.
I'm not saying that CO2 doesn't cause babies to cry and angels to lose their wings, I'm just saying that there's no way to extract meaningful information from the "consensus" of a community that's scared for their jobs about saying the wrong thing. I would consider Bill Gates a national, even international hero if he invested a large chunk of the Gates Foundation money in funding the best research that tried to assail current climate theory on all fronts. Not because that theory is bad, but because I want to see the research done and done well, so that we really get to find out what the hell is going on on planet Earth.
Let me ask you this: if you did research that suggested that, for example, ground-cover water vapor from irrigation had a strong hand to play in surface warming (that's arm-waving, but it's an example for sake of argument), do you think that you would continue to get funding? Would you be called an "enemy of the planet?" Would you have to go looking to oil companies to support further research and pretty much guarantee that no one listened to you? What if some republican picked up your work and started waving it around, taking it out of context and saying that fossile fuel is as safe as houses because of what you said? Would the community circle around you and defend your reputation from such gross misuse of your work, or would you just find yourself too "controvercial" to continue to work in the field?
We know the answer to these questions because it's been played out for nearly 30 years. You would be asking Slashdot, "what's a good tech job?"
The problem is that that's not their bias. Their bias is rooted deep in the changes that have come to pass in the sciences that touch climate, energy, and a number of other fields over the last 20-30 years. They seek to de-politicize the sciences in theory, but in reality, they have sought to de-corporatize them. This has two problems: 1) it's impossible and 2) it ignores the fact that some of the most important and ground-breaking science is done in a corporate environment.
I think it's important to fact-check any body of theory and the research that has sought to assail it (unassailed theory is useless, which global-warming folks tend to forget). You do this periodically, and as thuroughly as possible, but that's all you do. You don't yank people's funding for disagreeing with you, and you don't subsequently brand them as propagandists for being forced to seek alternate funding. You judge the science on the merits of the science.
UCS doesn't actually work this way. They are seeking a world where anyone that's privately funded is barred from consensus-making, and that seems to be a very, very slippery slope to me (just as much a slippery slope as allowing corporations to have too much influence over science-related policy making in government).
This is not true. Nothing has been accounted for, as there is very little real science being done. If you work in this field, you know that you have two choices: do work that supports the "consensus" or leave the field for lack of funding. When the CIA does this, we call it "group think" and we call for resignations and hearings. When funding for scientific reach gets cut in this way, we first call it consensus, and then label everyone who seeks alternate funding a lobbiest for big-oil and discredit their research as non-scientific propaganda.
Fact of the matter is that throughout the late 70s and 80s this process grew ugly, and now it's damn-near impossible to extract meaningful data from this field, which is DANGEROUS... far more dangerous than rising sea-levels. Even hurricane study is starting to get politicized as a by-product. We need to get the politics out of climate research and meteorology. We need to fully fund the skeptics because that's how we assail theory and determine its merits (scientific method, remember?) We need to stop branding researchers as biased just for losing their funding and deciding to keep doing the exact same research, but with corporate sponsorship. Judge the work, not the funding, and if you don't like the funding, fund it from elsewhere.
Now, can we get past the north-vs-south of climate change and let the scientists get back to work, please?
They just want to have the chance to look at v3 and see what it means for their business. I don't think that's an unreasonable possition to take, especially given that FSF is hell-bent on making the v3 license a big advocacy push against DRM and patents that might have substantial collateral damage among free software businesses.
The "or later" clause is boilerplate that FSF has suggested for decades.
EVERYONE should read the terms that they cut-n-paste into their software carefully, and make sure that they have not put their software out under terms that they did not intend!
Jimbo gets donations from Virgin Unite (aka The Virgin Foundation) and their page suddenly becomes this big advertising page for their "charity."
Interestingly, you make this sound like a bad thing, but in fact Virgin Unite, AKA The Virgin Foundation is in reality the charitable organization formed by the Virgin Group... so how is it "advertising" to say:
Virgin Unite is the working name of The Virgin Foundation, the independent charitable arm of the Virgin Group. Created by Richard Branson and Virgin employees in September 2004, Virgin Unite pools volunteering efforts across the Virgin Group and its hundreds of subsidiaries and associated companies and has partnered with more than a dozen charities worldwide.
That sounds like an accurate description to me, not an ad. Amusingly enough the article doesn't even mention their contribution to Wikipedia (IMHO this is as it should be, since it's not a particularly notable element of their work).
The correct answer, of course, is a middle-ground. Video is a useful thing, but there is a line that you don't want to cross, where your life is documented on media that the current power structure maintains and mines. There are things you don't want your government to be able to do, even when it would help law enforcement. Why? Because a corrupt and hostile government (which any government can turn into over time) will use that information to narrow their focus on potential opposition, and eliminate it.
So, you don't stop corner stores from using cameras, nor do you stop someone from filming their own property, but IMHO, there should never be a time when walking down the street means that you're caught on multiple public and privite video feeds. There's no reason to document my life in that fashion, no matter how many serial murderers you hold up as examples. A serial murderer can only kill so many people... unless they control the military. Serial murderers who controled militaries litter history, and will litter future history books as well. THEY are the primary concern. Any move that prevents the smaller problem by enabling the larger one is NOT a solution.
Jimbo gets donations from a bunch of groups like CAIR, suddenly facts that are "not so complimentary" to Islam vanish from the Islam-related pages and editors who try to put them back start getting attacked.
There have ALWAYS been edit wars back-and-forth over every religion, and at some points in time there are "favorable" edit waves and sometimes "hostile" edit waves for certain sets of articles. It's a process, not a destination. I doubt that it had anything to do with any one group donating, though that group may have decided to look into Wikipedia's content becuase they were now involved, and may have brought a wave of positive edits to certain pages for a period of time. That's certainly happened before.
Jimbo gets donations from Virgin Unite (aka The Virgin Foundation) and their page suddenly becomes this big advertising page for their "charity."
This is not the problem you think it is. It happens whenever Wikipedia is the subject of a current event. Some people can't divorce their Wikipedia POV from their edits, and Wikipedia becomes the focus of too much article text. That almost always gets reverted quickly, and over time, the text becomes much more NPOV and much more in-line with policy.
The same thing happens every time. Either Jimbo gets a "donation" and someone magically has their wikipedia entr(ies) scrubbed squeaky clean, or someone threatens a lawsuit and they just remove the page entirely.
Please link to specific edit diffs, and cite examples.
Wikipedia's worth the toilet paper it's printed on, and not a penny more.
Wikipedia is both crap and the best reference work ever produced by human effort. There is simply nothing as comprehensive, and yet it will take decades for Wikipedia to reach a level of quality across most important topics that matches their aspirations. Then again, I've seen countless formerly featured articles stripped of that status as the bar has been raised in terms of sources and quality of writing, and the ones that do make it through are far, far better than ever before. So, I do think there's strong hope for a Wikipedia that's not only more comprehensive than anything else, but overall higher quality, but WP is brand new, when compared with every other major reference work. It will be a long time before it improves.
As for advertising, I think the biggest danger is not in specific, focused changes, but in an overall reluctance on the part of independant editors to "rock the boat" when dealing with a contributor... we'll see, but that's the biggest fear that I have.
The BSD's have not changed much in terms of driver support and code bloat.
bloat == functionality, in this case. Applications under Linux tend to be smaller because there's a shared library that supports more of the functionality that they want. Under the BSDs, this functionality needs to be replaced on a per-application basis by code that doesn't even have to exit the pre-processor on Linux.
It's a trade-off, and both are valid. I happen to like the way Linux works out, but there's nothing wrong with going the other way if you understand the scaling implications.
I don't see it as misleading. If anything, the study itself is the one that's misleading. When the layman says "catch a cold", we don't mean that you have X ppm viral load, we mean that you have a runny nose, cough, etc. The study says that everyone had the virus (it was deliberately introduced), but some developed (or at least reported developing) symptoms. The latter category is what we would generally call "catching a cold," so the subject is correct.
It can sometimes be difficult to translate medicalese into English, so don't assume that all translations are perfect.
It was obviously an error, but I did like the cover in the books. If I recall correctly, the books described the Kessel Run as a sort of gravitational obstacle course around one or more black holes. Speed would obviously be a factor, but so would navigating the shortest distance (hence the notability of having accomplished the race in some number of parsecs).
Why not? Because when you tax goods that have no value, you give those goods a negative value. Games like Second Life attempt to convert in-game assets to real money, but in order to do so in a game like World of Warcraft, you would have to either pay taxes out-of-pocket (increasing the cost of playing the game) or you would have to violate the EULA and sell your items out-of-game.
A move like this would likely drop the World of Warcraft player base by a third overnight, sending the company scrambling to cut enough jobs and consolidate enough servers to drop the overhead... it would essentially destroy the game in short order.
Recall that the same was true of Dungeons & Dragons in the late 70s / early 80s. Many schools saw waves of students flunk out "because of the game." In reality, of course, the students were the sort to be distracted by shiny things, and D&D happened to be there at the time, but because it was popular enough to capture many of the shiny-challenged, it seemed that it was the cause and not the symptom. The same was true for the Atari and EverQuest. Now WoW gets the nod.
When will we understand that the "addiction" is to a time-killing hobby that involves a modicum of structured social activity for those who cannot or choose not to structure social activity on their own, and not to a particular hobby?
Cults are, of course, ill defined. In general, the term simply refers to any organization based on a set of religious beliefs that the members hold in common, and usually having associated rituals. Since there is nothing im MMOGs which can be considered a religious belief (though religious fiction is introduced, there is no sense that I have ever gotten that there is any difficulty discerning the in-game story from reality... in fact, the lack of suspension of disbelief is often a problem), I don't really see how the label can be applied.
In common usage, however, we Americans often call any social group that we disapprove of a "cult". In THAT sense, all MMOGs are cults to SOMEONE. That's not a terribly useful definition, however.
What MMOGs are is gaming clubs online. The gaming is what draws people in, but the social elements are why you stay. It's either to spend time with new-found (or real life) friends or to compete with others or to demonstrate your prowess at some aspect of the game. These are strongly compelling elements of online play, and MMOGs are very good at providing them.
The real question is, "is this a bad thing?" Dance clubs are "addictive" in roughly the same way, but because an outsider can look at someone at a dance club and SEE that they are being social, it lacks the same stigma. All social interaction, especially competitive social interaction is addictive in this way.
One further note. Unlike real addictions, games have no withdrawral or long-term health effects other than lack of physical excersise (which is probably the easiest physical ailment to resolve). When I stopped playing EverQuest and didn't play any other MMOGs for 2 years, I had no desire to go back, and never felt that I needed a "fix", but I did play 2-4 nights per week for 4 years until it failed to interest me further, and I had more pressing things at work that required long hours at the time.
Recently, I picked up World of Warcraft because a group of friends play, and it sounded interestingly unique in several ways. I'm playing quite often now in order to attain a specific goal (60 before the expansion), but then intend to play 2-3 times per week for as long as it holds my interest.
Why is this a problem? Where is the impact? I have friends, a house, a job. I spend time with my family. I cook. Every now and then, I even go out into the woods and enjoy the feel of soil under my feet.
Is it that games are an unknown to the "older generation" (of which I realize, I'm a member) or is there something more here? What scares us so?
Re:Real geeks only please
on
Top Ten Geek Girls
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Paris Hilton is a geek in the classic sense. She might as well be biting the heads off of small animals.
Lisa Simpson is clearly a girl-geek role model, even if she's a cartoon.
Aleks Krotoski spends a lot of time advocating 'girl-video gaming' according to her Wikipedia article, though I've never heard of her.
I have yet to RTFA, but I'm wondering how they drew the line. For example, many geek guys are fans of Ripley from the Alien movies, but SHE is more of a strong female character than a geek per se. Same goes (though without the teen drooling) for Eleanor Roosevelt who was an iconic strong woman with a powerful presence, but not even remotely a geek. On the other hand, I'd say that every woman on the list of female Nobel Prize Laureates is worth a spot on such a list, but very few were strong personalities, and thus are typically not recognized even when their contributions were enormous.
Slashdot Mirror
You suggest that expressing skepticism is incompetence, and yet you still continue to defend this as non-censorship?! Wow, that really takes some cast-iron cajones.
Yes, silencing skeptics is censorship. Yes stripping someone's professional certifications because they don't agree with you is censorship (and just plain wrong on every level). Yes, there is no such thing as "consensus by force". And yes, you are dismantling the scientific method.
Good work.
Yep, and if he were alive today, and working in the field of climate, I suspect he would have already been hounded out of a job. Being brilliant and inquisitive aren't enough of late... you also need to be "correct", and correct is a word whose definition is carefully defined by a set of mantras that you must not contradict. It's not that some other scientists won't still respect you, it's just that funding is inversely proportional to how controversial you are seen to be, so someone as controversial as Einstein would be hard-pressed to find grant money for his crazy theories. He would be told that he had to demonstrate that he was correct before anyone would fund such work (the exact opposite of how the scientific method works).
Now, let me play my own devil's advocate. Lots of folks, since the days of Usenet, and before, have made claims that sound like the above, but with one important difference: that they feel that some particular crackpot idea is being "surpressed". I want to be clear in that I'm not advocating anything other than the science. I just want to see political organizations like UCS and realclimate start to ratchet down their shrill advocacy and remember that not everyone who tries to disprove a theory is "the enemy". I'd like to see funding organizations move to fund strong efforts to disprove existing climate theory because it is some of the most important theory that we have today, and it needs to be made rock-solid if we're to change the way we live as a result.
On the political side, I have other opinions, but those aren't nearly as important as the science and the fact that we've been damaging the process with all of our grandstanding.
I trust neither, as they are both poltical organizations, and politics has had far too strong a hand in climate of late.
What I find bothersome is that boilerplate arguments are had in lieu of actuall science because heaven forbid you should produce the "wrong results" and become controversial... that would end your career overnight.
Actually, while I'm not a big fan of that book, I think it's perfectly valid political SF. But that's NOT what I was refering to. I was talking about the essay titled "climate of fear." You can find it via google. Interestingly, it's not about the right or the wrong of the argument, but about how we go about arguing (using political or scientific approaches). Face it, not everyone who tries to prove relativity is wrong thinks Einstein was an idiot. It's just that assailing a theory is how you demonstrate that it's solid. We, the few who aren't happy with the current form of global warming debate, aren't saying that this is all bunk. We're just saying that the scientific method should be guiding our actions here, not floor debates in the senate or an ex-VP grandstanding in a movie that plays to the masses, and makes claims that aren't even remotely supported by the science (someone else in an earlier thread pointed out that Gore's movie claims that sea levels will rise dramatically, and demonstrates the impact that would have, but the UN's climate group predicts a tiny fraction of that sea level rise over the next 100 years, just by way of example).
Don't get emotional about it, just let the scientific method play out. Fund the people who want to tear down established theory in the same manner you support those who wish to build on it. That's how it works, and that's how you find the truth.
Of course climate change is real. All you have to do to verify that is look back in the temperature record for the last 100million years. When you do so, you will quickly see that all of human history (including this year) is a relatively flat line, and a drop in temperature that is much like the grand canyon when plotted over time is "right around the corner," geologically speaking.
Climate changes. Get over it.
That said, the current warming period is on a scale that, when viewed in the context of human history only, is quite impressive. We've known that for a while now. Also no debate.
The problem is that we're not exactly sure why. We have some models that say that everything but CO2 that we know of (and feel we have decent measures for) can't quite account for the warming. We have some theories on how a relatively small amount of CO2 (and keep in mind that compared to all atmospheric CO2, human emmisions are very small indeed) might have an impact that's disproportionate. This is a perfectly reasonable theory, and I'd like to shake the hands of the people who did that very important work.
The problem that I and many other people have is that any work that goes into supporting or opposing this theory (both of which are valid approaches) get politicized, and the result is that anyone trying to support the theory is seen as "good" and anyone trying to oppose the theory is seen as "evil". Instead, people like myself suggest that the scientific method shoud dictate our actions, here. We should assail theories, not because we have a moral investment in topling them, but because theory that stands the test of such assault is stronger for it.
Instead, those who work in the field operate under an understanding that their work must not become "controvercial". That is, if anyone ever holds your research in their hands and supports the political position that global warming isn't human induced or that changes to cars won't make a difference (be they right or wrong), your career will be finished. In that climate (pun intended), science doesn't have a chance. Even if the theory that "must be true" is true, that's darts, not science.
Some days, I feel like making a "support our climatologists, stay out of it," bumper sticker....
The saddest part is that I don't think that's the case. If there were a "bad guy" here, I might feel like there was a hope of putting the scientific method back on track, but no. I think it's just a cycle of failure that started the first time someone got worried about funding a "controvercial" climetologist or solar astrophysicist.
A lot of it has to do with media attention and the bad choices that that brings, but I don't think anyone WANTED this outcome.
It's not that those controling funding were trying to swing a debate, it's just that they were worried that they WOULD swing the debate, and they let that color their choices. In retrospect, I'm sure those choices are all justifiable, but each one inched us closer to a failure to do scinece and as one person calls it, a "climate of fear" surrounding results that might call into question the "consensus."
I'm not even saying that the consensus is right or wrong, just that there's no way to call it science when it's not attacked from every angle. Can you imagine how little respect we'd have for general relativity if it remained unassailed for fear of losing funding? Could we possibly accept it as "consensus," or would we just think of it as a "best guess?"
And there it is... we need go no further to see the gross abuses to which the scientific method is subjected than to read that statement.
First, research doesn't distort unless it's false, and false data tends to show itself over time. What you're talking about, though, isn't really false. What you're talking about is people who do research that shows that there's doubt about a particular set of theories. Now, you may be familliar with the way the scientific method worked pre-global-warming. In that golden age you just had to focus on what you wanted to prove or disprove and construct experiments to do so. Now, you have to think about the political ramifications of proving or disproving a particular bit of theory and steer clear of anything that might make you too controvecial to fund.
After all, you might end up having to turn to oil companies for funding, and at that point, you wouldn't be able to get a 13 year old to read your papers no matter how valid they might be.... There are so many things wrong with that that I don't even know where to start.
Can we stop being pro-X and anti-Y and just do some science for Euler's sake?!
I'll just have to pretend that that wasn't asked, since it implies a magnitude of unethical behavior that I hadn't even considered....
For certain values of genuine, you are correct. But once someone's research is used to support a theory or oppose a theory that it "should not have," they become "too controversial." Then it's over. You just don't get funding.
There again, the scientific method goes out the window. We look to one guy who says, "let's do more real science and fund the work that assails theory because that's how the scientific method works," and ask him to prove that the contrarian case is correct. That would be like denying Issac Newton funding until he proved that Calculus could get a man to the moon. You fund research on the basis of its merits, without regard to the researcher's political standing or the political implications of the research. You don't ask someone to proove that they've solved a problem before funding them. That's how we got in this mess.
Anyone who's honest with themselves will admit that the scientific community have been alarmist over global warming. I submit to you that that's not a BAD thing, it's just something that we need to be aware of. Yes, we pushed this issue hard because it was important. Yes, it was important. Yes, we needed to have the debate and do the scinece, and it needed to be funded. Yes, yes, yes. Now, we've done a lot of work, and there's much left to do. What we need is to pull some of the hounds off of the media and the politicians. We need to convince people like Gore that no matter how good his intentions, he's just making it HARDER for good scientists to do good work, and turning the field into more of a sport than a science. We need to just go back to basics and fund the research that will help us understand the world we live in.
Good stuff. I'm glad that you're level-headed, and I'm glad that you seem to be approaching the science with an open mind.
On the issue of reducing pollution, I think most people agree. My major concern with the global warming alarmists is that pollution in all other forms has dropped off the radar. We predict that life might be impacted by CO2 in the future, and yet thousands of people are made sick or die from other pollutants every day NOW. I'm much more interested in dealing with the pollutants that kill today than those that might cause waterfront cities to have to relocate in a 100 years. I know cities. I know they'll cope. Children in the third world who breath the toxic fumes of industrial solvents aren't doing so well. Choose your battles.
Realclimate, the site you pointed to, is a den of folks who enjoy trolling anyone who says that the climate is a more complex system that a big box with a hole it in labeled, "insert CO2 here to destroy the earth."
They usually resort to name-calling, insinuations of tainted motivations, etc. without actually responding to the points being made, epsecially with respect to the problem of funding.
Funding is key, and I've never understood why someone would respond the way you do. For example, you say that extraodinary claims require extraordinaty proof, and yet for 30 years we've been chasing the people who wish to provide that truth out of climate science. Everyone who I have ever spoken to who worked with the Sun or climate and did NOT agree that we understand the climate well enough to be making grand, sweeping conclusions, has said the same thing, "I work in tech now because it's the only way I could pay the bills." That's just not right, and it's got to change. We need to support scientists who have valid work to do, even if they're coming up with hypotheses and data that we don't like. Otherwise science is broken.
Of course. You can get access to money from biased sources, but your research is then ignored as "tainted" (even if your data is useful, it's discarded). It's not a problem of getting money, it's a problem of relatively unbiased money drying up for anyone who says, "there's no actual certainty here, and many variables to account for." That's not the "correct" answer and hasn't been for about 30 years, so you either get out of the business of climate research (as one sibling poster mentioned he had) or you toe the line by studying specific, narrow areas that won't be controvercial. I'm not saying you lie... most scientists have too much of a respect for the truth to lie about their research. No, you just work in an area that isn't likely to get your funding removed. You avoid controversy, and leave the grand-standing to those who have an agenda to push and slightly less ethics.
Understand that the current "consensus" is, "the Earth is warming more recently than it has in a long time and we have a set of computer models that account for every other variable that we can think of in ways that we think are correct, and the warming is left unexplained... human-produced CO2 could explain the difference." That's the consensus. That's the extent of the consensus. Of course, we don't yet understand the climate of our solar system (yep, that airless void has weather, and we're just learning how much of an impact that has on earth, causing things from C14 levels to lightning). We don't yet understand the full impact of the sun on the Earth. We don't yet even know how the ocean and atmosphere work together enough to tell you how strong next year's hurricanes will be (we got that horribly wrong in 2006 which was supposed to be one of the worst years on record). We just don't know, and that's all people like me want to hear. We don't want to hear, "SUVs are killing the planet," and we don't want to hear, "A glass of crude with breakfast will cure the clap." We want to hear the extent of what we really do know, and what we really don't and we want honest research to tear down established theory when it needs tearing down because that's how the scientific method works.
This is the best part of the debate. Someone like me (a liberal, as it turns out, but that really doesn't matter) announces that they think the politics of science have gotten out of hand, and we're immediately told, "what you read on Free Republic does not count as experience" (as if I read any such publication, but hey it makes for a great straw-man) and the vauge "loopier and loopier ideas" concept, which isn't even a refutation.
As for real-world examples... it began long ago. For example, the primary author of "Sun, Weather, And Climate" (1978 NASA special publication), John R. Herman was subsequently shunned by his peers as, during the early 80s, the data from that book was used as a counter-point in the greenhouse gas debate.
Any solar observatory these days sees this. They either talk about other topics, or only publish data that fails to contradict the "facts" as accepted by the current consensus. Violating that has one observatory mentioned in the congressional floor debate record as, "an enemy of the planet," I kid you not.
There's also a great article about the modern implications of the "climate of fear" surrounding climate research, but of course, you can't listen to Richard Lindzen because he takes money from those people... but of course, that's self-perpetuating because anyone who speaks up in Lindzen's defense is branded with the same iron, and must seek funding elsewhere... which further invalidates their voice.
I'm not saying that CO2 doesn't cause babies to cry and angels to lose their wings, I'm just saying that there's no way to extract meaningful information from the "consensus" of a community that's scared for their jobs about saying the wrong thing. I would consider Bill Gates a national, even international hero if he invested a large chunk of the Gates Foundation money in funding the best research that tried to assail current climate theory on all fronts. Not because that theory is bad, but because I want to see the research done and done well, so that we really get to find out what the hell is going on on planet Earth.
Let me ask you this: if you did research that suggested that, for example, ground-cover water vapor from irrigation had a strong hand to play in surface warming (that's arm-waving, but it's an example for sake of argument), do you think that you would continue to get funding? Would you be called an "enemy of the planet?" Would you have to go looking to oil companies to support further research and pretty much guarantee that no one listened to you? What if some republican picked up your work and started waving it around, taking it out of context and saying that fossile fuel is as safe as houses because of what you said? Would the community circle around you and defend your reputation from such gross misuse of your work, or would you just find yourself too "controvercial" to continue to work in the field?
We know the answer to these questions because it's been played out for nearly 30 years. You would be asking Slashdot, "what's a good tech job?"
The problem is that that's not their bias. Their bias is rooted deep in the changes that have come to pass in the sciences that touch climate, energy, and a number of other fields over the last 20-30 years. They seek to de-politicize the sciences in theory, but in reality, they have sought to de-corporatize them. This has two problems: 1) it's impossible and 2) it ignores the fact that some of the most important and ground-breaking science is done in a corporate environment.
I think it's important to fact-check any body of theory and the research that has sought to assail it (unassailed theory is useless, which global-warming folks tend to forget). You do this periodically, and as thuroughly as possible, but that's all you do. You don't yank people's funding for disagreeing with you, and you don't subsequently brand them as propagandists for being forced to seek alternate funding. You judge the science on the merits of the science.
UCS doesn't actually work this way. They are seeking a world where anyone that's privately funded is barred from consensus-making, and that seems to be a very, very slippery slope to me (just as much a slippery slope as allowing corporations to have too much influence over science-related policy making in government).
This is not true. Nothing has been accounted for, as there is very little real science being done. If you work in this field, you know that you have two choices: do work that supports the "consensus" or leave the field for lack of funding. When the CIA does this, we call it "group think" and we call for resignations and hearings. When funding for scientific reach gets cut in this way, we first call it consensus, and then label everyone who seeks alternate funding a lobbiest for big-oil and discredit their research as non-scientific propaganda.
Fact of the matter is that throughout the late 70s and 80s this process grew ugly, and now it's damn-near impossible to extract meaningful data from this field, which is DANGEROUS... far more dangerous than rising sea-levels. Even hurricane study is starting to get politicized as a by-product. We need to get the politics out of climate research and meteorology. We need to fully fund the skeptics because that's how we assail theory and determine its merits (scientific method, remember?) We need to stop branding researchers as biased just for losing their funding and deciding to keep doing the exact same research, but with corporate sponsorship. Judge the work, not the funding, and if you don't like the funding, fund it from elsewhere.
Now, can we get past the north-vs-south of climate change and let the scientists get back to work, please?
They just want to have the chance to look at v3 and see what it means for their business. I don't think that's an unreasonable possition to take, especially given that FSF is hell-bent on making the v3 license a big advocacy push against DRM and patents that might have substantial collateral damage among free software businesses.
The "or later" clause is boilerplate that FSF has suggested for decades.
EVERYONE should read the terms that they cut-n-paste into their software carefully, and make sure that they have not put their software out under terms that they did not intend!
Interestingly, you make this sound like a bad thing, but in fact Virgin Unite, AKA The Virgin Foundation is in reality the charitable organization formed by the Virgin Group... so how is it "advertising" to say:
That sounds like an accurate description to me, not an ad. Amusingly enough the article doesn't even mention their contribution to Wikipedia (IMHO this is as it should be, since it's not a particularly notable element of their work).
The correct answer, of course, is a middle-ground. Video is a useful thing, but there is a line that you don't want to cross, where your life is documented on media that the current power structure maintains and mines. There are things you don't want your government to be able to do, even when it would help law enforcement. Why? Because a corrupt and hostile government (which any government can turn into over time) will use that information to narrow their focus on potential opposition, and eliminate it.
So, you don't stop corner stores from using cameras, nor do you stop someone from filming their own property, but IMHO, there should never be a time when walking down the street means that you're caught on multiple public and privite video feeds. There's no reason to document my life in that fashion, no matter how many serial murderers you hold up as examples. A serial murderer can only kill so many people... unless they control the military. Serial murderers who controled militaries litter history, and will litter future history books as well. THEY are the primary concern. Any move that prevents the smaller problem by enabling the larger one is NOT a solution.
There have ALWAYS been edit wars back-and-forth over every religion, and at some points in time there are "favorable" edit waves and sometimes "hostile" edit waves for certain sets of articles. It's a process, not a destination. I doubt that it had anything to do with any one group donating, though that group may have decided to look into Wikipedia's content becuase they were now involved, and may have brought a wave of positive edits to certain pages for a period of time. That's certainly happened before.
This is not the problem you think it is. It happens whenever Wikipedia is the subject of a current event. Some people can't divorce their Wikipedia POV from their edits, and Wikipedia becomes the focus of too much article text. That almost always gets reverted quickly, and over time, the text becomes much more NPOV and much more in-line with policy.
Please link to specific edit diffs, and cite examples.
Wikipedia is both crap and the best reference work ever produced by human effort. There is simply nothing as comprehensive, and yet it will take decades for Wikipedia to reach a level of quality across most important topics that matches their aspirations. Then again, I've seen countless formerly featured articles stripped of that status as the bar has been raised in terms of sources and quality of writing, and the ones that do make it through are far, far better than ever before. So, I do think there's strong hope for a Wikipedia that's not only more comprehensive than anything else, but overall higher quality, but WP is brand new, when compared with every other major reference work. It will be a long time before it improves.
As for advertising, I think the biggest danger is not in specific, focused changes, but in an overall reluctance on the part of independant editors to "rock the boat" when dealing with a contributor... we'll see, but that's the biggest fear that I have.
bloat == functionality, in this case. Applications under Linux tend to be smaller because there's a shared library that supports more of the functionality that they want. Under the BSDs, this functionality needs to be replaced on a per-application basis by code that doesn't even have to exit the pre-processor on Linux.
It's a trade-off, and both are valid. I happen to like the way Linux works out, but there's nothing wrong with going the other way if you understand the scaling implications.
I don't see it as misleading. If anything, the study itself is the one that's misleading. When the layman says "catch a cold", we don't mean that you have X ppm viral load, we mean that you have a runny nose, cough, etc. The study says that everyone had the virus (it was deliberately introduced), but some developed (or at least reported developing) symptoms. The latter category is what we would generally call "catching a cold," so the subject is correct.
It can sometimes be difficult to translate medicalese into English, so don't assume that all translations are perfect.
It was obviously an error, but I did like the cover in the books. If I recall correctly, the books described the Kessel Run as a sort of gravitational obstacle course around one or more black holes. Speed would obviously be a factor, but so would navigating the shortest distance (hence the notability of having accomplished the race in some number of parsecs).
Why not? Because when you tax goods that have no value, you give those goods a negative value. Games like Second Life attempt to convert in-game assets to real money, but in order to do so in a game like World of Warcraft, you would have to either pay taxes out-of-pocket (increasing the cost of playing the game) or you would have to violate the EULA and sell your items out-of-game.
A move like this would likely drop the World of Warcraft player base by a third overnight, sending the company scrambling to cut enough jobs and consolidate enough servers to drop the overhead... it would essentially destroy the game in short order.
Recall that the same was true of Dungeons & Dragons in the late 70s / early 80s. Many schools saw waves of students flunk out "because of the game." In reality, of course, the students were the sort to be distracted by shiny things, and D&D happened to be there at the time, but because it was popular enough to capture many of the shiny-challenged, it seemed that it was the cause and not the symptom. The same was true for the Atari and EverQuest. Now WoW gets the nod.
When will we understand that the "addiction" is to a time-killing hobby that involves a modicum of structured social activity for those who cannot or choose not to structure social activity on their own, and not to a particular hobby?
Cults are, of course, ill defined. In general, the term simply refers to any organization based on a set of religious beliefs that the members hold in common, and usually having associated rituals. Since there is nothing im MMOGs which can be considered a religious belief (though religious fiction is introduced, there is no sense that I have ever gotten that there is any difficulty discerning the in-game story from reality... in fact, the lack of suspension of disbelief is often a problem), I don't really see how the label can be applied.
In common usage, however, we Americans often call any social group that we disapprove of a "cult". In THAT sense, all MMOGs are cults to SOMEONE. That's not a terribly useful definition, however.
What MMOGs are is gaming clubs online. The gaming is what draws people in, but the social elements are why you stay. It's either to spend time with new-found (or real life) friends or to compete with others or to demonstrate your prowess at some aspect of the game. These are strongly compelling elements of online play, and MMOGs are very good at providing them.
The real question is, "is this a bad thing?" Dance clubs are "addictive" in roughly the same way, but because an outsider can look at someone at a dance club and SEE that they are being social, it lacks the same stigma. All social interaction, especially competitive social interaction is addictive in this way.
One further note. Unlike real addictions, games have no withdrawral or long-term health effects other than lack of physical excersise (which is probably the easiest physical ailment to resolve). When I stopped playing EverQuest and didn't play any other MMOGs for 2 years, I had no desire to go back, and never felt that I needed a "fix", but I did play 2-4 nights per week for 4 years until it failed to interest me further, and I had more pressing things at work that required long hours at the time.
Recently, I picked up World of Warcraft because a group of friends play, and it sounded interestingly unique in several ways. I'm playing quite often now in order to attain a specific goal (60 before the expansion), but then intend to play 2-3 times per week for as long as it holds my interest.
Why is this a problem? Where is the impact? I have friends, a house, a job. I spend time with my family. I cook. Every now and then, I even go out into the woods and enjoy the feel of soil under my feet.
Is it that games are an unknown to the "older generation" (of which I realize, I'm a member) or is there something more here? What scares us so?
Paris Hilton is a geek in the classic sense. She might as well be biting the heads off of small animals.
Lisa Simpson is clearly a girl-geek role model, even if she's a cartoon.
Aleks Krotoski spends a lot of time advocating 'girl-video gaming' according to her Wikipedia article, though I've never heard of her.
I have yet to RTFA, but I'm wondering how they drew the line. For example, many geek guys are fans of Ripley from the Alien movies, but SHE is more of a strong female character than a geek per se. Same goes (though without the teen drooling) for Eleanor Roosevelt who was an iconic strong woman with a powerful presence, but not even remotely a geek. On the other hand, I'd say that every woman on the list of female Nobel Prize Laureates is worth a spot on such a list, but very few were strong personalities, and thus are typically not recognized even when their contributions were enormous.