I'd be curious what sort of fusion powering device you are thinking of here? There is no bloody way that a Tokamak style reactor could ever fit inside of anything smaller than the mobile launch platform that was used for the Space Shuttle, although the Polywell and Focus Fusion devices might be able to fit inside of a mid to large size ship (like a modern military submarine, aircraft carrier, or cruise ship). It is a matter of physics and being able to handle the plasma needed to cause fusion in the first place, where you also need to have enough equipment to be able to do something useful with that energy when it is produced in the reactor.
Robert Bussard suggested that a 5th or 6th generation Polywell (aka after it is already producing energy commercially in fixed location facilities like an electric generator plant and a few generations past that) might be refined to fit in the back of a semi-tractor truck and have room left over for cargo.
Perhaps in another 1000 years there might be some other breakthrough in physics that might permit something like Mr. Fusion from the Back to the Future movies, but don't go holding your breath.
P.S. don't get caught up in the scam called the E-Cat or other kinds of systems... almost all stuff of that nature is a scam or people under a strong delusion of seeing things that don't exist. "Cold fusion" might have some promise as a neutron source, but not for net gain in energy. A Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor works better for stuff like that anyway.
While $20k for a new automobile may be your price point for purchasing one of these vehicles, why do you think this is a ridiculous price? Dismissing the cost here as if Tesla was somehow gouging the customers and that they have maybe $5k worth of parts and engineering in this vehicle is sort of absurd on your part.
There are some incredibly cheap electric automobiles including Zap Jonway, who sells an incredibly cheap electric vehicle. They don't have the performance of Tesla vehicles though. You could also get a golf cart if you don't want to worry about any sort of performance.
As for used vehicles, thanks for the "cash for clunker" program of Obama there are considerably fewer of those vehicles around to buy and their price is currently quite a bit higher... if you can even find them. Yes, there are "used" or "pre-owned" vehicles, but you can't find any $100 or $200 vehicles any more that you can take apart just for parts or spend a summer trying to rebuild.
The market that Telsa is going for right now are those who in America would normally be buying a BMW or Lexus, where $78k is typical.... perhaps a bit high but not too much. With the performance and the kind of interior work that you get with the Model S, I think it is priced about right and perhaps even a bargain for an electric automobile. If it doesn't fit your budget, don't be complaining.
A bunch from Pakistan, Russian, North Korea, and Iran would love to volunteer to work for the U.S.Department of Homeland Security. The Chinese would simply turn their nose up at the prospect though because they won't be making enough money.
I'm not a fan of TSA either, but this seems like an unfair standard. How many criminals has the lock on your home door stopped?
The role of a lock on a front door or for that matter an automobile is to keep "the honest people honest". In other words, it is there to stop a 70 year old partially senile old woman from driving off with your car or walking into your house at odd hours because they got lost or confused. It reminds an otherwise honest person that they have gone too far and should likely turn back.
A uniformed officer walking around an airport with a radio and a gun works just fine to do that kind of security to protect passengers, staff, and crew from ordinary civil disorder, where they may have to call in some backup if some guys are getting a bit too rowdy at a restaurant bar or some group of people being too pushy trying to board an airplane. "Ordinary" crimes like assault, murder, and perhaps pickpockets and purse snatchers are legitimate things for a security force to try and keep under control.
Trying to keep some group of idiots who are determined to go postal and start killing random people in some manner is much harder to stop... assuming they can even be identified. Soldiers or mercenaries (however you define those terms) who are acting in the interest of a foreign government and trying to disguise as civilians in an attempt to perform acts of war (this is my own definition of terrorism) seems to be a larger problem... but there are ways to deal with such nations as well. Curtailing civil liberties and molesting grandmothers or toddlers is not a way to get that to happen.
What makes you think they went to college before being hired at the TSA?
I'm talking about the guys who designed this system... but you might be right about the "software experts' who designed this system. I question if they even bothered taking lessons at Khan Academy or Code Academy.
What would be your response if a liquid bomb threat was discovered and then the TSA did nothing to screen for it? Everyone would be screaming their heads off that the TSA should be checking for known threats. It is absurd to try to claim that the TSA airport checks are not security.
Not everybody is screaming for increased authority being given to the TSA to declare martial law in airports. Too far? I think it was too far on September 10th, 2001, as the security procedures in pace prior to the 9/11 attacks should have stopped those terrorists from getting on board those planes in the first place as well as stopping even the shoe bomber.
These guys are simply being lousy rent-a-cops that really don't know the first thing about how to act as a law enforcement agency in a once free representative democracy. It is sad that they can't simply act like almost every other police agency acting outside of those airports and *gasp* actually investigate crimes when they happen, to do gum shoe detective work, and root out would be criminals who might be causing problems. I also think this "zero tolerance" for terrorist actions is maddening as well.
The real issue here is that stupid people do stupid things. We can't afford to have TSA level security in malls, public schools, banks, or elsewhere. Certainly not in bus stations or on freeways. In reality we can't afford to have this in airports either, but some stupid congressmen had a knee jerk reaction to a non-problem and didn't really address the issues involved either... trading one form of corruption for another.
What the TSA should be doing is real security and police work in airports. There may even be a need to keep it a federal agency, so far as threats to airport security typically do cross state borders and even become international problems. There are even national security issues involved so far as there are foreign governments who are using "terrorist groups" as surrogates to cause chaos and disorder deliberately in an attempt to further their own national goals. Yes, I'm saying that Al-Queida and other similar groups are not merely spontaneous but rather are supported, financed by, and encouraged by many countries (almost all of whom have seats at the United Nations along with national capitals and recognizable leaders) and this is a real war going on.
If these doughnut loving idiots would get off their behinds, turn off their scanning machines, and actually do some real police work to find those people who are causing problems... then I might be encouraged by the work that the TSA is doing. For now, I consider them to be lazy asses that are wasting billions of tax dollars on a futile exercise that won't stop a real terrorist attack in America by somebody determined to cause problems. This security theater is utter bullshit and needs to stop. If there is a real threat that soliders or mercenaries from foreign governments are coming into America... they should also be stopped. But it should be painfully obvious who they are as well and stopping those foreign soldiers from committing acts of war inside of America can be done without infringing on the rights of ordinary citizens or molesting toddlers.
If the guys at the TSA haven't even bothered to get other government security experts like the guys at the NSA to review their strategy and how these tickets are encoded, it seems like these guys need a few basic lessons in computer science and should go back to college as freshmen.
The early animated GIF images really was the only way to effectively perform any sort of animation when they originally came out, thus they got widespread browser and editor support. The MNG file format instead came much later... after there were other alternatives such as motion JPEG, and especially the ubiquitous Microsoft AVI format not to mention Quicktime, Real Media, and MPEG that were all coming out at about the same time. While MNG wasn't really trying to get into the video format business (IMHO a failure of imagination of the group putting together MNG too) those alternate video formats really ended up taking over what niches were left for the MNG format.
And then ultimately by the time MNG was finalized and in a position to be readily accepted, the LZW patent (or at least the one being pushed by Unisys) expired so people who really wanted to use the GIF file format could do so without worrying about royalty payments... the thing that really pushed the PNG file format forward in a huge way.
The one niche application that MNG could have done is video (with multiplexed audio), but that "open source and royalty free" application has been taken over by the Ogg file format and thus is relegated to the file format backwater. Some web browsers do support MNG files and some of the chunks can be read by software supporting the PNG format, so it isn't a total waste. Still, it is only a niche application that doesn't offer much of an improvement over other competing animation file formats.
If NASA's budget had doubled and a serious effort to go to other extra-terrestrial destination was a major objective of a presidential administration along with a supportive congress... Constellation could have worked. The dirty little secret of Constellation is that the program was set up with the notion in mind that it would be "too big to fail" and that fairy god-senators would come to its rescue to keep it from getting cancelled.
If it wasn't for companies like SpaceX and other "new space" companies, I dare say that would likely have been the situation too. That was pretty much the way that the Space Shuttle was organized, with early start-up costs of the program low enough to not draw congressional ire but a gradual ramping up of costs until it wouldn't even be considered for cancellation because of all of the money that was spent. That seems to be the attitude towards the James Webb Space Telescope too, even though I consider it in either case to be fallacious logic.
Apparently these guys have never heard about the Superconducting Super Collider either. Science projects are never considered "too big to fail" in the long run, which was one of the problems that even Werner Von Braun had to face at the end of his career.
NASA engineers really didn't like the Constellation design anyway, as it was being designed by committee for political considerations that had absolutely nothing to do with aerospace engineering. Then again that same sort of mentality of design by committee is what has given us the Senate Launch System (usually called just SLS).
Considering I have several children.... you had better believe that I have been in the delivery room for the birth of every single one of my children. One of them even spent some time in the neo-natal unit of the hospital with some complications due to the birth. I had one of my children saved from nearly certain death because of a very skilled obstetrician... although a very skilled and mature mid-wife likely could have done the same thing in the same situation. While I did talk with my wife about home deliveries, it was the "just in case" situations that we didn't know that caused us to go to a hospital.
I also witnessed an obstetrician do some things on my 3rd child that likely could have resulted in a malpractice lawsuit if I had cared to bother with the issues. He still has some long term health consequences from that incident that my wife and I are dealing with, so you had also better believe I've seen the whole range both good and bad what the medical profession can dish out in this situation.
Don't go presuming something you know nothing about, particularly about another person. My attitude is that something should be done with watching what mice will do first in space, since we have that ability and capability. My concern is that the first experiments will be done on humans because of callousness and a total disregard for human life. I find that a horrible thing to see particularly because there are other options available.
Considering the other kinds of experiments that are done with mice here on the Earth, seeing what happens to a bunch of mice over the course of several generations in the ISS wouldn't be all that bad and in fact might give some amazing insights into the life cycles of what we might expect when that happens to people. Is there a problem with bone development in the womb? Can there even be multiple generations of any mammal be born in space? Does living in a partial gravity environment mitigate any of the problems that arise from a microgravity situation?
My point is that you can't answer a bloody single one of those questions because the science hasn't been done. Do not confuse this thinking that it is impossible to do the science (unlike studying rock formations on Mars that only now Curiosity is just barely able to get started on) but rather because the powers that be who decide what is going to be studied simply refuse to do this kind of research. I would also dare say that knowing the long-term health consequences of gestational development as well as even adolescent growth and development in space are things that we need to know about now, as there will soon be kids going into space sooner or later where intelligent decisions about how they are to be treated and what problems they may encounter are very legitimate concerns to mission planners.
I do agree this isn't much to do with sex, but the gestational development of children in the womb is something that really does need to be investigated. I also think it is irresponsible to be making blanket statements saying that people need to be sterile or at an age where conception is not really an option if they are going to be traveling into space. Find out first what is the problem and then go from that point forward.
My point about doing human experimentation first is that I'm suggesting that the callous and prudish behavior on the part of the decision makers is going to make human experimentation on the subject what will end up happening... by default. If no other legitimate scientific studies are done to really examine the issues involved, the first time it will become an issue to worry about will be due to the fact it will be a human child or embryo that will need to be a part of the statistical universe. If you think that is unethical, I would have to agree... other than the fact that ample opportunity to perform this kind of study has been made available in the past on non-human subjects first but that the policy makers who could make a difference in this situations have deliberately chosen to wait until it is a human trial first so they can decide if it is safe to bring up rabbits and mice later on. That is ass backward and something that needs to be pointed out to those engaged in mission planning.
The lack of seats or restraints would affect the surviveablity of splashdown.
Why would a simple hammock not work to help increase survivability? I don't think it would necessarily be that hard, as a scuba tank + hammock may be all you would really need. The capsule already needed to be "man-rated" simply to dock to the ISS in the first place and certainly would contain air pressure.
I'd certainly want to try and find as many "soft" items to survive re-entry in even the current Dragon capsule as opposed to trying to re-enter the way that the Columbia astronauts attempted re-entry.
W. Bush funded Constellation, although that funding was supposed to continue on past the end of his term. It didn't. I'm not saying that I think Michael Griffin's NASA was really into going to some place beyond low-Earth orbit either, but at least a serious effort was made toward that end and something more than I can say of the Obama administration. The last president to offer any sort of substantive support for NASA was the Johnson administration, which is sort of why the center in Houston, Texas bears his name.
Constellation was a disaster in part because it was only half-way into what was needed to pull the thing off. It really did need a larger budget and much more commitment to getting done, not to mention that there were other problems that the program really didn't address including the fact that up to that point in time launch costs were going up faster than inflation... indeed still are if you consider traditional launchers.
SpaceX offers a glimpse that perhaps the cost of spaceflight can be a fair bit cheaper, but I'm not convinced that SpaceX will be successful at making a meaningful drop in price in the long term. At least if SpaceX becomes a "traditional launch company" and gets in on the gravy train of government launch contracts, I expect that their prices will eventually get up to what the other "big boys" are currently charging for launches.
Every time I see a statement like this, I ask: Where is the science to back up any statement of any kind about any mammalian reproduction?
Hint: There isn't any at all... at least any sort that would tell you about what will happen to somebody conceiving a child in space and carrying that baby full term to birth. I'm not talking just humans here but any kind of mammal, including rats, mice, or even monkeys.
This is also an experiment that to me is long overdue to be conducted on the ISS or some other space platform. To me it is a travesty that it was never done earlier. The main reason why such studies haven't been done is because NASA is too prudish about sex and has either rejected or dismissed such proposals in the past... even when there have been mixed genders of small mammals that have gone into space before.
There have been some experiments done with mammal ovum and sperm done in a "simulated microgravity" environment... but they really aren't really anything more than a little past the basic embryo stage when that was done and powerful magnetic environments are a lousy simulation of microgravity. There was a pregnant rat which gave birth on the Space Shuttle...where the mom and the babies seemed to have done just fine, although that was limited to just a couple of weeks due to the limitations of the Space Shuttle itself for long-term missions. Some mice and rats have gone up to the ISS, but they have been explicitly separated by protocol from attempting reproduction during those experiments.
Chances are likely that the first "experiments" will be done with humans before it is done with any other mammal... something I consider a travesty simply because such clueless statements like this one are repeatedly made and sentiments about sterilization of spaceflight participants is made through assumptions rather than any sound understanding of what is actually happening based upon real science. Assumptions can be made, but that is all they are.
Some sort of artificial gravity (aka a spinning torus) may be necessary... and certainly there have been almost no long terms studies about what happens in a partial gravity environment to almost any living thing. There was going to be a centrifuge added to the ISS, but that module is one of the items cut from the design when budget considerations started to be applied. About the only significant partial gravity environment studied was the experience the dozen Apollo astronauts experienced while on the Moon... and the most any of those astronauts spent on the Moon was just three days. That coupled with the fact they were in a microgravity environment going to and from the Moon sort of negates the experience as well from serious consideration of determining any long-term health complications from living in a partial (say Mars-like) environment.
It is best to simply say "we don't know" and end it at that.
As you say, enormous resources and productivity of American society is going into that endeavor that servers no really useful purpose and ultimately is wasting lives and even killing more people than it is protecting (literally... when people choose to travel by automobile and die in accidents that could have been prevented had they been traveling by air). It would be by far better productivity and even save lives by simply hiring those same people to move a pile of rocks from one location and then moving it back to the original location once a month or so.
What amazes me is the nearly universal support that exists in Congress for an agency that is nearly universally hated by the American people. I hate to give in to the conspiracy nuts, but in this case it nearly is a textbook example of how those who are technically elected representatives are completely out of touch with the constituents that they claim to represent. It isn't even a liberal vs. conservative issue but rather a small elite few who think they know better than the American people as a whole.
Yes, there are "surveys" of people who are interviewed about the TSA that seems to show it has universal support except for a few nut jobs (or so it is portrayed). I question the sampling method of such surveys. It may be fear and intimidation coming from living in a police state that creates such survey results or simply pure bias through the sampling methods, but it seems like nobody I've ever met in any sort of context likes this kind of screening at airports... passengers, or for that matter even the airlines (if you get executives or even flight crew to really be honest about it).
You keep asserting that Rand SImberg has committed some sort of unethical action by being paid by some group to make these statements... yet in this case just trying to stay right outside of the box by claiming ambivalence. Please just stop, at least without any sort of proof to the contrary. You might just end up on the wrong end of a libel suit yourself. You are at least committing the fallacy of guilt by association when none exists either.
Note also that the article for which Michael Mann is filing the lawsuit over was something that did have editors and outside people doing editorial review. As for why that editor didn't perform the review you are suggesting... I suppose that is why the publication is named in the lawsuit as well (which isn't Rand Simberg's personal blog). I suppose that publication will explain why they chose to publish such a statement as well, and may have even cleared such statements with their own lawyers before publication.
I'm also suggesting that Rand Simberg very well may have a good answer for why he thinks it is a fraud. One of the first rules you should know as a lawyer is to know precisely what a witness will say if you ask a question. I don't think Mann knows what Rand Simberg will say in response to a question like that, or might be surprised when Mr. Simberg responds with an answer that a judge + jury (assuming this becomes a jury trial) thinks is reasonable.
That was before they were corrupted with MS-DOS, but I'll grant to you that Microsoft has been in the hardware business for quite some time. Microsoft branded mice and keyboards have been around for decades as well, along with other kinds of equipment.
The difference is that Microsoft is now becoming a competitor to what was their bread and butter customer base (computer manufactures imposing the "Microsoft tax" upon future computer users). For whatever reason, Microsoft is deciding they don't need those other computer manufactures any more for future profit streams.
BTW, you should also be aware that the "floating-point BASIC" used on the Apple II computers was also written by Microsoft, under license by Apple Computer. Steve Wozniak wrote the initial "Integer BASIC", but the more commonly used "Applesoft BASIC" really was a Microsoft product. It is interesting where that relationship went over time:)
Compared to the lost hours of productivity changing to a new version of Windows, switching to Linux seems like a much better alternative where you know you won't need to be retraining people every couple of years.
True, I haven't given my reasons for thinking this way. My brief experience into working with climate science is two-fold: Working with the data entry of historical climate information (mainly 19th Century and early 20th Century weather station records that were hand written and had to be transcribed and digitized) as well as computer modeling of climate data.
In the case of this historical data, my largest gripe is that the data has been manipulated and modified with the raw data being completely discarded. By discarded I mean that the only record available isn't digital but rather the raw paper data... paper data that in itself is falling apart and fading or even being destroyed by accident or on purpose because the need for preserving that data is not seen as necessary.
While I don't have clinching proof, I did sit down with the state climatologist for the state where I live (I was working with him to digitize this data so it was a mutual working relationship) and discussed the greater issues in climate science. He was deeply concerned that similar data from other states was being manipulated explicitly for political purposes or to prove some sort of working theory (like the Mann hockey stick graph).
Explicitly this climatologist took some of the data that "proved" there was global climate change and compared that to the paper data of his own. There had been some manipulation of the data... some of it legitimate and some very questionable. For instance, since this is hand-entered data on paper forms, ordinary human error can often happen when recording this data or even transcribing the data. Numbers can be inverted (91 degrees might be recorded as 19 degree for a hot summer day) or perhaps even a simple misreading of the instruments. Sometimes a weather station might simply have some problems (almost always recorded in the station logs) where the data would be inaccurate thus ought to be ignored. To try and massage the data for outliers and to remove obviously errors in the data set, the data was sent through "noise filters" and other data processing subroutines.
Here is where the kicker came though. In comparing the "official" data in the archives of the National Weather Service, this state climatologist noted about 20+ changes to the data from what existed on his own records for a random date that he had on his own records. Of those changes, he only agree with about three of those changes. In inquiring about these changes, he ask the National Weather Service for the original raw data set in digital form... since he and other state climatologists had given their data to the NWS in raw form. Their response was that the original data set before processing was simply gone... as they presumed it wasn't necessary.
This state climatologist blew his top upon hearing that, and definitely questioned the scientific integrity of what was being reported. I'd also have to agree that this is a scientific travesty that has largely gone unreported. It has led me to generally suspect almost all data being reported by climate science researchers unless they are being honest about their data sets and show the warts of their data along with data that "proves" their hypothesis.
Getting to the computer climate models, I had the experience of working with a group that was trying to do some climate modeling using a system like the Seti@home project of distributed computing to help improve climate forecasting. I was active (for a brief time) on the forums of that project and generally quite interested in climate research and computer modeling in particular for that activity. Since I'm a software engineer and understand some of the difficulties involved with modeling theories in general, I wanted to learn more about how the models were put together, what algorithms were being applied along with what formulas they were using to derive their climate information.
The largest problem I encountered was a general distrust of anybody not "in the club" with regards to criticism of the meth
You say that you know a bit about the writing business... but do you have any proof? It is an assumption you are making and nothing more. You may be correct about your assumption, but for now it is just a wild ass guess as to any sort of relationship with what you are claiming. You are just as guilty of making up junk about Simberg as you claim he is making up about Mann. You talk about libel yet your are making incredibly libelous accusations here without any shred of evidence yourself.
Since Rand SImberg is an engineer (with credentials and such... literally a rocket scientist in the tradition of Werner Von Braun and Robert Goddard but he considers himself more of an engineer than a scientist) there could be something resembling malpractice in asserting that Mann is not using the scientific method properly and performing "academic and scientific misconduct". There may even be a judicial remedy in terms of losing a professional certification (again... I don't know first hand, but it is a possibility) because of his background. On the other hand, since Mann is claiming scientific credentials going up against Simberg who has engineering credentials, it will be interesting where this will go. Being an engineer, Simberg in particular is in a position to understand this kind of data and certainly can review some scientific reports (particularly in physical science.... something that most engineers have ample training simply to do their job) and can even be considered an "expert witness" in a legal sense.
As for 1st amendment protections, while I will agree that they don't protect you from libel, courts typically have given commentators and pundits a very wide latitude for what they can say about public figures. In regards to climate science and the political ramifications of that science, Michael Mann is very much a public figure where even calling somebody a child molester may not be actionable in a legal sense. Accusations of fraud may simply be considered political speech, and it will take a very high legal threshold to prove that. Courts have been very reluctant to shut down dissent through legal actions like this, and far more often than not it backfires against the person who filed the lawsuit in the first place.
In short, I'd like to see Rand Simberg sit on a witness stand and explain how he came to the conclusion about Mann too, and it may not be pretty for Mann. In a legal sense, Mann has also put himself out on a limb by engaging in this lawsuit as everything Mann has said about climate change including every e-mail on the subject is now subject to discovery.... by the defendants. Judges are much more lenient to granting such discovery motions and Mann has thus opened himself up in a way that other previous "fishing expeditions" would have failed in the past. All Rand Simberg really needs to accomplish here is that he had any sort of reasoning to believe his accusation of fraud was credible, including relying upon public statements by others who have reviewed Mann's data. Since such public statements by other credible reviewers has been made about things like Mann's hockey stick graph (it only takes just one statement by one reviewer to suggest there may be a problem), it seems like Mann is going to try some other legal strategy other than pure libel.
One of the comments I saw on a legal website said it best: Michael Mann is finally going to get the public rectal exam that everybody has been hoping for once and all. Had he simply kept his mouth shut and left these guys alone none of that would happen. In a great many ways, I think Michael Mann has much more to lose here than Rand Simberg or Mark Steyn. Somebody has convinced Mann that this will be successful, but for those who are political opponents to Michael Mann, he has just opened up a Pandora's Box including a counter SLAPP suit possibility even if he immediately drops this lawsuit. If you thought earlier trips to the court room were fishing expeditions, you ain't seen nothing yet. This very well could be like th
With Mann being a public figure, it will certainly be an uphill battle for him to require anything from Simberg or Styne. 1st amendment protections of freedom of speech may be enough to protect them from even bothering to disclose anything at all, particularly if all they are stating is personal opinion.
Furthermore, you are presuming that there is some kind of connection to the energy industry when you have absolutely no idea what they do and who they are. Mark Steyn is a conservative commentator who has occasionally filled in for Rush Limbaugh as a guest host on Limbaugh's show, and writes his own blog as well as participates in on-line discussions of various kinds.
Rand Simberg is really more along the same line as Mark Steyn and Rush Limbaugh as he has been making generally conservative POV commentary with his blog, Transterrestrial Musings. It has become increasingly political although much of his earlier commentary had little to do with politics but rather with space policy and following things like the Ansari X-Prize or talking about NASA. He used to work for Rockwell International and did some engineering work on the Space Shuttle, as well as other similar kinds of projects. Climate science and discussions are just a very minor part of his commentary, but he certainly has been vocal about the issues surrounding climate science. At best, you can call him a skeptic. Rand Simberg has written quite a bit in magazines like Popular Science or Wired recently, and has pretty much become a full time freelance writer.
For those two, I think you would be very hard pressed to see them taking any money from the energy industry, except for perhaps some modest advertising revenue for their websites that is not aimed specifically at influencing their opinions. Neither one is really anything more than spouting off what other conservative political pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Glenn Beck have been saying for years as well. They are perhaps a little more vulnerable because they are not as widely published as those major pundits and don't have nearly so much money, but that doesn't change who they are. It certainly is disingenuous to claim that there is a connection of these guys to "big oil" or other "energy producing companies" without any sort of evidence to back up the assertion.
The question isn't even if all of this correlates with human activity. Even though I consider a great deal of what the climate scientists are doing is psuedoscience that borders on the realm of astrologers and psychics (perhaps charitably more with cold fusion researchers and ufologists), I think it would take somebody incredibly dense to flat out deny that human civilization has had an impact upon the greater overall global climate. The degree that the impact of human activity has had can be questioned though, and it is the political questions that are much more troubling to me.
In other words, it isn't so much the studies themselves, but rather the political questions that are raised from those studies where the politics of the whole issue of anthropogenic climate change are going back into the science itself and influencing both the kinds of studies being investigated as well as even the skewing of the data to fit political philosophies and to make a political point. The stick part of the hockey graph may be legitimate....but why is the stick there? Is it being added so climate researchers can boost their funding from political agencies? Are there "green energy companies" who are making a profit off of this fear of "global warming"? Who stands to gain and who stands to lose as a result of these studies?
It is the mixing of politics and science which is the real problem here. Political policy is being made off of what seems to me as psuedoscience due to the politicization of the science, where the scientists have become advocates of a particular political philosophy rather than dispassionate reporters of facts and trying to find legitimate explanations for the data being discovered. Furthermore, legitimate scientific investigations which produce contrary results won't get funding and will be discredited on a political basis that has absolutely nothing to do with the science itself being presented.
Some of this is the politicians who are pressing the red panic button and are sensationalizing climate studies for their own political purposes. Some of this is also folks like Al Gore who are involved with economic projects like the carbon credit trading which he and his children will personally benefit financially if it becomes enacted as a policy. I think it is very much proper to question the political motives of those who are wrapping themselves in the mantel of science when they have the chance to become millionaires as a result of advocating a certain course of action.
Suggesting that there are other political philosophies at stake and I dare say even religion is being injected into this discussion. As can be seen here in this Slashdot discussion, it is nearly a religious devotion that some people have toward climate change complete with prophets, sacred scripture, temples (aka "houses of worship"), orthodoxy and heretics. I'll even go so far as to suggest that this has become a religion in all but name, even if many of those practicing don't recognize it as such. Communism/Marxism in particular (a religion unto itself after a fashion) is something that has also crept into climate science through a sort of "redistribution of the wealth" and a general attitude that the rich are the ones screwing over the poor through "evil pollution" causing all of these problems. It doesn't matter if it is true or not, the raw belief is in place and taints the research and even the politics of what political conclusions should be made from this scientific inquiry.
I'll note that Mann is one of these "prophets", and depending on who is writing about him will be in a reverent attitude or reviled as the anti-messiah.
I was involved with a data entry project involving weather station data going back to the 19th Century, where some of the original data was being manipulated by climate scientists for questionable reasons. The largest problem that was happening is that after the data was entered and verified from the original records (dead tree paper records that were hand-written... thus it was a very labor intensive project simply to enter all of this data and a simple OCR program wouldn't work) that it was sent through a processing system where some of the data was rejects for the reasons you mention.
In this case, some of the data was rejected because people, being human, sometimes make mistakes in recording the data. For example, if it is June and most of the weather stations of the region are reporting temperatures around 70 degrees but some weather station reports the daily high temperature to be 17 degrees (it happens... simply transposing 71 degrees to be 17 degrees when it was written down) that outlier is rejected from the data set.
As you suggest, sometimes there were problems with a particular weather station that may also skew the results in various ways. One in particular is a serious problem where originally a series of weather stations were installed in the middle of an open meadow, but over time trees, brush, and other things creep near to the "fixed" weather station that bias the information being collected. Perhaps a subdivision is built near the weather station or other factors as well. Assumptions have been made with weather data that certainly is not accounted for in many of these studies. Snowfall/rain measurements are particularly suspect when several trees grow up around that weather station which wasn't there when it was established.
The largest problem though is that the data which is presented is the data which is processed. An honest researcher would make available the original raw data set with all of the outliers and problems in the data set along with observations and relevant information that could then be verified, reviewed, and monitored independently. I thought that is what happened in real science. Instead, that original raw data is being discarded and isn't even available for review to question or check the methods being done to process and "clean up" the original data. I am suggesting that for various reasons the data is being deliberately skewed including historical data, and that all of this gives a black eye to climate science as the biases aren't really being accounted for.
Due to all of this data manipulation, it seems especially suspect that data is claiming accuracy of a fraction of a degree when none of the original data even remotely has that kind of accuracy.
In fairness to the Mercury astronauts, they were working in a very different kind of environment with different mission requirements than what will be expected for the spaceflight missions of the future. When Alan Shepard was going into space, there were so many unknown factors about what would happen while in orbit that they didn't even plan on having the astronaut urinate while in flight. It was a perfect environment for test pilots, with relatively short missions and needing the skills of a pilot to be able to work with the situations they faced most of the time. Even the Apollo flights only lasted a little over a week at the most.
If people are going to be traveling away from the Earth, it will be missions of several months long using skills like you say are more appropriate to a submariner. Unfortunately for NASA, the test pilot mentality still is a part of their internal culture. Then again, the current NASA astronaut corps is in a state of transition where the old time shuttle astronauts are leaving with the remaining astronauts facing a very uncertain future.
Interestingly enough, those astronauts who weren't athletes or at least not in strong athletic conditioning here on the Earth before their trips into space seem to have less of a problem in space than those in peak physical condition before going up. There may be some need for exercise in space, but it isn't necessarily the only thing to consider. Overall general health and reasonable diets seem to be a much more important factor.
The one significant issue that seems to be an ongoing issue is calcium loss.... that may be arrested or at least kept in check if some sort of modest partial gravity situation (aka rotating the spacecraft like the "space wheel" in 2001: A Space Odyssey). Running a marathon (one astronaut "competed" in the Boston Marathon from the ISS) is certainly not necessary if you want to return back to the Earth.
Considering that most current American astronauts are folks in their 40's and 50's with advanced degrees (sometimes several), astronauts really are no longer the hot-shot fighter jocks portrayed in "The Right Stuff" any more.
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I'd be curious what sort of fusion powering device you are thinking of here? There is no bloody way that a Tokamak style reactor could ever fit inside of anything smaller than the mobile launch platform that was used for the Space Shuttle, although the Polywell and Focus Fusion devices might be able to fit inside of a mid to large size ship (like a modern military submarine, aircraft carrier, or cruise ship). It is a matter of physics and being able to handle the plasma needed to cause fusion in the first place, where you also need to have enough equipment to be able to do something useful with that energy when it is produced in the reactor.
Robert Bussard suggested that a 5th or 6th generation Polywell (aka after it is already producing energy commercially in fixed location facilities like an electric generator plant and a few generations past that) might be refined to fit in the back of a semi-tractor truck and have room left over for cargo.
Perhaps in another 1000 years there might be some other breakthrough in physics that might permit something like Mr. Fusion from the Back to the Future movies, but don't go holding your breath.
P.S. don't get caught up in the scam called the E-Cat or other kinds of systems... almost all stuff of that nature is a scam or people under a strong delusion of seeing things that don't exist. "Cold fusion" might have some promise as a neutron source, but not for net gain in energy. A Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor works better for stuff like that anyway.
While $20k for a new automobile may be your price point for purchasing one of these vehicles, why do you think this is a ridiculous price? Dismissing the cost here as if Tesla was somehow gouging the customers and that they have maybe $5k worth of parts and engineering in this vehicle is sort of absurd on your part.
There are some incredibly cheap electric automobiles including Zap Jonway, who sells an incredibly cheap electric vehicle. They don't have the performance of Tesla vehicles though. You could also get a golf cart if you don't want to worry about any sort of performance.
As for used vehicles, thanks for the "cash for clunker" program of Obama there are considerably fewer of those vehicles around to buy and their price is currently quite a bit higher... if you can even find them. Yes, there are "used" or "pre-owned" vehicles, but you can't find any $100 or $200 vehicles any more that you can take apart just for parts or spend a summer trying to rebuild.
The market that Telsa is going for right now are those who in America would normally be buying a BMW or Lexus, where $78k is typical.... perhaps a bit high but not too much. With the performance and the kind of interior work that you get with the Model S, I think it is priced about right and perhaps even a bargain for an electric automobile. If it doesn't fit your budget, don't be complaining.
A bunch from Pakistan, Russian, North Korea, and Iran would love to volunteer to work for the U.S.Department of Homeland Security. The Chinese would simply turn their nose up at the prospect though because they won't be making enough money.
I'm not a fan of TSA either, but this seems like an unfair standard. How many criminals has the lock on your home door stopped?
The role of a lock on a front door or for that matter an automobile is to keep "the honest people honest". In other words, it is there to stop a 70 year old partially senile old woman from driving off with your car or walking into your house at odd hours because they got lost or confused. It reminds an otherwise honest person that they have gone too far and should likely turn back.
A uniformed officer walking around an airport with a radio and a gun works just fine to do that kind of security to protect passengers, staff, and crew from ordinary civil disorder, where they may have to call in some backup if some guys are getting a bit too rowdy at a restaurant bar or some group of people being too pushy trying to board an airplane. "Ordinary" crimes like assault, murder, and perhaps pickpockets and purse snatchers are legitimate things for a security force to try and keep under control.
Trying to keep some group of idiots who are determined to go postal and start killing random people in some manner is much harder to stop... assuming they can even be identified. Soldiers or mercenaries (however you define those terms) who are acting in the interest of a foreign government and trying to disguise as civilians in an attempt to perform acts of war (this is my own definition of terrorism) seems to be a larger problem... but there are ways to deal with such nations as well. Curtailing civil liberties and molesting grandmothers or toddlers is not a way to get that to happen.
... and should go back to college as freshmen.
What makes you think they went to college before being hired at the TSA?
I'm talking about the guys who designed this system... but you might be right about the "software experts' who designed this system. I question if they even bothered taking lessons at Khan Academy or Code Academy.
What would be your response if a liquid bomb threat was discovered and then the TSA did nothing to screen for it? Everyone would be screaming their heads off that the TSA should be checking for known threats. It is absurd to try to claim that the TSA airport checks are not security.
Not everybody is screaming for increased authority being given to the TSA to declare martial law in airports. Too far? I think it was too far on September 10th, 2001, as the security procedures in pace prior to the 9/11 attacks should have stopped those terrorists from getting on board those planes in the first place as well as stopping even the shoe bomber.
These guys are simply being lousy rent-a-cops that really don't know the first thing about how to act as a law enforcement agency in a once free representative democracy. It is sad that they can't simply act like almost every other police agency acting outside of those airports and *gasp* actually investigate crimes when they happen, to do gum shoe detective work, and root out would be criminals who might be causing problems. I also think this "zero tolerance" for terrorist actions is maddening as well.
The real issue here is that stupid people do stupid things. We can't afford to have TSA level security in malls, public schools, banks, or elsewhere. Certainly not in bus stations or on freeways. In reality we can't afford to have this in airports either, but some stupid congressmen had a knee jerk reaction to a non-problem and didn't really address the issues involved either... trading one form of corruption for another.
What the TSA should be doing is real security and police work in airports. There may even be a need to keep it a federal agency, so far as threats to airport security typically do cross state borders and even become international problems. There are even national security issues involved so far as there are foreign governments who are using "terrorist groups" as surrogates to cause chaos and disorder deliberately in an attempt to further their own national goals. Yes, I'm saying that Al-Queida and other similar groups are not merely spontaneous but rather are supported, financed by, and encouraged by many countries (almost all of whom have seats at the United Nations along with national capitals and recognizable leaders) and this is a real war going on.
If these doughnut loving idiots would get off their behinds, turn off their scanning machines, and actually do some real police work to find those people who are causing problems... then I might be encouraged by the work that the TSA is doing. For now, I consider them to be lazy asses that are wasting billions of tax dollars on a futile exercise that won't stop a real terrorist attack in America by somebody determined to cause problems. This security theater is utter bullshit and needs to stop. If there is a real threat that soliders or mercenaries from foreign governments are coming into America... they should also be stopped. But it should be painfully obvious who they are as well and stopping those foreign soldiers from committing acts of war inside of America can be done without infringing on the rights of ordinary citizens or molesting toddlers.
If the guys at the TSA haven't even bothered to get other government security experts like the guys at the NSA to review their strategy and how these tickets are encoded, it seems like these guys need a few basic lessons in computer science and should go back to college as freshmen.
As a sting, this is pretty hopeless.
The early animated GIF images really was the only way to effectively perform any sort of animation when they originally came out, thus they got widespread browser and editor support. The MNG file format instead came much later... after there were other alternatives such as motion JPEG, and especially the ubiquitous Microsoft AVI format not to mention Quicktime, Real Media, and MPEG that were all coming out at about the same time. While MNG wasn't really trying to get into the video format business (IMHO a failure of imagination of the group putting together MNG too) those alternate video formats really ended up taking over what niches were left for the MNG format.
And then ultimately by the time MNG was finalized and in a position to be readily accepted, the LZW patent (or at least the one being pushed by Unisys) expired so people who really wanted to use the GIF file format could do so without worrying about royalty payments... the thing that really pushed the PNG file format forward in a huge way.
The one niche application that MNG could have done is video (with multiplexed audio), but that "open source and royalty free" application has been taken over by the Ogg file format and thus is relegated to the file format backwater. Some web browsers do support MNG files and some of the chunks can be read by software supporting the PNG format, so it isn't a total waste. Still, it is only a niche application that doesn't offer much of an improvement over other competing animation file formats.
If NASA's budget had doubled and a serious effort to go to other extra-terrestrial destination was a major objective of a presidential administration along with a supportive congress... Constellation could have worked. The dirty little secret of Constellation is that the program was set up with the notion in mind that it would be "too big to fail" and that fairy god-senators would come to its rescue to keep it from getting cancelled.
If it wasn't for companies like SpaceX and other "new space" companies, I dare say that would likely have been the situation too. That was pretty much the way that the Space Shuttle was organized, with early start-up costs of the program low enough to not draw congressional ire but a gradual ramping up of costs until it wouldn't even be considered for cancellation because of all of the money that was spent. That seems to be the attitude towards the James Webb Space Telescope too, even though I consider it in either case to be fallacious logic.
Apparently these guys have never heard about the Superconducting Super Collider either. Science projects are never considered "too big to fail" in the long run, which was one of the problems that even Werner Von Braun had to face at the end of his career.
NASA engineers really didn't like the Constellation design anyway, as it was being designed by committee for political considerations that had absolutely nothing to do with aerospace engineering. Then again that same sort of mentality of design by committee is what has given us the Senate Launch System (usually called just SLS).
Considering I have several children.... you had better believe that I have been in the delivery room for the birth of every single one of my children. One of them even spent some time in the neo-natal unit of the hospital with some complications due to the birth. I had one of my children saved from nearly certain death because of a very skilled obstetrician... although a very skilled and mature mid-wife likely could have done the same thing in the same situation. While I did talk with my wife about home deliveries, it was the "just in case" situations that we didn't know that caused us to go to a hospital.
I also witnessed an obstetrician do some things on my 3rd child that likely could have resulted in a malpractice lawsuit if I had cared to bother with the issues. He still has some long term health consequences from that incident that my wife and I are dealing with, so you had also better believe I've seen the whole range both good and bad what the medical profession can dish out in this situation.
Don't go presuming something you know nothing about, particularly about another person. My attitude is that something should be done with watching what mice will do first in space, since we have that ability and capability. My concern is that the first experiments will be done on humans because of callousness and a total disregard for human life. I find that a horrible thing to see particularly because there are other options available.
Considering the other kinds of experiments that are done with mice here on the Earth, seeing what happens to a bunch of mice over the course of several generations in the ISS wouldn't be all that bad and in fact might give some amazing insights into the life cycles of what we might expect when that happens to people. Is there a problem with bone development in the womb? Can there even be multiple generations of any mammal be born in space? Does living in a partial gravity environment mitigate any of the problems that arise from a microgravity situation?
My point is that you can't answer a bloody single one of those questions because the science hasn't been done. Do not confuse this thinking that it is impossible to do the science (unlike studying rock formations on Mars that only now Curiosity is just barely able to get started on) but rather because the powers that be who decide what is going to be studied simply refuse to do this kind of research. I would also dare say that knowing the long-term health consequences of gestational development as well as even adolescent growth and development in space are things that we need to know about now, as there will soon be kids going into space sooner or later where intelligent decisions about how they are to be treated and what problems they may encounter are very legitimate concerns to mission planners.
I do agree this isn't much to do with sex, but the gestational development of children in the womb is something that really does need to be investigated. I also think it is irresponsible to be making blanket statements saying that people need to be sterile or at an age where conception is not really an option if they are going to be traveling into space. Find out first what is the problem and then go from that point forward.
My point about doing human experimentation first is that I'm suggesting that the callous and prudish behavior on the part of the decision makers is going to make human experimentation on the subject what will end up happening... by default. If no other legitimate scientific studies are done to really examine the issues involved, the first time it will become an issue to worry about will be due to the fact it will be a human child or embryo that will need to be a part of the statistical universe. If you think that is unethical, I would have to agree... other than the fact that ample opportunity to perform this kind of study has been made available in the past on non-human subjects first but that the policy makers who could make a difference in this situations have deliberately chosen to wait until it is a human trial first so they can decide if it is safe to bring up rabbits and mice later on. That is ass backward and something that needs to be pointed out to those engaged in mission planning.
The lack of seats or restraints would affect the surviveablity of splashdown.
Why would a simple hammock not work to help increase survivability? I don't think it would necessarily be that hard, as a scuba tank + hammock may be all you would really need. The capsule already needed to be "man-rated" simply to dock to the ISS in the first place and certainly would contain air pressure.
I'd certainly want to try and find as many "soft" items to survive re-entry in even the current Dragon capsule as opposed to trying to re-enter the way that the Columbia astronauts attempted re-entry.
W. Bush funded Constellation, although that funding was supposed to continue on past the end of his term. It didn't. I'm not saying that I think Michael Griffin's NASA was really into going to some place beyond low-Earth orbit either, but at least a serious effort was made toward that end and something more than I can say of the Obama administration. The last president to offer any sort of substantive support for NASA was the Johnson administration, which is sort of why the center in Houston, Texas bears his name.
Constellation was a disaster in part because it was only half-way into what was needed to pull the thing off. It really did need a larger budget and much more commitment to getting done, not to mention that there were other problems that the program really didn't address including the fact that up to that point in time launch costs were going up faster than inflation... indeed still are if you consider traditional launchers.
SpaceX offers a glimpse that perhaps the cost of spaceflight can be a fair bit cheaper, but I'm not convinced that SpaceX will be successful at making a meaningful drop in price in the long term. At least if SpaceX becomes a "traditional launch company" and gets in on the gravy train of government launch contracts, I expect that their prices will eventually get up to what the other "big boys" are currently charging for launches.
Every time I see a statement like this, I ask: Where is the science to back up any statement of any kind about any mammalian reproduction?
Hint: There isn't any at all... at least any sort that would tell you about what will happen to somebody conceiving a child in space and carrying that baby full term to birth. I'm not talking just humans here but any kind of mammal, including rats, mice, or even monkeys.
This is also an experiment that to me is long overdue to be conducted on the ISS or some other space platform. To me it is a travesty that it was never done earlier. The main reason why such studies haven't been done is because NASA is too prudish about sex and has either rejected or dismissed such proposals in the past... even when there have been mixed genders of small mammals that have gone into space before.
There have been some experiments done with mammal ovum and sperm done in a "simulated microgravity" environment... but they really aren't really anything more than a little past the basic embryo stage when that was done and powerful magnetic environments are a lousy simulation of microgravity. There was a pregnant rat which gave birth on the Space Shuttle...where the mom and the babies seemed to have done just fine, although that was limited to just a couple of weeks due to the limitations of the Space Shuttle itself for long-term missions. Some mice and rats have gone up to the ISS, but they have been explicitly separated by protocol from attempting reproduction during those experiments.
Chances are likely that the first "experiments" will be done with humans before it is done with any other mammal... something I consider a travesty simply because such clueless statements like this one are repeatedly made and sentiments about sterilization of spaceflight participants is made through assumptions rather than any sound understanding of what is actually happening based upon real science. Assumptions can be made, but that is all they are.
Some sort of artificial gravity (aka a spinning torus) may be necessary... and certainly there have been almost no long terms studies about what happens in a partial gravity environment to almost any living thing. There was going to be a centrifuge added to the ISS, but that module is one of the items cut from the design when budget considerations started to be applied. About the only significant partial gravity environment studied was the experience the dozen Apollo astronauts experienced while on the Moon... and the most any of those astronauts spent on the Moon was just three days. That coupled with the fact they were in a microgravity environment going to and from the Moon sort of negates the experience as well from serious consideration of determining any long-term health complications from living in a partial (say Mars-like) environment.
It is best to simply say "we don't know" and end it at that.
And that would be a bad thing because?
As you say, enormous resources and productivity of American society is going into that endeavor that servers no really useful purpose and ultimately is wasting lives and even killing more people than it is protecting (literally... when people choose to travel by automobile and die in accidents that could have been prevented had they been traveling by air). It would be by far better productivity and even save lives by simply hiring those same people to move a pile of rocks from one location and then moving it back to the original location once a month or so.
What amazes me is the nearly universal support that exists in Congress for an agency that is nearly universally hated by the American people. I hate to give in to the conspiracy nuts, but in this case it nearly is a textbook example of how those who are technically elected representatives are completely out of touch with the constituents that they claim to represent. It isn't even a liberal vs. conservative issue but rather a small elite few who think they know better than the American people as a whole.
Yes, there are "surveys" of people who are interviewed about the TSA that seems to show it has universal support except for a few nut jobs (or so it is portrayed). I question the sampling method of such surveys. It may be fear and intimidation coming from living in a police state that creates such survey results or simply pure bias through the sampling methods, but it seems like nobody I've ever met in any sort of context likes this kind of screening at airports... passengers, or for that matter even the airlines (if you get executives or even flight crew to really be honest about it).
You keep asserting that Rand SImberg has committed some sort of unethical action by being paid by some group to make these statements... yet in this case just trying to stay right outside of the box by claiming ambivalence. Please just stop, at least without any sort of proof to the contrary. You might just end up on the wrong end of a libel suit yourself. You are at least committing the fallacy of guilt by association when none exists either.
Note also that the article for which Michael Mann is filing the lawsuit over was something that did have editors and outside people doing editorial review. As for why that editor didn't perform the review you are suggesting... I suppose that is why the publication is named in the lawsuit as well (which isn't Rand Simberg's personal blog). I suppose that publication will explain why they chose to publish such a statement as well, and may have even cleared such statements with their own lawyers before publication.
I'm also suggesting that Rand Simberg very well may have a good answer for why he thinks it is a fraud. One of the first rules you should know as a lawyer is to know precisely what a witness will say if you ask a question. I don't think Mann knows what Rand Simberg will say in response to a question like that, or might be surprised when Mr. Simberg responds with an answer that a judge + jury (assuming this becomes a jury trial) thinks is reasonable.
That was before they were corrupted with MS-DOS, but I'll grant to you that Microsoft has been in the hardware business for quite some time. Microsoft branded mice and keyboards have been around for decades as well, along with other kinds of equipment.
The difference is that Microsoft is now becoming a competitor to what was their bread and butter customer base (computer manufactures imposing the "Microsoft tax" upon future computer users). For whatever reason, Microsoft is deciding they don't need those other computer manufactures any more for future profit streams.
BTW, you should also be aware that the "floating-point BASIC" used on the Apple II computers was also written by Microsoft, under license by Apple Computer. Steve Wozniak wrote the initial "Integer BASIC", but the more commonly used "Applesoft BASIC" really was a Microsoft product. It is interesting where that relationship went over time :)
Compared to the lost hours of productivity changing to a new version of Windows, switching to Linux seems like a much better alternative where you know you won't need to be retraining people every couple of years.
True, I haven't given my reasons for thinking this way. My brief experience into working with climate science is two-fold: Working with the data entry of historical climate information (mainly 19th Century and early 20th Century weather station records that were hand written and had to be transcribed and digitized) as well as computer modeling of climate data.
In the case of this historical data, my largest gripe is that the data has been manipulated and modified with the raw data being completely discarded. By discarded I mean that the only record available isn't digital but rather the raw paper data... paper data that in itself is falling apart and fading or even being destroyed by accident or on purpose because the need for preserving that data is not seen as necessary.
While I don't have clinching proof, I did sit down with the state climatologist for the state where I live (I was working with him to digitize this data so it was a mutual working relationship) and discussed the greater issues in climate science. He was deeply concerned that similar data from other states was being manipulated explicitly for political purposes or to prove some sort of working theory (like the Mann hockey stick graph).
Explicitly this climatologist took some of the data that "proved" there was global climate change and compared that to the paper data of his own. There had been some manipulation of the data... some of it legitimate and some very questionable. For instance, since this is hand-entered data on paper forms, ordinary human error can often happen when recording this data or even transcribing the data. Numbers can be inverted (91 degrees might be recorded as 19 degree for a hot summer day) or perhaps even a simple misreading of the instruments. Sometimes a weather station might simply have some problems (almost always recorded in the station logs) where the data would be inaccurate thus ought to be ignored. To try and massage the data for outliers and to remove obviously errors in the data set, the data was sent through "noise filters" and other data processing subroutines.
Here is where the kicker came though. In comparing the "official" data in the archives of the National Weather Service, this state climatologist noted about 20+ changes to the data from what existed on his own records for a random date that he had on his own records. Of those changes, he only agree with about three of those changes. In inquiring about these changes, he ask the National Weather Service for the original raw data set in digital form... since he and other state climatologists had given their data to the NWS in raw form. Their response was that the original data set before processing was simply gone... as they presumed it wasn't necessary.
This state climatologist blew his top upon hearing that, and definitely questioned the scientific integrity of what was being reported. I'd also have to agree that this is a scientific travesty that has largely gone unreported. It has led me to generally suspect almost all data being reported by climate science researchers unless they are being honest about their data sets and show the warts of their data along with data that "proves" their hypothesis.
Getting to the computer climate models, I had the experience of working with a group that was trying to do some climate modeling using a system like the Seti@home project of distributed computing to help improve climate forecasting. I was active (for a brief time) on the forums of that project and generally quite interested in climate research and computer modeling in particular for that activity. Since I'm a software engineer and understand some of the difficulties involved with modeling theories in general, I wanted to learn more about how the models were put together, what algorithms were being applied along with what formulas they were using to derive their climate information.
The largest problem I encountered was a general distrust of anybody not "in the club" with regards to criticism of the meth
You say that you know a bit about the writing business... but do you have any proof? It is an assumption you are making and nothing more. You may be correct about your assumption, but for now it is just a wild ass guess as to any sort of relationship with what you are claiming. You are just as guilty of making up junk about Simberg as you claim he is making up about Mann. You talk about libel yet your are making incredibly libelous accusations here without any shred of evidence yourself.
Since Rand SImberg is an engineer (with credentials and such... literally a rocket scientist in the tradition of Werner Von Braun and Robert Goddard but he considers himself more of an engineer than a scientist) there could be something resembling malpractice in asserting that Mann is not using the scientific method properly and performing "academic and scientific misconduct". There may even be a judicial remedy in terms of losing a professional certification (again... I don't know first hand, but it is a possibility) because of his background. On the other hand, since Mann is claiming scientific credentials going up against Simberg who has engineering credentials, it will be interesting where this will go. Being an engineer, Simberg in particular is in a position to understand this kind of data and certainly can review some scientific reports (particularly in physical science.... something that most engineers have ample training simply to do their job) and can even be considered an "expert witness" in a legal sense.
As for 1st amendment protections, while I will agree that they don't protect you from libel, courts typically have given commentators and pundits a very wide latitude for what they can say about public figures. In regards to climate science and the political ramifications of that science, Michael Mann is very much a public figure where even calling somebody a child molester may not be actionable in a legal sense. Accusations of fraud may simply be considered political speech, and it will take a very high legal threshold to prove that. Courts have been very reluctant to shut down dissent through legal actions like this, and far more often than not it backfires against the person who filed the lawsuit in the first place.
In short, I'd like to see Rand Simberg sit on a witness stand and explain how he came to the conclusion about Mann too, and it may not be pretty for Mann. In a legal sense, Mann has also put himself out on a limb by engaging in this lawsuit as everything Mann has said about climate change including every e-mail on the subject is now subject to discovery.... by the defendants. Judges are much more lenient to granting such discovery motions and Mann has thus opened himself up in a way that other previous "fishing expeditions" would have failed in the past. All Rand Simberg really needs to accomplish here is that he had any sort of reasoning to believe his accusation of fraud was credible, including relying upon public statements by others who have reviewed Mann's data. Since such public statements by other credible reviewers has been made about things like Mann's hockey stick graph (it only takes just one statement by one reviewer to suggest there may be a problem), it seems like Mann is going to try some other legal strategy other than pure libel.
One of the comments I saw on a legal website said it best: Michael Mann is finally going to get the public rectal exam that everybody has been hoping for once and all. Had he simply kept his mouth shut and left these guys alone none of that would happen. In a great many ways, I think Michael Mann has much more to lose here than Rand Simberg or Mark Steyn. Somebody has convinced Mann that this will be successful, but for those who are political opponents to Michael Mann, he has just opened up a Pandora's Box including a counter SLAPP suit possibility even if he immediately drops this lawsuit. If you thought earlier trips to the court room were fishing expeditions, you ain't seen nothing yet. This very well could be like th
With Mann being a public figure, it will certainly be an uphill battle for him to require anything from Simberg or Styne. 1st amendment protections of freedom of speech may be enough to protect them from even bothering to disclose anything at all, particularly if all they are stating is personal opinion.
Furthermore, you are presuming that there is some kind of connection to the energy industry when you have absolutely no idea what they do and who they are. Mark Steyn is a conservative commentator who has occasionally filled in for Rush Limbaugh as a guest host on Limbaugh's show, and writes his own blog as well as participates in on-line discussions of various kinds.
Rand Simberg is really more along the same line as Mark Steyn and Rush Limbaugh as he has been making generally conservative POV commentary with his blog, Transterrestrial Musings. It has become increasingly political although much of his earlier commentary had little to do with politics but rather with space policy and following things like the Ansari X-Prize or talking about NASA. He used to work for Rockwell International and did some engineering work on the Space Shuttle, as well as other similar kinds of projects. Climate science and discussions are just a very minor part of his commentary, but he certainly has been vocal about the issues surrounding climate science. At best, you can call him a skeptic. Rand Simberg has written quite a bit in magazines like Popular Science or Wired recently, and has pretty much become a full time freelance writer.
For those two, I think you would be very hard pressed to see them taking any money from the energy industry, except for perhaps some modest advertising revenue for their websites that is not aimed specifically at influencing their opinions. Neither one is really anything more than spouting off what other conservative political pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Glenn Beck have been saying for years as well. They are perhaps a little more vulnerable because they are not as widely published as those major pundits and don't have nearly so much money, but that doesn't change who they are. It certainly is disingenuous to claim that there is a connection of these guys to "big oil" or other "energy producing companies" without any sort of evidence to back up the assertion.
The question isn't even if all of this correlates with human activity. Even though I consider a great deal of what the climate scientists are doing is psuedoscience that borders on the realm of astrologers and psychics (perhaps charitably more with cold fusion researchers and ufologists), I think it would take somebody incredibly dense to flat out deny that human civilization has had an impact upon the greater overall global climate. The degree that the impact of human activity has had can be questioned though, and it is the political questions that are much more troubling to me.
In other words, it isn't so much the studies themselves, but rather the political questions that are raised from those studies where the politics of the whole issue of anthropogenic climate change are going back into the science itself and influencing both the kinds of studies being investigated as well as even the skewing of the data to fit political philosophies and to make a political point. The stick part of the hockey graph may be legitimate....but why is the stick there? Is it being added so climate researchers can boost their funding from political agencies? Are there "green energy companies" who are making a profit off of this fear of "global warming"? Who stands to gain and who stands to lose as a result of these studies?
It is the mixing of politics and science which is the real problem here. Political policy is being made off of what seems to me as psuedoscience due to the politicization of the science, where the scientists have become advocates of a particular political philosophy rather than dispassionate reporters of facts and trying to find legitimate explanations for the data being discovered. Furthermore, legitimate scientific investigations which produce contrary results won't get funding and will be discredited on a political basis that has absolutely nothing to do with the science itself being presented.
Some of this is the politicians who are pressing the red panic button and are sensationalizing climate studies for their own political purposes. Some of this is also folks like Al Gore who are involved with economic projects like the carbon credit trading which he and his children will personally benefit financially if it becomes enacted as a policy. I think it is very much proper to question the political motives of those who are wrapping themselves in the mantel of science when they have the chance to become millionaires as a result of advocating a certain course of action.
Suggesting that there are other political philosophies at stake and I dare say even religion is being injected into this discussion. As can be seen here in this Slashdot discussion, it is nearly a religious devotion that some people have toward climate change complete with prophets, sacred scripture, temples (aka "houses of worship"), orthodoxy and heretics. I'll even go so far as to suggest that this has become a religion in all but name, even if many of those practicing don't recognize it as such. Communism/Marxism in particular (a religion unto itself after a fashion) is something that has also crept into climate science through a sort of "redistribution of the wealth" and a general attitude that the rich are the ones screwing over the poor through "evil pollution" causing all of these problems. It doesn't matter if it is true or not, the raw belief is in place and taints the research and even the politics of what political conclusions should be made from this scientific inquiry.
I'll note that Mann is one of these "prophets", and depending on who is writing about him will be in a reverent attitude or reviled as the anti-messiah.
I was involved with a data entry project involving weather station data going back to the 19th Century, where some of the original data was being manipulated by climate scientists for questionable reasons. The largest problem that was happening is that after the data was entered and verified from the original records (dead tree paper records that were hand-written... thus it was a very labor intensive project simply to enter all of this data and a simple OCR program wouldn't work) that it was sent through a processing system where some of the data was rejects for the reasons you mention.
In this case, some of the data was rejected because people, being human, sometimes make mistakes in recording the data. For example, if it is June and most of the weather stations of the region are reporting temperatures around 70 degrees but some weather station reports the daily high temperature to be 17 degrees (it happens... simply transposing 71 degrees to be 17 degrees when it was written down) that outlier is rejected from the data set.
As you suggest, sometimes there were problems with a particular weather station that may also skew the results in various ways. One in particular is a serious problem where originally a series of weather stations were installed in the middle of an open meadow, but over time trees, brush, and other things creep near to the "fixed" weather station that bias the information being collected. Perhaps a subdivision is built near the weather station or other factors as well. Assumptions have been made with weather data that certainly is not accounted for in many of these studies. Snowfall/rain measurements are particularly suspect when several trees grow up around that weather station which wasn't there when it was established.
The largest problem though is that the data which is presented is the data which is processed. An honest researcher would make available the original raw data set with all of the outliers and problems in the data set along with observations and relevant information that could then be verified, reviewed, and monitored independently. I thought that is what happened in real science. Instead, that original raw data is being discarded and isn't even available for review to question or check the methods being done to process and "clean up" the original data. I am suggesting that for various reasons the data is being deliberately skewed including historical data, and that all of this gives a black eye to climate science as the biases aren't really being accounted for.
Due to all of this data manipulation, it seems especially suspect that data is claiming accuracy of a fraction of a degree when none of the original data even remotely has that kind of accuracy.
In fairness to the Mercury astronauts, they were working in a very different kind of environment with different mission requirements than what will be expected for the spaceflight missions of the future. When Alan Shepard was going into space, there were so many unknown factors about what would happen while in orbit that they didn't even plan on having the astronaut urinate while in flight. It was a perfect environment for test pilots, with relatively short missions and needing the skills of a pilot to be able to work with the situations they faced most of the time. Even the Apollo flights only lasted a little over a week at the most.
If people are going to be traveling away from the Earth, it will be missions of several months long using skills like you say are more appropriate to a submariner. Unfortunately for NASA, the test pilot mentality still is a part of their internal culture. Then again, the current NASA astronaut corps is in a state of transition where the old time shuttle astronauts are leaving with the remaining astronauts facing a very uncertain future.
Interestingly enough, those astronauts who weren't athletes or at least not in strong athletic conditioning here on the Earth before their trips into space seem to have less of a problem in space than those in peak physical condition before going up. There may be some need for exercise in space, but it isn't necessarily the only thing to consider. Overall general health and reasonable diets seem to be a much more important factor.
The one significant issue that seems to be an ongoing issue is calcium loss.... that may be arrested or at least kept in check if some sort of modest partial gravity situation (aka rotating the spacecraft like the "space wheel" in 2001: A Space Odyssey). Running a marathon (one astronaut "competed" in the Boston Marathon from the ISS) is certainly not necessary if you want to return back to the Earth.
Considering that most current American astronauts are folks in their 40's and 50's with advanced degrees (sometimes several), astronauts really are no longer the hot-shot fighter jocks portrayed in "The Right Stuff" any more.