Another gag on US scientists

[ExAFO 0]

How will this affect the following animals:

-Asthma Hound Chihuahua
-Kodiak Marmoset
-Jellyfish
-German Sphincter Mouse
-Gnu
-North Korean Sage Grouse
-Crocostimpy
-Bearded Yak
-Kitten
-Buddhist Sea Cucumber
-Flemish Walrus

Illinois needs a CCW Law. NOW.

[Royd 0]

Quote

On the plus side, at least you're acknowledging that global warming is a problem and is destroying habitats.

It might be happening. I don't see it as a problem.

It is changing habitat, not destroying it. It's been doing it for thousands, or according to you guys, millions of years.

I heard that the Vikings gave Greenland that name for a reason.

[jakee 1,255]

Quote

I heard that the Vikings gave Greenland that name for a reason.

Because the south coast of Greenland is, in fact, quite green?

BTW, using a theory you don't even believe in to try and argue against another theory you don't believe in, all the while either knowingly or un-knowingly misrepresenting both, really is quite annoying.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[billvon 2,400]

>It might be happening. I don't see it as a problem.

Depending on your age, it may very well never be a problem for you.

>It is changing habitat, not destroying it.

That is correct. New species will radiate into the niches left by species like the Polar Bear once they are gone, and life will go on. As long as you are OK with the changes that involve (like, say, relocating twenty million people) then you may well consider it not a serious problem. But at least you consider it a reality!

>It's been doing it for thousands, or according to you guys, millions of years.

True! And we've been adapting to it. If it continues to change slowly we will continue to adapt. Rapid changes are harder to adapt to.

[Royd 0]

Quote

BTW, using a theory you don't even believe in to try and argue against another theory you don't believe in, all the while either knowingly or un-knowingly misrepresenting both, really is quite annoying.

Are you one of my old high school teachers?

[Royd 0]

>It might be happening. I don't see it as a problem.

Depending on your age, it may very well never be a problem for you.

>It is changing habitat, not destroying it.

Quote

That is correct. New species will radiate into the niches left by species like the Polar Bear once they are gone, and life will go on. As long as you are OK with the changes that involve (like, say, relocating twenty million people) then you may well consider it not a serious problem. But at least you consider it a reality!

>It's been doing it for thousands, or according to you guys, millions of years.

True! And we've been adapting to it. If it continues to change slowly we will continue to adapt. Rapid changes are harder to adapt to.

Ibelieve the biggest cause of the problem is not the overproduction of CO2, but the deforestation of large portions of the planet.

I see it everyday in housing developments.

Many older neighborhoods were built with large trees left undisturbed. City services were still installed.

No more. We bulldoze a section of land that contained thousands of trees just for the convenience of putting in streets, services, and cookie cutter homes. Rather disgusting, in my view.

No real effort is made to reforest these areas.

Home owners are lazy and don't want the task of raking leaves.

I would dare say that certain HOA do not allow certain trees to be planted back into a neighborhood simply because they are messy in the fall. Sycamores come to mind. Here in the South, some people literally despise pine trees because of the needles, cones, and sap, so they have them cut down.

Paying the govt. carbon credits to plant trees elsewhere is BS. Cypress trees don't grow on a sandhill.

[NCclimber 0]

Quote

I would dare say that certain HOA do not allow certain trees to be planted back into a neighborhood simply because they are messy in the fall. Sycamores come to mind. Here in the South, some people literally despise pine trees because of the needles, cones, and sap, so they have them cut down.

Sweetgum trees should be renamed Devil-spawn.

I have a massive one in my backyard. Every winter I fill up about six large leaf bags of those nasty motherfucking gumballs. Grrrr

Sorry about the sidetrack. Please continue with "Department heads instruct scientists to keep formal meetings On Topic"... er... um... I mean "Fascist regime squashes free speech in scientific community".

[rehmwa 2]

Quote

How will this affect the following animals:

-Asthma Hound Chihuahua
-Kodiak Marmoset
-Jellyfish
-German Sphincter Mouse
-Gnu
-North Korean Sage Grouse
-Crocostimpy
-Bearded Yak
-Kitten
-Buddhist Sea Cucumber
-Flemish Walrus

Now that's seriouly good work, I can tell you really put a bit more effort in it compared to, say, "Cat Butt". Not that there's anything wrong with "Cat Butt".

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[jakee 1,255]

Quote

Not that there's anything wrong with "Cat Butt".

There is when it's shitting on my lawn!

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[billvon 2,400]

>I believe the biggest cause of the problem is not the overproduction
>of CO2, but the deforestation of large portions of the planet.

I think that is indeed part of the problem. CO2 is a gas that's part of our atmosphere; we breathe it out and plants use it to build their cell walls. If we started producing more of it and using more of it, then there wouldn't be a problem. Cutting forests down, and replacing them with subdivisions, means we use _less._

[shropshire 0]

In my opinion, one of the biggest problems that we're encountering, is the lack of cohesive scientific agreement on the cause(s) of the Climate Change.

Perfectly respectable and seemingly intelligent scientists exist on both sides of the fence and then there's the politicians, NGOs and journalists all stirring the pot to the tune of their own pet theory for their own ends.

It 'seems' that our (UK) government has thrown it's lot in the with CO2 is the culprit, which provides them with the opportunity to Tax the hell out of everyone. Where as, if they believed that the Sun & water vapour was the root cause, their opportunity to raise revenue would be more limited.

FOLLOW THE MONEY!!

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[billvon 2,400]

>is the lack of cohesive scientific agreement on the cause(s) of the Climate Change.

There is 'cohesive scientific agreement' as you describe it. There is also an effort to portray the science as "not settled" since such a perception benefits the most powerful businesses on the planet. The scenario is similar to what happened to the tobacco industry in the 50's. No one cared much about the public's opinion of the health issues surrounding cigarettes until Reader's Digest published an article about the link between tobacco and lung cancer. This caused tobacco sales to drop. The tobacco industry responded by creating the Tobacco Institute. It hired doctors to claim that other things caused cancer, and that cigarettes were good for you (they reduced stress.) They operated by making it look like the science wasn't at all settled, and the "theory" that cigarettes caused lung cancer was just an unproven theory, one of many equally-valid theories. (Sounding familiar yet?) It worked well, and brought their sales back up.

An internal memo described the purpose of this institute as "promoting cigarettes and protecting them from these and other attacks" by "creating doubt about the health charge without actually denying it, and advocating the public's right to smoke, without actually urging them to take up the practice."

A judge who presided over several tobacco-injury trials later called the institute "nothing but a hoax created for public relations purposes with no intention of seeking the truth or publishing it." The Wall Street Journal described it as "the longest-running misinformation campaign in US business history." It finally closed in 1999.

Today we have oil companies who find themselves in the same situation. All the mitigation strategies being discussed involve higher costs/lower sales for fossil fuel suppliers. Since they are not idiots, they worry about that. They thus fund researchers specifically to create doubt in the minds of the public, and make it appear that there may be many other reasons for the warming we are seeing - indeed, that perhaps CO2 has nothing to do with the issue! As we can see in this thread, they have been quite successful in their attempts.

However, that's just in the public arena. Stop by the UCSD campus or Scripps Institute of Oceanography and talk to them about the issue, and you won't see all the silliness and drama that pervades the public discussion. They're working on the actual science, and there's not too much doubt about what's going on when you go at it from that angle.

>FOLLOW THE MONEY!!

Indeed! On one side we have the most powerful, richest organizations on the planet who plan to lose lots of money if we attempt to slow down climate change. On the other side we have some UK bureaucrats and a Michael Crichton-esque secret cabal of environmentalists bent on world domination. Which do you think more likely to try to mount a PR campaign?

[willard 0]

It seems, though, that anytime someone questions the validity of CO2 being a major cause of gw they are called wackos and ignorant hicks. It doesn't make a good impression on the general public.

[billvon 2,400]

>that anytime someone questions the validity of CO2 being a major
>cause of gw they are called wackos and ignorant hicks.

Extremists will do that, and both sides do it. Heck, scientists who believe that CO2 is a major cause of global warming are called liars and frauds, out to make political statements and take over the world. But like I mentioned, that's all happening in public forums. Fortunately, in academic circles, the research has shown pretty clear results and there isn't this sort of nonsense.

[rushmc 18]

Really gaged huh.......

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20070320-120435-3136r.htm

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[willard 0]

Exactly my point. There are those who are claiming the debate is over. But how can the debate be over when there is no general concensus on how much of the global warming is caused by human misdeeds and what all the causes are? Scientists are supposed to be open minded and willing to listen to opposing arguments, no matter how outlandish they may seem. Remember, at one time the Earth was flat and was supported by a giant turtle. At that time it was fact and anyone challenging that notion was ridiculed or even jailed.
I've not taken a side in the argument concerning the cause of gw. I just like to see it stopped if, in fact, it is caused mostly by our own intervention. And the only way to know that for sure is to keep our minds open to all possiblities.

[billvon 2,400]

>But how can the debate be over when there is no general concensus on
> how much of the global warming is caused by human misdeeds and what
>all the causes are?

That's like saying "how can the debate on smoking be over when people don't fully understand cancer?" That sort of mischaracterizes what's going on. There are two separate arenas:

1) The political/commercial arena. Tobacco companies are defending themselves from lawsuits, politicians are trying to curry favor with parents/tobacco companies etc. There is lots of debate there.

2) The research arena. Oncologists are re-evaluating what causes cancer all the time, and often they discover something unexpected (like the viral vector for many cancers.) They also continue research into how smoking causes cancer, what the odds are, how to mitigate them etc. To characterize this as a "debate" and then claim that no one knows anything about what _really_ causes cancer would be a mistake, because we do know enough to cure it quite often - even if we don't know all the details.

Likewise, there are two arenas in the climate debate:

1) The political/commercial arena. Oil companies will lose billions if their products are shown to be causing much of the problem with the changing climate; they are already seeing lawsuits. Radical environmentalists want someone to blame for all their ills. Politicians want to curry favor with the oil companies, the "concerned homeowners" seeing their property melt into sludge in Alaska, the environmentalist crowd etc. There's a lot of debate and shouting there, most of it ill-informed and almost all of it based on people pushing political/economic agendas.

2) The research arena. Researchers are continuing to refine what they know; the IPCC is continually narrowing down their prediction ranges as a) they learn more and b) they see what the _actual_ climate is as compared to their earlier predictions. Scientists are measuring solar flux, gamma-ray mediated cloud nucleation, albedo changes due to deforestation, and natural sources/sinks for methane and CO2. Again, to characterize this research as a "debate" and then claim that no one knows why the climate is changing would be a mistake, because we now do know quite a bit - indeed, we know enough to be able to predict how much the climate will warm based on CO2 levels and be pretty accurate. We don't know everything, of course, and likely never will.

[nerdgirl 0]

Quote

Scientists are supposed to be open minded and willing to listen to opposing arguments, no matter how outlandish they may seem. Remember, at one time the Earth was flat and was supported by a giant turtle. At that time it was fact and anyone challenging that notion was ridiculed or even jailed.
And the only way to know that for sure is to keep our minds open to all possiblities.

I appreciate the intention toward open-mindedness -- I'd like to advocate open-mindedness in many more endeavors than science, to include DZ.com
Too open-minded & everything gets funded -- including proposals for perpetual motion machines, investigation of the potential use of Bose-Einstein Condensates by terrorists, etc.

There is probably some minority (one could probably find them on the internet ) that still believes in the type of flat earth idea you described ... and there definitely are still folks out there who would jail, ridicule, and worse, others for challenging their beliefs about scientific facts (see the recent thread w/r/t the Pakistani who was attacked for trying to vaccinate infants from polio).

Some times an opposing argument is just an opposing argument, like a cigar is sometimes just a cigar ... other times a cigar is more, especially if it's entangled in a policy debate that might impact many someone's proverbial pocketbooks.

Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[idrankwhat 0]

Quote

Exactly my point. There are those who are claiming the debate is over. But how can the debate be over when there is no general concensus on how much of the global warming is caused by human misdeeds and what all the causes are? Scientists are supposed to be open minded and willing to listen to opposing arguments, no matter how outlandish they may seem......

I think that many scientists are becoming testy on this issue, and others, because of the way their information is treated. You're right, scientist are supposed to keep an open mind, and generally, they do otherwise they're lousy scientists. That's part of the scientific process. Where they get pissed off is when their work is run through the political wringer and then disseminated through a rather lame media. The best example that I can think of at the moment is when Bush's political appointee to the EPA, a man with no scientific background, took it upon himself to edit out the EPA scientists' conclusions with regard to global warming and insert his own comments along with those of a study that was financed by the petroleum industry. That sort of abuse of scientific information is really quite annoying.
As an aside, it's rather disheartening when you realize that the people who are supposedly protecting you, like the EPA leadership and the state health department (can't speak for all) are political/industry goons first and dedicated to their profession second.

[JohnRich 4]

Quote

It is the latest in a string of cases in which the administration has carefully controlled or even banned government employees' public speech about global warming....

News:

"A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he'd done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years..."

Source: Washington Times

Oops. There goes his credibility.

[kallend 1,623]

Quote

Quote

It is the latest in a string of cases in which the administration has carefully controlled or even banned government employees' public speech about global warming....

News:

"A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he'd done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years..."

Source: Washington Times

Oops. There goes his credibility.

"Credibility" and "Washington Times" in the same post Reminds me of their Pelosi jet "scandal" that wasn't.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[rushmc 18]

Quote

Quote

Quote

It is the latest in a string of cases in which the administration has carefully controlled or even banned government employees' public speech about global warming....

News:

"A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he'd done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years..."

Source: Washington Times

Oops. There goes his credibility.

"Credibility" and "Washington Times" in the same post Reminds me of their Pelosi jet "scandal" that wasn't.

Hey perfessor, did you happen to see the last witness (gagging bs) about this yesterday?

I suppose not as none of the main stream drive be media carried it.

Lind to come

oh ya, and nice attack on a source you don't agree with. I know only yours are correct (as they will never be right)

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 18]

Since you chose not to respond I thought I would post this testimony (that the media and you avoided because it goes against your point)

From the Limbaugh site but the testimony non the less.

University of Alabama Climatologist Roy Spencer's Oral Testimony

March, 19 2007


I would like to thank the Chairman and members of the Committee for the opportunity to provide my perspective on the subject of political interference in government-funded science.

I have been performing NASA-sponsored research for the last twenty-two years.
Prior to my current position as a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I was Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and was an employee of NASA from 1987 to 2001.

During the period of my government employment, NASA had a rule that ANY interaction between its scientists and the press was to be coordinated through NASA management and public affairs. Understandably, NASA managers do not appreciate first learning of their scientists' findings and opinions in the morning newspapers.

It was no secret within NASA that I was skeptical of the size of the human influence on global climate. My views were diametrically opposed to those of Vice President Gore, and I believe that they were considered to be a possible hindrance to NASA getting full congressional funding for Mission to Planet Earth.

So, while Dr. Hansen was freely sounding the alarm over what HE believed to be dangerous levels of human influence on the climate, I tried to follow the rules. On many occasions I avoided answering questions from the media on the subject, and instead directed reporters to John Christy, my co-worker and a university employee.

Through the management chain, I was politely told what I was allowed to say in congressional testimony. In fact, my dodging of committee questions regarding my personal opinions on the subject of global warming was considered to be quite humorous by one committee, an exchange which is now part of the congressional record.

I want to make it very clear that I am not complaining -- I am only relating these things because I was asked to. I was, and still am, totally supportive of NASA's Earth satellite missions…but I understood that my position as a NASA employee was a privilege, not a right, and that there were rules I was expected to abide by.

Partly because of those limits on what I could and couldn't say to the press and congress, I voluntarily resigned from NASA in the fall of 2001. Even though my research responsibilities to NASA have NOT changed since resigning, being a university employee gives me much more freedom than government employees have to express opinions.

So, while you might think that the political influence on our climate research program started with the Bush Administration, that simply isn't true. It has ALWAYS existed. You just never heard about it because NASA's climate science program was aligned with Vice President Gore's desire to get rid of fossil fuels.

The bias started when the U.S. climate research program was first initiated. The emphasis on studying the PROBLEM of global warming, of course, presumes that a problem exists. As a result, the funding has ALWAYS favored the finding of evidence for climate CATASTROPHE rather than for climate STABILITY.

This biased approach to the funding of science serves several goals which favor a specific political ideology:

1) It grows government science, environmental, and policy programs, which depend upon global warming remaining as much a threat as possible.

2) It favors climate researchers, who quite naturally have vested interests in careers, pet theories, and personal incomes.

3) And, it provides justification for environmental lobbying groups, whose very existence depends upon sustaining public fears of environmental disaster.


I'm NOT claiming that a global warming science program isn't needed -- It IS. We DO need to find out how much of our current warmth is human-induced, and how much we might expect in the future. I'm just pointing out that the political interference flows both ways -- but not everyone has felt compelled to complain about it.

(This concludes my oral testimony).

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 18]

Well???

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[sundevil777 93]

Quote

Well???

Well..well..well he's a denier, as bad as a holocaust denier! There is no room for dissent, this is a settled issue, except for those bad-as-a-holocaust deniers.

From the Special Report with Brit Hume:

Quote

An expert in thermodynamics says the assumption that the earth is getting warmer through the use of what is called a "global temperature" is scientifically unsound.

Professor Bjarne Andresen of the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute says it is meaningless to talk about an average global temperature. He says compiling temperatures from various places and averaging them would be like calculating the average phone number in the phone book.

And he points out there are several different methods by which scientists calculate average temperatures — and they can come up with many different answers from the same set of numbers.

and just because it is worth repeating, as it completely refutes the primary assertion inherent in this thread:

Quote

A NASA scientist who says the Bush administration muzzled him because he believes global warming could cause catastrophic results now acknowledges he has done more than 1,400 media interviews in recent years.

James Hansen made the accusation when his request to do a National Public Radio interview was denied. The Washington Times reports Hansen acknowledged to a congressional committee Monday that he violated NASA press policy by not notifying his supervisors when he did interviews.

And California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa pointed out that Hansen conducted 15 interviews in the month after accusing the White House of censoring him.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am