What Do We Think About Climate Change

Yeah the 'worst they could find' was that they confirmed that they were screwing with the temperature record to solve the 'divergence' problem, working together (not 'conspiring', of course; that's a bad word ) to pressure journals to reject works of skeptical authors, and working together to co-ordinate the destruction of data that they did not wish released, in violation of a court order and national laws governing publicly owned information.

And Phil Jones resigned for personal reasons.

Other than that, everything is just fine

Jimbo

 

"You seem to have a problem with people who are better educated than you. Why is that?" - More formal education but not necessarily better. My formal academic education ended at 4 years. I have all the respect in the world for those that study hard to achieve an end. For example, my finance degree is about three classes different from a marketing degree, from a business degree from an accounting degree - worse, its about four classes different from liberal arts, raising goats, etc.. Nothing wrong with ANY of those paths to personal success but my point is that we are just getting basics out of these curricula and another two years for a master's or whatever it is for an MD, etc., is worthy. I DO have little respect for PhDs, as these fall into the catagory of "professional student", those who don't know what they want in life, couldn't get a job, so stayed in school. That's fine, too but the problem arises when they have spent so much time in school that they have no connection with the real world, never held a job, had a family, had a car payment that their mommy didn't cover, then start influencing real-world situations as if they can relate.
If the guy really has a PhD, and these people throw the title around like it's more important than non-academic personal achievement, this does nothing for me - PhD means "couldn't get a job" and "only qualified to teach". Now, when someone who has no qualifications in the real world is put in charge of impressing knowledge upon young minds, all too often they try to shape opinions, maybe subconciously, maybe not. The fact remains that generations of students are being exposed to lost souls who couldn't get a job, are generally themselves molded by the halls of academia, have never had to fire an employee or meet a payroll or get their nails dirty. I believe that in a pure science lab course, there can be a use for these teachers but too much of this exposure can be dangerous to a society. Also, the guy's a chemist - good for him. I dropped chemistry and physics both because the course load was more than I felt I could handle while working full-time and helping run my wife's business to put my way through college. I already feel that the things I learned going to university I should have learned before eighteen, that most of the professors were ******** who couldn't get a job in the real world (even worse in state subsidized universities and deplorable in community colleges - at least in private university there is not necesarily the scourge called "tenure". I'm dangerously close to goin' off on our education system, as a whole...), that the students who took success from university had a job waiting for them or were running businesses before they finished... yes, I'll come up for air. I do have a problem with many people with more education than I. It is not jealousy. It is the wasting of the students who are exposed to them and the pompous attitude they tend to air.
Bos, "Openhiemer later regretted having "invented" the bomb and Einstein later believed relativity to be flawed (as was eventually proven)" - The Oppenheimer point is mine exactly. He did a great and marvelous thing and then f'ed up and started trying to engineer opinions. He was schooled in physics, one of the most brilliant thinkers in history but was not well qualified to opine about consequenses. So far, the technology has gone towards good deeds. Argue, if you will, but many lives were saved by those two bombs on both sides, period. Also, what if the Russians had it without the MAD restraint of a competing, thankfully benevolent, adversary. Einstein is irrelevant to this discussion.
"...you find graduate level students who poses that essential element of critical thinking..." - Yes, they do often pose it! (did you mean "possess"?)
All the way thu that to glean "not his standing nor opinion hold special sway with me"

 

As you commonly do, you made a statement that was almost factual -- but with a completely dishonest spin on it.

Phil Jones didn't resign 'for personal reasons' and go slinking quietly off in disgrace, no matter how much you'd like that to be the case.


The climate scientist at the centre of the row over stolen e-mails has no case to answer and should be reinstated, a crossparty group of MPs says.

Phil Jones, of the University of East Anglia, was acting “in line with common practice in the climate science community” when he refused to share his raw data and computer codes with critics.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee said that the focus on Professor Jones, director of the university’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), had been “largely misplaced”. It said that there were innocent explanations for his use of the word “trick” and the phrase “hide the decline” in e-mails concerning global temperatures.

He stepped down in December pending the outcome of an inquiry by the university into more than 1,000 e-mails sent by him and colleagues.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7081921.ece

 

actually mark the Japanese had been trying to sue for peace and the US was ignoring them. It is thought that the US was hoping to experiment with the bombs and see how well they worked although this view is controversial. The emperor had attempted to convince his military that surrender was the only way to save the people. Hirohito was not after all such a bad sort and it was his advisers and military leaders who had pushed him into the rash actions of entering WW2. He himself was relatively detached from the real world and in the end he although emperor "did what he was told"

Japan was defeated long before the decision to drop the bomb
there economy destroyed
there military output reduced to less than subsistence levels
almost every town and city had been burned to ashes
except maybe Nagasaki and Hiroshima which were full of refugees
the brutality of the Bushito code is not in question
but the brutality of war must be held to the light
the USA nuked civilians huddled in fear and ignored attempts to find a negotiated peace
which is kinda odd cause if you really dig into the surrender of Japan you will find it to have been a conditional surrender
and not what the history books would have us believe
the emperor was never held accountable and his palace never violated nor was there much more than a theft of national treasures by the US
no reparations were demanded and no trials of consequence held like what happened in Nuremberg
instead we simply reorganized the feudal lord system into a feudal business system

hardly what the text books suggest and definitely not an unconditional surrender
I would recommend the two books by Saburu Sakai as a primer for any discussion concerning the state of Japan towards the end of WW2 and also recommend Oppenheimer memoirs "Oppenheimer is watching me"

the simple reality is that history is written by the victors
as an Iroquois I feel imminently qualified to speak to this issue

getting back to a more relevant point the simple truth is that a PHD is somewhat detached from the norm and as such often able to provide a valuable insight that might otherwise be overlooked
as I said its a two edged sword

the ability to distance ones self from the mundane in my view places science in a unique position uniquely able to illuminate truths otherwise over shadowed by the more servile of distractions

 

Just because you self styled alphas may have reached a higher plane in formal education, it does not mean you are more educated.
Those of us betas who went on other career paths still kept learning, studying and researching both for work and personal edification.
Please climb down from Mt. Olympus and stop slinging the snarky little pissant lightning bolts.

 

So no one with a formal education has ever kept learning after getting out of school? They all shut down their minds the day they got their degrees? Please.

There's nothing wrong with not having a college degree...I don't have one myself. But carrying on like having one somehow makes a person mentally defective and inferior is just plain asinine.

 

Having a college degree doesn't make a person better than others. It is just another life's path. Not having a college degree doesn't make a person worse.

 

But carrying on like having one somehow makes a person mentally defective is just plain asinine.

What???

 

Bos, my dad was on a troop transport ship inroute to Japan when the bombs were dropped. First, you just want to root against the US and you know it's true. It is your MO. BTW, if your openly calling for revolution does not get you arrested, it will amaze me. "History written by the victors" is catchy, biting, succinct and... wrong but this is not the thread for your, nor my soapbox. Thank God for nuclear weapons, tho.
Hoyt, my point exactly. I should have learned in high school what I learned in college. My dad knew more of any subject than I, and never went beyond the military and trade school. The system is filled with Phds, the schools are filled with students that do not need an education, the bright students are bored to submission waiting for the teacher to pull up the kid who will operate a shovel (or a tourboat) and we spend more taxpayer dough on this than we (or any other country) can withstand - now, all these educated but dumber than Wood kids are a voting block with no knowledge of history, what built this country - look at Boston's twisted views. - That kind of thot process can only come from a mentor like Ward Churchill and that is totally F'ed. How else could we explain seemingly bright individuals taking hook, line and sinker this AGW crap. I blame it on our education system. I blame it on a system that allows non-productive members of society to vote. I blame it on the greed of politicians.

 

That was in reference to my comments on PhDs, Hoyt.

 

mark775, you said that more eloquently than I could have. The snarky ones don't know our level of education. They just assume that since we don't agree with them we must be dumber than a sack of doorknobs or don't have enough sense to pour pee out of a boot. You can't teach a pig to sing and even when he tries, the sound is annoying.

 

I confronted old Ward Churchhill personally and told him what a fraud he is. He tried to walk away but I made him listen. His claims of being an Oglala Sioux medicine man really pissed me off and my friend who I was with ( an Apachi ) was also very offended. Not only that he would claim to be what he was not but that he would pretend to teach our ways. He was the worst form of charlatan. By the way another of my friends was the woman who exposed him for the fraud he is. She was sitting in his class at Neropa when he made his wild *** claims and her she is an Oglala sioux, she questioned him right then and there and he would not face her. Then she went to her father an tribal elder of the Oglala and he had never even heard of this fraud. Your attempt To link my faith with a phony like Churchill is miles from accurate.

as for my openly calling for a revolution in this country, that is a moment of truth that is way past due. First your leaders screwed the English, then they screwed the native peoples, then they screwed the south ( lets be real the civil war had nothing to do with emancipation) then they fought people overseas and took advantage of them, now they are turning inwards, the politicians are selling there own mothers for a buck, selling out american jobs overseas to the lowest bidder and selling off technologies as fast as they can, as long as it profits them personally what do they care. Americans are sheep, still going to the poles and still expecting politicians to save them from the corporate oligarchy. At least I have the guts to say what I feel and take what comes my way

I'd rather be a dead lion than a live sheep any day

the simple reality is that the "freedoms" of the american people have been effectively eliminated when free speech is threatened by incarceration simply because that freedom entails talk about revolution

 

I don't know who indoctrinated you, Boston, but they did a bang up job!

 

I also am descended from a tribe defeated by the English speaking white man. That tribe or collection of clans was known as the Scots and once held sway over Scotland. Now totally domesticated, they clear the minefields for the English who defeated them.

 

I have a fairly good education from a variety of universities although indoctrination is hardly the term I would use for an ability to think for oneself.

the government would prefer an education system that produces unarmed complacent and mailable masses
sorry if I did not fit the bill and actually expressed a few of my own views
even if they do threaten the status quo