Niall Ferguson on How Europe Could Cost Obama the Election
Obama's fate could be in Europe's hands
It's the economy, dummkopf #wonkbook
W.H.'s continental calculations
Daily Treasury Real Yield Curve Rates
The Panhandler and the President
Lawmakers avoid buzzwords on climate change bills
Conservative political correctness targets 'sea level rise'
Memo exposes Bush's new green strategy
Virginia's dying marshes and climate change denial
Senate committee likes slow-rise approach for sea-level forecasts
Leave a Comment:
Hi guys....all this "oh we don't like ___— (scientific fact), so we're just going to pretend it doesn't exist and pass legislation to that effect" trend is very frustrating for those of us who work in scientific and/or academic fields. I emailed you all about a related topic last week, but in light of today's show's focus on the 'war' on science I thought it was relevant to bring it up in a more public forum.
Last week, BP won their court case that seized private emails from several prominent Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists who had published estimates of the volume and flow rate of the hydrocarbons coming from the DWH Macondo well last year. I should note that this was AFTER those scientists had produced an extensive report including their raw data and how they did their analyses. The scientists wrote an op/ed piece for the Boston Globe, found here:
Science Out of Context: BP's demand for emails will erode the scientific deliberative process
And Susan Avery, the director of WHOI, wrote this response to the seizure:
Statement on the Need to Protect the Scientific Deliberative Process
of which the most critical quote is this:
"This case raises issues that go far beyond our institution and BP. Despite earlier Supreme Court recognition of the importance of the deliberative scientific process, there remains inadequate legislation and legal precedent to shield researchers and institutions who are not parties to litigation from having to surrender pre-publication materials, including deliberative emails and notes, manuscript drafts, reviewers’ comments, and other private correspondence. This situation leaves scientists and institutions vulnerable to litigants who could disregard context and use the material inappropriately and inaccurately in an effort to discredit their work. In addition, there is no guarantee that the costs, both time and material, incurred by an institution in response to court-mandated requests will be reimbursed by the litigants."
The courts have essentially set a dangerous precedent for science: that companies (and maybe even the government) can come in and take your intellectual property if they think your conclusions are 'wrong.' Those of us who work in the ocean sciences are preparing for a backlash akin to climate-gate, as BP is likely looking for any kernel of doubt in the data in order to blow it out of proportion and get out of some of the fines they rightfully owe for their negligence in the DWH incident.
Science, and in particular the ocean sciences, has been suffering from heavy budget cuts for the last decade. Recently NOAA was forced to cut all funding to the National Undersea Research Program, which funded 2 of the 3 deep diving submersibles available to scientists in the US (the 3rd being Alvin, operated by WHOI). These new policies that are trying to pass off sea level rise as a "liberal agenda" in VA and NC show a frightening trend towards the denial of fact and a continued 'war' on those of us who seek to understand the planet on which we live and disseminate the FACTS to an increasingly uninterested, under-educated, idealogical public.
Science IS valuable....but not when its proponents are treated as frauds and/or pariahs just because the truth isn't filled with rainbows and unicorns like the public wants.
People have always resisted knowledge that threatens age-old comfortable beliefs particularly if it forces a change in how we think (Galileo) or - even worse - how we act.
Scientific knowledge can sometimes be truly frightening. I was born and raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico where, in case you don't recall, the first atomic bombs were developed during WWII. My parents moved there in 1949 and my Dad worked at the laboratory. The
fearfact that science can be used to destroy was always present.The news lately about the "science deniers" in North Carolina and Virginia is hard to understand. It's like we are living in a cheesy Sci-Fi disaster movie in which civilization as we know it is threatened with doom if only people would heed the warning of the scientists. (uh oh ... we have a black President ... think Morgan Freeman in "Deep Impact"...)
It is clear, from what you wrote in your post, why BP is attacking the scientists about the DWH report - it is about the money.
It's about the money ... this might be our clue.
Here are several important questions to ask of these people who are denying the theory of climate change and the projected sea-level rise:
>maphi
The emails are fair game after the East Anglia contretemps. Science has broken trust with the general public and the money trail leads to grants and Govt subsidies. Consensus is not science and the politicization of science has devolved the myriad of surveys, studies, and new articles into lobbying for Govt favor.
As for beachfront property, all one needs to know about it is the selling price. Considering beachfront still earns a huge premium, the people with actual money on the line aren't worried about it.
Interestingly, all that is still distorted by Govt, in the form of Federal flood insurance. Kill that program, and you'll see a huge reordering of prices and priorities.
Actually, Shooter...if you mean the -private- emails between the WHOI scientists, then NO they are not 'fair game.' We as scientists are not required to turn over private emails about our research.....this is not some clause in our grants. The WHOI guys were not part of the lawsuit, and had already volunteered THOUSANDS of pages of data and analytical information to the courts/BP.
There's a big part of the scientific process where you just have to figure out what your data are telling you. This is not always obvious, and you might go through 5 or even 10 (or more) different stories before you get to the one that is correct. THIS is what BP is after....they want to basically dig into the deliberative process and tease out early/incorrect bits of the story and say "OH WELL THEY THOUGHT THIS WAS TRUE, THEN THEY CAVED TO THE LIBERAL AGENDA." Which is most decidedly NOT the case here. Science is not instant, nor is it immediately gratifying....which is difficult for most of the public/politicos to understand.
re: Klein's chart
It's meaningless. Cherry picking data and weird formatting highlights that it's obfuscation, not clarity. For clarity's sake let's point out that the 600,000 jobs are lost from an existing 22,000,000 Govt workers. That makes their unemployment rate 2.7%. Hardly austerity.
regarding employment this chart is much more informative...
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QsTygrc5N4U/Thg6S9gpA5I/AAAAAAAAGiU/2dobPOzrehc/s1600/chart-of-the-day-the-scariest-jobs-chart-ever-july-2011.jpg
Hello Shooter,
Ezra Klein chart displays data that is easily found and is accurate. Charts often display data that is fairly narrow in scope. You certainly are entitled to disagree with the conclusions that Ezra came to.
I have not checked on number of total government workers. But the point you raised for clarity's sake in my opinion does nothing to clarify anything.
I actually agree with you that the chart you provided a link to is important. I would say it is "very" informative - you say it is "much more" - because we disagree on the value of the first chart.
I am absolutely certain that we disagree on what the "Percent Job Losses in Post WWII Recessions" chart shows. [BTW - I love charts!]
One is the obvious - the red line - that is why our current recession is called the Great Recession. Very Very deep. Recover is slow due to ... won't go there - we beat that topic to a pulp yesterday...
Also note the two lines that don't follow the same general shape of the others - 1990 and 2001. While these 2 were shallower, they took much longer to recover from. Why was that? what was the difference?
Another thing - note 1980 and 1981 - How close did we come to not 2 separate but 1 double-dip recession?
Look at the 1948 line - the deepest before this one. Note the steep drop - roughly parallel to the drop of the red line - with the jagged spike - big up-tick followed by the final plunge. I wonder what caused that! That could NOT have been FUN!! Note also the rapid recovery - sharp increase on the way up. Was this one directly related to the end of WWII - massive re-ordering from war-time to peace-time and the resulting unleashing of pent-up consumer demand?
There - I said it "CONSUMER DEMAND!!!"