The larger a corporation gets the more it resembles government.

This is what I like about you NL, you ask a couple well thought out questions and we go from there. I think either government funded or private funded research can be corrupt or pure, which is why transparency is the key in either case. Transparency is easier to demand in a government run operation, which is why it is important to have government agencies and labs double check private industry when appropriate, as in drug testing. If you read Ike’s address he is saying that the day and age of a single man making a discovery is probably over and Universities having the funds to pay for these studies themselves is probably over as well, so government monies will be needed, that is just a fact of life, he isn’t saying we shouldn’t use the government money, we should just be extra careful that political pressure doesn’t hold sway to proper scientific process. I agree with that sentiment.

I think the melting is a hoax from the standpoint that it is being exaggerated, not that it isn’t happening. If ice is melting in one area of Antarctica and growing in another, but the amount melting is slightly more than the area that is growing, we have a loss, no problem there. What I see is the AGW people are only giving the melting side of the equation (and yes some anti AGW types are only giving the growing side). Human Co2 emissions do effect global warming, the question is how much, I don’t think it has that much effect. That said, there are plenty of good reasons to get off fossil fuels as much as possible, but the reduction of Co2 emissions should be a byproduct of, not a reason for, weaning ourselves from fossil fuels in the normal course of business.

Pretty darn close, kind of like an old married couple that finish each other’s sentences.

Did you hear that AlGore has canceled a lecture to 3000 he was supposed to give at Copenhagen.

NL – This is what shcb thinks:

Dependability of research by funding source? Depends on the power and agenda of the funder and the degree of arm’s length from the fundee.

Melting of ice & rising sea levels a hoax? Not a hoax, to the extent that it can be demonstrated to actually be happening and not siply a function of natural climactic variation over longer time periods than conveniently picked by Al Gore for his graphs (i.e. aligning with 20th c. industrial revolution.)

Greenhouse gasses causing ice melting (Global warming) ? shcb recognizes these man-made gasses as a contributing factor, but has not been convinced it is significant enough to warrant actions to reduce them. That’s not to say he does not think they are contributing, just that they may ultimately prove to be insignificant relative to other factors (solar intensity, natural emissions, etc.); or that eliminating the man-made solar gasses may not make any significant difference, or perhpas even that natural counter-measures will provide far greater mitigating effects (e.g. increased cloud cover reflecting more sunlight) than grand schemes launched from Copenhagen (cap and trade or geo-engineering pilot programs.)

Lurking is so not me.

Sheesh.

Also, do you think the melting of our polar ice caps and rising sea levels is a hoax? Do you think this is not happening? Do you not think that the trapping of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is the cause?

http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Nieuws/Wetenschap/252385/Nederlander-ontkracht-klimaatbewijs-van-Al-Gore.htm

In Canada, I’m not aware of much science funding changes except some cutbacks in the 1990′s (and certainly big ones coming in next few years to recoup stimulus funding spent last year and pay for social assistance costs from the lagging economy); except there has been a significant shift in focus for universities to solicit and obtain research funding from corporations which has its critics because that directs science towards study of practical matters that have chance of a quick payback rather than pure science that may not result in development for years if ever (but pure science is often where the big game changing discoveries are made…)

I’m getting tired of listening to myself here, so everyone else must be either utterly bored or bored to death. I shall lurk for a while.

He was a good old Kansas boy, Anybody that could get Patton and Montgomery to fight together can’t be all bad.

Larry King on the other hand… Hint to Larry, Ike was a five star general.

I’d like you to listen to this, no need to offer rebuttals as I know where you stand, but just listen and reflect on what is and see where this person stands (sort of anti-Obama now.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoAQLVaoTVA&feature=player_embedded

To see what is happening here, you have to distinguish between several types of research activity which are all lumped together as ‘Science.’ Traditionally, experimenters like Fermi, Rutherford, Carnot, and Roentgen would perform repeatable experiments which were of a scale that their counterparts could then repeat. Data were published so that anyone who was interested could do the same. There was public debate on the outcomes. This is still the way much of hard science is conducted.

Climate Science, on the other hand, offers no repeatable experimentation, because of the scale of the observations. So practitioners are reduced to debating their interpretations of the same set of numbers. Data are not published so nobody knows what these fellows are up to. We are asked to accept their conclusions without the opportunity even of verifying their analysis. This shouldn’t be called Science in the same sense as the discipline the physicists, chemists, and biologists practice is called Science. The Earth’s climate is not scientifically accesible to experiment in the same sense that atomic systems are accessible.

and this,

14. Insufficiently Sensitive:

Twelve days after the leak to the internet of decades of emails between the scientists of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, analysts of the emails are pointing to evidence that those scientists to have been discussing, a) manipulating data to get their preferred results; b) methods of subverting the peer review process to ensure that skeptical papers had no access to publication, and c) working to circumvent the Freedom of Information process of the United Kingdom.

Today, Britain’s University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit, one Phil Jones, is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.

To those of us who studied the scientific method prior to its corruption by politics, participation in any of those acts is damning evidence of abandoning science for advocacy. Serious examinations of such behavior must be held, and if necessary those participants should be stripped of their authority as scientists. For it is exactly that authority which has fuelled the movement to impose control by government, or super-government, body over the enterprise and economic activity of freely acting humans, as a restraint to a future global warming trend predicted by those very ‘scientists’.

Argument from authority can lead to disaster, when the authorities violate the very method which generates our respect for their conclusions and predictions. Let in the sunshine, then, and begin full and public investigations …

However, where they have failed is in preventing, in their leadership position, a proper scientific debate of the issues that we and others have raised. It is interesting and quite revealing that NCDC has still not submitted a comment in the literature on our 2007 JGR paper.

Much like NIST’s reaction to Bentham scientific paper about the presence of high explosive Thermite in World Trade Tower debris.