GhostintheShell

Lol...I can't believe this thread is still going on.

Did we not exhaust everything there is to say on the subject several pages ago?

Meet me back here in 50 years so we can discuss our independant observations, they probably still won't correlate.

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Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter.
Ernest Hemingway, "On the Blue Water," Esquire, April 1936

AMosely

scratch Peter Doran and his co-authors off the list of the 8 scientists that dispute global warming.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/op...9e3&ei=5087%0A

Lucky Shot

Scientists are questioning the long held thought that hurricanes are stronger than they were in the past...

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbc...607280336/1006

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/loc...home-headlines

As well as a potential "solution" to Global Warming, so dig out the sulpher and the moon boots!

http://www.livescience.com/environme...ct_sulfur.html

Lucky Shot

Beatnik

A little update on this oldie-but-baddie thread...

(AP) Scientists Allege White House Pressure

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Steeler

Also relevant to this thread:
Civil servants and career scientists: out.
Party flacks beholden to political whim: in.

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TheFatKidDeath

What do those scientists really know with their charts, graphs, peer reviewed studies and years of boring research for little pay or recognition? Honestly, don't they just have an agenda with all this?

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|TG-9th| TheFatKidDeath
"Born to Party, Forced to Work."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/55640 - Check me out on The Onion
http://www.theonion.com/content/vide...ssfully_avoids - I'm on the local news!

AMosely

No, they don't, or at least they shouldn't if they call themseves a scientist. That's one of the most insulting things you could ever say to a scientist. Science has no agenda other than truth.

AMosely

Too little too late, this moronic directive will be undone by Obama or Clinton when they take the executive back in 2008.

Steeler

(Mosely, RE:Fatkid's post, switch on your sarcasm detection circuit)

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TheFatKidDeath

Yes, it was my amateur attempt at being Colbertish.

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|TG-9th| TheFatKidDeath
"Born to Party, Forced to Work."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/55640 - Check me out on The Onion
http://www.theonion.com/content/vide...ssfully_avoids - I'm on the local news!

AMosely

You got me! A+

Kerostasis

Hrmmm...

I know climate scientists (or at least the ones that don't question the conventional wisdom) are regarded as the infallible epitomy of human acheivement and all that, but did you guys bother notice what types of changes the Bush administration is accused of demanding?

Changing scientific data? No.
Changing scientific methods? No.
Changing scientific logic in correlating the data? No.
Changing scientific predictions? No.

What was the accusation? Removing words such as "global warming" from publications. Replacing words of certainty referring to decidedly uncertain long range predictions with words of probability. And similar purely semantic changes.

So here's a good question: What does any of that have to do with interfering with science?

The answer: Nothing whatsoever. Unless of course there's much more insidious activities also going on, and the news article simply chose to report on the least incriminating evidence against the Bush administration for its own reasons. But we all know how likely that is.*

The only thing the Bush administration did here is play politics. Or more accurately, they attempted to stop government funded scientists from playing politics with government money. You want to have a discussion on the ethics of that? By all means, lets have it. But lets make it clear what we're talking about first.


*(For those who don't know, the likelyhood is approximately zero.)

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AMosely

Actually, I'd say pretty darn likely! And yes, that is the precise subject of this thread, at least it was initially, because I started it with the James Hansen story. And there are others.

If a scientist, government or not, comes to a conclusion, the President (or an appointed, unqualified director) has absolutely no right to declare that conclusion unfit for disclosure, or 'off message.' At best it is meddling, and at worst it is censorship.

Kerostasis

Your second line is a complete non-sequitur to your first. Perhaps you intended it that way, but you don't come across as presenting any coherent idea there.

You start by suggesting the news reporter would intentionally shield the administration from harm by choosing to report only the most unimportant accusations while ignoring something worse, but as yet unspoken.

Then you offer ethical judgement on how bad it would be for those unspoken accusations to be true. They havent even been CLAIMED yet! Why discuss the severity of a transgression that, to our knowledge, never took place?

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AMosely

There is no longer a debate on whether the Earth is undergoing significant warming. There is no longer a debate on whether or not there will be both predictable and unpredictable changes in the Earth's weather patterns and ecosystems as a result of atmospheric warming. The only debate is how much humans can do to minimize their contribution to this change and stabilize the negative effects of climate change.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articl..._globalwarming