51–60 of 75 posts
I look forward to the day when all email between members of Congress are public by default, to fully understand the representation process that they conduct on our behalf.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's indeed an exercise in douchebaggery, but the fact is, Smith has the right to subpoena the emails. They're public property. If you saw The Martian, you might remember the arguments among NASA managers about how much information on Watney's predicament should be revealed to the public. It was pointed out that their only legal option was to lay it all out there. That's pretty much how government agencies actually w…
The actual power being used here, the Congressional subpoena power, doesn't have anything to do with whether something is public property or not, so that isn't the basis they're claiming. It's a general quasi-judicial investigatory power, which can be used to compel any person to both appear physically, and turn over any documents in their possession that Congress, in their sole discretion, believes might be importan…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The data should speak for itself Are you serious ? Not only is there multiple way to interpret same data (after all there are so many competing models to explain it) and at best you can debate confidence intervals and models - it's far beyond non-experts expecting them to review the data directly is ridiculous - the only way they can work with experts is based on trust and credibility.
"Work with experts" the way you already work with accountants, lawyers, etc. Hire two and have one check the other. And no, it's not unreasonable to expect a non-technical person to review the data or the methods either. Many people don't want to put the time in to try but it's well within the reach of any high-school grad.
Not if you don't trust the field. It's like saying if you don't like your numerology readings hire a different numerologist and compare the results.
Not saying I agree with the view but science is a lot less convincing when when you can't setup repeatable experiments.
>And no, it's not unreasonable to expect a non-technical person to review the data or the methods either.
You're going to review PHD level work that ran weather simulations on supercomputers and compiled various data sources with highschool level knowledge in your spare time ?
Perhaps you could do a security audit of OpenSSL if you have some free time on your hands - I'm sure people will even pay you if you manage to find security issues and you' be doing the community a big favor. Maybe we should hire some highschool grads to do it - start a kickstarter campaign and I'll pitch in.
"Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) wants thousands of e-mails among scientists and NOAA’s staff of political appointees that he thinks will show that the researchers had something to hide when they refuted claims that global warming had “paused” or slowed over the past decade." Apparently climate change science is not in the published research itself, but can only be found by going through someone's email. What bald-face…
There have been numerous accusations that raw climate data is 'processed' using questionable assumptions. I can’t judge that but I would that thought it's better to get to the truth rather than dismissing such claims out of hand with a demeaning personalized epithet. This is especially so given that truly enormous sums of money are at stake.
Getting to the truth might well involve examining professional communications between people people supported by taxpayers' cash.
Why would emails be more important than the data? The data should speak for itself, only a politician is looking for "gotcha" phrases they can print in huge letters for a poster board that they put up while making speeches denying global warming. It's not that these politicians don't understand how science works, they understand how to manipulate people to favor legislation that is actually against their interests. E…
The data should speak for themselves. Unfortunately people who don't know statistics think they can't, because as we found out from emails, the data were "manipulated" via statistical methods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_c... Honestly I'd rather we press scientists of all sorts for all their source code and modeling tool configurations including the raw data that hasn't been post-proces…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who cares if I can run a formula/program that tells me Y from X if I can't understand/trust the program/formula ? If you think that stuff like economics/climatology/etc. has the same level of rigor and validation applied to it as established and verified theories from hard science then boy do I have some bad news for you (struggling for SD 2 as ideal vs SD 5 for eg.).
I see you don't want to trust even yourself in actually learning the formulas and the basic principles of physics behind them, but that's how it is. Physics works. Humans produce immense amounts of CO2, CO2 in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the planet. It's as simple as that. Reading other people's mails won't refute the physics. And no, other factors aren't the answer: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/…
CO2 is a green house gas - good job mr. high-school physicist - now show me the temperature projections along with human CO2 production graphs and estimated impacts and error margins and past model prediction performances vs measured data. You know the actual things that matter for policy implications. See that's where things go beyond high school.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see you don't want to trust even yourself in actually learning the formulas and the basic principles of physics behind them, but that's how it is. Physics works. Humans produce immense amounts of CO2, CO2 in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the planet. It's as simple as that. Reading other people's mails won't refute the physics. And no, other factors aren't the answer: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/…
>Humans produce immense amounts of CO2, CO2 in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the planet. It's as simple as that. CO2 is a green house gas - good job mr. high-school physicist - now show me the temperature projections along with human CO2 production graphs and estimated impacts and error margins and past model prediction performances vs measured data. You know the actual things that matter for policy imp…
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/index.shtml
There are other countries among those who took part in making the reports who would be more than eager to point on anything that's wrong there. And nobody did find anything significant against.
It's a lot less okay to lead people to believe their communications are private and then demand to read their email after the fact. What if Alice, in what she believed to be a private email to Bob, truthfully criticised Carol for being a vindictive jerk, and in the meantime Carol has climbed the political ladder and now has the power to sabotage Alice's career?
If Congress or whoever wanted that sort of oversight, they should have said so upfront, not to try to apply it retroactively.
Why would emails be more important than the data? The data should speak for itself, only a politician is looking for "gotcha" phrases they can print in huge letters for a poster board that they put up while making speeches denying global warming. It's not that these politicians don't understand how science works, they understand how to manipulate people to favor legislation that is actually against their interests. E…
In theory, yes. Among ideal rational agents, yes. But in practice, science depends on the trust that scientists aren't actively subverting the process: failing to consider alternate hypothesis, fabricating data, ignoring data, deliberately filtering for confirmatory data, groupthink, etc. So an import safeguard is the ability to detect when someone is doing the above, even if the detector doesn't know the literature…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Humans produce immense amounts of CO2, CO2 in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the planet. It's as simple as that. CO2 is a green house gas - good job mr. high-school physicist - now show me the temperature projections along with human CO2 production graphs and estimated impacts and error margins and past model prediction performances vs measured data. You know the actual things that matter for policy imp…
There they are, they are agreed by the scientists of the whole world, so again no need to worry about the e-mails of one country's organization: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/index.shtml There are other countries among those who took part in making the reports who would be more than eager to point on anything that's wrong there. And nobody did find anything significant against.
Wait - but you didn't verify it your self ? After all :
>You don't have to be a rocket scientist to repeat most of the basic calculations which give similar results.
Or does it all boil down to trust and your original argument is nonsense.