Why They March: “Science and Scientists Are Now Under Attack”
Thousands of scientists unite in marches around the U.S. to protest a regime that has taken a sharp knife to government science budgets.
The March for Science is a response to the Trump administration’s distaste for science — or at least the kind that gets in the way of profit — but it is also a celebration of those among us who have devoted their lives to understanding how the world works. The thousands descending on the National Mall, on the first Earth Day under a regime that has taken a sharp knife to government science budgets, study stars and butterflies, barrier reefs and hedgehog reproduction, viruses and bird flight patterns.
Most days, they make and test their hypotheses in laboratories or perhaps in the Arctic Circle or the Australian Outback, in an anti-gravity chamber or a deciduous forest. But on this rainy April Saturday, they have come together in Washington, D.C, to make a point that feels more urgent than ever: Science matters, and we ignore its findings at our peril.
Michael Mann (shown above), a climatologist and geophysicist, has pioneered computational models based on patterns of the past 600 years of climate changes. Mann is perhaps best known for the “Hockey Stick graph,” which shows a sharp uptick in global temperatures starting around 1900. And he was one of the lead authors of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which helped establish the scientific consensus about the global phenomenon. But Mann may be proudest of his most recent work documenting the sometimes subtle impacts the climate is having on hurricane activity, extreme weather events, and phenomena like El Niño. “This is an area of the science where there is still legitimate debate and a lot of interesting work left to be done,” he said, “much of it steeped in basic physics where I got my start.”
Mann is marching because “Science and scientists are now under attack in this country.” He should know. Mann is one of the favorite targets of climate deniers, as evidenced most recently by a hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology at which he was the only witness representing the mainstream view that climate change is the result of human activity.
“When congressional Republicans are denying basic science,” Mann said, “and the Trump administration — run largely by polluting interests — is trying to revoke policies to protect our health and our environment, more than ever we need to hear the voices of scientists, loudly and clearly.”
Photo: Matt Roth for The Intercept
“Not all species are equal,” said Mary Droser, a paleontologist who uses fossils to study how ecosystems develop and change over time. “You take out a particular species, a keystone species, and the whole thing crashes. That’s why so many people are now worried about the Great Barrier Reef.”
Having studied the rise and fall of past species can make our current crisis particularly scary. “When people say save the earth, I think the earth will be fine. It’s humanity that I’m worried about. We know from the past that, in terms of extinctions, and in terms of environmental change, the tipping points come sooner than we think.”
Droser finds it absurd that the current administration “wants to pick and choose what science to believe.” Still, she considers herself an optimist. “You can’t just go into despair,” she said. “What am I going to do, tell my 16-year-old that I’m just going to sit this one out?”
Photo: Matt Roth for The Intercept
“We’re starting to realize how seriously our oceans are in trouble,” said David Guggenheim, a marine biologist who studies coral reefs. Since 1970, the Caribbean has lost about 50 percent of its reefs.
For the past 17 years, Guggenheim has been working in Cuba, which has some of the healthiest coral reefs left in the Caribbean. The Cuban reefs have thrived because the country has protected its coastal waters — and also hasn’t suffered the effects of large-scale tourism or agriculture. Also, said Guggenheim, “they actually listen to their scientists. There’s no climate debate there like we have here.”
Protecting fish is essential for protecting reefs, said Guggenheim. “We think of fish as something to eat, as crops that grow in the ocean. But they have jobs to do and one of them is keeping coral reefs healthy.”
Guggenheim is marching because he’s alarmed by the anti-science bent of the new administration. “I’m used to getting around the table with the opposition. I’m used to compromising. But this is different,” said Guggenheim. “It’s a throw-back to the dark ages. The problem is the voice of science is not being heard. The voice of Trump is being heard.”
Photo: Matt Roth for The Intercept
Melanie Killen is a developmental scientist who looks at the emergence of moral concepts from early childhood to adulthood. Theorists used to speculate that morality emerged in adolescence. But Killen and her team showed that a sense of right and wrong begins to form in children who are as young as 3, 4, and 5.
By age 5, Killen’s team showed, children can also understand and account for relative advantage. Asked to divide supplies between two schools that have unequal resources, for instance, children will often choose to give a larger share to that the one with less. “They start saying things like, ‘well you have to give them more because then it’ll all be fair,” she said.
Killen is marching to stand up for continued support for basic science. “The U.S. has been a leader in the world in terms of basic research funding for everything from child health to space exploration and cures for cancer,” she said. “The idea that we are reducing that funding is a terrible blow to progress.”
Photo: Matt Roth for The Intercept
Jessica Ware is an evolutionary entomologist. Her work focuses on dragonflies, which were the first creatures to fly on earth and are also among the fastest of the animals responding to climate change. Ware has traced the evolution of the insects’ genes through fossils, which date as far back as 250 million years ago, and follows current dragonfly populations in the Yukon and the northern-most points of the world.
“Trying to understand how, when and why they evolved helps us understand where the planet is now and where it’ll be in the future,” said Ware. She is marching, in part, to highlight the importance of evolution. “The U.S. is lagging behind almost every single country in terms of the general public’s belief in evolution. But it’s not something to be believed. It’s a process that creates life and causes things to go extinct. It exists.”
Ware also wants all young people to know that they could be scientists, something she didn’t realize as a child. “I am an African American woman with LGBT family,” said Ware. “When people think of science, they don’t think of someone who looks like me.”
Photo: Matt Roth for The Intercept
“Most science gets done for the benefit of the powerful,” said John Vandermeer. “We feel it should be done for the benefit of everyone.” Vandermeer and his wife, Ivette Perfecto, have worked together for 37 years, using ecological principles to improve agriculture. For much of that time, they have focused on coffee production in Puerto Rico. They have also established a coffee plantation in Chiapas, Mexico, where they research interactions among pests and their natural enemies.
Agriculture is a major cause of both climate change and species extinctions. But Vandermeer and Perfecto have been studying more sustainable ways of growing, focusing on natural systems that control pests without pesticides. They’ve recently developed games that help farmers understand the complexity of ecosystems.
For Perfecto, the march is about more than science. “I feel like we’re losing democracy,” she said. “Science is just one of the casualties.”
Photo: Matt Roth for The Intercept
Robin Kimmerer’s work as a botanist and professor of environmental and forest biology has largely focused on the ecology of mosses, the tiniest and most ancient plants. “They’ve been on the planet for 350 million years and have endured every climate change, every movement of continents,” said Kimmerer. “And they’re still flourishing!”
A member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer has also worked to integrate indigenous knowledge with Western science. She combined the two in an effort to restore the sweetgrass plant, which had been disappearing from its native habitats throughout the Northeast several years ago. “We found, in order to restore it, it wasn’t enough to restore the plant and leave it alone. Sweetgrass flourished only when it was used.”
In Kimmerer’s view, it’s not just the land that’s broken, it’s the relationship to land that’s broken. She is marching in part to bring such indigenous views into the mainstream of science. “It’s not a matter of just marching for science. I’m marching for sciences. There are multiple ways of doing science.”
This portrait series was photographed by Matt Roth for The Intercept in and around Washington, D.C. April 21-22, where the nation’s leading scientists converged for the March for Science.
Science and Scientist are not under attack, scientist who preach Global warming being solely a human caused phenomenon; requiring Fascist style reforms by every man, woman, and child in an attempt to MAYBE fix the problem is why “Science and Scientist are under attack.” Even suggesting that the statement above has some validity will surely get me killed on the comments feed, but that is the fact of the matter.
Science has shown us that over the Earth’s long history the climate has changed a time or two, some of those changes happening while humans were in existence. What we did as a species was adapt to the changing conditions and survive, that is all you can truly ask for in a situation involving a gigantic set of ecosystems. It is the arrogance of the modern man to believe that we can determine exactly what nature is going to do and then go ahead and make nature change course. We as a species do not have the scientific advancement to know what the earth’s ecosystems are truly being affected by and how those changes will impact humanity. We can guess sure and those educated guesses need to be taken seriously, but not at the expense of the civilization we all enjoy. Even for those use that civilizational framework to constantly bash the culture(s) that brought them prosperity.
none of this will be a problem when we finally learn how to “transmute” all matter into different matter
and the human/cockroach hybrid is an important first step
The original Earth Day had human overpopulation as one of its main agendas; now hardly anyone even talks about it and leftists deny it as racsim like the idiots who deny climate change.
And to see Earth Day hijacked by this, which promotes evil science as much or more than good science, is really infuriating. As modern humans become ever more disconnected from the natural world, their interest in it wanes and will soon disappear along with the species and ecosystems that they are destroying with their overpopulation and overconsumption.
While I oppose silencing science because it gets in the way of profits, overall this march replacing Earth Day is really disgusting.
Discussion on the science of Global warming is very good representing it as the single issue not good. As I stated below” Half the foot print and double the population net effect zero.” While political, Nation resources and wealth and even “racist” forces my shape some events the four horsemen are equal opportunity at population control. It will be slim comfort to be treated fairly at the end.
If you do not make global warming the number one priority, earth day is completely irrelevant.
I would say that about overpopulation and overconsumption instead, the latter including any consumption of things that we should not be like fossil fuels. Global warming is merely a symptom of overconsumption and, to a lesser extent, overpopulation. Even if we totally stop global warming (not possible at this point), humans would still be destroying the Earth.
Global warming may cause great ecological and environmental harm, but only non-environmentalists and the more conservative environmentalists obsess on it. Humans are doing many other great harms to our planet beside global warming.
Your logic is totally circular. What you call ” overconsumption” is contingent on the level of consumption causing problems. You cannot sensibly turn it around and say that those problems are symptoms. They are problems. The term “overconsumption” can be used to describe all such similar problems, but it is not some independent philosophical thing that comes about because, for example., we are out of balance with nature. Like all species, we try to succeed; we are the only one smart enough to look at the bigger picture, at least some people are, sometimes.
Obviously you attack the problem that is potentially the end of humanity, especially since its solution takes care of some of the others as well. Forget the stupid philosophical nonsense. If you cannot convince people to save their children’s asses, you certainly cannot convert them to your philosophy, especially since it clearly wrong.
My logic is not circular and my position is clearly not wrong. If you want to know how humans live without overconsuming, look at the very few hunter-gatherers that civilization has not yet wiped out. Overpopulation and overconsumption are the root causes of ALL environmental and ecological problems, again overconsumption including consuming things that we should no be like fossil fuels. If you don’t fix these problems, you are merely dealing symptoms like global warming.
People who insist that anatomy and genetics have nothing to do with gender accusing others of being anti-science…..so pure.
Nice cover boy too; a guy who fraudulently stated in legal papers that he was a Nobel Prize winner.
There is more to gender identity than anatomy. It is the genes that may give answers to these issues, and work on this is being done.
You forgot to cite the source for your claim about Mann.
Harkin didn’t say “gender identity,” he said “gender.” And he’s quite correct (though I don’t agree with his attitude); the only thing that determines gender is anatomy, which is in turn determined by genetics.
science and scientists are under attack because a bureaucratic government organisation is getting a slightly unfriendly treatment?
But then, as we read just below, “I Marched for Science in Portland Maine, with my Political Revolution against EMPIRE sign”. I guess that really says all there is to say about the “science” march.
Only scientists who lie and fake the numbres are under attack. Why do they refuse to publish the raw date they use to “show” temperature increase?
It’s quite strange to me that people who consider themselves “empiricists” would so blindly support regulatory bodies like the EPA without any proof that their funding levels have any correlation with GHG reduction.
I Marched ‘for’ Science in Portland Maine, with my “Political Revolution against EMPIRE” sign because Science can’t survive under an EMPIRE — just ask Galileo.
Dump the Trump Empire and Emperor Trump’s War on Science.
BTW, I just bought Shawn Otto’s fabulous new book, “The War on Science”, in which he excoriates Empires for being the Enemy of Science and points out how Empires always try to dominate honest Science into building advanced weapons systems for the “Merchants of Death”, and using AI systems for immoral and inhuman purposes.
Yes empire can harm science, seen it, lived it. Science dogma can also at times be a potent enemy of progress. Once the “best and brightest” doctors and scientists argued it was folly to wash hands between autopsy and delivery. I believe Global warming is a real danger but just part of the over population, over consumption of resource and resultant pollution. The good news we can not over populate. Bad news if we do not set limits the four horsemen will.
You stil do not get it.
There was no scientific result that implied that hands did not need to be washed. There was just skepticism towards a new scientific result. A bit of skepticism is a good thing, but I think it went over board in that case!
Global warming is not “just part of the over population, over consumption of resource and resultant pollution”. It is potential disaster in which the positive feedback will carry the effect way past the point of no return before the effects are obvious to those who profit from denying it and those whom they can convince.
“I believe Global warming is a real danger” please accept victory in my case. I just believe it is difficult to address Global warming in isolated from the other issues I raised. Half the foot print and double the population net effect zero.
No Mike, Fred is right: global warming is a symptom, not a problem per se. If you leave fossil fuels in the ground and don’t overpopulate, you don’t have global warming, simple as that. And even without global warming, the removal and burning of fossil fuels causes massive environmental and ecological harms, including habitat destruction, killing of plants and animals, air pollution, and toxic pollution, just to name some off the top of my head.
A better way to look at it is this: Global warming is by far the most serious problem caused by burning carbon. It is the “symptom” that must be alleviated. Yes, other “symptoms” go away also if this problem is solved.
Your language is wrong. A symptom is something that indicates a problem. Global warming is a problem, the biggest problem facing humanity. To call it a symptom of some greater problem is just stupid.
That’s not what a symptom is. A symptom is a byproduct of an underlying problem, which is exactly what global warming is. The real problems are that there are far too many people and that we’re living wrongly, as in not simply and naturally enough.
Look it up in the dictionary. I did.
Dictionaries are not ultimate authorities and are sometimes wrong. It should be obvious that a symptom is a result of a problem. Yes, a symptom ALSO indicates a problem, but that’s a byproduct, not what a symptom is.
We agree that global warming is a problem that also has symptoms. Where we disagree is that you are advocating that global warming is a problem per se, which it’s not; it’s clearly caused by more deeply rooted problems. Get rid of industrial civilization, animal agriculture, and human overpopulation, and you’ve solved global warming PLUS many other major environmental problems. Solving global warming alone without doing anything else will still result in human destruction of our planet.
what is your evidence that agw is “science dogma” and not good science? right now the pressing issue is reliance on fossil fuels, not overpopulation. overconsumption is a big problem.
I never suggested that just, that science and scientists such as myself should not be consider infallible, we it wrong sometimes.
Of course you can overpopulate, what do you mean? Any species that exceeds its natural limits is overpopulated. Humans have been overpopulated for a very long time; the difference between us and other species is that we have circumvented the natural limits on our population TEMPORARILY (in geological terms), which has allowed us to have over seven billion people on Earth and growing.
However, our overpopulation is the main cause of the current extinction crisis and will not last. Far too many people, along with the agriculture and other infrastructure needed for them, has destroyed almost all the wilderness on our planet and made it impossible for many other species to survive (right now, numbers of many large animals are in decline due to lack of sufficient habitat and the current numbers are not high enough to be sustainable).
Denying overpopulation is as idiotic as denying global warming/climate change. Humans need to stop worshiping themselves and realize that like anything else, there can be too many of us and that that point was reached long ago.
What I said was that if you try over population one or several of the four horsemen will kill off the excess. Population control is do or die. It is a natural law one breaks at their peril. If we fail to correct our numbers Famine, War, Pestilence and Death got population control covered. I believe other species or new ones that are bound by natural law will recover and mankind’s survivors my even get another chance. The earth is more resilient than we as a species.
Again, not true. Gross human overpopulation has already begun the Sixth Great Extinction and massive destruction of natural ecosystems, to name just two problems for the macro building blocks of life. Whether humans starve because they overpopulate even further is irrelevant at this point.
Yes, I am on your side and believe humans have pushed past our natural population limits and are “Reaping” osculating consequences for our “unwise” actions. When you screw up Mother Nature’s game of life the horsemen declare game over for a good portion of mankind and their will be collateral damage to many other species. The planet will shack most of us off like fleas and heal it’s self, there may even be enough of us left to learn something from the experience. If a mass die off does not teach something what will?
Sorry Fred. I’m so used to people arguing that human overpopulation is not a problem that I guess that I just assume that’s what they mean if they don’t explicitly agree. Unfortunately, we’re a small minority. The good news is that we’re growing fast as it becomes more obvious that there are far too many of us for the good of our planet or even ourselves.
Left Wingers don’t do science because their entire reality is based on the precept that everything is just a perception. They don’t believe in truth vs fallacy. They have embraced a notion that was then spun to become a tool of their favorite and overarching desire – socialism. They want Klimate Koo Koo to institute the “great socialist society”, and they haven’t the ability to see how they’ve contorted science to suit their obsession. Libstania is a mental disease.
Actually, scientists are pretty far to the left on the average compared to the general population. Your comment is nonsense.
over 30,000 real scientists have signed the petition calling global warming a fraud.
This is a lie, regardless of whether the specific fact is true. 97% of climatologists agree that global warming is real and is caused by humans. It is irrelevant that scientists from other disciplines, who are not qualified to comment expertly on global warming, may have signed this industry BS petition.
Quite ironically, people of that viewpoint are driven by ideology over empiricism. No matter what the environmental concern is, according to them, it is a falsehood perpetuated in the name of socialism. They have epistemic closure on all environmental science.
Michael Mann has done more damage to science than Trump could ever hope to do.
No, he has done good science; the deniers who have attacked him are reprehensible shits who should be in prison.
No, he has done good science. The people who have attacked him are reprehensible shits who belong in prison.
Well, I am glad to see you have a level headed view! If you are interested in science read the work of all the scientists working in this arena. Less than half believe in anthropogenic global warming and those that do are often supported by corporate interests. Folks make money from this you know!
bullshit. over 98% of people working in the area say it is good science, supported by multiple studies. the corporate interests making money are fossil fuel interests. by the way, the oil company scientists told them emissions cause global warming, so they shut down their research into it and started the tobacco industry styled propaganda campaign.
Correct. Several years ago I watched a lecture by a climatologist speaking as a Republican to others in that party. He was adamant that the science on AGW is sound, and demands some policy decisions to deal with this reality.
RPDC You are ABSOLUTELY correct! Hell, he can not even find his original data! Well, I should not say that because he most likely CAN find it but since it was all trumped up, (no pun intended) he does not want to expose himself to the truth of what he did!
More lies, more nonsense. If you have something real to say, make your case.
He did. He pointed out that Mann basiclly claimed the dog ate his homework and therefore can’t post the original numbers he used to fraudulently show global warming.
Warmists are the children of Lysenko.
the hockey stick study has been replicated multiple times, by many scientists.
Michael Mann is an embarrassment and should not be the poster child for victim-scientists. He is the original bully-scientist. His entire recent testimony was made up of irrelevant innuendo and bullshit. He did a poor job of representing actual physical science and demonstrated instead how politicization corrupts the judgment of people who might have been capable of useful work. .
Then Chris Hayes must do the honorable thing and quit the neoliberal cesspool that is his employer, MSDNC:
Perhaps Chris doesn’t feel the five or six million per year of compensation rises to the level of ‘cosmopolitan finance capitalism.’ Thatsa lotta coin.
Democrat Bernie unity-tours with fellow Democrats:
http://www.npr.org/2017/04/22/525089501/sanders-unity-tour-with-dnc-chair-exposes-rifts-but-also-suggests-common-goals
While delusional leftists refuse to admit he’s a Democrat.
Bernie isn’t a Democrat, and hasn’t been since he ran for Mayor of Burlington, Vermont over 30 years ago. With the sole exception of his run for POTUS, he’s been an Independent and self-described social democrat. Indeed, many Democrats will be the first to insist he ain’t one of them.
Yet again, your own link undermines your inane claims:
Fucking software. My reply, yet again, only can be read in “Latest,” as opposed to “Threads.” Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat as demonstrated by your very link.
It’s only happening to you Mona.
Uh, no. Maisie, Milton, Doug and many others have long been griping about it as well, claiming this is being done to them on purpose. It isn’t. It’s a tech issue.
Maisie and Doug weren’t conditionally vacationed for a month and a half from the Intercept in 2013 like you were.
That never happened. Among other things, The Intercept did not exist in 2013. A software glitch — not unlike the one causing the current trouble — caused some accounts, mine included, to not post, until the sites’s tech people figured out the issue in 2014.
You, by contrast, have actually been banned here some 4-5 times, under various handles.
No, it can happen to anybody. Of course some people are to unaware to notice what is happening.
Except that he caucuses with them, then primaries, then tours with its DNC chairman.
Yup, he does — he’s always caucused with the Democrats when there’s common ground. But isn’t one of them, as many Democrats will be the first to inform you.
Those who love Bernie, and disdain today’s Democrats, boo Tom Perez. These Bernie folks generally don’t like Democrats one little bit.
Yup? hoo rite englis zo bad dat de englis peepel no mor no wat is sed?
How can you start to talk about science when you can’t even use the English language? Rules?
wot 4? me speek gut, me a merry can, lats a noiz an no cantent.
Start with the date, then grammar, punctuation and then at some point you can discover the concept of INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS.
That is where science begins.
Scientists all over the world find it hard to believe that education in the land of huts is also retarded. But we have to face reality, and the facts show us that USA is not up to low standard yet.
2017 04 24 07:24:11
Big Bank
My post does not always come up either, so I just switch over right away to another browser (from chrome to explorer) and I find it did come up on the second browser right away. This time and I think for the first time this comment also did not show up on explorer right away. Maybe I did not hit submit or something.
I do not understand the difference between threads and latest but will look for that from now on.
Above comments, there’s a comment box. Just below that box one can choose to read in either “Latest” or “Threads.” For some reason, 10% or so of comments for many people only appear in “Latest” for about 24 hours.
It’s weird. Commenter Maisie even wrote a clever poem about this ongoing annoyance; it involves drunken monkeys. ;)
Thank you
Thank you
omg! That’s what Maisie is talking about with the drunken monkeys!! *I should make amends … I thought she didn’t like monkeys./
btw Mona. I think just about anybody off the street could have beaten Trump, and Bernie would have walked away with it.
Still, I don’t think Hillary Clinton lost it by herself. It’s not like Obama, and other DNC leaders in government, had corrected the Bush cabals lawlessness, disorder and chaos. .. like they were overwhelmingly fucking elected to do.
Plenty of sour grapes to go around, I should think.
And then, there are the people who elected that utter nutter POTUS. It’s a broad, strange mix sis: like the well educated wealthy made a suicide pact with the poor and downtrodden and gave Trump POA!
Fucking drunken monkeys … the lot of ’em.
Jonathan Turley: Washington Post Poll: Trump Would Still Beat Clinton
Certain commenters below are in utter denial of the above reality, and refuse to face that the same (non-outlier) poll finds more Americans perceiving Democrats as more out of touch with their concerns, than are Republicans. Democratic hatred of the Bernie wing is killing the party: Accept that, and fix it, or the country and planet continue to lose.
Now that is a non-sequitur.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/04/please-god-stop-chelsea-clinton-from-whatever-she-is-doing
No, it’s not. See this sub-thread.
However, I was about to post that link to the excellent (but sickening) Vanity Fair piece about the promotion of Chelsea Clinton — quite inadvertently, I’m sure, you performed a service.
Frank is a talented writer.
Yes it is, and you originated yours at the trunk at 3:30 p.m.
You are not qualified to rule on logical fallacies, as you promiscuously commit them and evince not a whit of ability to reason soundly. Further, you are morally depraved, relishing the suicidal depression of man being inundated with death threats and requests to kill himself. (Poor reasoning skills can cause evil thinking.)
Your thinking is disordered. If you think I’m “relishing” the repeat violence-ideation of Phil Jones as reported, please link to and explain the reasons for your opinion on the thread post in question.
It’s just below, the sub-thread in which this was posted to you:
That’s not my comment, Mona.
Link to a post of mine here directly, and explain your objection to it.
It’s the same sub-thread just below in which this was also posted to you:
Multiple of us are thoroughly offended and disgusted by what you said, and what you continue to say. Including the disgusting shit about Sandy Hook. Those parents are fucking not “crisis actors” faking grief over a non-existent massacre.
Yes, sure you were.
You got me — I’d never do anything like that.
“but the following is flat out wrong and you probably know it, so not sure why you wrote it.”
So says the headmistress.
Do the march-attending scientists criticize and oppose aggression by the US government? Why isn’t war abolition or anti-imperialism a topmost priority?
There is little need for scientists and teachers to cry po’boys over anything the current government regulates. Scientists need to take the mantle and run with it rather than act like crippling whiners. Science study is wonderful and should be promoted in a positive and vibrant way…as does Neil deGrasse Tyson. But, he’s not the only one! Not only do we need good science in future technology, but it’s imperative to life itself.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, the leftists’ favorite planetarium director, confuses gene editing with cross-breeding:
_”Neil deGrasse Tyson To GMO Critics: ‘Chill Out’“_
“We have systematically genetically modified all the foods, the vegetables and animals, that we have eaten ever since we cultivated them. It’s called ‘artificial selection.’ That’s how we genetically modify them. So now that we can do it in a lab, all of a sudden you’re going to complain?”
http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-degrasse-tyson-believes-in-gmos-2014-7?op=1
You’ve posted that particular non sequitur once already before in this thread (which, if the reply is any indication, is an error about the purported “confusion”). You post many non sequiturs, some of them morally repugnant. Such as your belief that no one died at Sandy Hook, in support of Alex Jones’ notions that the grieving parents are “crisis actors.” Or your relishing a man’s suicidal distress after your like-minded friends inundated him with death threats and demands that he kill himself.
Something is deeply wrong with you.
Mona, out of compulsive neuroses you’ve again thread-jacked a page, in this one with a full 17% of its total 241 comment count.
Tell your intended audience why that post is a non-sequitor.
Why don’t you explain to YOUR intended audience why you declare vile things about the Sandy Hook victims, and a man victimized by death threats and admonitions to kill himself? What is the matter with you?
What victims?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71V_O5bTJCE
And what Brahmin Connecticut Yankee town has a street called Yoga Nanda?
That. Is. Disgusting.
You’re sick. Seriously, go see a doctor.
basic physics and NIST are out of alignment, that much is clear
last summer i drove from the midwest to california and back, and i was surprised to see lots of big wind power installations … most of them seemed to be running agricultural areas
no doubt there are many such practical eco-technologies .. but the political barriers are huge
these barriers make the human/cockroach hybrid a viable solution
A stable, thoughtful bunch:
_”‘Climategate’ Professor Phil Jones ‘considered suicide over email scandal'”_
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/7180154/Climategate-Professor-Phil-Jones-considered-suicide-over-email-scandal.html
So…the guy who disgustingly rants that no one died at Sandy Hook, who supports the deranged infowars bile about grieving parents as “crisis actors,” that guy has the fucking gall to post about anyone else’s “stability?”
Jesus.
How about some colorful snacks? LE even peels a banana. And they shoot the breeze:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3DO_674-Qo
At what appears to be a multi-agency drill. FF to around 1:30.
You think it proper to mock a man’s suicidal distress in light of what your own link reports he endured:
One wonders what goes on in the merciless minds of people like you. Your own ilk were telling the man to kill himself.
He even thought about it “several times,” but he thinks he’s past that stage.
You are depraved. Truly vile.
“-Mona- ? Communete
April 23 2017, 9:41 a.m.
You are depraved. Truly vile.”
I bet that feels better. Almost like you tossed the bird yourself …
You post for your own gratification but others must wade through it because this site cannot keep track of voluminous posters who insist on directing the majority of conversations in service of some perceived greater good.
You appear to want to help others so you mention disturbing behavior in order to demonstrate behavior that should not be tolerated. The trouble is, by creating continually disturbing situations, others must then envision them to some degree. It is like starting a fire to then extinguish; with self-accorded accolades of course.
The casual reader cannot scroll by until it is too late.
Uh, what? [shrug]
“Uh, what? [shrug]”
Yes, that one is off-the-rails into depravity. That can be the by-product of immersion in paranoid and irrational thinking — it isn’t harmless.
You are a narcissistic piece of dreck. You wouldn’t recognize empathy if it bit you in the ass.
Communete: If thou canst not love, what art thou?
ive been approaching this cockroach thing all wrong … cockroaches dont need to evolve intelligence
WE need to evolve cockroach bodies, as per kafka .. in any case, global warming can help
the question is, do we wait for evolution or just start genetically engineering the thing right now?
sometimes it’s good to be proactive
OMG, where would we be but for the science generated by an “African American woman with LGBT family.”
And this task is accomplished via the traditional “use”of sweet grass?
Hmmm… spirit healing via the use of a medicine wheel – sounds like science to me!
Your deep racism is disgusting. This is merely it’s latest iteration. Your bile about Black Lives Matter is some of the foulest this space has seen.
Can a person be more than one-dimensional? Is it possible that indigineous people also practice science? Here’s some more of her work:
Kimmerer, R.W. 2012 Searching for Synergy: integrating traditional and scientific ecological knowledge in environmental science education. Journal of
Environmental Studies and Sciences 2(4):317-323
Robinson, S., Raynal, D.J. and R.W. Kimmerer 2010. A 23 year assessment of vegetation composition and change in the Adirondack alpine zone, New York State. Rhodora 112: 43-51.
Muir, P.S., T.R. Rambo, R.W. Kimmerer, D.B. Keon. 2006 Influence of overstory removal on growth of epiphytic mosses and lichens in western Oregon. Ecological Applications Vol. 16 (3):1207-1221.
Kimmerer, R.W. 2005 The role of dispersal limitation in community structure of bryophytes colonizing treefall mounds. The Bryologist 108(3):391-401.
Shebitz ,D.J. and R.W. Kimmerer 2005. Re-establishing roots of a Mohawk community and restoring a culturally significant plant. Restoration Ecology 13(2):256-263
McGee, G.G. and Kimmerer, R.W. 2004 Environmental variation with maturing Acer saccharum bark does not influence epiphytic bryophyte growth in Adirondack northern hardwood forests: evidence from transplants. The Bryologist 107:302-311
Shebitz, D.J. and Kimmerer, R.W. 2004 Population trends and habitat characteristics of sweetgrass, Hierochloe odorata: Integration of traditional and scientific ecological knowledge . Journal of Ethnobiology. 24 (1):345-352
Kimmerer, R.W. 2002. Weaving traditional ecological knowledge into
biological education: a call to action. BioScience 52:432-438.
McGee, G.G. and Kimmerer, R.W. 2002. Forest age and management effects on epiphytic bryophyte communities in Adirondack northern
hardwood forests. NY, USA. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 32: 1562-1576.
DeLach, A.B. and R.W. Kimmerer 2002. Bryophyte facilitation of vegetation establishment on iron mine tailings in the Adirondack
Mountains . The Bryologist 105:249-255.
Balunas,M.J. and Kimmerer R.W. 2002 The restoration potential of goldthread, an Iroquois medicinal plant. Ecological Restoration 20:59-60.
Kimmerer, R.W. 2003. The role of dispersal limitation in bryophyte communities colonizing treefall mounds in northern hardwood forests. Submitted to The Bryologist
Kimmerer, R.W. and F.K. Lake 2001. Maintaining the Mosaic: The role of indigenous burning in land management. Journal of Forestry 99: 36-41.
Faust, B., C. Kyrou, K. Ettenger, A. Drew, R. Kimmerer, N. Richards, B. Nordenstam, J. Ransom and R. Smardon 2001. Human ecology Literacy: The role of traditional indigenous and scientific knowledge in community environmental work. Occasional Paper No. 16. Randolph G. Pack Environmental Institute. SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
Kimmerer, R.W. and M.J.L. Driscoll 2001. Moss species richness on insular boulder habitats: the effect of area, isolation and microsite
diversity. The Bryologist 103(4):748-756
Kimmerer, R. W. 2000. Native Knowledge for Native Ecosystems.
Journal of Forestry. 98(8):4-9
Kimmerer, R.W. 1998. Intellectual Diversity: bringing the Native
perspective into Natural Resources Education. Winds of Change.
Summer. 14-18.
Kimmerer, R.W. and C.C. Young (1996) Effect of gap size and
regeneration niche on species coexistence in bryophyte communities.
Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 123:16-24.
Kimmerer, R.W. and C.C. Young (1995) The role of slugs in dispersal of the asexual propagules of Dicranum flagellare. The Bryologist 98:149-153.
Kimmerer, R.W. (1994) Ecological Consequences of Sexual vs. Asexual
reproduction in Dicranum flagellare. The Bryologist 97:20-25.
Kimmerer, R.W. 1993. Disturbance and Dominance in Tetraphis
pellucida: a model of disturbance frequency and reproductive mode.
The Bryologist 96(1)73-79.
Kimmerer, R.W. (1991) Reproductive Ecology of Tetraphis pellucida:
Differential fitness of sexual and asexual propagules.
The Bryologist 94(3):284-288.
Kimmerer, R.W. (1991) Reproductive Ecology of Tetraphis pellucida:
Population density and reproductive mode.
The Bryologist 94(3):255-260.
Kimmerer, R.W. (1989) Environmental Determinants of Spatial Pattern
in the Vegetation of Abandoned Lead-Zinc Mines.
American Midland Naturalist. 121:134-143.
Kimmerer, R.W. (1984) Vegetation Development on a Dated Series of
Abandoned Lead-Zinc Mines in Southwestern Wisconsin.
American Midland Naturalist. 111:332-341.
Kimmerer, R.W. (1982) A Quantitative Analysis of the Flora of Abandoned Lead-Zinc Mines in Southwestern Wisconsin.
The Michigan Botanist. 21:185-193.
Kimmerer, R.W. and T.F.H. Allen (1982) The Role of Disturbance in the Pattern of Riparian Bryophyte Community.
American Midland Naturalist 107:37
Kimmerer, R.W. (1981) Natural Revegetation of Abandoned Lead and Zinc Mines.
Restoration and Management Notes, 1:20.
You are making my point for me. There is nothing note worthy about an African American woman with LGBT family choosing to become, or acting as, a scientist. Why, then, did the author feel compelled to include those biographical facts? If they are important, then why not make reference to the race of every scientist mentioned along with the sexual orientation of their respective families? The mere mention of those facts is gratuitous at best. At worst, they speak to the type of tokenism that has become all to frequent in the writings of those who want to be perceived in a particular fashion .
March for Science or March for Realty?
A wall won’t modernize antiquated immigration laws; blessing wealthy families and their corporate fiefdoms with more tax cuts won’t create jobs or repair neglected infrastructure; shoveling more money into the dark abyss known as the Department of Defense won’t stop climate change or give refugees refuge; anointing churches as arbiters of morality and bankers as honest accountants won’t diminish the corruption that saps the strength of the nation.
These aren’t solutions.
These are palliatives designed to distract from the ongoing theft of the common good. With sufficient political narcotics, the pain and the disease concentrate among the poorest. Toxic water in Flint? Sip Perrier at the Ford Motor Company board meetings or watch — sedated and drooling — as Survivors fight against exile. Bridges falling down? Call your chauffeur or watch while America brings justice to the citizens of Korea by killing them (or letting them die.) Homelessness? Get some exercise playing golf at Mara del Lago or find some Muslims to blame for your pain.
Science might as well be astrology or voodoo for all the effect it will have on national policy.
The people doing this know exactly what they’re doing.
Your march for science is a way of avoiding the reality of our dying world. Does anyone — anyone anywhere — truly think that the Trump administration and the Republican legislatures and courts are simply misinformed?
Thieves such as these don’t need an education, they need their heads chopped off.
This is all fine and good. But we know politicians have politicized and hijacked science for its own agenda. Why was California legislator Richard Pan marching with the scientists? He’s a pediatrician by trade. What is on his agenda plate? By scientists allowing pols to join them, it weakens their argument and muddies the message.
Medicine is not science?
Wake up intercept! We need jobs and prosperity. 8 years of failed alternative energy, think salindra and the failed wind turbines, obomo admin war on coal and basic prosperity has left America with a gaping deficit and no hope on the horizon, til Trump.
He’s pushed back on the deep state bureaucracy/invironazis squarraled away in DC sucking tax dollars and doing nothing for the common man! The EPA should return power back to the states and shut the green lobby down! MAGA!
“8 years of failed alternative energy, think salindra and the failed wind turbines…”
1) Jan, 2017: Renewable Energy Creates jobs 12 times than the rest of the US economy. Sustainability represents 4 to 4.5 million jobs. Average wages for energy efficient jobs are 5,000 higher than the national median. ( Environmental Defense Fund, Meister Consultant Group, 2017)
2) “solar employment accounts for the largest share of workers in the Electric Power Generation sector. This is largely due to the construction related to the significant buildout of new solar generation capacity. Solar technologies, both photovoltaic and concentrating, employ almost 374,000 workers, or 43 percent of the Electric Power Generation workforce” (US Energy and Employment Report, Jan 2017, page 26)
3) “The solar industry added 35,000 jobs in 2015, up 20% from the previous year, according to the Solar Foundation, a nonprofit in Washington D.C.. The group is not funded by solar companies.” CNN, Jan 12, 2016
4) “The Energy Department’s loan-guarantee program, enacted in 2005 with bipartisan support, has backed nearly $38 billion in loans for 40 projects around the country. Solyndra represents just 1.3 percent of that portfolio — and, as yet, IT’S THE ONLY LOAN THAT HAS SOURED. Other solar beneficiaries, such as SunPower and First Solar, are still going strong.” (Washington, September 2011)
Now explain to us how the creation of more jobs is a “failure “.
And what, pray tell, are your children going to do when they don’t have clean air to breathe, clean, fresh water to drink, or nourishing food to eat when the planet is too poisoned to even support life? Even in an underground bunker water and food eventually will run out and if the planet can’t grow food you and your’s will perish.
“And what, pray tell, are your children going to do when they don’t have clean air to breathe, clean, fresh water to drink, or nourishing food to eat when the planet is too poisoned to even support life?”
none of these are a problem for the human/cockroach hybrid
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
Al Einstein
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
TJ
“Science” gave us 30,000 genocidal atomic bombs aimed at population centers. But scientists are so incredibly moral, ya know. Unlike the rest of us.
BTW, that atomic orbit emblem has been debunked as thoroughly unscientific.
Science did not construct those weapons, the taxpayer funded massive military industrial did, enabled by fear mongers in positions of power.
But it invented those weapons. Science is far from being innocent, as much as you would like to believe otherwise. There are evil sciences and evil scientists, just like there are evil lawyers and good lawyers.
Because human science is so powerful, it should be very restrained in what it does. Humans have not done this because their intellect is out of control and they have not developed any substantial amount of wisdom to control it.
Science functions to determine what is, not what ought to be. Those making ought determinations are not scientists (or if they are, they are not functioning as such when making moral decisions), they may simply use the fruits of science.
I say without science humans would all be living ( a lot less of us ) in harmony with nature. But with science humans have started to manipulate nature and climate change is a way for nature to fight back. Climate change is a good thing for this planet !
Without science (that is, without an intellectual method for increasing knowledge)) humans would find other ways to get out of “harmony with nature”. It did not take science to invent metal weapons and then train armies to slaughter millions.
In harmony with nature does not mean that humans would live in peace with each other.
As far as basic knowledge of metallurgy to make simple weapons, is part of sciencific advance….
I repeat: climate change is a good thing for this planet.
Science uses data and logic to construct various levels of underlying models which are used to guide technological advances for good or evil. I think the early use of metal does not qualify as part of that process. It was more of a craft.
You are unqualified to say what is good for the planet.
Of course …only scientists are qualified to say what is good for the planet.
They are the ones who brought us so far, and they are the ones who will save us.
They just need to be financed by us.
I did not say that scientists are so qualified; you are the one that implied that you are. Deniers are saying that the science is wrong; scientists are saying that it is correct. Your position that AGW is good is the outlier here.
As far as Earth’s concerned the sooner the invasive species known as humans over run their resources and become extinct, the better.
Yes , let us thank science for the selfdestruction of our own species and killing lots of others on our way down.
It is not science to dig coal and pump oil from the ground and burn them. What the hell are you talking about?
An absurd notion. Science is first of all a uniquely human activity; without science we would be less than human. Second, science includes no principles other than the quest for knowledge; how it is put to use is in the realm of politics. History is full of examples of politicians perverting science for their own purposes, and yet you choose to ignore that and blame science itself for all the world’s ills. The fundamental problem is that humans, especially in the west, have embraced a religious philosophy which promotes overpopulation and exploitation of nature instead of taking the scientific viewpoint in which we are a part of nature. We would be far better off without the Abrahamic religions than without science.
So what you say is that science is a human activity. That humans embrace religious philosophy. Therefore science is perverted by humans. Conclusion : science in the hands of humans will inevitably lead to autodestruction of the human race !
“[S]cience includes no principles other than the quest for knowledge.”
That’s as dumb as saying, “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” Everything we do is based on some desire. Pursuing chemistry, for example, is based on the desire to manipulate chemicals. Some sciences are just plain evil, no two ways about it.
Your highly anthropocentric rant means that you don’t understand the perspective of Voice from Europe or me, because you put humans on a pedestal above all other species, which BTW there is no scientific evidence to support, not to mention that it’s totally immoral.
AGW is not “a good thing for this planet.” Human-caused climate change, as opposed to natural climate change, is extremely fast and will cause massive extinctions that have already begun. Additionally, unnatural and massive human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing ocean acidification, which might be worse than climate change.
Getting rid of humans would be good for the planet if they were magically plucked into space or something similar. But climate change is not nature fighting back, it’s the Earth suffering from the humanpox the way your body suffers from a disease. Climate change could kill life on Earth for all we know by turning it into Venus once the feedback loop kicks in.
Powerful report and statements by the scientists, thank you. Pure class, boy sure makes the Trumpistas look like a bunch of white trash.
Everybody is acting as if Trump’s environmental policies are shocking. Candidate Trump presented his views on climate change many times. If those views were so alarming then those who are marching and complaining should have ensured he did not get elected. There was even a Green Party candidate in the election.
The people marching now were not quiet before the election. Are you saying scientists should have staged a coup? Not the kind of power play they are accustomed to.
“Are you saying scientists should have staged a coup?”
No. But those people knew the danger of Trump, but they either disregarded it or under estimated it. They should have been marching before the election.
Everyone — including the heads of Team Clinton — was certain Hillary Clinton was going to win. Everyone.
But the Democrats, and especially the Clinton campaign, so fucked things up, that they managed to lose to to a depraved reality TV host. That’s on them.
The Democrats gave us Donald Trump. First and foremost, by nominating a candidate widely and properly despised.
“The Democrats gave us Donald Trump. First and foremost, by nominating a candidate widely and properly despised.”
That is quite a stupid statement. Democrats cannot give you an elected president if they didn’t vote for him. If you chose not to vote knowing the consequences of your actions, then you can only blame yourself. I am not interested in your personal hate of HC. She was not the only candidates in the election. ONLY ONE candidate clearly expressed his disdain for pro environment regulations and investments. It was not a secret. Those people knew what to do to prevent him from getting elected. Now, you are blaming Hillary Clinton??? Again, she was not the only candidate.
Says the guy who just declared: “If those views were so alarming then those who are marching and complaining should have ensured he did not get elected.”
So, those marching for science could have, by themselves, kept Donald Trump out of office, but Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have no responsibility for the election of Trump.
Nope, the Democrats themselves are directly responsible. Greenwald in February of 2016: With Donald Trump Looming, Should Dems Take a Huge Electability Gamble by Nominating Hillary Clinton?
Stupid wankers insisted on Hilary ANYWAY. And as a result, we have POTUS Trump.
“So, those marching for science could have, by themselves, kept Donald Trump out of office”
NO.
“Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have no responsibility for the election of Trump.”
ABSOLUTELY NOT. Candidate HC, JS, and GJ presented their policies to the people. ADULT voters decided to vote for them, not to vote for them or not to vote at all. The people who voted for Trump are responsible for the election of Trump. Not the people who voted for JS or HC.
Again, I am not interested in your personal hate of HC. If you were so concerned about Trump then you should have picked JS or GJ. If no candidates met your criteria and you decided to stay home, then that was your choice. Whining about HC will not change anything about the environment. Trump already reduced funds for EPA and is dismantling core regulations. He is doing exactly what he promised.
And just by the way, a new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows more American adults perceived the Democrats as “out of touch with the concerns of most people” than Republicans are. The fault for that lies squarely with the Democratic Party and its out-of-touch positions and establishment officials.
“The fault for that lies squarely with the Democratic Party and its out-of-touch positions and establishment officials.”
The Democratic Party, the Green Party or any other party are responsible for what voters think about that specific party. The DC, the GP are not responsible for voters who decide to vote for the Republican Party.
I admire your tenacity. Just like the science march, some people can be shown — clearly and without rancor — why they are wrong. Still they will repeat their ignorance.
The people responsible for Trump’s election are the people who voted for Trump.
The people LEAST responsible for Trump’s election are the people who voted for Clinton.
That’s how voting works.
-Mona- doesn’t display stupidity. She shows a pathological inability to accept reality.
I find this a waste of time. (If anyone wants to really waste their time, they should count the number of references to Clinton and Trump since November 9. I suspect it will be a 10:1 ratio. At least.)
It’s like talking to climate change deniers. They can see the icecaps melting but will continue to crochet some sort of dispute.
You might as well try to teach your dog how to knit.
Which includes quite a few registered Democrats, who crossed over for Trump out of disgust with the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton — that crossing over happened in, e.g., Ohio. Because the fundamental fault lies with Democrats and what they’ve become — it’s their job to make themselves attractive to voters, and they’ve massively failed.
Whistling past this graveyard — or lashing out at me and others of us pointing out the reality of pervasive disdain for what the Democrats now are — will not fix what caused the election of Donald Trump.
As I’ve reminded you many times, Democratic partisan Matt Yglesias himself accurately describes the Democratic Party as a “smoking pile of rubble” at all levels — federal, state and municipal. Whose fault is that?
That is really the point when it comes to TI. I don’t understand why those who spent the run up to the election declaring that HRC was a warmonger who would certainly get us into WWIII with Russia and were clearly preferring anyone but HER are now whining that she lost because the democrats ran a bad campaign. You got it exactly right:
“The people LEAST responsible for Trump’s election are the people who voted for Clinton.”
Me and any number of others. Like those “whining” Democrats in key states like Ohio: Democrats are still ignoring the people who could have helped them defeat Trump, Ohio party leaders say
Look at that! Mr. Betras and Mr. Gentile, whining, whining, whining. Why, they and I, we just can’t stop whining that Democrats like Milton need to get a clue.
Whine, whine, whine.
(P.S. Hillary Clinton *is* a warmonger who very well could have started WWIII. That Donald Trump may well also do so doesn’t alter the Democrats’ massive failure at every level — federal, state and municipal.)
Mona if you could push a button and change the election outcome making HRC president would you push it?
The commenter Mona has a history of avoiding questions that suggest she is interested in objective analysis.
“Look at that! Mr. Betras and Mr. Gentile, whining, whining, whining. Why, they and I, we just can’t stop whining that Democrats like Milton need to get a clue.”
Millions of Democrats can exercise their freedom of expression to whine as much as they want. Trump was elected. That means grown men and women went out and voted for him. They elected him. They are responsible for electing him. HC, JS, GJ are not responsible for those voters who made their choice.
Are Mssrs. Betras and Gentile, of Ohio, also “reading the same talking points as Republicans?”
Are these GOP talking points why Democrats are a smoking pile of rubble at all levels?
“I fully expect the nutcase in the White House to use nukes. ”
You mean Obama. May, 2015 Yemen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsS_TGFjAXA
That nutcase.
So now you have the Kenyan Muslim Socialist and Black Hitler dropping neutron bombs on something somewhere while missing the city?
Do you people ever stop?
1. It wasn’t a radioactive bomb(s) or else there would be radiation poisoning.
2. Bombs going off on Youtube is about as common as Mentos rockets. What makes you think the big explosion was a neutron bomb?
3. How do you know “Obama” was responsible?
4. The point of blowing things up is blowing things up. Yet this video shows explosions NOT blowing things up. What’s with that?
5. The smart phone camera work suggests to me the guy aiming the camera was ready for the explosions.
6. Like the old Strangelove question — what’s the point of doomsday device if you don’t tell anyone? Why drop a neutron bomb in the middle of nowhere and not tell anyone?
7. Youtube videos aren’t known for reliability.
8. Who is “World Conflict Films”?
9. I’d think you were joking if not for all the sciency shit that proves an implosion.
10. Is there a difference between being mistaken and lying when you have no respect for truth?
Do you have any video on Planet X? I understand it should arrive any day.
Yes Dems can and did when somewhere between 8 and 12 million DemocRATs crossed over in primaries to vote for Trump, the only candidate Hillary could possibly beat.
Unfortunately for Hillary she actually was that bad a candidate.
This is precisely how it went down. It really is that simple. I cannot fathom how many of my Democrat friends still fail to grasp this simple concept. I have abandoned some long term friendships over this matter. That Trump is such a despicable character blinds their reason why Clinton lost. It is not Comey. It is not the Russians. It is not Bernie bros. It is NONE OF THAT.
For the last time, this is exclusively on the DNC and the Clinton campaign.
Not only all that, but these prats would not have let the specter of POTUS Trump stop them from opposing Bernie, had he been the nominee. The evidence is strong that neolibs would have rushed to a Bloomberg third-party candidacy, and there would have been none of this “party unity” blather.
Neoliberal Labour scum in the UK are the same. They’d rather Tories win than Jeremy Corbyn.
I did vote green, not that it mattered but my conscience is clear. Science only states facts of reality. It can’t grow a sense of moral conscience or ethics in leaders that have neither; that’s where science fails because a large portion of people are ignorant or in denial of reality.
“I did vote green, not that it mattered but my conscience is clear.”
Exactly. You had at least four choices and you picked one of them. All that BS about HC is non sense. A voter should know the consequences of voting of individual X or of staying home.
The left now gets more than it bargained for after years of PC-influenced science:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/opinion/my-daughter-is-not-transgender-shes-a-tomboy.html?_r=0
Why are you posting non sequiturs? I can post some as well.
Shall we discuss you theories on Satanic influence? How about discussing your guru, Alex Jones, and how that slug wants privacy regarding his custody battle for his kids, after the depraved way he and his ilk harassed the parents of dead children from the Sandy Hook shooting, claiming the parents were “crisis actors,” & etc?
Karma’s a bitch for Alex right now.
Nobody died at Sandy Hook. Nobody even attended Sandy Hook in 2012, it was an abandoned school.
That’s disgusting, and a perfect example of why your deranged, irrational, infowars mentality is not harmless silliness; it’s pernicious and can be evil.
Nobody died at Sandy Hook. Nobody even attended Sandy Hook in 2012, it was an abandoned school.
What a coincidence that everything you don’t like seems to be what “the left” does. I suppose it’s all simpler that way. I’ve even seen you describe Bush and Cheney as leftists, and Hitler, too (please don’t explain why again).
I bet when you were a kid you were convinced Brussel sprouts were Bolshevik.
This is so goddam frustrating. Twice I’ve tried to post replies to Mr. “They’re-all-Bolsheviks,” and of course it can only be read in “Latest.”
If it’s any consolation, I read the post! It made me curious about (and look into) what has happened with Jones, so thanks for the info. I appear to be unscathed by the drunken monkey so far, but perhaps I shouldn’t tempt fate (she said unscientifically).
Oh – spoke too soon, my response to @pretzelattack below was censored (for being too utterly brilliant for real time consumption, I am going to presume).
Jones has all kinds of trouble these days. After all his ranting about Democrats running a pedophile ring out of a DC pizzeria, he was compelled to retract and apologize — otherwise the owner of that joint was gonna sue him and Alex has plenty of assets to take. (A lawsuit against Jones would almost certainly have been successful.)
So, Pizzagate has been repudiated by the head crazy man hisself.
Pizzagate was what many of his fans wanted, which is pretty sad and shameful. As if the DNC emails didn’t reveal enough to puke over already!
It seems so transparently hypocritical that the ostensibly “America-first” Infowars has ignored all Trump’s intense pro-Zionism, and how Alex Jones can claim to support Ron Paul AND Trump is pretty crazy to my mind. Jones did some great work (interviewing the non-partisan Bev Harris) showing how the voting machines are easily rigged by the establishment, and his sudden excuses for Trump’s win after the election were embarrassing to watch.
I think some of Infowars viewers are less in the mood than the outlet itself to forgive the current administration’s obvious corporatism, militarism and imperialism – but obviously at the same time many viewers are also just ultraconservative macho nationalists who don’t really think anything through, just constantly reverting to blaming what they perceive as ‘liberalism’ for all social and political ills, and Jones is in my opinion a carnival barker capitalizing on this most of the time even if he’s done some neat stuff occasionally to expose crony capitalism, corruption and warmongering.
Well, perhaps you shouldn’t, but scientifically it’s too late now ‘chile … just don’t let the drunken monkey* drive your El Dorado (a type of Cadillac) when he comes to town!
Non sequitur. Next
March for Science rallies draw huge crowds around US
More from that article:
Because the Democrats have been so uninfluenced by corporate interests! It isn’t as if Hilary Clinton spread fracking throughout the world with Obama’s blessing, oh wait… This infighting duopoly-puppet show ought not to be the baseline for being pro-science, as the entire American culture needs to be excited by possibility and invention, not falling into a divide of complainers and deniers. In my opinion this making it about Trump (and the article points out it did become this, really) is hypocritical and unproductive, to exploit this dynamic for what ultimately becomes a political squabble that never lets cultural advance and enthusiasm take hold and give promise to the future.
One voice is begging corporations and government to “help,” and another voice is saying it isn’t necessary. Both miss the point that without a united goal (not around neoliberalism, for God’s sake, but around the scintillating beacon of dauntless American progress) the culture can not rake real steps to amend, but will just continue bickering while bipartisan corporatism persists in its dangerous planetary looting.
Yeah, I read the Democratic hacks in that piece, and was singularly unimpressed.
More than one establishment Dem has expressed alarm about all this activism, people getting out into the streets. They’re concerned this will cause “radicalizing” of Democratic voters and thus of the party.
One can only hope.
If it radicalizes voters to actually resist neoliberalism as well as Trump, it would be fabulous!
“To exploit this dynamic for what ultimately becomes a political squabble that never lets cultural advance and enthusiasm take hold and give promise to the future.”
Bingo, Maisie you have the distillation of the issue. America used to be a Nation of innovators and actions, stewards of the future to achieve new frontiers and improve ourselves and inspire the World. Global warming is a big question and problem; however if someone built a reasonable priced zero-house to a good national standard it would not pass many local building codes, big contractors have big lobbies. We legislate to stop progress, the new America.
A peer of Captain Kangaroo takes a few thousand attention-seeking, average, nerd wannabees to Washington to protest being ignored.
The super-rich who give a damn need to fund scientific SOLUTIONS, and scientists need to volunteer to work together to massively accelerate progress in alternative energy source production (and other life-saving measures), because at the moment all rich people seem to be selfish bastards (or charitable ineffectuals), and all scientists seem to be doing is complaining unproductively (or quietly working directly for corporations who make matters worse).
The moonshot was ‘impossible.’ So is solving the current problems. Money and science can do it, if there’s the will. I don’t see the will, yet. I see mostly loudmouthed deniers and complainers, and both are pretty damn useless ultimately.
Kennedy may have been a jerk in many ways, but he inspired solution-orientation in a widespread visionary way, and that can-do (not whine-whine) American spirit (to use the term advisedly) that makes the 1960s seem to stand out historically for many reasons needs to return.
the solution is to get off fossil fuels. it is not “complaining” to point that out. that’s the scientific solution. the politicians need to listen to this, or get impeached or removed. this is a political and economic crisis, not a scientific one, and all scientists can do in the context of this larger crisis is continue doing the science, doing what they can to protect the results, and speaking out.
Power is entrenched to resist this in the array of policymakers to which the scientists are appealing, and to my knowledge incumbents are not being removed for such corporatism.
What you are saying is what has been tried for weary years and evidently found wanting in productive terms, and I personally think it is indeed functionally just ‘complaining.’ Science (if I may give it an anthropomorphic voice) used to say the impossible is only an invention away, pointing out that ‘man can’t fly’ was busted wide open, that radio waves would meet no resistance from the air, and so forth – but now all we hear is what can’t be done, while this political bickering between theatrical (and equally corporatist) left-and-right over climate change seems suspiciously to make united progress and inspiration impossible in ways it never was before.
If you think things like this are “all scientists can do,” I can only wonder what happened to the American spirit of my predecessors, and what happened to having such a strong vision that it compels society as a whole to embrace it beyond the conveniently binding parameters of liberal and conservative.
A bunch of self-indulgent flakes on the middle of the bell curve, who wear their identities on their sleeves.
Every progressive leftist’s favorite planetarium director-astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, confuses gene editing with cross-breeding:
_”Neil deGrasse Tyson To GMO Critics: ‘Chill Out’“_
“We have systematically genetically modified all the foods, the vegetables and animals, that we have eaten ever since we cultivated them. It’s called ‘artificial selection.’ That’s how we genetically modify them. So now that we can do it in a lab, all of a sudden you’re going to complain?”
http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-degrasse-tyson-believes-in-gmos-2014-7?op=1
These are essentially the same processes. Directly changing one or two genes should theoretically be less risky than randomly combining many through cross-breeding.
You also should consider genetic defects in humans (and other animals). If we advance sufficiently in these processes to ‘edit out’ illness then that’s a very useful tool.
It is important to have oversight of what is being done, of course. This is why you don’t want to deter science in countries with relatively strong governance (agencies such as the FDA, strong legal systems) — it will then be left to despotic regimes and corporations willing to set up shop in such places.
They’re in no way the same processes. Cross breeding gives you brocolli and beagles. Gene editing is violent, blind, hit or miss molecular scale rearrangement, and gives you something out of The Fly.
Cross breeding is the mating of two fertile same-species. Gene editing is violently rearranging the genes of any species into any other.
That statement is twisted, inverted, and betrays either your ignorance or a deliberate attempt to misinform. Like-species breeding is not a “random” mating. By contrast insertion or deletion of genes by definition changes the definition of a naturally occurring species.
You don’t understand how speciation works, or genetics. There is no functional difference between scientists altering a gene or a random mutation altering a gene. The difference is in intent rather than a random process, and obviously the selection that then occurs is also controlled by the scientists.
Humans produced dairy cows and bananas by different selective breeding and cloning processes. There is no functional difference between altering genes directly or the older trial-and-error processes used intentionally for thousands of years.
Amusingly, your failure to understand this has you parroting what the ‘lefty liberals’ in Greenpeace and such assert.
Speciation and cross breeding isn’t violently gene-gunning spider genes into goat cells, or fish genes into tomatoes.
Genes aren’t specific to an organism. This is why we have bits of viruses and other junk DNA scattered all over the place. Living organisms aren’t designed, with bespoke genes that only work in a particular organism — which is why evolution can operate in the first place.
Your view is amusingly pre-science — ‘Biblical’ in the sense that fundamentalists use. Yet another group of fellow travellers for the modern Luddite. (Also highly selective, like the fundies, as you’re still posting here.)
Jerome, there is no such thing as “junk DNA.” Your not understanding its nature doesn’t make it junk.
That bit of hubris also came about a few years before it was discovered that wrapping the molecules in folds has that so-called “junk” fitting neatly adjacent to other genes.
Species are corporeally defined by their genetic nature; their fertility maintains that differentiation. When you decide that you can do better by fusing together chimeras, you’re making a horrible mistake.
You really should stop posting and go look up what ‘junk DNA’ is.
Absolutely clueless.
You really should stop pretending we’re speaking of different ‘junk DNA.’
yes exactly. why should we limit ourselves to evolution “as it happens” when we can intervene for the better
this is thinking behind my idea for the human/cockroach hybrid … unlikely to occur naturally, this hardy hybrid would be a great fit for the future climate
We all put our pants on one leg at a time.
WRONG!!! This is the big lie that Monsanto, DuPont, and the other genetic engineering Nazis have promote. (That’s right, genetic engineering is Nazi science!) If you can’t tell the HUGE difference between breeding hybrids and injecting the genes of a species into a different species, you need to learn how to think.
I really don’t understand why the Intercept can’t fix their comments section. For God’s sake, if Truthdig can have a first-rate comments section (I’m talking about it’s functionality of course, not the posters there), why can’t the Intercept?
does this work
Our U.S. leadership is not wise enough nor do they really care to properly analyze the true peril we face relating to the environment, or why so much of the American middle class has found themselves now existing in or close to that of poverty, which makes it even harsher for the poorest as they have to share what little is available to the poor with so many more.
Our non-leadership lacks the ability and desire to study the key issues of our day because they are too focused on fundraising. They also have no vision that could lead to the betterment of the masses other than buying into “if we let the greediest become even more exorbitantly rich and powerful they will miraculously suddenly become most generous and show a reasonable concern for their fellow man. They would have us naively believe that perhaps the greedy filthy rich will no longer establish their tax avoidance foundations that enable them to hold up the value of their stocks, and from ever paying their fair share or giving back part of what they most often have extorted from the working class during their lifetimes. These foundations allow the rich to utilize the time value of money to establish a feudalistic society and use part of their “money tree” to be able to buy off politicians and judges in perpetuity.
Newly established laws and the repealing of those that protect the environment have just become ever increasingly immoral sources to feed the unquenchable greed of the nastiest people while simultaneously taking away the means and rights of the masses. These laws for the rich at the expense of the common people and our environment are not reported on for what they truly are, and are hardly even part of mainstream media coverage.
The educational system governed and administrated by the sycophants of the elite only serve to fortify and glorify the greediest and most power hungry as they rein upon their thrown of gluttony.
What is moving from a plutocratic to an oligarchic power force now controlling the U.S. would have us buy into their propaganda of “The Cornerstones of Individuality, Self-reliance, Meritocracy and Free Market”, which in actuality is a ploy to justify the likes of austerity being thrust upon our oppressed masses and the ending of environmental protection.”
Individuality via a 24/7 influx of media consumeristic indoctrination has become the doorway to selfishness and greed.
Promoting self-reliance only fosters separation from community and the likes of driving alone to work in order that one is subject to the inane indoctrination of talk radio hosts rather than possibly learning something of value from a fellow passenger while sharing a daily commute. It also makes sure we the people buy the likes of a lifetime of expensive tires and tanks full of gas rather than share the cost of an environmental friendly commute with fellow passengers on public transportation. Our educational system now circumvents the development of critical thinking making it far less likely for us to be in a position to comprehend how self-reliance at an extreme can be at the expense of community and sharing.
The concept of meritocracy is used to subtly brainwash the public into a visceral “greed is good mind frame” that has transformed the masses; into beings voraciously seeking to move up into the most powerful and wealthiest echelon of the one percent, which has resulted in developing the most selfish and backstabbing species our planet has ever seen.
Free Market belief indoctrination has enabled the greediest and power hungry to buy all three branches of federal and state governments so they can be the beneficiaries of endless corporate welfare, and free from regulation that enables them to legally steal whatever and from whomever, they choose.
These cornerstones of individuality, self-reliance, meritocracy and free market are often representative of selfishness, isolation, bullying and undue influence, and are most likely to have been set in hell with the purpose being to subject mankind to the ravages of greed, selfishness, the militarization that comes with blind patriotism, and the cost of being guided by the entity of short-term corporate profits at the expense of what is best for society, eventually even at the extreme detriment to our environment.
So-called “Climate scientists” couldn’t even place you into a broad time range of when California’s drought would be declared over. They never predicted the easterly “river” of precipitation that ended it.
If their models worked–which they never do–they would have had to anticipate that in the procedure of subsequent larger-scale forecasting.
You’re making the pretty basic mistake of conflating climate and weather forecasting — entirely different disciplines, with entirely different physics, models and considerations.
His political views dictate his position on anthropogenic climate change. There’s quite literally no evidence or consensus of relevant experts one could present to him that would counter his determination not to accept this particular piece of reality. He has a very extreme form of epistemic closure.
You’re making the basic mistake of not understanding the “atmospheric river” that ended California’s decade long official drought was not a mere rain shower but a large-scale climatological passage–that officially ended a declared, years-long drought attributed to Climate Change.
But you have no problem calling tornadoes in Indiana and Oklahoma ‘Climate Change.’
“…went to Monsanto and I spent a lot of time with the scientists there.” As a result, he added with a grin, “I have revised my outlook, and am very excited about telling the world. When you’re in love, you want to tell the world!” -Bill Nye
_”What Did Monsanto Show Bill Nye to Make Him Fall “in Love” With GMOs?“_
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2015/03/what-did-monsanto-show-bill-nye-make-him-stop-worrying-and-love-gmos
There is another side to this that stigira man touched on below. Of course the attack on science “that gets in the way of profit” is immoral BS, but as stigira man pointed out, there is much evil science. Science has brought us things like nukes, petrochemical pesticides, artificial fertilizer that is wreaking havoc by creating dead zones in water, genetic engineering, etc.
While sciences like wildlife & marine biology, ecology, theoretical physics, astronomy (to name some off the top of my head) are generally very positive and should generally be strongly supported, sciences like physics, chemistry, and genetic engineering are generally harmful and I for one would be happy to rid the world of them. Sciences that merely allow us to acquire knowledge are fine and good, and I support them. But sciences that allow humans to destroy or harm the natural world (always for the exclusive benefit of humans, BTW) are evil and should be banned. And yes, I’m typing this on a computer that is mainly used in my environmental law practice, but hopefully I do far more good than harm with this computer, and if we didn’t have this crap I certainly would oppose ever getting it.
Leave science out of morality, religion, ideology or politics. A noble goal. Or is it?
Read Russel-Einstein manifesto to understand fallacy of such a stand, A CLEAR CALL FROM EINSTEN TO POLITICIANS TO REJECT AND DEFUND NUCLEAR SCIENCE.
Einstein himself refused to work with a Nobel price winner Max Plank on new methods of delivery of chemical weapons of mass destruction during WWI.
Science is not benign and does not have any divine authority it is manmade and must be controlled by ethical consideration whatever they are, or it will be controlled by vested political interests like it is in case of climate change or military science or genetic/medical science.
Would you support science of eugenics or racism, you would not since while using scientific tools it is specific goal seeking, and not open to discovery that would contradict it.
We always should be careful and not push ourself in a dogmatic slumber.
To doubt is human and to err is human.
Good attitude, ears up, eyes open. so you ass does not suffer. Science is a tool and profession not a religion, no better than those that publish or practice it.
As I was saying science is a human endeavor embedded in the society, economy and politics and it has always been and it never had a value of absolute truth unlike religion or cult all those fanatics of POLITICS of global change seem to worship. And the real problem is that science of Global Change does not need fanatics on any side of the issue but rational thinkers.
However, not particularity in the case of global climatic change but in general there is a reason to be worried about science in the US and elsewhere.
US science is metaphorically and in many cases literally dying endangered for many decades already starting from destroying NSF and NASA budgets some twenty years ago by Clinton and carnage to scientific communities that followed.
And the real danger facing science especially now is abhorrent corporatism, political opportunism and Wall Street greed that all but destroyed quite solid foundations of US scientific community developed during cold war years.
By now, major universities in the US and all Ivy League became nothing but a corporate outfits pushing good old American mediocrity, anti-intellectualism and their institutions already fell out from the era of enlightenment back onto old scholastic revelation based shallow behaviorist’s understanding of reality of the world in quasi religious terms of ideology of inherent goodness of global capital and that absolute scientific truths are determined by capital markets.In academia almost no economists dare to speak against capital markets or market makers and shakers and those who do are treated as blasphemers and their tenures cut short, the same is in medicine and pharma and biotechnology.
Scientific dogmatism [aligned with corporate profit] reigns supreme, argument of power and money prevails over a power of rational argument, which has been eradicated from scientific discourse decades ago. Aristotle system of syllogisms that gave us modern scientific foundation has been perverted back into a Sophistry of proving anything for money which is clearly seen in a global change debate.
As I wrote: to doubt is human and to err is human. Only to forgive is divine.
Scientific dogmatism [aligned with corporate profit] reigns supreme, argument of power and money prevails over a power of rational argument, which has been eradicated from scientific discourse decades ago. Aristotle system of syllogisms that gave us modern scientific foundation has been perverted back into a Sophistry of proving anything for money which is clearly seen in a global change debate.
Yes, in my field immunopharmacology many new ideas are pushed aside for “me to” drugs or break trough drugs are overpriced with IP or regulatory protection to the point of preventing drug synergy experiments that could get us out of the decades old rut of curing only about 7% of metastatic major cancers. Slowly things are changing but only when the efficacy to profit line of drug synergy became clear. We should and could have moved much faster to save many lives. I have had scientist tell me how immunotherapy is new when I have been in the field for forty years and the key concepts were long in place when I joined the war on cancer.
Thanks for your comment. Money entered and paralyzed scientific developments in many field and as you point out medical filed is highly infected with vested interests and greed.
Here is an excerpt from my other comment discussing Medicare for All relevant here:
“Pushing for healthy immune system capable to handle most of the common diseases is not some crazy anti-medicine ploy, since the modern medicine has it role but this role has been abused for money destroying many of its benefit to the people in medical need.
In fact, the long known in the alternative medicine circles and Chinese medicine, importance of restoration and boosting of individual healthy immune system before cancer is even treated is a hot topic right now in the government and corporate cancer research field, where researchers now are focusing on the assisting, empowering the immune system in killing the cancer cells by itself.”
As you pointed out such facts were well know for decades and nothing much was done since there was no money in it.
Totally agree, I published an article on this of course it was in a Chinese medical journal.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1726490116301848
Perhaps -Mona- might tell us what aspect of mathematics she is claiming her link demonstrates.
She might paraphrase some of the material to demonstrate her understanding of the subject.
I could link to a page about computer programming but that doesn’t demonstrate my knowledge of programming languages.
Mona has demonstrated her grasp and I use that term ever so lightly.
Programming languages are implemented using numbers; binary in fact.
Great Lord! “Science and Scientists Are Now Under Attack” by Trump for trying to study his hair!
What they should actually do, even if as a symbolic [email protected] gesture, is come clear about their participation in MKUltra and do some soul searching about U.S. Academia being in bed big time with the Military Industrial Complex:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/bodies-of-evidence-psychologists-and-the-cia-torture-scandal
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/us/report-says-american-psychological-association-collaborated-on-torture-justification.html
Most “prestigious” North American and European Universities very actively participated in all of the MIC “research projects” from torture and psycho farma b#llsh!t to improvements of drones used to kills people in mass. Why is it that everybody talks about the NSA when USG goes about killing innocent children in mass and no one about U.S. Academia?
USG has been the #1 employer of psychology graduates and no, they don’t hire them as therapists for themselves, but for their MKUltra++, COINTELPRO++ total domination drive.
U.S. Universities have become snitching zespools: https://canarymission.org/
I find suspect that after the highly publicized divorce of APA from the CIA/FBI/USG and the clear statements about revoking licenses of those psychology graduates who help the government with their b#llsh!tting persecutory. “mind control” and torturing, not a single one has been found and his/her license revoked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psychological_Association
~
RCL
Bill Nye calling out lawmakers. While Bill Nye may be somewhat of a ‘celebrity’ among the scientific community, I have yet to find anything hyperbolic in his assertions.
http://www.salon.com/2017/04/22/bill-nye-and-scientists-from-around-the-world-speak-out-against-the-suppression-of-science/
Nov 28, 2016 Weather is NOT Climate!
No, weather is NOT climate…even when it’s warm outside. But in case there’s a climate cultist in your life that insists otherwise, here are some facts about global warming and vaguely-defined “extreme” weather that you can use to talk some sense into them.
https://youtu.be/sT4133vfTmk
February 13, 2017 Chemistry Expert: Carbon Dioxide Can’t Cause Global Warming
Scarcely a day goes by without us being warned of coastal inundation by rising seas due to global warming.
Why on earth do we attribute any heating of the oceans to carbon dioxide, when there is a far more obvious culprit, and when such a straightforward examination of the thermodynamics render it impossible.
Carbon dioxide, we are told, traps heat that has been irradiated by the oceans, and this warms the oceans and melts the polar ice caps. While this seems a plausible proposition at first glance, when one actually examines it closely a major flaw emerges.
http://principia-scientific.org/chemistry-expert-carbon-dioxide-cant-cause-global-warming/
For those readers and posters who are either dismayed, depressed or angered, either by the article itself, or some of the posters in the comments section… take heart and read this article below. You will feel much better I guarantee it whatever side of the various arguments you may lean towards.
https://fee.org/articles/18-spectacularly-wrong-prophecies-from-the-first-earth-day/
Feel no joy, some of the predictions are a bit dire/overstated; however, many may have just got the timeline wrong. No worries if we exceed the speed or population limits of Natural environmental protection it will not be a scientist pulling us over but one of the four horsemen.
The increasing levels of CO2 will lower the pH of the oceans enough to kill phytoplankton.
We already cannot just raise oysters in the ocean as their shells dissolve before they mature. They are grown in special controlled tanks and then placed in the ocean.
Phytoplankton provide most of the oxygen we breath. When they go we all go.
TRUMP: The protesters are paid. These marches are small.
Well, here’s Chicago today
What may social/economics play in the role between scientists and the rest of us non scientists in conjunction with their education?
What I think it means, just my humble opinion, opinions vary. Of Sharing and Humility in Science. Fred Cowan. Commentary, The Scientist, Sept. 28, 1998.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/19116/title/Of-Sharing-and-Humility-in-Science/
Thanks for the link …did you write this?
Yes, I wrote this and have fought in the war on cancer for forty years. Summary of work. https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S1726-4901(16)30184-8
Pundits have rightly said that Trump is the culmination of various forces. And some long trends for me. There has been in America an ongoing counter reaction to the ideals of the Enlightenment for some time now. And rationality and science sits enthroned are among the ideals that are attacked in American society. Look at the creationists. They have been winning the battle against the Enlightenment for some time now. Teachers have given up teaching evolution to avoid problems. Speaking of teachers, they are the true foot soldiers of the Enlightenment spreading such things like science, history near and far, mathematics, the scientific method. And everyday they are under assault by forces both liberal and conservative. We having gladly turned our schools in job factories where late night comedians make fun of college graduates who are clueless. We have high tech executives attacking American universities along with the public school hating right wingers to justify the importing of cheap and yes, poorly educated engineers. We have congressmen attacking fundamental research using good old boy common sense like not knowing that the foundation basis of the research.
I hope this protest isn’t just about Trump because then it will be failure because he is fruition of horrible shit, and not its cause.
Okay funnies, at least to me. People are surprised when I tell them that fundamentalists hate everything about dinosaurs and kids. Why? Dinosaurs are the gate way drug which introduces kids to evolution. Some hate Set Theory. Why? Miscreants talk about infinite sets, and only God can be infinite.
The problem with Scientists are that they too are often more willing dupes than they realize to the bidding of an extractive (rent based) oligarchy. Automated or Self Driving Cars are a perfect example where scientists labor happily and not always ignorantly, but in any case highly effectively for something that will change the very nature of society toward a centralized personal information driven extractive model. Cars will, by in large, be rented as needed and will be too expensive (on purpose) to be owned. To travel anywhere, one will effectively need to sign away all rights to personal information, ultimately, right down to their very DNA and it’s ownership which will be stated as a biometric identity necessity, or some such, but will come with oh so much more exploitative intent under the surface. This will not all happen at once, but will be entirely dependent on the tendency of scientists to be relatively unconcerned about the end uses of their research.
The very objectivity and discipline that makes science so powerful, will be used against society to legitimize a pathological controlling and profit driven model of social organization.
Like every other form of human conditioning, science has areas where knowledge based information is highly useful to society at large, such as the facts surrounding climate change being self evident in the promotion of seeking out new directions in energy usage. But there are other areas, such as the fact that we operate by an economic model of endless growth in a very finite world where science largely falls flat and worse, can be manipulated easily by those who seek profit for themselves rather than for society as a whole.
What’s part of the double standard in this? On the one hand, major corporations and billionaires who own them scream that climate change is a left wing hoax. But in secret, many of these companies are selling weather derivatives. Derivatives are a way to place a bet on literally anything you can imagine.
Will Trump be impeached?
Will we go to war with North Korea?
and many more
Sadly, these CEO’s know that climate change is real. But if they publically admit that, their career is over. Kind of like Colin Kapernick. He tells the truth and is now blackballed from the NFL.
Insurance companies and the Pentagon certainly believe in climate change. Bush the Younger was criticized when right wingers found out the Pentagon was studying how global climate changes will effect world conflicts, and how it should react. And I believe that insurance companies may be factoring in global warming into their rates.
From what I can tell, the super rich believe they can avoid the various catastrophes of the world by building elaborate fall shelters, and buying up land in New Zealand to watch while the world collapses.
oh i get it!
the GD climate deniers are another breed of wallstreet whores which wallstreet thieves figure on PRIVITISING THE CLIMATE so they can sell US our weather and rain and water and air..
or they can GTFO my planet.
tell it to someone who cares, like Al Gore, and when you do, be respectful, take off your tin foil hat
Probably Trump didnt have an ant farm or aquarium when he was little.
Under attack is not just science, but a broader philosophical understanding of our complex relationship to the world around us. Science breeds a sense of awe and humility. Study an ant farm and you will realize how fragile is the world the ants have created for themselves. Study an aquarium and you will understand the ocean and how pollution could destroy it.
But above all, an attack on science is an attack on truth. It doesnt surprise me that Trump has no interest in supporting science or scientists. He has no interest in the truth, period.
The good news is that science is due for a huge funding increase. Once Trump’s klutzy regime starts dancing with soul mate Kim Jung Il, there will be fallout and loads of exotic new bio-weapons flying every which way. I’m sure he and his fellow rich folks will be more than happy to hand over five trillion to make Pyongyang the most beautiful capital in the world, in exchange for vaccine, but there’s a hitch: since when did stuff developed by a military in secret ever really work reliably? I bet half the crap the North Koreans have spiked their population’s mandatory vaccinations with is absolutely foolproof on paper and about as effective as pure spring water when they let loose their engineered plagues. Hence the coming abrupt interest in science, or at least biomedical science.
I bet if we lost as little as 99.5% of the population, all of a sudden human beings would start being sort of valuable again. Not lamborghini valuable, but at least, enough that it doesn’t seem like a mystery that the military isn’t lining them up and shooting them yet. And think of the ecological benefits!
Generally good article and thoughtful commits that emphasize the importance of science and involvement of society in the process. Science is at some level a rough sport, come up with something new and expect very robust opposition. However, if the opposition has a political or financial grant or product axe to grind this should be part of the discussion.
Kudos to Sharon Learner for the article and especially to the photographer Matt Roth for seemingly capturing the very essence of some of the scientists involved. To slightly misquote Bonaparte… “A picture is worth a thousand words”
Scientists would be more popular if they weren’t such a bunch of unrelenting pessimists. There must be some species that will benefit from changes to the ecosystem – perhaps tapeworms – so why can’t the scientists focus on those positive aspects? I don’t want my taxes funding research just so a bunch of scientists can tell us we’re all doomed.
Scientists may be good at science, but they are lousy at marketing.
“Scientists may be good at science, but they are lousy at marketing.”
Those nits are lousey at marketing.
Perhaps a cockroach pie-chart would convey the idea of the hollow-leg effect from tapeworm without annoying text.
I think the reason that most are attacking the march has little to do with anyone mentioned in your article. It has more to do with the usual SJW causes that are latching onto the Science march. It should be about science period, and Trumps disregard for it.
The March has already deleted some silly tweets from their twitter feed.
@john anderson
Who was manifestly wrong. One. Scientist. Who. Was. Wrong. Scientific findings are never accepted by other scientists as even provisionally true based on one scientist’s unverified work or claims. And certainly not because Johnny Carson thinks that scientist is cool and promotes him.
When scientists get it wrong — including purposefully — who is it that usually shows that? Other scientists.
Uh, huh- and?
there’s a lot of grandstanding around climate change by scientists, some of them are utopians or something like that
but global warming could our “big break” in evolutionary biology … towards the development of a giant cockroach with human intelligence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-gJMs6DwuE
I decline to believe — without a very great deal of compelling evidence — that the 99% of relevant scientific experts are all “grandstanding.” That some do — as in virtually all human fields — is not remotely sufficient reason to doubt anthropogenic climate change.
The cockroach is a very old species, having survived may catastrophic events. If it has not developed intelligence by now, why would it in the future?
increasing levels of background radiation from nuclear waste will evolve the intelligent cockroach, i saw this on tv probably
Ergo it must be true. Even more so if in addition you read it on Twitter.
Humans are abandoning intelligent behavior, which means there’s a niche available for an intelligent species. Cockroaches have been waiting eons for this chance; they’ll jump on the opportunity.
Indeed, cockroaches must have great respect for the memory of dinosaurs. Otherwise, they would acted when the great reptilians went extinct, rather than let those pesky mammals take over.
Cockroaches must have great respect for the memory of dinosaurs. Otherwise the never would have allowed those pesky mammals to take over when the great reptilians went extinct.
already happened
wallstreet thieves, nyc cockroach brains
elected congress, kochroach brains
ceo’s who now charge extra to get beat on their airlines to qualify for an apology upgrade, flying cockroach brains
Let me defend cockroaches. They are perfectly fine without human types of intelligence. In fact, it is the evolution of human intelligence which which has been responsible for this currently extinction period we are in. As far as I know, human type of intelligence has never existed in any animal that we know of. And guess what, life has flourished for millions upon millions of years without it. Various species had no need of our levels of intelligence to be relatively successful. Last thing we need is talking roaches.
Paul Ehrlich’s idea that there are too many humans on our planet was not wrong; where he went wrong was that he myopically only considered humans (i.e., he foolishly predicted that we’d run out of food to feed everyone due to overpopulation). In fact, human overpopulation is a far bigger problem for other species than it currently is for humans, though that will change at some point. Ehrlich just didn’t consider that humans might find other ways to harmfully manipulate nature in order to temporarily produce even more food.
600 years???!!! That’s all Mr. Mann went back? 600 years is merely one very, very, very small drop in the bucket of the Earth’s life span to date. He should try developing a climate model based on hundreds of millions of years.
I think what he’ll find is that the Earth has gone through thousands of ‘climate changes.’ Why is this one anything new? I think if these scientists actually took into consideration the hundreds of millions of years of Earth’s existence, I’d think they’d be surprised to find what is happening now is nothing new. As we know, the Earth has changed immensely over hundreds of millions of years – from the continents all being joined together, to dinosaurs, to the extinction of dinosaurs, to ice ages, to thousands of active volcanoes, etc, etc. It is nothing new that animals become extinct (on this note, yes, I believe humans are speeding this process up in some cases, but eventually in maybe another million years, there won’t be tigers, lions, elephants, etc).
I think climate change is natural. However, can we do more to clean up pollution? Absolutely! But to threaten people with ‘climate change’ (once called global warming and before that, global cooling), is definitely playing to an agenda.
they’ve done ice core studies, which i think goes back hundreds of millions of years. for some reason the zombie forest fire argument keeps resurrecting and flailing about the countryside, terrorizing the citizens. yes climate changed before, when something caused it to. this time, we are the cause. climate change has been called climate change for a long, long time. there is no nefarious plot to change names. and there was never any kind of consensus on global cooling, which was always a minority position.
You think wrong.
Sorry. I sure need a preview function.
“This one” is occurring very quickly, and therefore has a specific special cause. And it is very clear what that cause is.
Actually, the article does not do justice to what has been done. Climate modeling in detail has been performed over very large time intervals, and we are confident that the current rate of increase in the greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere is unprecedented in geologic time.
There are many factors that result in oscillations or changes in the earth’s climate; the Milankovitch cycles for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles. Deniers also tend to discount climate changes occurring as a result of the earth’s evolution as a planet, or attribute events that resulted from cosmic cataclysms (the extinction of the dinosaurs that you mentioned, which resulted from a large meteor impact just off the coast of the present-epoch Yucatan Peninsula) to some mysterious ice age; the ice age in that particular case was caused by the huge debris cloud thrown up from the impact event.
It is naive to the extent of foolishness to believe that carbon sequestered over hundreds of millions of years by nature, then released into the atmosphere over a period of time one millionth that long by humans, would not have an effect on the climate. Even an open minded fifth grader could make that connection.
Hey woody, if it is “natural”, why is the temperature rising so fast now?
Re: “why is the temperature rising so fast now?”
Spring??
It’s unlike any natural climate change in its speed. The rate of temperature change is what you might see after a catastrophic geological event.
Reply to all…
Also in terms of climate change, we only think about things that may cause it here on Earth. I see no talk about what actually fuels our climate. The Sun! Any changes to the sun’s output (or climate if you will) must certainly affect the climate on Earth. No???
There is a reason why you did not cite any evidence that changes in the output of the sun are causing global warming.
Yes, and the Math on this is well understood. Typical changes in the sun’s irradiance can only cause minimal changes in Earth’s temperature (say, a tenth of a degree or so). To explain historical temperature shifts you need more than that (this has been understood since the 1800s), namely changes in the concentration of greenhouse gases and Earth’s albedo.
Why go back further if the intent is to study how human activity. Humans didn’t exist millions of years ago.
Also, climates that go back beyond the existence of humans have been used to bash global warming models. The problem is, earth as it existed in the far past has been radically different from the earth as it exists one. I am remember one of the arguments said “hey look, see back when global warming happened”. Problem was, the earth had enormous volcanoes which were spewing huge amounts of gasses into the atmosphere.
The Earth was inhabited by dinosaurs and had a globally tropical climate at one time.
IMHO, dinosaurs are nicer than humans.
Just go with the ice flow and lets do Jurassic Park. When the dinosaurs inhabit the planet again, the climate will then reverse for another ice age. Humans will appear and it will warm up again.
Of course, the sun could turn into a supernova and explode at any moment. So, why worry about it?
Who cares?
OK, here’s why YOU need some science:
1. Natural cooling and warming of the Earth is MUCH slower than human-caused global warming. The massively increased speed of AGW will cause many species to become extinct, because they can’t move fast enough to get away from the heat. In your scenario, there won’t be dinosaurs again, because we’ll have killed off most if not all of the species that could possibly evolve into them.
2. The Earth cannot “turn into a supernova and explode at any moment.” The sun will last another 4.5 to 5.5 billion years. At that point, our sun will become a Red Giant, then eventually a white dwarf. Our sun is not large enough to ever supernova.
The fact that this article gives so much important (and early) space to Michael Mann tells you that this isn’t “journalism” at all, but mere advocacy. Mann falsified data, has a history of bullying anyone who disagrees with him and excluding them from the professional journals (which are completely dominated by him and his ilk), and refuses to disclose the details of his alleged “models” (which, from what I can tell, appear to be risibly simplistic). Any reputable scientist (or journalist) should be completely distancing himself from this fraud.
Most of what passes for “climate science” isn’t “science” at all, but advocacy designed to keep the money flowing. True science posits hypotheses and then tests them against real data. It produces measurable predictions. And most of all, it is replicable. Climate “science” fails all those tests. It begins with a conclusion and then tries to back-fill the data and models to validate it. Unfortunately, none of the simplistic models produced by such as Mann are the least bit predictive. And it certainly doesn’t help that they manipulate the data (either overtly, as was done by the NASA group among others, or by moving the locations of the measuring devices to overstate recorded temperatures) or simply by carefully choosing start and end dates which support their claims (that was Mann’s favorite trick).
There is far more debate within the scientific community than climate activists (“the science is settled”) would have you believe. And if they were true scientists they would disclose all of their data (without “smoothing” or other such tricks), and the details of their models, and would welcome robust debate and criticism. But the fact is these people are more interested in advancing a political cause (and retaining their sinecures) than in learning actual truth. Which is why there is still so much skepticism among those who are actually paying attention (as opposed to those who merely read headlines, or advocacy articles such as this one).
No one disputes that the climate changes over time; it has many times and will continue to do so. What is under debate is the extent to which human activities contribute to it (carbon dioxide is actually a very small, and relatively unimportant, component of greenhouse gasses), if so what to do about it (would the minuscule reductions which would result from implementation of the Paris Accords actually accomplish anything?), whether there are other, better, means of dealing with the results of a changing climate, and what are the benefits to be derived from a slightly warmer climate (and they are many). Until there is some honesty brought to this debate I continue to view apocalyptic predictions with extreme skepticism, and most climate-change activists as either outright frauds or (at best) useful idiots.
It is clear from your rant that you are mentally unprepared or incapable of digesting the mountain of experimental evidence supporting the result that the planet’s climate is changing as a result of human activity. Nobody would deny that there are some ‘benefits’ of this, but the evidence of net change for the worse is overwhelming.
It would be instructive for you to review the scientific literature on global warming, going back a hundred years. Were you to review it, it would become obvious to you that there is no great conspiracy among scientists to concoct an issue and then fit the evidence to it; instead discoveries led to further research, leading to more discoveries. It is true, however, that there are some people trained as scientists who cherry pick the data to support contrary ideas; these people work mostly for the industries that are responsible for the greatest share of the damage being done, and they were schooled by their fellow charlatans who performed similar functions for the tobacco industry. Scientists, as people, are fallible just like everyone else, but science, as a process for discovering truth, is perhaps the supreme achievement of the human intellect.
the skeptical scientist website has a good introduction to fairly current research, and the negative outcomes of global warming outweigh the positive:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm
however, stepping outside the secular humanist viewpoint allows one to see the overall benefit of the destruction of the human species, and the evolution of lifeforms better adapted to the planet’s warmer climate
Though I certainly sympathize with the notion of the planet and is remaining life forms returning to the way of Nature once we are extinct, I prefer the alternative of humans living in harmony with nature.
I’ve long held that the resolution of the Fermi paradox is that once a life form reaches our stage of development, it becomes so self destructive as to ensure its extinction in a very short time. But at the same time, I have not discounted the possibility that some form of intelligent life, somewhere in the universe, will learn to control its self destructive impulses before it is too late.
Without the human species burning carbon, the climate would not stay warm forever. Recovery of species diversity after a catastrophic event appears to take millions of years, a long time scale. I do not think that what you are proposing could happen.
that is INSANE
having an economy consisting of mimicing or perpetually correcting or customizing weather, water and the food chain is INSANE as such preposterously misguided Fups will constitute an economic dependency that will cost far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far more than what we get FREE AS GOD’S GIFT TO LIFE ON PLANET EARTH THAT CAN FLUCTUATE MODESTLY.
Human FAKE CLIMATE is a sure killer as idiots strive for perfection, fight for control, and generally F everything up because when one thing goes wrong, it cascades into calamity.
in other words, IT’S INSANE
Typical fanatic dismisses contra-evidence from skeptics. Religious fanatics, climate fanatics, political fanatics. Skeptics must be anti-science since they don’t agree with the extremists who dominate the public square. Mob rule, which is what this march is about, is antithetical to science and civil society. “Climate change” is oxymoronic from the start. Climate has always changed. Slower and faster. But it changes. But the reactionary mob that shouts down all discussion, and which you are tacitly supporting, can do nothing more than whine for more money and more power. This mob will most certainly not improve science. They abandoned that long ago in favor of ideology.
Skeptics come in all shapes and sizes. Einstein was a skeptic when he developed the Special Theory of Relativity; Planck was a skeptic when he proposed quantization; Boltzmann was a skeptic when he proposed his statistical thermodynamic treatment of entropy. All were derided – Boltzmann to the point of committing suicide – and all were vindicated by evidence that is no less overwhelming than that supporting the association of human activity with climate change.
The reactionary mob, as you put it, is led from the boardrooms of the large energy concerns, from big agriculture, the pharmaceuticals industry, all taking their cue from the tobacco industry in the subversion of science. And now one of their number is in the White House, and another is a heart beat away from it.
i stopped reading when you trotted out all the discredited smears about michael mann. you haven’t bothered to learn anything about the science or the issues, you just repeat long refuted talking points you get from some blog like watts.
I think every other sentence you just wrote is plainly false. I’ll take one in particular that illustrates how you don’t know what you’re talking about:
What you don’t get is that climate change is not about the climate changing slowly like it has in the past. In the last 40 years or so, the temperature trend is about 1.5C/century. Where in history do you find anything close to that (not caused by a catastrophic event)?
I’m not too worried. If scientists get upset enough they’ll strike back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzUoe-9bKa0
The “attack” is on any sort of shared (objective) reality, so that power can dictate reality for its own ends. Orwell got it mostly right:
“In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for ‘Science’. The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards. The fields are cultivated with horse-ploughs while books are written by machinery. But in matters of vital importance – meaning, in effect, war and police espionage – the empirical approach is still encouraged, or at least tolerated.”
Best sign at March for Science:
Ask an Engineer or a Physicist but never ask a lawyer.
Lawyers think they are experts after, you know, reading about experts all the time.
They’ve never learned the language of science (mathematics) but that doesn’t stop them from assertion of expertise they cannot possess.
#dumblawyer
The language of science is not mathematics, or certainly not only that. This is the language of science, in which mathematics is often one tool.
mathematics is a large field, logic and set theory are part of mathematics
A | B -> C
A & B -> C
A -> B, B -> C, A ->C etc etc
science could exist with only a mathematical language
I don’t enirely disagree with that, but logic is more accurately in the domain of philosophy and is its own “science.”
Mathematics is arguably necessary to science, but it is not sufficient.
“science could exist with only a mathematical language”: Exactly. IMO there are three formal methods of communication: art, the written or spoken word, and mathematics. Only mathematics provides the precision that is essential to scientific discourse; the others are fraught with ambiguities. Ironically, perhaps, it is the artists and scientists who are most keenly aware of the limitations of written and spoken communication; those who make their living though the manipulation of words, lawyers and philosophers among them, seem almost oblivious to those limitations.
“those who make their living th[r]ough the manipulation of words, lawyers and philosophers among them, seem almost oblivious to those limitations.”
They are oblivious to what math even is. They use logic but they don’t use it in conjunction with numbers. They use it in conjunction with human language and behavior. Numbers are intrinsically consistent whereas language and behavior are not.
Lawyers are even taught that they are not there to deduce the truth but they are there to ensure justice through procedure. Scalia had no qualms about executing an innocent man as long as the procedure to reach such a conclusion was intact.
Science rules. h/t Bill Nye
That’s an absurd assertion, and rather ironically, is an example of the informal fallacy known as the “sweeping generalization.”
Moreover:
“Mathematics has always been and remains to be a remarkably effective method of describing the mechanics of the world around us.”
That should read:
Math can describe everything that occurs. Math is all you need to communicate with anyone on the planet regardless of the language they speak. Math was on display during 911 and if you spoke it you would know. You do not and your ignorance is on display.
Just STFU about math; my statements stand while you collapse into smoking rubble.
Uh-huh. Your comments constitute galloping fallacies and you have the chutzpah to reword the statements located in the Mathematics Journal. Someone should, indeed, “STFU,” but it does not appear to be me.
You cannot describe the simplest of motion yet you assume expertise.
Didn’t they teach you not to do that in law school? They did but you care not.
Justice and truth are 2 very different things in your world.
(I don’t ever click on your links. I don’t even mouse over them.)
Yeah, so, I replied to that, and as so annoyingly and frequently happens here, it only shows up in “Latest” and not when reading in “Threads.”
Says the anonymous internet crank who has been given unlimited opportunities, for money, to come out from behind his silly anonymity and display his understanding of math and physics to the entire world and all of the “experts”, 99% of whom disagree with him and his fellow travelers.
If there is any more convincing demonstration of the fact you’re both wrong and full of shit, it’s you unwillingness to demonstrate openly, and provide all your work and calculations (which I’m quite convinced don’t exist anywhere except in your deluded moronic mind which is why you refuse to produce them), for all the actual experts in the world to contend with on the merits.
But you don’t, because you can’t, and that’s because the minute you come out from behind your anonymity to demonstrate your lack of knowledge, you’d be laughed at and mocked mercilessly. That’s why you do it anonymously on the internet. You need that pathetic level of validation and a space for your delusions knowing you’ll never have to actually put up or shut up in the real world and be proven demonstrably wrong.
It must be seriously embarrassing to be you, an anonymous internet nobody peddling truther bullshit who pathetically attempts to scold everyone who doesn’t believe in the non-existent “evidence” for you claims while your screeching about your knowledge and the relevance of “Newtonian physics” which you don’t have the courage to demonstrate publically.
“Says the anonymous internet crank who has been given unlimited opportunities, for money, to come out from behind his silly anonymity and display his understanding of math and physics to the entire world and all of the “experts”, 99% of whom disagree with him and his fellow travelers.”
You have demonstrable illiteracy in mathematics. Your child-like verbiage asserts victory with the arbitrary, but oh so convincing, 99 percent standard. You are a legal hack who does not understand this board is not a jury.
Find one aspect of my description of why rectilinear motion was on display and discuss it.
You can’t. I am using Newtonian Law and that is something beyond your skill set; for cause IMO.
You do not even understand the most basic physics as evidenced by your taunting “offer”. You do not even understand the coordinate system let alone motion.
I don’t get out of bed for less than $5k. If you are abusive verbally I will charge double. Put $10K in escrow with first class travel and accommodation and I’ll show up.
I was at my favorite brewery earlier this week. The old brewer is back after a 5 year absence and the beer quality has noticeably improved. Another patron had a Black Knight T-shirt on; the Knight’s arm is lying on the ground as blood spurts.
We all laughed as we remembered the foundering fool with infinite self-optimism.
I thought of you briefly; specifically, when you brought up Aristotle’s thoughts on motion.
You are still not sure, are you … Just like The Catholic Church; they still aren’t sure Galileo was right either. They do admit he was probably right though.
Why do you believe the old ways have merit? Or is it that you do not recognize the position you are bolstering …
that’s more likely.
@ 24b4Jeff
I generally always enjoy your insights and comments, but the following is flat out wrong and you probably know it, so not sure why you wrote it.
If you honestly believe lawyers and philosophers (who study everything from metaphysics, ethics and epistemology, to logic, semantics and semiotics) are oblivious to the limitations of written and spoken communication, my guess is you don’t personally know too many of either.
Any lawyer or philosopher with half a functioning brain cell knows only too well that it is the ambiguity inherent in written and spoken word, and the inability of any language invented by man to accurately and precisely describe our material and immaterial world, and convey meaning (or abstracts like “values”) in such a way that we situationally agree to the same meaning and usage of words in a contingent and subjective shared reality.
Seriously, what is it you believe lawyers do? Lawyers, generally speaking, write the laws (the ones working for the legislative branch anyway if not the corporate ones who create model legislation and just provide it to captured legislators), and then we have to work to try and divine what those words mean as applied to the “facts” of a case, while attempting to construct arguments that convince others that the application of the meaning of words were as intended by those who wrote them and that employing them achieves an indeterminate and contingent subjective value(s) like “justice”, or “fairness”, or “due process” . . . . to some set of contested “facts”.
I mean for gawd’s sake, nobody other than linguists probably understand the imprecision of human language better than lawyers or philosophers, because that’s all they do for a living is fight and argue and attempt to persuade others because of the imprecision of meaning and understanding of particular words.
You are right, of course, my thread diverged from its central point. I allowed my disdain for the notion held in law that the truth can be decided based on the majority opinion, and that of philosophy that it can be found though the process of thought alone.
You need something beyond the mathematics to correlate the physical events with the correct mathematical description.
The best language is the one that matches the data accurately. The Position Equation describes all motion.
Pictures rendered from the data generated illustrate any object doing anything (motion pictures).
THAT is why graphs are so important. They speak pure math. The pie chart is a most effective tool for communicating for a reason; it is talking math.
THAT is why anyone with a knowledge of math feels “like they are eating nails” when TI generates charts that are not even acceptable for high-school level science.
nouns are needed for variable labels, otherwise spoken language is superfluous for science … as we can all see by reading the comments section
Oh, so the types of people who help destroy the natural environment (engineers & physicists) should be held up as experts? NO!!!
As to lawyers, we HAVE to learn things in order to do our jobs. It’s not that lawyers necessarily claim that they know as much as scientists, but we have to have a basic understanding of how things work in order to understand our cases that involve the relevant science.
Your blanket hatred of lawyers shows extreme ignorance. There are many types of lawyers — corporate lawyers fully deserve our wrath, but environmental and other public interest lawyers do very good work — and deserve our praise, not condemnation.
I just had to fire 2 separate attorneys for fraud before I found a third who was not trying to rip-off my octogenarian parents on their land.
I have some legal training but engineers are really just lawyers who know math :). We argue in numbers.
I bitch-slapped a big-shot attorney last summer in front of a judge, appellate, no less. I received a preliminary ruling that should have significant consequences down the road. My approach was described as “novel” by a sympathetic group of attorneys.
my view of lawyers is also molded by Mona and rrheard so don’t take my venom personally.
There is a lot of abuse in the practice areas of immigration and elder law, but that’s no excuse for condemning all lawyers. As I said, there are many public interest lawyers who do very good work and help the environment and a lot of people.
Lol, left wing politicos, liberal activists, and the rest of mostly social sciences Twitteresque do gooders babbling nonsense.
It’s about the science for Oprah’s and Ellen’s show brains.
you don’t have to support clinton to believe physicists know what they are talking about.
Was Mickey Mouse better physicist than Sharon Lerner?
Exactly. One would think that would be obvious. I hate Clinton, and understand and agree with what those scientists are saying. Besides, Clinton’s neo-liberalism pretty much puts climate considerations on the back burner.
The best thing for this planet would be if humanity was wiped out. We’ve treated this amazing world, a gift, like a toilet. We’ve done so much damage. We’ve got giant gyres of trash floating on the oceans. The Great Barrier Reef is on it’s last legs. Species are disappearing at an alarming rate. We’ve let fracking ruin the air and ground water AND cause earthquakes too. It’s not only the Trump administration that’s responsible, though I do admit they’re particularly bad. If humans were to disappear, this world could heal and maybe someday a new human race might come along that would actually appreciate what they’ve got.
Cheer up Chris our current World view and plan will leave a lot of the future for the four horsemen. Maybe not a total wipe-out but a hell of a hard lesion of a few billion dead. Perhaps we will do better next try.
Thus, there is no reason for political action.
Take your meds and relax. Just don’t kill anyone if they disagree with you, please.
Relax Tony baby. I wouldn’t dream of killing anyone and I just may take your advice.
I fully agree, except for two things:
1. Because humans are not necessary parts of any ecosystem, the only use for humans is expanding our consciousness. While there are many ways to do this — mental exercises like meditation & astral projection; psychedelic drugs like mushrooms and peyote; art, music, poetry, etc.; even playing sports (getting in the “zone”); etc. — it should be the main focus of humans.
The problem is that humans have greatly expanded their intellect, which includes science, while totally ignoring the wisdom part of their minds. This combined with a total lack of spirituality causing overblown egos and things like materialism, has created a species whose collective mind is akin to a runaway car with the throttle open but no brakes or steering.
The good news is that humans could be a very beneficial species to the universe. Consciousness-expansion could be the ultimate benefit of a species, and ours is the only one that I know of capable any significant level of that.
2. There are almost 450 nuclear power plants around the world. Without humans, these plants would all suffer meltdowns. Same problem with toxic chemical plants. I don’t know whether the overall effect of removing humans would be good or bad, but you have to consider the immense harms that would be caused by removing human control of nukes & toxic chemicals, to name two issues off the top of my head.
That all said, humans fit the medical definition of being a cancerous tumor on our planet; they are an out of control growth that is consuming the host (i.e., the Earth). At this point, I agree that the best thing to happen would be if humans were removed from the Earth. However, that’s a fantasy that has no possibility of happening absent a cataclysmic event that would also eliminate most other species. The only thing that we can do is to try to change human consciousness in order to greatly reduce human ego and hubris, realize that all life is connected, and that humans are not better or more important than any other species (which actual science shows). I’ve never met anyone who has any idea how to get humans to evolve mentally and spiritually, because people have to WANT to do that; they can’t be forced to do it. Regardless, this is our only chance.
Perhaps if Michael Mann hadn’t been as manipulative with his data in producing the “Hockey-stick Graph” and scientists were more forthcoming on what is still happening with the fallout from Fukashima, or what is happening to sea life generally in the Pacific Ocean and salmon and sardines among other species in particular along the Pacific shore, people would have more respect for government supported scientists.
Many people are currently concerned that World War Three may be about to kick off over Syria and allegations that the government gassed its own people with “Sarin or a like substance”. Indeed, a cruise missile strike has already happened, but the US government is blocking a proper SCIENTIFIC investigation of what happened. Ask yourself why aren’t these scientists demonstrating against their government for a full enquiry into that event, especially as increasing doubt is being heaped on the narrative we have been told and there are reports that more false flag events are being prepared in Syria as increasingly US boots on the ground are being put into place.
It’s not science people mistrust it’s the scientists and the way their research is directed, presented, and their findings manipulated, to ensure they continue to receive funding, for research which supports any government narrative which may be currently being promoted.
Good thinking, good comments. same sprite my article list comment below. You can follow the money/funding or the truth, but only rarely are they on the same path.
Re: ” “Most science gets done for the benefit of the powerful,”
“I feel like we’re losing democracy,” “Science is just one of the casualties.”
Yes and Yes to the above, however, poor education, academic elitism and scientists also share the blame. WE must educate and inspire or we will lose out. ”
All true Fred… BUT you left out the most important aspect which is the Media (MSM)… If they were doing their job in presenting the scientific arguments from both sides of a subject in a fair and balanced way then we possibly wouldn’t be facing the quandary we are. The science is often out there… it is its presentation, (or lack of) to the public which causes the problems and prevents wider discussion.
The rise of the ‘Alternate Media’ and the decline of the ‘Main Stream Media’ show that the public have become more aware… and continue to be. Google’s recent restricting of advertising revenues to some of these alternate media resources also indicates THEY are fully aware that people are waking up and are taking steps to deal with that particular problem.
There are many good science shows such as “Nova” and the internet can educate to some degree, MSM is out to lunch on science. There is no substitute for good science teachers in our public schools.
“There is no substitute for good science teachers in our public schools.” Amen to that. The problem is, almost all the teachers in our schools are education majors, and as a result know very little about the subjects they teach. Perhaps the most important skill to be learned in the context of science education is that of critical thinking, and critical thinking leads to questioning. Most educational settings do not encourage students to question, and because of the shallowness of their education most teachers punish questioners. If, for instance, a high school student asks her science teacher why the sky is blue, chances are she will be told to sit down and shut up, instead of providing a segue into an elementary discussion of Rayleigh scattering. Why? Because the teacher probably does not know the answer, and is too insecure or dishonest to admit it.
PS – while in graduate school I had occasion to deal with some teachers who came to the university’s summer school session to take an 8-week summary of physics for liberal arts students (that is, a distillation of a distillation), and was dismayed by how little they were able to learn. I don’t blame them, though, because they were a product of a lousy education system.
A good or bad education is the gift that just keeps giving good or bad lives. I am from a time when biology and physics major were taught how to teach. You were up close and personal with science professionals every school day. Cart before horse thinking runs, rules and ruins public education.
a distillation of a distillation; now that some mighty rarified whiskey
There are no substitutes for good teachers… period. Underpaid and overworked in many, many cases, I don’t know how they persevere. But not everyone studies science at school, and especially to a degree which would assist them in debunking a well presented one sided argument. An enquiring mind however if taught and nurtured well (again by good teachers) is of far more value to most, as they proceed through life, long after they leave high school science behind.
How many, even science taught adults, would have found out about the ‘Heat Island Effect’ of urban sprawl over time on the thermometer readings or the fact that taking water vapor (clouds) into consideration when propositioning Global Warming was said to be too difficult a task to model, without an enquiring mind either searching the internet or being directed to the arguments by spirited discourse via modern communications.
The proper teaching of science should automatically arouse the naturally occurring enquiring mind in any case, as it should when studying almost any other subject too. Set and fire-up an enquiring mind on the trail of history for example… The Opium Wars, Pearl Harbor, The Sinking of the Maine, Tonkin, etc. and the resulting research presents a far different picture than what was evident in the Media at the time… and even now one may not know the whole truth… just that what was presented at the time was the result of someone’s agenda… and there is the lesson.
No… I would suggest to you that distrust of authority, an understanding of agendas (anyone’s), coupled with the nurturing of the fledgling enquiring mind, together with the teaching of how to find and use the resources available is the most valuable lesson a child can be taught. Good teaching is about finding the individuals ‘blue touch-paper’ and adding a spark. A good summer time reading list might be a start… of course one might also lose tenure as a result.
“Set and fire-up an enquiring mind on the trail of history for example… ”
Why not stick to current events?
Tough luck on posting. -Mona- has that trouble often.
quilt-on.
The subject had digressed slightly into education and I felt the historical references made the point without the fear of opening up side “discussions” into other areas.
As far as the reply to ‘pretzel’ was concerned I should have written that “as I understand it the thread’s policy on posting prevent me from replying adequately.” I would never descend to the level desired and obviously required to joust with the poster in question.
“You can follow the money/funding or the truth, but only rarely are they on the same path.”
I raise my hat to the profundity of your comment.
perhaps if deniers stopped lying about michael mann…oh wait that’s never going to happen. he didn’t falsify data, he didn’t do anything improper, and the hockey stick has been replicated over and over.
Sorry pretzel, the thread’s policy on posting prevent me from replying adequately.
“Most science gets done for the benefit of the powerful,”
“I feel like we’re losing democracy,” “Science is just one of the casualties.”
Yes and Yes to the above, however, poor education, academic elitism and scientists also share the blame. WE must educate and inspire or we will lose out.
Of Sharing and Humility in Science. Fred Cowan. Commentary, The Scientist, Sept. 28, 1998.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/19116/title/Of-Sharing-and-Humility-in-Science/
If we want a World based on good science and good judgment scientist must get more involved and teach the general population of our methods and values and improve on both. Hint much of our educational system is science illiterate and the “war” on cancer has been no more successfully overall than our recent military adventures.
One problem science has as an institution is that establishment institutions are, in general, distrusted — for good reason. This should be addressed with greater transparency (open science, etc.) Basically, you need to assume there’s a natural lack of trust, and act accordingly.
Lack of trust and skepticism, critical evaluation, are part of the science process and a good thing. Where it can go wrong are arguments of angels dancing on pinheads and no one answering critical questions pointing to needed solutions and actions. Science is often guilty of this. Regardless of scientific discourse population control and a conservation rather than consumption economies might save the four housemen from picking up the slack for poor planning.
But science is not an institution in the sense that a government agency is, or even in the sense that a large corporation is. Yet many people trust these corporations far more than scientists. So what you are saying is just plain wrong. Corporations are more trusted because they spend a lot money buying support. Scientists cannot do that.
Fred, your article that you refer to contains the usual fatal flaw. Science does not do either good or bad: it is the pursuit of knowledge about the physical world. Obviously it is up to those in power (as well as anyone concerned) to assure that the application of science is for good, not evil. Understanding atomic physics made many things possible, only one of which is the atomic bomb.
One of us does not get it. Industry, government and academia have scientists at the bench and in management intimately involved in policy making. I have experience in all three for over four decades. If I had not taken an active role my life’s work would not exist.
https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S1726-4901(16)30184-8
Yes, scientists do things other than science. So what?
I am talking about science read the link above. I have spent my life and a good share on my own salary and placed a lot of my own skin in the game to move cancer immunotherapy forward. We all will spend our life on something, best do it on a good cause. Still in the fight until death do us part.
It would be ideal if science were uncorruptible, but it’s not. Corporations can use their wealth to attempt to tip published science in their favor. The scientific method is supposed to be self-correcting, but that’s an idealization of science (similar to the idealization of the free market.) In short, science should be seen as a process that can potentially be corrupted by special interests, and therefore it’s in everyone’s best interests that substantially more transparent practices take hold.
Yes, no human process is perfect. Educate and jump in, science is too important to be left to just scientists, lots of special interests and free market forces already in the game.
Science is not about a bunch of liberals who happen to live in Maryland and benefit from government largesse. Or a bunch of hippies with an identity agenda about LBGT issues who happen to believe that “their” truth is settled science. Science is never settled and anyone regardless of their pedigree who peddles “their” truth is no freaking scientist. This kind of thinking is merely fascism dress up as politically correct rubbish.
That litany of fallacies does nothing to undermine the article to which it purportedly responds. Science is a method of determining facts about the natural world. All those reported on in the piece appear to employ the scientific method to reach conclusions. That is what makes them scientists.
one problem with established, credentialed, and respected scientists is that they state opinions based on their research as if these opinions are the results of their research
for instance:
this statement has no basis in the specific agricultural research conducted by Vandermeer
another problem with this article is that complex systems science is not a mature field, like for example mathematics. witness the dire predictions of Paul Ehrlich in “The Population Bomb”, who in the 1960s forecast massive population die-off in the 70s and 80s
so it isn’t unreasonable to want more information about, or show some skepticism towards, such concepts as “keystone species”
but much more serious than either of these problems is the fact that “teacup” is running a phishing scam on my celly … she has been messaging me every night and more or less invited me to DC for the science march but i can’t go, also i don’t know anyone named teacup …
JV did not claim what he said was a result of his research. You are the one stating your opinion, and giving an “example” that is not.
his opinion has a soapbox because of his research, and his opinion has implied validity because of his scientific reputation
otherwise nobody would listen to him … it’s the high-IQ version of Sting Wants to Save the Whales
obviously it’s my opinion, do you typically release your peer-reviewed research here?
And?
Whose opinion on the political realities in the world of science is more worthy of consideration by intelligent, truth-seeking people: A practicing scientist, or anonymous ankle-biters in an Internet comments section? (I don’t mean the latter characterization to refer to you, but there are certainly a lot of morons holding forth here, including the one who initiated this sub-thread.)
Idiots have the right to pontificate; the rest of us also have a right — and a duty — to separate intellectual wheat from chaff.
oh, please …
http://www.subgenius.com/
And?
It doesn’t need to be, nor is he claiming it as scientific finding. Rather, he’s stating a reality about how scientists are mainly funded — and why — in the capitalist West.
My profession is attorney. When I correctly state that the U.S. justice system is deeply flawed for providing just process largely only for the well-to-do, that is not a specifically “legal” argument. It is, however, true — as I know from both the inside and from independent reading. Mr. Vandemeer is equally qualified to address how matters stand in his own professional world.
(Adding, however, that the same principles of logic and sound reason apply in science and law on the one hand, and on the other to myself and Mr. Vademeer when we posit facts about the worlds of our respective professions. Sound reasoning is the best route to all determinations about reality in the material world.)
You mean the Paul Ehrlich who was more of a great guest on Johnny Carson than a promoter of sober science? No one argues that, as with all humans, some scientists traffic in popular grandstanding in pursuit of celebrity.
None of that, however, alters the fact that the scientific method, and its practitioners, are properly relied upon as the best means for learning the facts about the natural world.
i’m talking about the Paul Ehrlich who was a professor of biology at Stanford University, and the idea that he was completely wrong about the human carrying capacity of the planet
the public … educationally qualified or otherwise … is allowed in a free society to question experts. even so-called dumb questions can shed light on the difference between those practicing the scientific method and those engaged in “popular grandstanding”
“None of that, however, alters the fact that the scientific method, and its practitioners, are properly relied upon as the best means for learning the facts about the natural world.”
So, when an Engineer points out that Newtonian motion is settled (has been for 400 years as we can park a spacecraft around Saturn predictably) lawyers are correct in trashing that statement when it is applied to the 3 towers …
The towers displayed Rectilinear Motion in a Curvilinear Motion world. That’s fine because it was recorded many times from many angles; it happened. With knowledge of Calculus, an Engineer is able to explain the observed simple (rectilinear) motion displayed in the real world of complex (curvilinear) motion.
It is describing the difference between the flight of a cannonball vs a guided missile.
‘Where will the cannonball land?’ is a standard high-school physics problem using rectilinear coordinates (motion across one plane with force in one direction, gravity).
Rectilinear motion problems have 3 elements (position, velocity, and acceleration) in a single plane where curvilinear motion requires 9 elements to describe fully. There are 3 elements in the Z direction for the cannonball; 3 elements in each of the X, Y, and Z directions (3×3=9) gets you the curvilinear flight of a guided missile.
We use the same equation for both the cannonball and the guided missile (the Position Equation) but the cannonball gets zero for acceleration in 2 of 3 planes (it’s only falling in the direction of gravity, Z) so the math reduces to a simple 3 element problem.
A building has diagonal brace beams on vertical columns which divert 70.7% of the load they carry sideways (perpendicular). Because we use bracing in 2 opposing directions (each corner column has diagonals) the sideways force sums to zero (simple number-line math) and the building stands rigidly because it is loaded in 3 directions. When the building collapses (moves) the sideways-forces cannot add to zero unless the diagonal beams are cut with explosive charges. All three towers fell without rotation (angular momentum) like a dropped cannonball.
911 was a coup by Dick Cheney and company.
I will not cooperate with your clear desire to hijack this thread for your Truther enthusiasms. Any interested in that argument between us — and among others — should do a search on my name (or yours) in this lengthy thread.
“I will not cooperate with your clear desire to hijack this thread ”
says the most prolific thread hijacker to walk this board.
I addressed your pathetic attempt to draw a distinction between experts and dolts.
In a thread about the need for science I gave, again, an accurate description of the events of 911 and there is no room for discussion because my analysis is complete.
No one here has even the language to engage so the thread is not hijacked by anyone other than the master quilter -Mona-.
Carry on.
Um, your “specific agricultural research” is done for the benefit of agribusiness, aka the rich. And anyone who denigrates Paul Ehrlich has no credibility, regardless of whether Dr. Ehrlich’s foolish predictions came true (one should never predict things over long periods of time or predict large events, because even if you’re seemingly right at the time, the number of variables in life that can change the predicted outcome is almost infinite). The FACT is that human overpopulation is the biggest problem on the planet, and the level of science needed to realize that is probably no higher than a fifth grade level.
“Ulster Presbyterianism differed from English dissent both in its theoretical claim to the rights of an establishment, and in its numerical strength. The most numerically strong of the English dissenters in the eighteenth century (outside Methodism) were the Congregationalists, but by the 1851 Census, there were still very few areas in which they made up more than eleven per cent of the population (and this was after something of a revival in the early nineteenth century). Their adherence to the idea of independent congregations consisting only of the visibly saved worked against any claims to the status of a national church incorporating the whole population. ”
http://www.peterbrooke.org.uk/p%26t/Northern%20Ireland/controversies/ch1
That science is technically never settled doesn’t mean all opinions are equally valid.
This…a thousand times, this.
Nonsense. Most things in science are “settled”: the database of scientific knowledge is huge. Some are not, including some that most people accepted as settled.
The fact of global warming can be understood by anyone. The basic cause should be apparent to everyone as well, while the details cannot be so easily understood. Intentional denial in order to enable business profits, when well funded, attracts the easily fooled. Actual science can never be as attractive because it has to stick to the truth as best it is known.
It is not so difficult to see when science is being perverted by the powerful. How many needless heart attacks have occurred because the sugar industry bought three Harvard nutritionists to write a review paper slanting the science? How did the rest of the field allow this to happen?
How many people will die because the oil industry has done this many, many times over with climate research? This cannot be allowed to continue.
You, dydactyl, are either very stupid or on the payroll. I suspect the latter.
I don’t know that I’d say “most,” but certainly many. Evolution and the germ “theory” are both theories and facts. Gravity is.
Most people fail to appreciate the distinction between the theory of evolution and, for lack of a better term, the fact of evolution. These two are confounded and compounded into a single idea, which allows those in denial of reality to claim that it didn’t provably occur and is an untestable assertion.
Allow me to explain in plain terms. The FACT is that evolution happened – no more nor less. This is the product of direct observation of both the fossil record and apparent similarities and quantifiable relationships amongst living species. It absolutely cannot be denied that evolution exists. The only component which is THEORY is WHY it happened – specifically, the Darwinian genetic selection model.
So next time you get into an argument with someone mindlessly droning on about a 5,000 year-old planet and claiming evolution cannot be proven because “it’s only a theory”, you can point out the contrary.
Yes to all of that. I’ve said pretty much exactly all of that many times, when I used to get into it with creationists.
I gathered that you already knew from your post, but for the benefit of anyone else who might find themselves in such a position… Then again, it’s not as if reasoning is a well-familiar concept to those types, so it’s not likely to get you anywhere in an argument. So call it more of an interesting tidbit than fuel for out collective intellectual advancement.
Let’s see. Maxwell’s four little equations underly all this electronic communication, while the success of these equations serves as a constant verification of special relativity. Things are tied together to an amazing degree, placing severe restrictions on what can be altered. Even so, there still are things of vast importance that are not understood. Dark matter and energy, anybody?
Your conceit belies your ignorance. So you already know the set of all things and then proclaim that most are settled? You’re just another progressive pin head who mistakes political opinion for science. Good luck with that.
I said that most things in science are settled. I did not say anything about the set of all things.
“Most” presupposes that you “know” what all of them are or you couldn’t make that judgement. Same kind of logic fueled the Spanish Inquisition. Where do you come up with this stuff? The Al Gore Institute for Climate Progress?
The relevant arguments here are not the difference between “many” or “most.” Even if Mike Sulzer made a poor word choice in that tangential claim, his overall reasoning is sound, as are his material fact claims.
Your, by contrast, are spewing fallacious inanities.
It certainly does not. Most things in science are tied to other things in science in such a way that the number of underlying independent things is not so large. That is what you need to recognize in order to see what I am saying.
True, and nowhere is that better demonstrated than in the fact of evolution, and the creationists who deny it. The number of scientific fields whose working bases would be wrong if creationist claims were correct is merely one strong indictment of their notions.
What I see you’re saying is that you’re challenged when it comes to constructing useful syllogisms. No big deal. Most folks who subscribe to the Al Gore Institute for Climate Progress are afflicted by the same condition. That goes for you too, Mona.
every national academy of science supports agw. not one disputes it. meanwhile, you make up fake entities. telling.
great report. many thanks.
Perhaps Flat Earthers are the new terrorists. Somehow or other these neanderthal geniuses became insulted embarrassed and very angry. Consequently they have decided to get elected to TAKE POWER and get serious about their round earther problem. Their genius solution and objective is to deny science and foment wars to flatten the earth. Right now they are also working on solving the clean air and clean water problem.
How about instead of voting for imbeciles we vote in a third party of real professionals?