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Pete_N
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Jan 15, 2017 - 09:02am PT
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This discussion makes me wish that some of these folks declaiming the "waste" of federal research funds could sit in on a NSF panel or two. Funding for basic and applied science is so tight in my experience, that the idea of waste is mostly laughable. There's no doubt that we could do a better job of teaching the importance and the pleasure of basic research, but that'd require some measure of interest, at least for anyone over the age of 10. Try explaining why your NIH funding for studying chimpanzee facial expressions is NOT a waste of money!
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 15, 2017 - 09:09am PT
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Why funding for smiling chimps is a waste of money?
One overriding and simple answer-experimentation on higher primates has been pretty much outlawed. The last ones were recently removed from Stonybrook. I know this because my daughters thesis was partially based on locomotion dara collected from those same smiling chimps.
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Pete_N
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Jan 15, 2017 - 10:05am PT
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Rick: You're conflating the legal, ethical and scientific rationale for primate research. I don't work with non-human primates any more, and haven't kept up with the legal issues. If you're interested in an excellent review of relatively recent efforts to address the ethical issues, see http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001291. Regarding the scientific rationale, we have learned a great deal about the evolution of behavior, for example, from the study of primates, including chimps. Why is this important? I think Vassily Grossman put it best in his book, "Life and Fate": 'The value of science lies in the happiness it brings to people. Our fine Academicians think that science is the domestic servant of practice, that it can be put to work according to Shchedrin's principle: 'Your wish is my command.' That's the only reason why science is tolerated at all. No! Scientific discoveries have an intrinsic value! They do more for the perfection of man than steam-engines, turbines, aeroplanes or the whole of metallurgy from Noah to the present day. They perfect the soul! The human soul!' Tell us more about your daughter's research--sounds interesting.
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Jan 15, 2017 - 11:06am PT
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Talking about global warming denial and primate behavior...
It is sometimes argued that a full assessment of the risks of climate change would be counterproductive, because the risks may be so large and the solutions so difficult that people will be overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness, and will look the other way. In some cases, this may be true. The anthropologist Jared Diamond, in addressing the question:
‘Why do some societies make disastrous decisions?’, writes:
…consider a narrow river valley below a high dam, such that if the dam burst, the resulting flood of water would drown people for a considerable distance downstream.
When attitude pollsters ask people downstream of the dam how concerned they are about the dam’s bursting, it’s not surprising that fear of a dam burst is lowest far downstream, and increases among residents increasingly close to the dam. Surprisingly, though, after you get just a few miles below the dam, where fear of the dam’s breaking is found to be highest, concern then falls off to zero as you approach closer to the dam! That is, the people living immediately under the dam, the ones
most certain to be drowned in a dam burst, profess unconcern. That’s because of psychological denial: the only way of preserving one’s sanity while looking up every day at the dam is to deny the possibility that it could burst. Although psychological denial is a phenomenon well established in individual psychology, it seems likely to apply to group psychology as well.
The premise for writing the [Center for Climate and Security's Risk Assessment] is that we can all choose whether or not to look up at the dam. Governments can choose either to ignore it, or to send their best experts to inspect it closely. We have taken the view that it is better to be well informed than not. As the American nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter wrote during the Cold War,
“We must contemplate some extremely unpleasant possibilities, just because we want to avoid them.”
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dirtbag
climber
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Jan 15, 2017 - 11:17am PT
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Rick, pud etc. are lost causes. You can't reason with them, they are a bundle of arrogance and insecurities. We have to defeat them.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jan 15, 2017 - 02:19pm PT
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Your "legion" of skeptics does not form its ranks from US physicists. And world wide, might rise to as much as a Roman legion, if you count medical doctors as "scientists" (which I would not) and "weathermen" (even expanding that to "weatherwoman")
Oh no! As an ex "weatherman" I must take exception!
;>)
I went through the U of Chicago meteorology program at the end of the 1950s, before it disappeared from the curriculum about 1961. The most interesting courses were in atmospheric physics (mostly DEs that my classmates who were EEs were better at solving than me) and fluid dynamics (the most intriguing in my opinion). The "basket weaving" course was climatology, wishy-washy and speculatively rambling, almost like a class in the humanities.
I left the USAF in 1962 and immediately had a GS11 offer from the USWB, which I politely declined, deciding to become a mathematician instead.
That part of climate science - a significantly improved version of the old climatology - that is not probability-related involves non-linear, coupled differential equations (since aspects of the atmosphere influence one another). Most of these DEs can only be solved numerically, and back in the late 1950s that was not so easy to accomplish.
These days my Lenovo Thinkpad on the dining room table can do the job quickly running a simple BASIC program I wrote. Coupled, non-linear DEs can produce surprising results. Here is a simple example (having no connection to the climate): z=x+iy and w=u+iv,
dz/dt = w+1/w and dw/dt = x(siny+cosx)+iy(siny-cosx)
See how the two DEs are intimately connected, hence "coupled"? w depends upon z and z upon w.
This pair of DEs produces an image of an angel on the head of a pin: Azreal in the space [-.01,01]
Don't be frightened! Angels and demons can be interchangeable.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Jan 15, 2017 - 02:50pm PT
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And only demons can do one armed pull ups...
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 17, 2017 - 10:35am PT
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This toe dipping of yours is a good start jgill. The seriousness of the situation requires active participation of the thus far silent majority lest the country and developed world slide into totalitarian oppression from which extrication will be improbable for decades to come.
You realize, of course, that this science is largely false and just a vehicle of choice to reach a select few's goal of a world order where a new aristocracy of properly aligned and connected pols and the rabid monied interests that aid their rise are enabled in establishing their new order. It won't be pretty.
If successful, this new cabal, will make your kids and grandkids lives much less promising than that which you have enjoyed. For their sake please dive into this shark tank and take these phony plastic fish on.
Every little bit helps, even here on this back water blog.
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c wilmot
climber
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Jan 17, 2017 - 11:37am PT
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The only way to reduce the pollution caused by humans is to reduce the population. Since our economy and the rich folks who benifit from it is reliant on an ever increasing population that is not going to happen.
The only way to reduce the population while not harming the long term accumulation of wealth is through war..
Any talk of carbon taxes etc... is just flufff to delay the inevitable.
There is a reason our gov spends untold amounts of money to "study" a problem they have no intention of fixing
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Al Barkamps
Social climber
Red Stick
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Jan 17, 2017 - 12:24pm PT
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If successful, this new cabal, will make your kids and grandkids lives much less promising than that which you have enjoyed. For their sake please dive into this shark tank and take these phony plastic fish on.
This makes NO sense....how would this new cabal get rich off providing a crappy future for everyone else?
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Jan 17, 2017 - 01:04pm PT
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"Any talk of carbon taxes etc... is just flufff to delay the inevitable."
WRONG
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 17, 2017 - 01:06pm PT
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You're assuming they want to get richer than they already are after providing a very crappie present to a current majority of serfs, AL. Furthermore, a lot of people assisting them (the disaffected, including many wannabe scientists better suited for underwater basket weaving ) are true kooks motivated by their malthusian nightmares much more than money. See Holdren for a prime example.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 17, 2017 - 01:34pm PT
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You're downright kooky, Rick Sumner. Not unlike the President-elect.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 17, 2017 - 03:20pm PT
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Kooky because of what Eeyonkee? Is it because I take climate change seriously- the scam that it is I mean. Before marching lockstep down the consensus road perhaps you should examine the issue thoroughly yourself.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jan 17, 2017 - 03:58pm PT
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The only way to reduce the pollution caused by humans is to reduce the population.
Manifestly proven untrue. A few examples:
Is the air in Los Angeles cleaner than 50 years ago? More or less people?
More or less pollution by automobiles? More or less people?
More or less pollution in Ca from state power sources? More or less people?
Although it is certainly true that reducing the population CAN be ONE way to reduce pollution, it is certainly not the only one, and in fact, has not been the most common one.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jan 17, 2017 - 03:59pm PT
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the disaffected, including many wannabe scientists better suited for underwater basket weaving
My experience with the scientists I meet, which is weekly, is certainly not that they are disaffected.
Rick, that group would be YOU.
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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Jan 17, 2017 - 05:15pm PT
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Reducing consumption is a good start.
The idea of reducing population is a bit more complicated as I probably have the same carbon/consumption footprint as 30 rural Africans. The lifestyle of the population in question is very important.
Leo DeCaprio is concerned for the planet but his carbon footprint is probably astronomical.
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EdwardT
Trad climber
Retired
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Jan 17, 2017 - 06:31pm PT
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Right. The alarmists should be allowed to continue their hypocrisy. After all, they care.
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monolith
climber
state of being
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Jan 17, 2017 - 06:55pm PT
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Gore's carbon footprint is very negative, considering how much awareness he's responsible for.
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