Faux science of global warming doesn't pass legal scrutiny.

#226
#226
I would like to see the breakdown by discipline. I am willing to bet that the biological sciences accounts for the largest fraction of US retracted papers...it seems that almost anytime I hear about a retracted paper, it is bio related.

While 90 fraudulent papers by US scientists over a 10-11 year period may sound like a lot, I would like to see what percentage those are of the total US published record. It has to be absolutely tiny. i do find it interesting that US scientists were pegged the most. I wonder if it is more related to the volume of research papers coming out of the US or the competitive funding environment...I'm going to go with the volume argument.
 
#228
#228
OK...here's a bit of musing I was doing tonight while doing some dishes.....its a bit long, but I'll humor myself and write it up...

I had a colleague in graduate school who was a post doc at the time. He worked in industry before he took the post doc, as did I before I started my PhD. Every time a discussion about some work-related issue would begin to not go his way - he would immediately say "well, if you had worked in industry - you would see it this way." He always felt that his real-world experience was clearly the reason that he didn't see things like some others and that it implicitly made him more right. He was almost always wrong in these cases. He would even look to me for agreement because he knew my background ... he rarely ever got affirmation. (BTW, I like this guy a lot, it's just a fault he had.)

I am reminded of this as I read IHate's rants about real world experience in this thread and the voting thread. While I'll agree that some lack real world experience and that perspective is very important, this and other past experiences make me always question using it as justification for a way of thinking or a right of passage.

I've worked for a number of years, made investments, balanced bills with income, paid taxes, got married, etc. etc. ... and I rarely if ever felt that this gave me any kind of leg up on understanding how the world works relative to my colleagues in grad school who had not had those experiences. As long as they kept their eyes somewhat open, kept their minds open to the importance of perspective, and actively talked to people, they managed to generally have a clue.

The problem I have with the argument is that it implicitly forces qualifications over merit. While I have done all the "real world" things I mentioned above, it wouldn't surprise me that the next thing that would be said would be something like... "but do you have kids" ... or whatever...some qualification that this person possesses that I (or whoever is being disagreed with) don't have that becomes that basis for understanding why this person is right and I am wrong. It's a fallacious style of debate.

Again, I stress that having perspective is important and there are times that having some qualification does give you information that the other cannot have and therefore makes you know you are right (and the other is wrong). However, I also believe that it is all too often used as a false-reasoning to support an ill-conceived point.

"Well...if you had just ___(fill in verb here), you would see this my way." Any time I start to say this, I actively censor myself and rethink my position. If I still think I'm right, then I try to relay this perspective rather than just lord the perspective over them. It's the same reason why I said earlier in this thread that being a "scientist" is not a prerequisite for understanding this issue...all you need is the desire to actually learn about it and some time (and some sort of cognitive reasoning).
 
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#229
#229
Very insightful Tenn. But if you had had a dishwasher, you'd see it differently...
 
#230
#230
Ha ha ha. Nice. You are half right...if my wife would let me put her knives and cookware in the dishwasher, then I wouldn't have posted this :)
 
#232
#232
Imaginary exchange goes poof | Ezra Levant | Columnists | Comment | Toronto Sun

The Chicago Climate Exchange is shutting down at the end of the year.

Nobody’s buying carbon credits.

Right now, days go by when not a single trade is done. When trades are done, carbon dioxide sells for just five cents a ton.

It’s over.

In related news, the Pixie Dust Exchange has plenty of eager sellers but still no buyers. And the opening of the unicorn exhibit at the zoo has been postponed indefinitely.

None of these things exist in real life. Except the Chicago Climate Exchange. It was given millions of dollars in start-up subsidies, including from Chicago’s Joyce Foundation when Barack Obama was a board member. Buying and selling imaginary carbon credits was going to lead us to a bold, green future, when people would pay billions — Al Gore said trillions! — to buy hot air.
-------------------------------------

That was the plan Obama said would cause “the rise of the oceans to slow and the planet to heal.”

But that law died in the U.S. mid-term elections, the worst showing for Democrats since 1948. Carbon trading was one of the reasons: In a TV ad, Senate candidate Joe Manchin actually took a rifle and used the cap and trade bill as target practice.

And he won.

And he’s a Democrat.
--------------------------------------

As the unloved Chicago Climate Exchange dies, a dangerous myth dies too: That carbon credits are worth anything, and that somehow trading these worthless, imaginary credits, could replace the jobs we’d kill in real industries.

No; carbon credits are a tax, a tax on environmental hysteria and appeasement-oriented companies. If Goldman Sachs can’t make money off them, no-one can.

Next time someone tells you that we’re all going to get rich off some government green scheme, tell them you’ve got a little climate exchange to sell them, and you’ll throw in a unicorn too.
Click to expand...
 
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