I was pretty smug about what I believed when I went to college.
There, I encountered a number of professors who agreed with my smug, self-satisfied beliefs – and one who challenged them, assaulted them, turned them on their heads.
Of course, I went into college a liberal – and Doctor Blake was a self-described “monarchist”. Doctor Blake cajoled me into reading Crime and Punishment, Modern Times by Paul Johnson, The Gulag Archipelago, and PJ O’Rourke’s essays (the ones that later became Republican Party Reptile). I entered college as a kid who had been just too young to vote in 1980 – and in 1984 I voted for Reagan (and in 1996 may have done it again, although I don’t remember).
The challenge to my “beliefs” was a whack up side my intellectual head. It was also one of the things I went to college for in the first place.
Of course, Dr. Blake wasn’t on a mission to create young Republicans – indeed, I barely remember him discussing current events or politics in class. He was not on a mission to indoctrinate kids, and while when called upon he did talk about why he was a Republican and why the Democrats were wrong, it was never as an abuse of his position, at the front of a classroom.
Which is where the line needs to be – and all too often isn’t.
So as I join with King Banaian and Janet Beihoffer in hoping you can attend Indoctrinate U at the Oak Street Cinema starting this evening, I’ll also draw your attention to the latest Katherine Kersten piece. Not every professor, it seems, is as forebearing as Dr. Blake:
t’s become a common complaint that U.S. campuses are home to a stifling liberal orthodoxy where contrary beliefs are persecuted. Doyle says it’s no illusion.
A new film, “Indoctrinate U,” documenting that atmosphere, opens near campus tomorrow.
Bethany Dorobiala, a senior political science major at the U of M, knows just what Doyle is talking about. Dorobiala was one of the few students who agreed to speak on the record about the problem.
In many courses, Dorobiala says, professors load up reading lists with books that reflect their ideological agenda. “If you speak up in class and present an alternative view, you may risk being ridiculed by a professor twice your age with a PhD.,” she said. “Students who agree with the professor’s politics are regularly praised and encouraged.”
Dorobiala has encountered this disregard for intellectual diversity in classes outside of political science. “In geology class, I had a teacher who made side comments bashing President Bush,” she said. A rigid orthodoxy prevails on issues as disparate as the death penalty and global warming, she says, and some professors regularly pontificate on topics outside their discipline.
Read the whole thing. Check out the movie.
Challenge is good. Abuse is bad.
Yossarian:
“Thank you for that riveting Google-based scientific tut-tuttery. That you’re able to surf the InterWebs for scientifically-approved terminology whilst I am not, does not in some way expose illiteracy on anything.
Second, again with Wikipedia. Do you have that bookmarked as your source for everything?”
You are as free as any of us to check your comments for mistakes. That you choose not to is evidence of both your illiteracy and laziness.
I use Wikipedia because it is fast and reliable. I do not deserve any special credit for in depth research, but it says a lot about the people who post here that so few ever preform the most basic factual check of what they say.
I think such willful ignorance may in fact be a necessity of the conservative movement. Your coalition could never hang together unless all of you rigorously suppressed all of your fact checking instincts. You must not insult the fundamentalists by pointing out the facts about geologic time and biologic evolution. You can not upset the free-market fanatics by pointing out that tax cuts produce less revenue or that socialized health care is far more efficient. And nobody must ever point out that we are losing in Iraq.
You are as free as any of us to check your comments for mistakes. That you choose not to is evidence of both your illiteracy and laziness.
From the guy who said (paraphrasing) that sending our troops into the field in smaller groups was a recipe for disaster – something that could only have come from the talking points of a group that is…well, illiterate and lazy. I’ll be charitable and say “from a group”.
Wikipedia is as good as the topic is non-inflammatory.
You’ll notice, Rick DFL, how infrequently the people here link to any kind of support for their wacky propositions. And when they do, it’s generally an unsupported assertion from some kook like Malkin or Coulter. You’re exactly right – the facts aren’t the wingnuts’ friends these days.
Hey, RickDFL? Thank you for the best laugh on a Saturday morning I could have hoped for.
First, you say: “evidence of both your illiteracy and laziness”
Followed by: “I use Wikipedia because it is fast and reliable”
In other words, you accuse me of illiteracy and laziness, and follow it up with a defense of your own. That takes chutzpah. And, it’s pretty damned hilarious.
Perhaps RickDFL’s opinion of Wikipedia would change if he read this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#IQ
“The modern controversy surrounding intelligence and race focuses on the results of IQ studies conducted during the 20th century, mainly in the United States and some other industrialized nations. In almost every testing situation where tests were administered and evaluated correctly, the mean IQ of Blacks was approximately one standard deviation below that of Whites.”
DuhClown: You’ll notice, Rick DFL, how infrequently the people here link to any kind of support for their wacky propositions.
Submitted on the “accuracy” of the climate models: http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn12833-climate-is-too-complex-for-accurate-predictions.html
Anyone who’s dealt with sufficiently complex systems will tell you that belief in the quality of climate models is foolish at best. I can build you a model showing anything I (or you) would like it to do — it’s a simple matter of tweaking the parameters. Heck, I can even make it meet all the previous data points by setting the weighting and curve fitting parameters appropriately. Would that make you happy? Study up on over and underspecified systems sometimes and you’ll never trust another “computer prediction” without knowing how it was made and who programmed it.
Don’t get me wrong, theirs is a hard field. But they’ve had a history of getting it wrong that they’ve got to overcome before a reasonable person would ruin their economy based on their predictions. Plus, they’ve got to be far more forthcoming with their models and data. That’s been a big complaint from outside peer reviewers for the last decade or so in computational science circles. These guys have been famously “protective” about their methods and data, which is a huge red flag for anyone who’s worked in the hard sciences.
Besides, any reasonable overview of the performance of human civilization in periods of warmer climate vs. those of colder climates would say, “Global Warming? BRING IT ON!” (And this from the guy with a environmental impact far smaller then the clown’s because of my heating and transportation choices, so I guess it does make me hypocritical.)
It’s a little known fact that I am a huge fan of environmental movements.
At least until my hunting buddy gets off his dead ass and builds a proper outhouse.
I tried to contact several of Algor’s peers to give us a fast and reliable review of his mummery, but unfortunately they all said we’d have to wait until “My Little Pony” was over.
I did however find an adult who wrings Al out like a dishrag….
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/450392,CST-EDT-REF30b.article
Mitch:
Your paraphrase is, as usual, inaccurate.
Yossarian:
The little research I do is more than the none you do. It is enough to make me less illiterate and lazy than you.
Terry:
The very sentence you quote is flagged as ‘citation needed’ meaning is has not been verified by a reliable external source. If you feel the sentence you quoted is inaccurate feel free to correct it.
If you feel any information I have provided from Wikipedia is inaccurate feel free to correct it with some other source.
Nerdbert:
The article you cite does not deny the reality of global warming, that manmade CO2 omissions cause the warming, or that the impact will be significant.
Swiftee:
ditto
“The little research I do is more than the none you do. It is enough to make me less illiterate and lazy than you.”
See, now you’re just being an idiot. Citing Wikipedia is NOT research. Wikipedia is only a reliable source for mundane things, like the lifecycle of the fruit fly. If it’s about anything even remotely controversial or political, Wikipedia is a contentious cesspool of misinformation that is not to be taken as proof or evidence of anything. If you are relying on it for your global warming information, yes, you ARE illiterate and, yes, you ARE lazy.
If the argument you’re now trying to put forth is that you’re somewhat less illiterate and lazy than me, well, I’ll just have to concede that point, as I’m fairly certain there’s precious little research or information out there to make the case either way. Maybe you could make a Wikipedia entry about it so as to make if “official.”
our paraphrase is, as usual, inaccurate.
No, Rick, as usual, I am not only accurate, but my accuracy proves that you’re wrong not only about your spin, but about the subject originally at hand:
“And very relevant. Leaving a much smaller residual force scattered in small outposts is a recipe for disaster.”
So – not only are you comically and pathetically wrong about counterinsurgency, but your track-covering is shown to be, in the original latin, “de anus“.
Don’t condescend to me, Rick. On no topic are you ever qualified. When it’s a topic where you’ve stuck your face in the meatgrinder and lost, even more so.
Yossarian:
I guess I should have CCed you on the message to Terry. Again – If you feel any information I have provided from Wikipedia is inaccurate feel free to correct it with some other source.
Mitch:
In the post you cite in triumph:
You say:
“It – getting out into the countryside, even in small numbers, backed up by overwhelming firepower when it is needed – is one of the keys to effective counterinsurgency warfare.”
I respond:
“Sure, but it is still a recipe for disaster if you lack reliable local allies and the bulk of the population is firmly against you.”
Your paraphrase above was inaccurate because you left out the key conditional clause in my claim. You and I agree that dispersal is a key CI tactic. You think it is sufficient to win in Iraq, I think they lack of reliable local allies will render it ineffective.
RickDumbFuckingLiberal puked:
“The article you cite does not deny the reality of global warming, that manmade CO2 omissions cause the warming, or that the impact will be significant.”
Sure, if you call outing the leading spokesboob for the blatant liar he is a “non-denial” you’re right.
Of course that is just the sort of assinine reasoning we have come to expect from the party of “what ever the meaning of ‘is’ is”.
Keep digging DFLer, China’s down there somewhere.
RickDFL: “The article you cite does not deny the reality of global warming, that manmade CO2 omissions cause the warming, or that the impact will be significant.”
*sigh* No, but the article made the point that (a) the data upon which the models are based are terribly unreliable and rather questionable and (b) that said predictions from those models are also unreliable. Bad models producing bad results aren’t something you base your future on.
Look, the scam works like this. I can build you a model based on a dataset that will get a 100% fit to any data you give me. It’ll work absolutely perfectly to whatever you give me. But if I’m not scrupulous or if I’m as clueless about model development as many of the soft sciences types are I can make the predictions that model makes do anything I want.
Oh, and that model? Relationships between that model and any reality are purely coincidental. I’ve seen this time and time again where folks build models without proper controls and without understanding the subtleties of some of the statistical methods. It’s a tricky business and doing it well can make you a mint of money in various commercial enterprises.
You remember that “hockey stick” at the end of the first set of AGW models? That’s now been discredited, even by AGW fanatics. It was a red flag to ANYONE who’s seen modelling done before as little more than a blatant attempt to massage the data to give the desired result or the result of less than stellar modellers. Those of you who aren’t scientists might think that that isn’t a big deal, but to hard science types that’s a sure indication that you’re dealing with folks you can’t trust without verifying their algorithms and datasets. And since we’re dealing with a set of folks who are reluctant to disclose both let’s just say that scepticism is the order of the day.
Bottom line:
(a)Is Global Warming real? Probably, but the underlying methodology and sensing data is still somewhat questionable.
(b) Is it anthropogenic? The data there is far more questionable, since the mechanisms of climate are so poorly understood because of the complexity of the system. And the modellers have shown themselves to have many problems with openness, accuracy, and quality already.
(c) Is it worth spending the amount of money to fix it that would be required even if humans were the predominant cause? Unlikely. The money to mitigate the effects of Global Warming would be far less.
(d) What’s this fascination with a static climate? When has it ever been static? You’ve always told me that liberals were the ones in favor of change!
Swiftee:
Nowhere in the article you cite does the author call anyone a “blatant liar”.
In fact it turns out the author is himself a blatant liar.
http://comscep.blogspot.com/2007/07/addendum-to-part-1.html
Apparently your guy made up a quote and attributed it to real scientists who never said it. Naughty boy. If he had been a real scientist instead of a wingnut welfare queen, that would be the end of his career.
nerdbert:
Please go back and read the article you cited. Nowhere does it say anything like “the data upon which the models are based are terribly unreliable and rather questionable”. You simply made that part up.
Nor does it say that models of global climate change are not “reliable”. Rather it reaffirms the reliability of current models which predict that doubling pre-IR carbon levels will increase global temperature “between 2.0 C and 4.5 C”. The same models also allow “there is a small chance that the temperature rise could be up to 8C or higher.” The only debate is whether further research could produce models that make a more “precise” prediction within the 2C to 8plusC range. From my reading it looks like the authors lean to the theory that actual climate change results will be warmer than the models predict.
Since you can not accurately summarize a simple pop science news story, I will look elsewhere for expertise on climate modeling.
Once again, RickDFL, you have been conned into thinking a source is authoritative because it supports your view.
The article Swiftee mentions, http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/450392,CST-EDT-REF30b.article,
Taylor says his quote came from the Sep 2006 issue of Journal of Climate. You ‘debunk’ this claim by referring to a blogpost by one Justin Miron, who describes himself thus: “I attained my Honours BA in Philosophy (Magna Cum Laude), and I am currently planning on completing a masters in Landscape Architecture at the University of Toronto.”
The ‘debunking’ which you endorse consists of Miron’s challenging Taylor’s statement “Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate reported, “Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame.”” Miron does this by linking to a PDF of a paper published in Journal of Climate in Sep of 2006 which does not include the words Taylor quotes.
The problem is that nowhere does Taylor say where in the Sep. 2006 issue the quote can be found.
There are actually 2 issues of Journal of Climate with a publish date of September, 2006 — Vol. 19, issues 17 & 18. Together they contain 35 scientific papers and 3 instances of what the journal calls “Notes and correspondence”.
Nothing on the journal website, other than the abstracts, are available for download without purchase. The PDF Miron links to is actually stored on the website of that paper’s author.
Needless to say, demonstrating that the quote Taylor cites cannot be found in one paper out of 35 published in Sept. 2006 does not show, as Miron says that it does, ” . . . the purported quote drawn from the Journal of Climate paper was indeed made up (deliberately or not) – as I had feared.”
Terry:
Yes – you are right the Taylor quote i.e. “Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blamef”, may not have appeared in the article Miron and I looked in. After all it was only titled “Conflicting Signals of Climatic Change in the Upper Indus Basin” [The Indus being the river that starts in the Himalayas].
Perhaps it was in one of these from issues 17 and 18:
Comparison of Precipitation from Observed Data and General Circulation Models over the Iberian Peninsula [That would be Spain and Portugal]
Defining Intraseasonal Rainfall Variability within the North American Monsoon
Local Regimes of Atmospheric Variability: A Case Study of Southern California
ENSO Modulation of the Interannual and Intraseasonal Variability of the East Asian Monsoon—A Model Study
Simulated Global-Mean Sea Level Changes over the Last Half-Millennium
I tell you what Terry, you pick one article from the JoC v19 issues 17 or 18 and I will go to the trouble/expense of getting it just to bet you $25 that the Taylor quote does not appear in it. So which article do you want to pick:
The Effect of a Large Freshwater Perturbation on the Glacial North Atlantic Ocean Using a Coupled General Circulation Model
or
Is the Thermohaline Circulation Changing?
Take your pick.
Your missing the point, RickDFL. I never said that Taylor’s quote was legit, just that Miron’s ‘debunking’ of it was a farce — and that you didn’t notice it. Because you wanted Miron to be correct, your critical faculties failed you.
Nerdbert & RickDFL-
The New Scientist article is not about the unpredictability of climate change. It is commentary on the possible political fallout of a scholarly paper in Science that says that climate change models will never achieve the degree of accuracy that climate scientists and policy makers want them to. The abstract of this paper is here: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;318/5850/629.
I have access to the original Science article through work. RickDFl & Nerdbert, If either of you would like a PDF of it, email me at velocette@gmail.com & I’ll hook you up.
The Science article is really a precis of amuch longer, mathematics oriented article I haven’t looked at yet. The terms & math are probably beyond my ken anyhow.
I will, however, summarize here the Science article referred to by the New Scientist article:
Much of current climate change science is devoted to finding the value of climate sensitivity, S. This is the deg. C that the global temp will stabilize at if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is doubled from its pre-industrial revolution level.
The IPCC says that S is 2 to 4.5, with a one-in-three chance that it will be higher or lower. The authors state that, if S is 4 or > 6.5 all bets are off. The problem is that for a stable global temp to be achieved, there has to be a feedback mechanism, and for climate change the mechanism is the amount of heat that is lost by being radiated back into space. The value of this feedback F has to be between -1 and +1 (for positive & negative feedback) yet the possible values of S are unlimited. There is no reliable scaling between the values of S and F other than what has historically been observed.
The conclusion drawn by the authors is that long-term planning to stabilize the level of CO2 in the atmosphere at a certain level is a waste of time, since we don’t know with precision what level of CO2 in the atmosphere will produce what value of S .
Key paragraph:
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Oooopen wide DFLRick:
“Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ”An Inconvenient Truth,” have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.”
….go, and lie no more.
Terry:
I thought about the possibility that Miron searched the wrong article. But looking at the titles and abstracts convinced me that the article Miron cites is the only one that mentions Himalayan glaciers. He and I are out an a limb, but I am confident you will not be able to find the quote in either issue of the Sept. J of C.
Swiftee: You are unfamiliar with the concept, but the Taylor quote you pull is an example of polite disagreement. It is quite easy for two people to have a factual disagreement without calling each other “blatant liars”.
“Once fixed, it may be politically impossible to reduce it.”
Congrats SITD, after several days of trying to cite a peer-reviewed article against global warming, you finally manage to cite a peer-reviewed article that worries we need to move more aggressively against global warming.
RickDFL-
You don’t seem to understand how science works. If a team of astronomers announces tomorrow that they have data that shows that their is a 50/50 chance that a particular comet will strike the earth next year, you can believe it. The data and calculations are accessible to all. ‘Climate science’ is so hopelessly mired in public policy that it’s become primarily a political battle. The science doesn’t matter anymore, and that’s not a bad thing. If we ran our political system based on what scientists said was best for us we’d still be sterilizing the ‘genetically unfit’ as public policy & putting Downs Syndrome kids in mental institutions. When ‘science’ makes moral demands on society it has stopped becoming a tool and become a religion.
Terry:
Like everyone else here you keep repeating a conclusion about the scientific merits of global warming without ever providing anything remotely like scientific evidence for that conclusion.
The science on global warming makes no moral demands on society. It just lays out the likely consequences of alternative courses of actions. The moral demand comes from our obligations to each other and our possible descendants. If you think that the U.S. and the rest of the world ought to continue their current CO2 intensive economy despite the likely consequences feel free to make the moral case.
“Like everyone else here you keep repeating a conclusion about the scientific merits of global warming without ever providing anything remotely like scientific evidence for that conclusion.”
Now there’s an odd statement. If I see a long-bearded guy in a robe holding a “Repent the end is near” sign on a street corner it’s his job to convince me that he’s right, not the other way around.
If the global warming believers get their way the costs humanity will pay to banish the chimera will very high, and those costs will be borne, as always, by the poor.
The crazy street guy is not a scientist and he does not follow the scientific method. Global warming is a well-tested scientific theory. If you want to attack it produce some scientific evidence.
“If the global warming believers get their way the costs humanity will pay to banish the chimera will very high, and those costs will be borne, as always, by the poor.”
Then it should be very easy to produce scientific evidence that it is wrong.