Posted by Dee Norris
This article concerning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry caught my attention this morning:
Twenty years ago, Douglas Prasher was one of the driving forces behind research that earned a Nobel Prize in chemistry this week. But today, he’s just driving.
Prasher, 57, works as a courtesy shuttle operator at a Huntsville, Ala., Toyota dealership. While his former colleagues will fly to Stockholm in December to accept the Nobel Prize and a $1.4 million check, the former Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist will be earning $10 an hour while trying to put two of his children through college.
Shuttle driver reflects on Nobel snub – Cape Cod TImes
Are we starving science research in other areas to pursue accelerated and possibly needless research into Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and the dire consequences of AGW at the expense of other more productive and beneficial areas of study?
We have recently heard from Richard A. Muller justifying the distortions and untruths of Al Gore (I guess if the untruths were committed willingly, one could call them LIES) as necessary to stir the public to combat AGW, but at the same time are these tactics shifting funding away from more deserving science projects?
While it was perfectly within his rights not to share the cloned gene with others, Prasher said he felt an obligation to give his research a chance to turn into something significant, even if he was no longer a part of it.
“When you’re using public funds, I personally believe you have an obligation to share,” Prasher said.
How many researchers like Douglas Prasher are under-employed while others like Hansen and Mann receive lecture fees and yet continue to obfuscate data and research paid for by public funds simply to protect their ’empires’?
Your guess is as good as mine, but I ask if spending money on research the explore to the link between global warming and kidney stones really a good use of a limited resource?
In a final thought, I hope some research facility sees this article and offers Doug a job that pays better than $10 an hour. Clearly, he is a more deserving scientist than many of the AGW researchers.
Kum,
I think it is insulting for you to include American, British and Dutch oil companies in the same category as OPEC. What do you mean by their combined might? Do you think that they collaborate to fix the price? The non government oil companies control about 15% of the crude thanks to the policy in the US of not developing our resources. Think how bad it might be if there were not some private companies with high technology as players in the mix for oil exploration and production.
I keep hearing about the tax breaks and subsidies for the oil companies beyond that given to every other company. I know first hand about all the subsidies for the ethanol/corn folks including the 53 cents per gallon. Can you cite the particular subsidies and tax breaks for the oil companies. I know the Clinton administration did not include an escalation clause when they let some leases when the crude price was about $16/bbl. That was a contract that Pelosi now wants to break. I expect there might be some examples so I would like to hear them.
Not only have I seen pictures of the Alberta Tar Sands, I worked on the Engineering design of one plant and also spent 1 year working long hours at the site in Fort McMurray starting up the plant. You should visit Ft McMurray and see how a cold, desolate part of the world has been turned into a place with lots of job opportunities and financial rewards. Without oil from tar sands (assuming we still refuse to develop our resources) we would be more dependent on mifddle east oil and the prices would be higher. We need to thank Canada for the emense amount of energy that they provide the US especially considering that we refuse to develop our own resources. You mentioned earlier that we send our $$$ to the middle east. Most of the oil we import comes from Canada, Mexico, Venzuela, etc. , not te middle east.
Finally, I currently enjoy the economic benefits of working on renewable and other alternative fuel projects. Your comment that these processes are clean is a myth. Also I don’t know where you get your $80/bbl. Some backup would be appreciated, and possibly we could save lots of taxpayers $$ by eliminating the unnecessary subsidies and loan guarantees currently in place. Finally these plants are struggling at the edge of technogy and may never achieve the promises of our politicians, who seem to think we can just haphazzardly pump $$$ at it. Re my children and grandchildren, I am more concerned that these efforts will fail to meet the promise of providing our energy needs and their lifestyle will be seriously affected. I believe we need to focus on basic research rather than trying to force an approach decided by Congress.
The worst scenario I see for my grandchildrenis that the anti fossil fuel, AGW folks will significantly affect the quality their life. I am thinking about them!!
Kum (19:01:43) Hey, energy was his specialty, and he saw it coming. Do you not understand that land for crops is fungible?
How do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you are so stupidly and unnecessarily insulting?
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Kum (19:01:43) How much does a gallon of ethanol weigh? Are you seriously trying to tell me that nearly 8 pounds of ethanol contains less than 6 pounds of corn?
You do know there were food riots in Asia this last year? That implies that some on the margin died. It is more than irritating to listen to you defend this environmental, social, and political disaster. Their deaths be upon you.
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Kum (19:01:43) Let’s see, cows eat field corn. Cows produce milk. Children drink milk. More than this example, though, land diverted to produce ethanol has raised the price of food all over the world. And you are mistaken that reducing the output of fossil CO2 wasn’t one of the reasons used to shove this boondoggle down the throats of taxpayers.
[personal attack deleted ~ charles the moderator]
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Okay, okay, let’s rein it in a tad . . .
Kum (the usual) Government mandates and government subsidies produce an evil brew. If ethanol is so great why can’t it compete in an unencumbered market? My Daddy has wanted to know that since before you had any inkling of the question.
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evanjones (22:42:51) People are dying from the biofuel disaster, and even more are being impoverished. It’s a little tough to listen to Kum being both wrong and smug about it. Evil creeps in on little cat feet, and burning ethanol for transportation is evil, today. I’m not saying it can never have a role. Japan depended on making jet fuel from pine trees when we put them past peak oil with our submarines.
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FWIW, I thoroughly disapprove of the ethanol racket, but I understand that not everyone agrees with my math.
But the fact is that flour prices are up sharply in the UDCs.
ej (22:47:34) The ethanol disaster need to be stopped, and it won’t get stopped until people get angry about it. But it is a little silly to sit here and rant at a snoring Kum. I’ll lay off at least until he can respond.
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Look, kim, I know. I also believe it kills people. Food riots don’t occur in a vacuum. (And they were not only in Asia. They even occurred in Mexico, and IIRC, Africa.)
Perhaps I am a bit jaded by it all.
I grew up during the height of the Cold War. Lots more people were dying on account of that. Or even on account of, say, Rwanda.
I’ve lived through a lot of evil and it hasn’t been padding around on cats’ feet. Many millions dead and a lot of my contemporaries shrugging it off and making smarmy excuses for the redhanded murderers. (I took my masters in Ashamed of America at Columbia GSAS.)
But they were mostly wrongheaded, not evil. They didn’t realize (or perhaps accept) the indirect consequences of their beliefs.
I was in Germany a few years back. Came across an old codger who didn’t speak to Americans–he remembered the bombings. (I assume he lost someone or ones, but I never found out.)
We can’t win people over by being overharsh . . .
The ethanol disaster need to be stopped, and it won’t get stopped until people get angry about it.
I think it’s more effective to get upset about it and firm about it.
If he thought it starved people and didn’t care, then I’d get a bit mad. But he merely thinks we’re wrong.
If we’re going to win that fight we have to rope in the hearts and minds. Getting mad gets in the way.
ej, I’m sure you are right, but the plain deceitfulness of his answer about the starving children and field corn does not give me much confidence in his bonafides. He’s a partisan disinformation specialist, precisely whom we need to get angry and curse at. He’s not persuadable by reason.
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I don’t think he’s being deceitful. I just think he’s plain old wrong. He’s not considering the entire equation. Not a sin, just an error, and a rather common error at that.
I doubt he’s profiting off of it. We’re all a little partisan, come to think of it.
Besides, even if we may not convince him, there are the third parties. Keeping cool helps there, too.
And I am on your side of the argument, mind.
And certainly, evil often pounces like a strong lion. It also creeps in on little cat feet, like ethanol did.
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ej, in my comment at (22:35:22) I called him ignorant or disingenuous. It’s not going to be easy for him to beg off with ignorance, but if he does, then the deceit is not there. Personally, I think he understands that it is raising food prices around the world and it doesn’t matter to him. Why else that stupid comment about children not eating field corn?
You can be partisan without being disinformational. Isn’t that what we all strive for?
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With an assist from a harsh winter. But yes, you’re right. I’d bring up DDT about now (esp. since the WHO has recently approved and endorsed it–40+ million dead children later). And consider the sanctimony that accompanied the DDT ban.
But then perhaps you disagree with me concerning DDT. Many do. And they are very sincere in their beliefs.
Isn’t that what we all strive for?
Well, yes. But perhaps that’s what he’s striving for. It’s easy for people to miss indirect connections.
The AGW dudes think we are missing an indirect connection, too. Surely we drive them to fury or they wouldn’t so often be abusive. But abusing them back doesn’t work. We need to be firm but reasonable or we will lose out.
(Not that I intend simply to let the matter slide when it all comes clear!)
ej, I believe painting DDT on walls is the right thing to do.
It is a little amusing for me to rant like this, because I’ve spent a lot of time on adversarial boards, being accused of being a paid disinformational specialist. Notice that I never insinuated that he was personally profiting either from ethanol or from defending it. That is a bridge too far.
But for someone who is acutely and comprehensively knowledgable about the ethanol industry to make that claim about field corn seems deliberately deceitful. I promised to lay off, and I will until he answers. It is possible that he is merely ignorant, in which case, I’ll have to eat a lot of my angry words.
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And I’d go a lot further than mere doorframe painting (yet not as fr as we were in 1962). But that just goes to show how opinions can differ.
I think they ought to free up a lot of that subsidized land. maybe there is room for some sort of biofuel (though I don’t see where yet). I agree that the free market ought to deal with such things–without government subsidy.
Those nasty blogs will get to a body!
Don Shaw (21:55:42) Hear, hear. Let an unencumbered market price fossil fuel out of the energy market eventually. Those hydrocarbon bonds were much too laboriously and lovingly formed just to destroy them for the energy contained. We need them for plastic feedstock for structure and fibre to house and clothe the teeming billions.
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Doorframes and interior walls, is what I’ve read.
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Corn as far as eyes see,
Grown to feed a mandate.
Manchild starves.
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Regarding food riots:
April 8, 2008
April 14, 2008
April 9, 2008
April 14, 2008
February 2007 (read this one)
October 2, 2008
I don’t throw all these out to say “told you so”, rather to inform anyone who doesn’t realize what has been going on that this IS going on. Just like the French riots, most of the food riot information has simply gone unreported since the initial surge in April. The problem has not stopped. Global food supply is interconnected to a greater extent than you may realize, and using land and crops normally used for FOOD in order to grow a subsidized cash crop is not a good thing. It doesn’t matter if what they are growing on a plot of land is actually “food”, what matters is that yet another farmer is succumbing to the lure of fast cash for a crop grown on his land that is not food.
I sometimes wonder if the internet is a good thing after all. Information IS out there, LOTS of it, but who will guide you to what is important? What IS the definition of important?
kim (22:35:22) Charles, that was not a personal attack; it was an attack on his rhetoric. I might well have phrased it better by saying that his argument was uninformed or disingenous, rather than calling him ignorant or disingenuous.
Commonly, when one is faced with an argument with the structure and content his had, and that is wrong, the resolution is that the proponent is either missing some knowledge or deliberately hiding it. I am trying to find out which.
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Codetech (04:32:34) Thanks. Heh, it looks like we had a one person food riot here last night.
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