Susan Crockford writes
…commenter Brad Keyes at The Conversation defends the use of the “Ursus bogus” image with this astonishing statement:
“The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’—and readers’—attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty.”
More at her Polar Bear Blog
“… and if they hadn’t had large quantities of their wealth creation taxed away, they probably would have produced much more.” (Gary Mount at 4:14pm today) Great example.
Oh, there is no DOUBT about that. Much more.
Socialism is a disease (for every 1 government job it “creates,” 2 private sector jobs are prevented from coming into being — just ask Dr. Walter E. Williams if you don’t believe me.)
Churchill had it right (quoting from memory only): “Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. Socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
All boats rise with the tide of economic prosperity.
Corporations won’t fund research?!!
To find out the truth, Pat, do a little research into the R & D budgets of major corporations. Just a little ignorant of the business world, there. Did GE and Boeing and Procter & Gamble and Bausch & Lomb and Pfizer and … on and on and on … suddenly reorganize as partnerships or sole proprietorships?
Also, if the research is not basic science, but, applied science, so what? You and everyone out there with some wealth are free to get organized and invest together in whatever basic science endeavor you like. And many private (no coerced funds from taxpayers are required) foundations and trusts are doing just that.
Oh, and btw:
George Washington Carver and Thomas Alva Edison and the Wright Bros. and Henry Ford and Letourneau (forgot his first name) and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (and lots of others that we could name) were not taxpayer-funded.
Pat Frank said @ur momisugly January 21, 2014 at 12:25 pm
I’d like to second what Pat wrote.
For those of you criticising scientists for not speaking out, I happen to know a few who wish they could. Unfortunately, they have contracts specifically preventing them from making unauthorised statements to the general public. IOW, they abide by the rules of the game.
Of course they could speak out and hence be summarily dismissed from their position. IOW, they would no longer be able to work in science (whistleblowers usually find it hard to gain employment in their chosen field), so there would be less useful science being undertaken. Additionally, you are demanding that they probably take a a hefty pay-cut. And scientists are not particularly well-paid. That’s why the “best and brightest” compete for academic training as doctors, lawyers, accountants and possibly even documentary film-makers and telephone santisers.
Janice Moore says:
January 21, 2014 at 4:33 pm
Actually G. W. Carver was tax-supported. along with private philanthropy.
garymount said @ur momisugly January 21, 2014 at 4:14 pm
That’s research with an end in mind, also known as applied science, aka engineering. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not the kind of research Pat was referring to. So called pure research is entirely driven by curiosity. The practical benefits that flow from this kind of research often occur after, sometimes long after, the researcher has died.
Janice Moore said @ur momisugly January 21, 2014 at 4:33 pm
George Washington Carver spent a considerable portion of his career working at government funded Agricultural Experiment Stations. What evidence do you have that the US Government funded these through private means, rather than taxpayer revenue?
Pat Frank says: @ur momisugly January 21, 2014 at 12:25 pm
You folks who are extending that criticism to all scientists in all of the academe are preparing to throw the baby out with the bathwater….
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Pat Frank, academic science brought this anger upon themselves.
Where were the university and industry scientists when the Royal Society, American Chemical Society, Physics, …. ALL came out supporting CAGW? Where was the uproar from scientists about having their good name usurped for a G..D D…M HOAX?
I will tell you where they were. Most were busy trying to find an ‘Angle’ that would get them some of that grant money thats where.
Now we have people DYING, 65M Europeans live in fuel poverty, which is associated with more than 30,000 excess winter deaths in Europe per year. And Obama wants to visit that same horror on Americans.
As far as I am concerned every single dollar of that grant money is covered in blood and it wipes off on you. Every single one of you who takes a dollar instead of standing up against this hoax deserves to be condemned a long with the universities who are also supporting the hoax.
Please note I have been fired three times during my career as a chemist because I refused to lie especially when it came to other people’s safety. Too bad most other scientists rather grab grant money while throwing stones at the few brave souls willing to stand up instead of supporting them.
So yes, I stand by what I said. If you are not adult enough to be trusted with tax payer money then you deserve to have that money yanked away from you. The good work done by past scientists in no way excuses the present dishonest bunch.
The Pompous Git says:
January 21, 2014 at 4:55 pm
Tuskegee Institute (now University) is a largely privately funded institution. The Alabama Extension Service is now mainly tax- & government fee-funded, but early on benefited from private philanthropy, as in its Jesup Wagons.
But you´re right that Carver also enjoyed some public (state & federal) support, early in his career at Iowa State & to some extent at Tuskegee.
@ur momisugly Milodonharlani
I seem to recall Carver having contretemps on more than one occasion with Washington over what he was doing with funds he had been given. I don’t have the relevant documentation to hand, nor the will to go looking over the Internet. I believe that the Washington referred to was the government, rather than his good self. But you never know… 😉
Janice Moore says:
January 21, 2014 at 1:26 pm
… LOVE the send them to a deserted island idea; why not Siberia…
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Nah, make it Antarctica since they think it is melting. Shackleton already proved you can live there.
After all we just had this comment on another thread.
Gail Combs said @ur momisugly January 21, 2014 at 5:09 pm
Can’t disagree with that. But just because there are bad apples in the barrel, does not mean they are all bad. You appear to be telling us that you are a “good” apple, and I’m more than willing to take you at your word given the many words of yours that I have read here. I suspect that there are in fact many more since I know some of them, though as I said above, they are somewhat constrained.
garymount says: @ur momisugly January 21, 2014 at 4:14 pm
…but simply, Individuals and businesses outside of academia have produced extremely large quantities of science, and if they hadn’t had large quantities of their wealth creation taxed away, they probably would have produced much more.
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Thanks for saying that. You are correct. I always worked in industry and all the companies I worked for did R&D.
The Pompous Git says:
I am always reminded in situations like this of what Edmund Burke said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Do not allow evil to triumph.”
We are the ones who have to get up and look ourselves in the face and decide if we can live with blood on our hands. In one case several people were killed by the company I got fired from. In the other two cases people were severely injured. In all three cases the companies were entirely responsible and managed to wiggle out of it.
@ur momisugly Gail Combes & garymount. Do you think private industry R & D would have developed nuclear power without the theoretical foundations provided by Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Ernest Rutherford, Richard Feynman, Neils Bohr etc? Or, put another way, do you believe the many fine theoreticians in physics set out with developing a nuclear industry in mind?
@ur momisugly Gail Combes
As I said above; I am in broad agreement with you. And it is certain that each of us must face our own dilemmas and act according to personal belief. I also know the personal cost of going against the tide and it was high. Fortunately, I was already close to the end of my working life and could afford to tell clients I was directly ordered to lie to: “same shit, different toilet”.
I cannot sit in judgement of others when I know that I have had feet of clay in the past.
Janice Moore says:
January 21, 2014 at 1:27 pm
Great quote, Mark (and your two cats, too)!
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TY Janice! They’re the ones who put me onto that quote.
Cats are big time skeptics; dogs, not so much. Heck even Anthony’s pooch is a member of the Soviet Union of Consarned Scientists.
Thanks for informing me about George W. Carver, milodonharlani (whatever your real name is) and Pompous (glad you are back again, even if you strain out a gnat but swallow a camel, sigh). I hope the farming has been going very well for you.
Taxpayer funding of science is not necessary for the advancement of knowledge. You have not disproven my point by eliminating one of my pieces of evidence for it. People are free to fund universities with their private money to fund basic science — and they DO. And, in a democratic republic, the governed may consent to fund it. And that is fine. The fact remains, however, that basic science can happen without taxpayer funding.
State funding makes science vulnerable to ideologues and tyrants — let’s keep it beyond their reach as much as possible. HOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU THINK CLIMATE “SCIENCE” GOT INTO THE STATE IT IS IN if not for gov’t. control (money = control (always))?
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@ur momisugly Gail — lol, you are right! Antarctica (or the Arctic) would be even better! Good one. And, thank you, so much, for all your EXCELLENT research that you share, day in, day out. As I said to Jimbo earlier today, Don’t stop. We need reminding and there are new readers all the time. You are a one-woman warrior for truth — you go, girl! (hope that cold is better — ugh, sometimes, they seem to last forever)
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@ur momisugly Mark (and cats) — You’re welcome. Grrrr (with a smile), you don’t know dogs very well, I think. ALL dogs are 100% devoted to the TRRRRRRRUUUUTH (that’s how my German Shepherd says it, lol). It is cats who are sneaky and cynical and may …. or may not…. you just never can tell, can you….. support any side in particular…. cats, being narcissists, are looking for what’s in it for them… (they equate to the Enviro-profiteers or to publishers of sensational stuff they know to be junk science). Dogs are loving and faithful and try to please you and are very honest and…. AND I JUST LOVE DOGS. Okay, okay, I realize that you think cats are super-neat (and, no doubt, they would agree with you, lol) and we’ll just have to agree to disagree (and that is fine, (smile)). At any rate, you and I don’t need to fight like them, do we? (smile) We do agree on this: truth rocks!
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This isn’t directed at Git, but when there is a standard we are reaching for we aren’t upholding it by giving others a pass just because we ourselves have fallen short of it at times. We can have empathy for those who, like us, have fallen short of it but we don’t lower the standard to whatever level we’ve personally reached. Sometimes “Do as I say not as I do” (or did) has some wisdom behind it.
<a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/21/quote-of-the-week-sensationalizing-for-the-greater-good/#comment-1543702"DirkH, thinking that most of academic science is “crap” in the face of the tidal wave of knowledge and technology that has surged out of those labs since 1950 is to live in Never-Never Land.
Physics is no more stagnant now than it was between Newton and Maxwell (~200 years) or between Maxwell and Niels Bohr (~80 years). Your impatience just shows a lack of perspective.
Zeke, Austin Hughes is wrong. “Public education, peace, and democracy” all come directly from the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment and its rationalist philosophies gained credibility only because of the successes of science since the time of Newton.
Science developed in societies plagued with absolutist monarchies and religious strife. Supposing that, “A peaceful and democratic political order and a literate populace create the conditions under which science can develop” is exactly backwards from how science actually developed.
Science certainly needs those things to prosper. And we know that tyranny and oppression, aimed at science, will destroy science. But that’s hardly worthy of cosmically inverted philosophizing, is it.
Janice Moore said @ur momisugly January 21, 2014 at 7:13 pm
I can only speak here whereof I know, so it is confined to the Land of Under. It is true that private corporations/individuals provide funding to our universities. Indeed, it is a major objective these days for the universities to pursue such. The funding in every instance I know is decidedly not for fundamental research, but tied to providing marketable results. A scientist funded under such an arrangement would be in violation of contract were he, or she, to engage in fundamental research.
This state of affairs causes much anguish in academe and is a very common topic of conversation. I have no beef with this, but it does seem the academics have a point when they can show that this applied research is very much at the expense of fundamental/theoretical research.
While it is certainly true that the captains of industry could fund fundamental research, they do not. There are two major reasons why this is so. The first is that it would be perceived as against the interests of the shareholders since there is no profit to be had in either the short, or medium term. The second is illustrated by a conversation between a captain of industry and one who was attempting to interest him in something new. Captain of Industry said: “What I want are new ideas, but they must have been thoroughly tested.” He was completely unaware that his demand was a contradiction in terms. New ideas are by definition untested.
Finally, my now deceased younger brother was an excellent theoretician and gained his first degree in mathematics only to discover that you have to be very lucky indeed to gain funding for theoretical research. And none of that funding came from private industry. Upon gaining his second degree in engineering, he immediately found gainful employment, but theoretical research, his first love, was never anything but a private hobby for him.
Apropos the farm. We shall be putting it up for sale. Sadly, I am now too arthritic to put in the many long hours needed to keep it functioning as it should. The upside is that even though I will become a “townie”, I will be able to build another house, albeit with lotsa help 🙂
@ur momisugly Gunga Din
The problem here is we are not in the shoes of the potential whistleblower. Observing whistleblowers it is obvious that they convert most, if not all of their wealth into income-for-lawyers. If they are lucky, they remain married to a loyal spouse, but there’s never any guarantee that’s going to happen. My GP who has some firsthand experience in this area tells me that depression and ill-health frequently accompany the loss of wealth, family and prestige. It’s a hard ask…
garymount, you’re supposing that corporations left to themselves would invest huge sums into R&D. In the past, corporations left to themselves, invested time in building monopolies to remove competition and maximize profit. Why wouldn’t they do that again?
Part of the reason corporations invest in R&D now, is that R&D is mostly independent of the corporate purse – most of it runs on tax money. That has made the environment very competitive, because new products and methods emerge all the time from academic labs. Corporations *must* invest in some R&D just to keep up. If they don’t take advantage of new ideas and technologies, someone else will and put them out of business. Remove the impetus, and they’ll settle down and make insider arrangements with one another to remove that scary competition and rake in the easy money. And why not? Does anyone think business runs on altruism?
I’m reading Joyce Appleby’s “A History of Capitalism: the relentless revolution” Exactly that sort of thing – competition-suppressing monopolies — arose whenever the economic environment permitted them.
Pat Frank says: January 21, 2014 at 12:25 pm
You folks who are extending that criticism to all scientists in all of the academe are preparing to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Well said Pat Franks.
We perhaps become a little narrowly focused in here. I note from some comments in here that some seem to consider that the only science being done in the world is CAGW scare related.
We owe a lot to science. Of any source of funding or motivation. Just a bit of wheat/chaff sorting required. (You’d think there’d be a machine for that by now).