I’m off on travel today, but I wanted to take this opportunity to give readers a chance to talk about a variety of topics and to discuss something that has been of interest to me over the years: professional and scientific societies.
We’ve seen the pronouncements on climate change and the internal strife generated from organizations like the American Physical Society. As you may recall APS pushed a climate change agenda to their membership via a position statement. When one of their prominent members, Dr. Hal Lewis, decided to resign in protest, the APS doubled down.
A number of people who don’t like this sort of thing have resigned from professional societies they used to belong to for similar reasons, so my question is this:
If you could create a scientific society today in the physical sciences, what would you do to make it the best you could and to give it a measure of immunity from the political downsides of the climate wars?
Also, an unrelated note: the “Top Headlines” will return Monday.
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Key to climate change
What fascinates scientists about the age of the finds is that they correspond to times when climate specialists have already calculated the Earth was going through an especially warm period, caused by fluctuations in the orbital pattern of the Earth in relation to the Sun.
At these times, historians now speculate, the high mountain regions became accessible to humans.
The Roman coins found on the Schnidejoch are being seen as proof that the Romans used this route to cross the Alps from Italy to their territories in northern Europe. Interestingly, one of the Earth’s chillier periods coincides with the decline of the Roman empire.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/06/21/receding-swiss-glaciers-reveal-4000-year-old-forests-warmists-try-to-suppress-findings/
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Nick Stokes says:
June 21, 2014 at 5:17 pm
I haven’t seen much mention of the recent June SIPN Arctic Ice predictions, to which WUWT contributed. Wang at CFS and WUWT stand out as the big optimists, at over 6.1 M sq km minimum. Next is 5.5; median is 4.7.
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Nick, why is a larger guess “optimistic”? Optimistic might be zero ice in Sept as this allows life “en masse” to occupy the entire Arctic Ocean instead of being limited to just ice-specialists. An ice-free world is the most biologically productive.
I have been a geologist for 33 yrs and to date have avoided joining any professional organization because you are by association agreeing with their agenda. The advancement of science comes thru independence from constraints. I think the scientific method is the only rule that needs to be followed. The moment you create a group or organization, there will always be an agenda.
Surely this to a large extent turns on the answer to the question “is (scientific) knowledge finite or infinite” (perhaps akin to “is human ingenuity finite or infinite”). If finite, there will at some stage come a time when the work of the society/academy is done so this is more an issue of trying to understand where we now stand on the curve; otherwise (infinitely) more work, debate, controversy always lies ahead of us and today’s society/academy will probably come to be not fit for purpose at some point ahead.
My guess is that scientific knowledge (as per the universe) is to all practical intents infinite. Whatever way the society may be structured, I think the important thing is that it should formally “re-boot” from time to time, re-thinking its structure, membership qualifications, methods and practices so that these do not become entrenched or taken over by a group-think du jour.
I would therefore suggest that the constitution of any such society should provide that it automatically dissolves after a fixed term: perhaps once per century so that the society cannot get too entrenched in the political system and there is the opportunity for (former) members to re-think the ways of their predecessors and perhaps (jointly and/or severally) decide to go in entirely different directions.
“Also, an unrelated note: the “Top Headlines” will return Monday.”
No hurry on my part, it is really nice not to have to scroll past it for the newest posts. 🙂
Wayne Delbeke: Had the APEGGA spent one penny on this during my time as a member, I’d have resigned on the spot.
The first thing one would have to do to join the society would be to take a polygraph test!
Could any of the high visibility, policy impacting, climate folks pass it?
Think about it>p
“PLS says:
June 22, 2014 at 1:30 am
>Bill says:
>June 21, 2014 at 6:45 pm
>I do not think there is any way to write society charters to eliminate politics and selfish self-interest in >these societies;
It is impossible to write rules that compel unreasonable people to behave in reasonable ways. Period.
++PLS”
Things began going seriously downhill when “networking”, ie politics, became the most important factor in finding a job.
” I went down Virginia seeking shelter from the storm
Caught up in the fable I watched the tower grow
Five-year plans and new deals
Wrapped in golden chains
And I wonder, still I wonder
Who’ll stop the rain”
CCR from “Who’ll Stop the Rain”
If a society wasn’t formed in the back of a bar or in someones basement over a case of beer, you probably shouldn’t join.
I’ll drink to that Steve……..
I am a mechanical engineer employed in the nuke power plant business. I have been a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers since graduating from college in 1979. In the last 8 years or so, I have seen an increasing number of members writing letters and articles in ME Magazine urging all members to get behind the leftist global warming scam. Lately, as more and more evidence indicates there is no global warming, the letters to the editor have increased. I am beginning to think they are being paid to write these letters because they all sound the same.
Another question would be; what should happen to those once-reputable scientific organizations who signed on wholesale to the CAGW myth, at the expense of all of society and to science itself?
It is certainly to their great shame that they did so.
As a foreign member of the APS, it was irritating to see the executive release a statement claiming that the evidence for man-made global warming [AGW] is “incontrovertible”.
This was done with no consultation with the members.
What I find remarkable is the complete lack of critical review of AGW published results, compared to say, the recent claim by the BICEP2 experiment of the observation of gravitation waves.
For example, the original plot by NASA/GISS/Hansen et al, the started the AGW meme
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.gif
the claim that the global temperature anomaly is known to within +/- 0.1C back in 1880 is based on an equilibrium model guesstimate, an unproven assumption, as far as I know, that temperature anomalies correlate over thousands of kilometres, and the accuracy of various UHI corrections.
Homegenization, allowing the temperature at actual measurement sites to float, instead of being fixed, is also suspect.
Yet the plot is held up as established fact.
Critical reviews may have stopped the AGW meme in it’s tracks and prevented a lost opportunity cost in the billions in terms of time and money [WOFTAM]. Oh, well.
Of what organization is “Nullius in verba” the motto? The Royal Society. The very name suggests subordination to the state. I submit that this subordination is the source of the trouble, which is more deep-rooted than is usually acknowledged.
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Many groups with noble goals and inspirations have been diverted from their original vision because they were set up giving the authority to speak with whatever respect the group has earned to a few people. That’s fine until “the top” has been infiltrated by those with an agenda who use that respect earned in the past to promote their agenda in the present.
Keep the “authority” bottom up rather than top down.
Facts are not smears. He claims he wrote the AI for a video game but his name does not appear anywhere in the manual. I fail to see how that is a “smear”.
Poptech says:
June 22, 2014 at 1:34 pm
“Facts are not smears. He claims he wrote the AI for a video game but his name does not appear anywhere in the manual. I fail to see how that is a “smear”.”
What was it, Falcon 4.0?
From 1999:
http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/falcon-40-review/1900-2535935/
“Unfortunately, even with the latest patch, you’ll also see wingmen returning to base immediately after takeoff, AWACS controllers sending you to intercept enemy planes hundreds of miles off your course, inaccurate post-mission success ratings, and the rare but annoying crash back to the Windows desktop. In fact, if you’re going to be playing the single-player campaign, you’re better off not installing the initial patch, as the program is more stable and the AI more intelligent without it.”
Make of that what you will, I just found it amusing.
I do NOT regard PopTech’s writings a “smear” (as he notes)…I had a similar file I developed on Amory Lovins during the 1980’s. It was more for personal satisfaction, than “utility”. However, when contacted 3 times by legal firms, fighting PUC’s and other state regulators when the “greens” brought in good old “expert” Amory, it seems my FACTUAL file had quite the impact. DISQUALIFICATION from testifying as an “expert witness” was that impact. That, indeed, is a realm where PopTech’s research on this Poppinjay may prove to have great utility. It’s bad enough when people with actual academic status, are accepted (generally) unquestioningly, (Mann, et.al.) I think we should at least strive to expose the “Trolls” for what they really are. (Please note, in contrast we have a Willis E. WHO ADMITS straight out he has NO formal training. Yet, his published analyses are in depth, accurate, well backed. He oft times publishes the “R” code used for his statistical work, and also the data or pointers to the data. In his case, I’d hark back to a Marconi or a Tesla and say that discounting them because they had no “academic training” in Radio Frequency work, or A/C power systems, would, of course, be silly. But then again, they both PRODUCED reproducable and documented results. Mr. M? I don’t believe so.
DirkH, yep and I have a link to the manual on my post:
http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.485
Amazing that his name is no where to be found.
I don’t like people who make things up.
Of course, if it were about science, you would not censor science. You could censor foul language, sarcasm, bad jokes, etc., but you would not censor science. That’s if you really wanted to be scientific.
But, we know how that plays out….
I always thought Groucho had it right! I would never join any club that would be willing to have me as a member!
Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address was mentioned above. Here’s what he actually wrote relevant to the topic-
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It looks as if you folks at WUWT are winning (slowly) the war of truth over the Alarmists. Yet all my alarmist neighbors, after watching a “Nature” series TV show, are convinced the world’s polar bears are all dying from exhaustion from the long swims between ice foes. And, after reading the text from a Nat Geo article, they are sure the Antarctic ice extent is getting smaller every year. (The Nat Geo folks lie? Never.)
How about a section of WUWT for us slower witted folks and our even slower alarmists neighbors?
Not discussions of “Gompertz Curve fit” , just simple one line sentences of facts such as:
1) In 1960 the estimated total of the earth’s population of polar bears was 5,000. The estimated total of the earth’s polar bear population today is 30,000
.2) In the 1970’s, NASA began utilizing satellite imaging to measure solar ice extent. These measurements indicate that since measurements started, the three largest areas of Antarctic ice occurred in the last 10 years.
3) At current rates of sea level rise, it would take about 50,000 years for sea levels to reach the waist of the Statue of Liberty as indicated on the cover of a Nat Geo magazine.
Include the briefest of references to show where the data for the fact list came from?
We need to end this war as quickly as possible. It’s not just you doctors sparring with each other, It’s single moms working two jobs and teenagers with no summer jobs.