Mixing Rice with Pizza

[living_stradivarius]

So I'm back on campus now and Sec'y Rice is holding a free pizza dinner with students at one of the dorms. I've been inundated by e-mails asking people to participate in an "alternative" protest dinner on the lawn in front of the place.

I'd be interested in getting the board's opinion on the matter, please answer the poll Thanks Sorry, you can't refuse to go if you don't like pizza. Just imagine it's some other kind of food.

[nut-job]

So I'm back on campus now and Sec'y Rice is holding a free pizza dinner with students at one of the dorms. I've been inundated by e-mails asking people to participate in an "alternative" protest dinner on the lawn in front of the place.

I'd be interested in getting the board's opinion on the matter, please answer the poll Thanks Sorry, you can't refuse to go if you don't like pizza. Just imagine it's some other kind of food.

As provost she nearly crippled Stanford University by imposing a Byzantine purchasing system that no one can figure out how to use. She did the same at state, resulting in long delays to get a passport and making VISA processing a nightmare. Better to put her where she can do the least harm.

[RebLem]

So I'm back on campus now and Sec'y Rice is holding a free pizza dinner with students at one of the dorms. I've been inundated by e-mails asking people to participate in an "alternative" protest dinner on the lawn in front of the place.

I'd be interested in getting the board's opinion on the matter, please answer the poll Thanks Sorry, you can't refuse to go if you don't like pizza. Just imagine it's some other kind of food.

As provost she nearly crippled Stanford University by imposing a Byzantine purchasing system that no one can figure out how to use. She did the same at state, resulting in long delays to get a passport and making VISA processing a nightmare. Better to put her where she can do the least harm.

Maybe that would be in a pizza kitchen?
If someone is really interested in stirring the pot, this question should be asked of Chelsea Clinton. She's a Stanford grad, you know.

Yes, she is a war criminal, but I'd go anyway. If I've learned anything in my life, its that if you associate only with people who are not sinners, you will wind up a very lonely person. But I don't think I'd want to talk politics, international or domestic, with her. I'd ask her what her favorite recording of Shostakovich's Piano Quintet is.

[Corlyss_D]

e-mails asking people to participate in an "alternative" protest dinner on the lawn in front of the place.

How stupid, even for people living close enough to Berkeley to warrant a mental health warning!

The woman is incredibly accomplished and would definitely be worth a slice of pizza to hear.

As provost she nearly crippled Stanford University by imposing a Byzantine purchasing system that no one can figure out how to use.

Well, two points on this observation:

1) First of all, why anyone would expect a Russian scholar to design a procurement system is beyond me.

2) There's hardly a procurement system less efficient than that used in the federal government, which was designed by many congressmen who specialized in legislating for the system (Government Ops), but who were not "professional" procurement people. I know. I spent 35 years in the system. The only recourse procurement professionals have is to try to mitigate the nonsense imposed on the system by Congress. As far as Congress is concerned, the main purpose of the federal procurement budget is: to spread the money around as much as possible; to ensure that minority businesses, regardless of how corrupt or incompetent, get their share of the money; and if all those goals are met, lastly to get a product to a consumer on time and at a reasonable price (when I worked for DoD I used to say, "get the bullets to the soldier in the trenches when he needs them as cheaply as possible"). And depending on the time and the circumstances, goal 1 and goal 2 are interchanged with shocking regularity. Goal 3 is always third, when it should always be first, should always be "the mission."

[Cyril Ignatius]

Condi Rice as a "War Criminal"??? What planet do you live on!

The university should be honored that they have on their campus, at least momentarily, one articulate, intelligent person who understands that the war on terror must not only be fought; it must be won.

[living_stradivarius]

I went. "Do your homework first."
She worked around the waterboarding question whenever it came up.

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[Corlyss_D]

Condi Rice as a "War Criminal"??? What planet do you live on!

The one where HRW, AI, and a variety of European judges and prosecutors seek charges against Bush administration officials to be prosecuted in the ICC or elsewhere, including Rice.

[Cyril Ignatius]

Condi Rice as a "War Criminal"??? What planet do you live on!

The one where HRW, AI, and a variety of European judges and prosecutors seek charges against Bush administration officials to be prosecuted in the ICC or elsewhere, including Rice.

Okay, so let's really start filing charges. How about charging Al Gore for misrepresentation of scientific data pertaining to "global warming". And while we are at it, lets go after the large bevy of university and governmental leaders who suppressed research challenging the "global warming thesis". Let's also go after Bill Clinton for his negligence in allowing the Chinese get high security info from the USA. Let's also convict him for failing to take out Osama bin Laden each time he had the opportunity. Let's also file a lawsuit against the current President for releasing important security documents.

[Corlyss_D]

Condi Rice as a "War Criminal"??? What planet do you live on!

The one where HRW, AI, and a variety of European judges and prosecutors seek charges against Bush administration officials to be prosecuted in the ICC or elsewhere, including Rice.

Okay, so let's really start filing charges. How about charging Al Gore for misrepresentation of scientific data pertaining to "global warming". And while we are at it, lets go after the large bevy of university and governmental leaders who suppressed research challenging the "global warming thesis". Let's also go after Bill Clinton for his negligence in allowing the Chinese get high security info from the USA. Let's also convict him for failing to take out Osama bin Laden each time he had the opportunity. Let's also file a lawsuit against the current President for releasing important security documents.

Count me in! The Gore thing will be hard, given the fact that the same ignorant but well-meaning public that clamored to "Free Keiko" thinks Gore knows what he's talking about.

[nut-job]

Okay, so let's really start filing charges. How about charging Al Gore for misrepresentation of scientific data pertaining to "global warming". And while we are at it, lets go after the large bevy of university and governmental leaders who suppressed research challenging the "global warming thesis". Let's also go after Bill Clinton for his negligence in allowing the Chinese get high security info from the USA. Let's also convict him for failing to take out Osama bin Laden each time he had the opportunity. Let's also file a lawsuit against the current President for releasing important security documents.

There is a robust consensus in the scientific community that global warming resulting from industrial output of greenhouse gasses is occurring. There is no "bevy of university leaders" that has the power to suppress research of any kind. In any field of science you can find a few crack-pots who can't get their faulty research published and who cry that there is a global conspiracy against them. One of the most important processes in science is peer review, which suppresses research which is not valid. Studies of global warming have survived this process.

[Corlyss_D]

There is a robust consensus in the scientific community that global warming resulting from industrial output of greenhouse gasses is occurring.

Here's some consensus for ya:
"The world's climatologist are agreed . . . Once the freeze starts, it will be too late." -Douglas Colligan in Science Digest, 1975.

Consensus is not science. Science is "Here's my hypothosis; prove it wrong." The only robust consensus among scientists is that if they don't toe the line given to them by the politicians, they won't get any grant money.

The Root Causes of Climate Alarmism

"I believe there are three factors now at work:

First, the discourse of catastrophe is a campaigning device being mobilised in the context of failing UK and Kyoto Protocol targets to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

Second, the discourse of catastrophe is a political and rhetorical device to change the frame of reference for the emerging negotiations around what happens when the Kyoto Protocol runs our after 2012.

Third, the discourse of catastrophe allows some space for the retrenchment of science budgets.

It's a short step from claiming these catastrophic risks have physical reality, saliency and are imminent, to implying that one more 'big push' of funding will allow sceince to quantify them objectively.

We need to take a deep breath and pause."

-Mike Hulme, director, Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research.

There is no "bevy of university leaders" that has the power to suppress research of any kind.

Gee, what was all that public outrage about the Bush administration subverting science? You mean that was all . . . horrors! . . . politics?

In any field of science you can find a few crack-pots who can't get their faulty research published and who cry that there is a global conspiracy against them. One of the most important processes in science is peer review, which suppresses research which is not valid. Studies of global warming have survived this process.

Even a cursory review of the concept of "peer review" will yield sufficient criticism of it as seriously undermining innovation and supressing good theories with verfied results that don't conform to the thinking of the scientists doing the review. You put that together with the political stampeed and the money tied to parrotting the man-caused global warming theory, and you get peer review by many who have a direct monetary interest in continuing the scam.

[nut-job]

There is a robust consensus in the scientific community that global warming resulting from industrial output of greenhouse gasses is occurring.

Here's some consensus for ya:
"The world's climatologist are agreed . . . Once the freeze starts, it will be too late." -Douglas Colligan in Science Digest, 1975.

Consensus is not science. Science is "Here's my hypothosis; prove it wrong." The only robust consensus among scientists is that if they don't toe the line given to them by the politicians, they won't get any grant money.

All sciences begin with speculation, hypotheses and errors, and progresses to consensus. Severo Ochoa won the Nobel Prize for discovering the enzyme that transcribes DNA, copying sequence from DNA chromosomes to messenger RNA molecules so that proteins could be synthesize. Unfortunately, he was wrong. It was subsequently found that the enzyme Ochoa isolated was an enzyme that breaks down RNA, rather than synthesizes it. That doesn't mean Ochoa's attempt to isolate this enzyme didn't contribute to scientific advancement. (It turns out that Ochoa had fed his RNA degradation enzyme so much nucleotide he got it to run backwards and randomly synthesize RNA). His work led to the discovery of the true enzyme.

The same is true of Climate science in the 70's. The science had barely been conceived and researchers worked with scant data. Their early, questionable claims prompted the collection of more data, which has led to the current situation, where results are known with much higher confidence.

I congratulate you for finding a quote from someone who sounds like a reputable scientist expressing skepticism of climate change research. I don't know the context of that quote. But I can find quotes by people with reliable-sounding creditials who will explain to you that AIDS is not caused by HIV, that cancer is caused by not eating carrots, that your computer doesn't actually work because the theory of semiconductors is wrong, or any number of things that aren't so. As the political wonks chatter away about climate theory, the scientists are building a crushing weight of data to bear on the problem. Ignore it at your peril. You are on the wrong side of history, like the politicians who tried to explain to Galileo that the sun is at the center of the universe.

As to your remark that scientists say whatever they need to to get money from politicians, well it is just obvious that you have never actually spoken to a real scientist. It is true that Bush and company worked hard to pore as much money as they could into the sinkhole of their earmarked "science" projects. Real science comes from the smaller fraction of peer-reviewed scientific grants, which are not influence by politics, but by good science. It is true that a smaller and smaller fraction of scientific funding has gone into this pool of funding, but there is enough for real science to get done. With the new administration there promises to be more of it.

[Corlyss_D]

The same is true of Climate science in the 70's. The science had barely been conceived and researchers worked with scant data. Their early, questionable claims prompted the collection of more data, which has led to the current situation, where results are known with much higher confidence.

Yet both espouse their hypotheses with equal conviction and based on the same flawed system of models based on incomplete data.

I congratulate you for finding a quote from someone who sounds like a reputable scientist expressing skepticism of climate change research

.

You can find many similarly well-founded critiques in Bjorn Lomborg's, environmentalist and recovering climate hysteric, works.

As the political wonks chatter away about climate theory, the scientists are building a crushing weight of data to bear on the problem.

That's just political baloney. The crushing weight is the politics of the ignorant and the well-funded bearing down on the critics who want to spare us economic suicide to humor the European leftists. Now before you go off on my attributing it to European leftists, I'm sorry, but that is where it comes from. The Chinese and the Indians are quite happy to let the west end its prosperity and go broke trying to "stop the tide" of solar warming.

You are on the wrong side of history, like the politicians who tried to explain to Galileo that the sun is at the center of the universe.

Hardly. I'm on the wrong side of the politics, that's all. I just wonder what all these crackpots are going to claim when the new ice age sets in. Global warming? We'll all wish we had some then!

As to your remark that scientists say whatever they need to to get money from politicians, well it is just obvious that you have never actually spoken to a real scientist.

Don't be silly. They research whatever the money pays them to research. Just ask any tree-hugger that dismisses global warming critics as "all funded by the oil companies." Your arguments cut both ways. You know that. So do I. Don't kid a kidder, nut-job.

[Cyril Ignatius]

The same is true of Climate science in the 70's. The science had barely been conceived and researchers worked with scant data. Their early, questionable claims prompted the collection of more data, which has led to the current situation, where results are known with much higher confidence.

Yet both espouse their hypotheses with equal conviction and based on the same flawed system of models based on incomplete data.

I congratulate you for finding a quote from someone who sounds like a reputable scientist expressing skepticism of climate change research

.

You can find many similarly well-founded critiques in Bjorn Lomborg's, environmentalist and recovering climate hysteric, works.

As the political wonks chatter away about climate theory, the scientists are building a crushing weight of data to bear on the problem.

That's just political baloney. The crushing weight is the politics of the ignorant and the well-funded bearing down on the critics who want to spare us economic suicide to humor the European leftists. Now before you go off on my attributing it to European leftists, I'm sorry, but that is where it comes from. The Chinese and the Indians are quite happy to let the west end its prosperity and go broke trying to "stop the tide" of solar warming.

You are on the wrong side of history, like the politicians who tried to explain to Galileo that the sun is at the center of the universe.

Hardly. I'm on the wrong side of the politics, that's all. I just wonder what all these crackpots are going to claim when the new ice age sets in. Global warming? We'll all wish we had some then!

As to your remark that scientists say whatever they need to to get money from politicians, well it is just obvious that you have never actually spoken to a real scientist.

Don't be silly. They research whatever the money pays them to research. Just ask any tree-hugger that dismisses global warming critics as "all funded by the oil companies." Your arguments cut both ways. You know that. So do I. Don't kid a kidder, nut-job.

Most people promoting the Greenhouse hysteria haven't actually examined the science that purports to make such case. It isn't only that many outstanding scientists reject the Greenhouse theories, and that some actually argue that global cooling is more likely, it is also that most models said to favor the idea of global warming, assign human activities as a very distant, in some cases, marginal source of that warming. Solar cycles are much more important to what is going on.

There are also huge problems in the policy solutions realm: Even where certain models suggest there is global warming, evidence suggests that extremely draconian environmental policies would yield marginal returns in the actual reduction of greenhouse gases. But it gets worse. Still other policy-analytic models examining likely consequences of aggressive greenhouse policies find that the cost to business transactions and economic investment/modernization would have the effect of keeping older, dirtier productive systems in place, slowing down the move into modern equipment, and thus exacerbating greenhouse emissions.

Most of the real-world implications of climate control legislation are not shared with the public, (or students) in a responsible way.

[nut-job]

Don't be silly. They research whatever the money pays them to research. Just ask any tree-hugger that dismisses global warming critics as "all funded by the oil companies." Your arguments cut both ways. You know that. So do I. Don't kid a kidder, nut-job.

Fortunately this is not true. Your world view, which seems to be based entirely on cynicism, may be a good description of politics, but cannot fathom what science is, or how and why scientists do what they do.

[nut-job]

Most people promoting the Greenhouse hysteria haven't actually examined the science that purports to make such case. It isn't only that many outstanding scientists reject the Greenhouse theories, and that some actually argue that global cooling is more likely, it is also that most models said to favor the idea of global warming, assign human activities as a very distant, in some cases, marginal source of that warming. Solar cycles are much more important to what is going on.

There are also huge problems in the policy solutions realm: Even where certain models suggest there is global warming, evidence suggests that extremely draconian environmental policies would yield marginal returns in the actual reduction of greenhouse gases. But it gets worse. Still other policy-analytic models examining likely consequences of aggressive greenhouse policies find that the cost to business transactions and economic investment/modernization would have the effect of keeping older, dirtier productive systems in place, slowing down the move into modern equipment, and thus exacerbating greenhouse emissions.

Most of the real-world implications of climate control legislation are not shared with the public, (or students) in a responsible way.

It can be frustrating that an entirely uninformed person can say things like "most people promoting the Greenhouse hysteria haven't actually examined the science" or "it isn't only that many outstanding scientists reject the Greenhouse theories" as though they were true. They are not. Of course you can find a few individuals with scientific credentials who will express doubt, but ~95% of scientists who have investigated the evidence will say that there is compelling evidence of climate change arising from greenhouse gases.

The report I have linked below was prepared by the National Academy of Sciences, the most elite scientific society in the world. It's membership consists of the 2000 most highly regarded scientists in the United States, spanning all disciplines of science. You can believe what you read on someones blog, or you can believe the report prepared and approved by the most distinguished scientific organization that exists, or that has ever existed on this earth. I encourage you to read it.

http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/cli ... _final.pdf

[Mark Harwood]

Return to topic?
'Tis said that the lady plays piano tolerably well. I'll listen if there's seafood & chillis pizza on the menu.

[Corlyss_D]

It can be frustrating that an entirely uninformed person can say things like "most people promoting the Greenhouse hysteria haven't actually examined the science" or "it isn't only that many outstanding scientists reject the Greenhouse theories" as though they were true. They are not. Of course you can find a few individuals with scientific credentials who will express doubt, but ~95% of scientists who have investigated the evidence will say that there is compelling evidence of climate change arising from greenhouse gases.

Cyril's comments are true, Nut. That you don't like them is neither here nor there. The facts are out there and fortunately increasingly coming into prominence before the western economies do something stupid and irreversible. Most of the people flacking globaloney the loudest are in fact not scientists but politicians and computer modelers. Take Al Gore and Michael Moore for starters. One is a failed politician and the other a Democratic propagandist. Even when they are scientists, they tend not to be climatologists. Take NASA's James Hansen, that staunch anti-Bush family polemicist, for instance. He's not a climatologist. He's a chemist and astronomer, expert on the atmosphere . . . of Venus. Stephen Schneider is a biologist. Sir David King is a chemist. The dangers presented by the computer modelers is they make expensive mathematical guesses about sciences in which they have no background, but they hold the "right views" to make them climate science authorities, according to the globaloney crowd. You wouldn't have major surgery based on a computer model, but you are prepared to sacrifice on the altar of this proven nonsense the economies of the western world (because the emerging markest are not stupid enough to fall for it or curb their emissions).

The report I have linked below was prepared by the National Academy of Sciences, the most elite scientific society in the world.

What's changed since they butchered the hockey stick theory?

[nut-job]

The report I have linked below was prepared by the National Academy of Sciences, the most elite scientific society in the world.

What's changed since they butchered the hockey stick theory?

The "hockey stick" graph refers to an episode where the statistical methods used to prepare a certain graph that appeared in a UN report more than 10 years ago were questioned. The National Academy of Sciences was not involved, and the fact that a certain graph may or may not have been prepared with poor statistical basis does not prove that the conclusions drawn from the graph are incorrect.

[Corlyss_D]

The National Academy of Sciences was not involved,

Oh, but it was. It was tasked to discredit M&M's attacks on the hockey stick. To do so, it had to evaluate both evaluated the data used to produce the hockey stick graph and the data supporting the criticisms debunking it. The NAS determined that the data used to produce the hockey stick graph was inappropriate for the uses to which they were put. You like peer-review. That was peer review. It left the principal visual of the globaloney alarmists completely discredited.

and the fact that a certain graph may or may not have been prepared with poor statistical basis does not prove that the conclusions drawn from the graph are incorrect.

Duh. Of course it does. What kind of anti-scientific blather are you spouting here? The graph is still the principal pictograph for the climate hysterics. Gore uses it in his Nobel-prize winning film. Your denial of the significance of the NAS discrediting is consistent with the attempt to bury all findings inconsistent with The Word. Reliance on bogus data, incomplete data, and spurious computer modeling form the foundation of movement that leverages the respect a scientifically ignorant public has for science and technology into a political power over the national economy.

"The bad news is that the climate models on which so much effort is expended are unreliable because they still use fudge-factors rather than physics to represent important things like evaporation and convection, clouds and rainfall. Besides the general prevalence of fudge-factors, the latest and biggest climate models have other defects that make them unreliable. With one exception, they do not predict the existence of El Nino. Since El Nino is a major feature of the obaserved climate, any model that fails to predict it is clearly deficient. The bad new does not meak that climate models are worthless. They are, as Monabe said thirty years ago, essential tools for understanding climate. They are not yet adequate tools for predicting climate." - Freeman Dyson, Physicist, Princeton.

[nut-job]

Duh. Of course it does. What kind of anti-scientific blather are you spouting here? The graph is still the principal pictograph for the climate hysterics.

The fact that the statistical methods used to produce a certain graph were questioned does not exclude the fact that a more rigorous statistical analysis will produce the same result. This is what happened. The current NAS report contains a similar plot of temperature vs time, and the conclusions of the more rigorous analysis are substantially the same.