Politics Is Poisoning NASA's Ability To Do Science 416
An anonymous reader writes: Phil Plait just published an article about how politics is interfering with NASA's ability to perform vital scientific experiments. As expected when we heard that Ted Cruz would be made head of the committee in charge of NASA's funding, the Texas senator is pushing hard for NASA to stop studying Earth itself. Plait writes, "Over the years, NASA has had to beg and scrape to get the relatively small amount of money it gets—less than half a percent of the national budget—and still manages to do great things with it. Cruz is worried NASA's focus needs to be more on space exploration. Fine. Then give them enough money to do everything in their charter: Explore space, send humans there, and study our planet. Whether you think climate change is real or not—and it is— telling NASA they should turn a blind eye to the environment of our own planet is insanity." He concludes, "[T]he politics of funding a government agency is tying NASA in knots and critically endangering its ability to explore."
stop electing anti science politicians (Score:5, Insightful)
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so the HEAD of NASA says that the single most important thing he has been tasked to do is muslim outreach... and all you can say is yawn and make up excuses???
As the grandparent said, this was just pandering to the specific audience. No, it is not the most important thing for NASA to do any more than companies who claim that "safety is their priority" really care about anything other than their profits. Or bands on tour say that <INSERT_YOUR_STATE> is their most favorite place to be. Or insurance companies who advertise that "we care about you". Or politicians who say... pretty much anything!
The only reason that you are fixated on this is that it gives you
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so the HEAD of NASA says that the single most important thing he has been tasked to do is muslim outreach... and all you can say is yawn and make up excuses???
Actually that sounds like a really good response. After all, is Bolden, the head of NASA actually acting like muslim outreach is that important? No. Then why not just yawn and move on to something serious?
wait what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Please give NASA more money, but make sure it is used for space exploration as intended. I dont see why this is getting so much heat
Science (Score:5, Interesting)
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To be fair, the EPA can pay NASA to launch/operate satellites.
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On the other hand it's quite likely that the technology required to build satellites that can observe Earth is remarkably similar to the technology required to build satellites to observe other planets. There's a huge amount of overlap; why wouldn't you want them to do it on Earth first? It'd be cheaper and faster, for a start, along with providing useful information. What's the downside?
Re:Science (Score:4, Insightful)
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The net effect of that change would be exactly zero, paper shuffling excluded.
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They'd be smarter to pay SpaceX to do it. SpaceX launches are a lot cheaper than NASA's....
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You mean NASA or the Air Force would refuse to launch for them? I mean the US Air Force has been putting weather satellites into orbit for quite a while now and they either do it themselves or have it ride on a NASA mission.
Re:wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Aeronautics occur within the earths atmosphere. To not study it is completely insane. The EPA is a regulatory body. Noaa, Nasa do and should study the atmosphere.
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"Aeronautics [wikipedia.org]" != "[Enviroment|Climate|Earth Science]".
One that has a considerable research arm [epa.gov].
I'm with the grandparent - NASA should get out of the earth science business (and probably astronomy, and energy efficient houses, and all the pies the bureaucrat have stuck their hands in), leave that to more appropriate agencies.
Re:wait what? (Score:5, Informative)
the EPA can worry about the environment, leave NASA to what NASA is supposed to do.
The EPA is a regulatory agency, not a science agency. It's not the EPA's job to conduct the research on earth. Their job is to write rules and regulations.
On the other hand, it is well within the purpose of NASA and NOAA in particular to conduct various studies of things on earth. There should be no interference with scientific inquiry, just because the results might or might not be politically inconvenient.
I think the whole notion that humans are causing climate change is farcical, overblown, and possibly a fabrication, and yet I still say don't f*ck with NASA. They should continue their research. They should be given more funding to administer judiciously ---- that is, additional funds should be spent on materials and staff actually performing research and additional equipment, with demonstration of justification, not on more bureaucrats or raises/financial incentives for bureaucrats.
On the other hand.... the scope of NASA is pretty broad and specifically includes Aeronautics in the name. Let's not forget that Earth itself is one of the most accessible planets in space for exploration, and NASA can and should conduct scientific studies on earth that can be useful in understanding natural phenomena in general, and it may very well relate to observations of other planets, so that the study of earth can aid in investigating any planet(s).
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For not being a Science Agency, they sure do employ a lot of Scientists to justify their regulations.
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the EPA can worry about the environment, leave NASA to what NASA is supposed to do.
The EPA is a regulatory agency, not a science agency. It's not the EPA's job to conduct the research on earth.
http://www2.epa.gov/research [epa.gov]
Tell you what, I'll pass their phone number along to you so you can set them straight.
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Case closed? Hardly. The CRU emails reveal internal doubts about this entire enterprise both before and after the hockey stick made its debut. In a 1996 email to a large number of scientists in the CRU circle, Tom Wigley, a top climatologist working at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, cautioned: "I support the continued collection of such data, but I am disturbed by how some people in the paleo community try to oversell their product." Mann and his colleagues made use of some of the CRU data, but some of the CRU scientists weren't comfortable with the way Mann represented it and also seemed to find Mann more than a bit insufferable.
... and (better say no more)."
... It is puzzling to me that a guy as bright as Mike would be so unwilling to evaluate his own work a bit more objectively."
CRU scientist Keith Briffa, whose work on tree rings in Siberia has been subject to its own controversies, emailed Edward Cook of Columbia University: "I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative) tropical series," adding that he was tired of "the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage [Mann] has produced over the last few years
Cook replied: "I agree with you. We both know the probable flaws in Mike's recon[struction], particularly as it relates to the tropical stuff. Your response is also why I chose not to read the published version of his letter. It would be too aggravating.
In yet another revealing email, Cook told Briffa: "Of course [Bradley] and other members of the MBH [Mann, Bradley, Hughes] camp have a fundamental dislike for the very concept of the MWP, so I tend to view their evaluations as starting out from a somewhat biased perspective, i.e. the cup is not only 'half-empty'; it is demonstrably 'broken'. I come more from the 'cup half-full' camp when it comes to the MWP, maybe yes, maybe no, but it is too early to say what it is."
In another email to Briffa, Cook complains about Bradley, too: "His air of papal infallibility is really quite nauseating at times."
Even as the IPCC was picking up Mann's hockey stick with enthusiasm, Briffa sent Mann a note of caution about "the possibility of expressing an impression of more consensus than might actually exist. I suppose the earlier talk implying that we should not 'muddy the waters' by including contradictory evidence worried me. IPCC is supposed to represent consensus but also areas of uncertainty in the evidence." Briffa had previously dissented from the hockey stick reconstruction in a 1999 email to Mann and Phil Jones: "I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago." Even Malcolm Hughes, one of the original hockey stick coauthors, privately expressed reservations about overreliance on their invention, writing to Cook, Mann and others in 2002:
All of our attempts, so far, to estimate hemisphere-scale temperatures for the period around 1000 years ago are based on far fewer data than any of us would like. None of the datasets used so far has anything like the geographical distribution that experience with recent centuries indicates we need, and no one has yet found a convincing way of validating the lower-frequency components of them against independent data. As Ed [Cook] wrote, in the tree-ring records that form the backbone of most of the published estimates, the problem of poor replication near the beginnings of records is particularly acute, and ubiquitous. ... Therefore, I accept that everything we are doing is preliminary, and should be treated with considerable caution.
Mann didn't react well to these hesitations from his colleagues. Even Ray Bradley, a coauthor of the hockey stick article, felt compelled to send a message to Briffa after one of Mann's self-serving emails with the single line: "Excuse me while I puke." One extended thread grew increasingly acrimonious as Mann lashed out at his colleagues. He wrote to Briffa, Jones, and seven others in a fury over their favorable remarks about a Science magazine article that offered a temperature history that differed from the hockey stick: "Sadly, your piece on the Esper et al paper is more flawed than even the paper itself. ... There is a lot of damage control that needs to be done and, in my opinion, you've done a disservice to the honest discussions we had all had in the past, because you've misrepresented the evidence."
... I think you are all fine fellows and very good scientists and that it is time to smoke the peace pipe on all this and put a temporary moratorium on more email messages until tempers cool down a bit." Mann responded with his best imitation of Don Corleone: "This is ultimately about the science, it's not personal." If the CRU circle treat each other this way, it is no wonder they treat skeptics even more rudely.
To Briffa in particular Mann wrote: "Hopefully, you know that I respect you quite a bit as a scientist! But in this case, I think you were sloppy. And the sloppiness had a real cost." Mann's bad manners prompted Bradley to reply: "I wish to disassociate myself with Mike's comments, or at least the tone of them. I do not consider myself the final arbiter of what Science should publish, nor do I consider what you did to signify the end of civilization as we know it." Tempers got so out of hand that Tom Crowley of Duke University intervened: "I am concerned about the stressed tone of some of the words being circulated lately.
One of Briffa's concerns about Mann's hockey stick is that some of the tree ring data--Briffa's specialty--didn't match up well with other records, so Mann either omitted them (in some versions of the hockey stick) or changed their statistical weighting in his overall synthesis to downplay the anomalous results of the raw data. This, by the way, is the origin of Phil Jones's "hide the decline" email; after 1960 tree ring data suggest a decline in temperatures, while other datasets show an increase. (This is one of many sources of intense controversy about temperature reconstructions.) Jones's and Mann's treatment may be defensible, but is problematic to say the least.
Note that none of these concerns found their way into the public eye until someone published them as part of a huge compromise of the Clim
Re:wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
the EPA can worry about the environment, leave NASA to what NASA is supposed to do. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Arguably, the "aeronautics" bit could be taken as justification for NASA to study the planet. Even if you disagree, NASA's job is to study planets in general, and the easiest example of that is the Earth itself. I mean, the Earth is in space just as much as Mars or the Sun is, after all. And the effects of various gases in the atmosphere is definitely of interest to planetary science, even aside from any general human concerns over climate change.
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No, the left just know how to read, so they know that the first objective of NASA is " The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space."
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ogc/about/space_act1.html#POLICY [nasa.gov]
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NASA were if not the one, then one of the first who discovered the "hole" in the Ozone layer and raised alarm about it.
This discovery was a tremendously important piece of weather science. You can't argue with that.
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"make sure it is used for space exploration as intended"
Why do you want NASA to go against its objectives spelled out in The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958?
Re:wait what? (Score:5, Informative)
The first objective in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Act [wikipedia.org] is: "Expansion of human knowledge of the Earth, the atmosphere and space." Seems to me that's what they're doing.
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When not governed by focused adults NASA evolves in to a "big science" clearing house; the "funder of last resort" for all things "science." In part this is because the agencies these projects should inhabit are huge lawyer farms with zero engineering capability and an active aversion for such. Allowing NOAA/USGS to fob these projects onto NASA only fosters this anti-pattern.
You see this pattern in other agencies as well. One learns from Madoff transcripts that the only actual mathematician the SEC inv
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Re:wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The NOAA can worry about climate change with the EPA too.
Phil doesn't seem to think it's worth mentioning that in recent years, NASA's climate study budget has gone up 41% while their space budget only went up 7%.
That's almost 6 times as much increase for climate as for space. Phil still isn't happy? I don't know what the flat dollar figures are, but clearly climate has been getting attention.
I am with GP on the main point here: let NASA concentrate on space. And let NOAA and others work on climate. EPA, however, is a vastly self-serving and corrupt organization, and I wouldn't put it in charge of scrubbing toilets.
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What I find particular mendacious about this whole idiocy is not the bone-headed, ridiculously long, linked list of zero infor
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NASA should continue to do all those things... however the funding for them shouyld come from the other orgs that are using them, not NASA.
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It *may* be true that we are warming the planet. But there is absolutely ZERO funding to prove the opposite
Yes there is, it comes from think tanks who aren't big fans of the scientific method.
It's Not Political Bullshit (Score:2)
Horseshit. Also irrelevant, if they're not climate scientists. This is a claim that makes sense only if you have no understanding of the underlying science. It's impossible for rising CO2 levels not to warm the planet, feedbacks aside, and the H2O feedback (the most important one) is almost certainly strongly positive. There is a little bit of wiggle room, but given that H2O is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 and that there are huge reservoirs of it over 70% of the Earth's surface, and that air can
Re:wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
But there is absolutely ZERO funding to prove the opposite
There's funding to do research, and scientists all over the world are working on it. The fact that the opposite doesn't get any proof is not a problem of funding. It's a problem with reality.
Price of politicizing science (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither side is pure here. I think NASA briefly said their mission was muslim outreach for example. Why would they do that? Does that have something to do with space?
Just politics.
And NASA has been staffed not just with scientists but wtih scientists that are big democrat supporters. So... guess what, the republicans are going to want to suppress them.
Same thing happened in NYC with tammany hall. Every time parties would switch, the new party would staff the city institutions with political appointees that supported that political party. Everything. Fire departments, police departments, park service, road workers, etc... just everything. Parties would switch and everyone in authority in the city would lose their job.
And that meant that in part the people that did things were often not competent because they weren't on the job that long. And also you'd get a lot of corruption because if lots of people lose their jobs when the parties switch everyone is more inclined to cheat or stuff ballot boxes.
This was ultimately dealt with to some extent by protecting certain institutions from being used that way.
But there is no such protection in Federal agencies. They get used all the time. You can't tell me that the EPA or the ATF or whatever are doing the same thing under a democrat that they'd be doing under a republican. You can't tell me that they're being run by the same sorts of people or under the same guidelines.
It swings back and forth because all these institutions are political footballs at this point.
So complain about it if you want but nothing is going to change unless that stops. And it needs to stop for BOTH sides. Not just the side you don't like. If one side can do it, then the other side can do it.
So think very carefully about what you're asking for and understand there are going to be consequences.
Re:Price of politicizing science (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this is the exact reason why the founders of the USA wanted a limited federal system. If you have a limited mandate, you have limited funding and resources. Scope creep.
You are correct that both sides do it. Doesn't make it right. When you have the federal law, the power of policing and the ability to raise unlimited sums of money... What the people want is really irrelevant.
Re:Price of politicizing science (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not saying it is right. I think it is wrong of course.
The issue is that it will take biparstain support to fix it. Both parties are going to have to realize that the greater good is in letting go and having the various institutions do their jobs rather then be tools for the political games the administration of the moment is playing.
Democrats are going to be pissed at me here, but even many of your own people have realized that Obama is pushing the power of his executive orders to the limit. The border patrol is outright complaining about the nonsense they're being told to do by the administration in contravention of their actual legal guidelines.
JUST ONE example. And I'm not saying republicans don't do this crap too. But Obama is doing it to a greater extent than any president I can think of with the possible exception of FDR... and that guy literally threatened the Supreme Court that if they didn't approve what he wanted, he'd appoint more people to the court until by simple numbers his view over ruled them.
So... not great company to be in really unless you want to go fight WW2 again.
Point is, the system is so heavily politicized at this point that you can't cry foul anymore unless you're advocating for systematic reform.
You can't just point at ONE thing someone does and say "that's wrong" because its ALL WRONG. The whole system is terminally fucked up and it is getting much worse much faster than it ever has before.
Is Ted Cruz a dick for saying NASA is being used to push global warming stuff? No more so than Obama is a dick for making global warming NASA's number one priority. What exactly does that have to do with space exploration?
And here someone will say "but nasa has the ability to launch weather sats!"... Which has nothing to do with anything because NASA could launch them while another department actually monitors that data.
In which case, if Ted Cruz went after anything, he'd go after that institution rather then NASA.
Again... there are no virgins here. Everyone is compromised. Everything is corrupted. Bitching about one thing without going for systematic reform is just going to serve as a tool for the other side to gain an advantage.
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Again.
We've covered this stuff before.
We keep covering it.
You keep not getting it.
http://www.politifact.com/pund... [politifact.com]
http://www.politifact.com/texa... [politifact.com]
"Scientists who are big democrat supporters" ..
That's just BS. It's called Civil Service.
There are no purgings of the civil service based on ideology.
And again you operate under the assumption that independent agencies are micromanaged by the administration. You still don't comprehend what independent agencies are or how they operate, even though you yourself me
Re: Price of politicizing science (Score:2)
That's a good try, but the White House stood behind the NASA Administrator's words [go.com] - it wasn't the 'conversational puffery' you want to portray it as...
Remember when then President-elect Obama promised to "put science back in it's rightful place"? I guess you just find it hard to believe that in President Obama's opinion the 'rightful place' for science is in the service of making foreigners feel better about themselves.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
This is nothing new (Score:2)
Take a look at where NASA operates and why. Research divisions everywhere. Rocket design in Huntsville, launch from Florida, but mission control is in Houston. Why? Because politicians can get jobs and dollars in their districts. What Cruz is really saying is "spend more money in my state and not in anyone else's".
NASA's Mission (Score:2)
Re: NASA's Mission (Score:2)
Not according to President Obama's own directives to his NASA Chief [go.com]
Cruz from Canada (Score:4, Informative)
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Oh yah? Where's his real birth certificate?!
smart but biased (Score:2)
Phil Plait is a very, very smart man. In fact I agree with misty of his positions on the space program, etc.
However, I don't recall him issuing a 1000 word screed about how "politics is hurting NASA" when Bolden announced that NASA's foremost mission was Muslim outreach? And unfortunately that's where Mr Plait apparently decides to trade his science credibility (which is very high) to make overly political points. He's certainly entitled to do so, but when people maunder about how science skepticism is b
Oh yeah? (Score:2)
Well, you scientists are poisoning our ability to do politics! With your studies and your so-called "facts"...
Smite them, God! ...
He's-a cookin' something up.
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We are beating each others to pulp on issues like abortions / police brutality / TSA at the airport while other countries are rapidly gaining grounds
"Why aren't we talking about how great at playing fiddle we are? All I see people talking about is how Rome is burning."
If it makes anyone feel better, the Chinese version of this guy will be China's downfall. While China is busy worrying about the strength of their economy, they're literally turning their major cities into giant clouds of pollution. The dip in their life expectancy will probably send their health care costs sky high, and not being able to gently onramp into a super power scale economy will
Can you please give us a fucking break?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not only what you have said is baseless, it's utterly bullshit, and you can't even begin to proof what you said!
One thing that is very wrong with the Democrats is that they think that everybody else who do not agree with them are idiots --- while some Republicans occasionally do the same thing, --- the way Democrats are portraying themselves --- from Hillary down to that motherfucker that uttered the above quote --- as though they have all the answers and their answers can not be challeged
Re:Can you please give us a fucking break?? (Score:5, Insightful)
The nature of science is not to have all the answers, but to *look for* answers. The best science starts off with the attitude of Socrates: "I don't know". The precise problem with Ted Cruz, and other anti-science politicians like him, is that he knows the answer, and doesn't want scientists looking for it. If he really believed climate change was not real, he would want to INCREASE NASA's budget, to find out the truth. The most despicable thing, transparent in his actions, is that he KNOWS the truth, he is baldly LYING about it, and he cares more about his personal glorification than he cares about the future of the country.
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If he really believed climate change was not real, he would want to INCREASE NASA's budget
Except for the minor detail that it's the House that does the budgetary stuff.
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Doesn't mean he can't argue to have NASA's budget increased, just like he's arguing now to have it decreased.
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If he really believed climate change was not real, he would want to INCREASE NASA's budget, to find out the truth.
... When money goes to NASA I expect them to use it for space research, not climate research. If I wanted more climate research to be done NASA would not be on my list of organizations to push money towards.
A number of people have voiced that idea here an elsewhere, but it's a bit of an odd argument. Saying that climate research should only be done on Earth is a case of basing all your science on a single case study. But if we really want to understand climate, we should be studying all the atmospheres that are available to us, not just this one planet's atmosphere. And historically, NASA has been a major launcher of space probes, especially those aimed at other planets.
We even have an excellent near-twi
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nearly all anti-science people are Republicans
Explain anti vaxxers
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Re:Yet another Ted Cruz bashing article ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Explain anti vaxxers
Anti-vaxxers are spread pretty evenly across the political spectrum. In fact a study published in December 2014 [ssrn.com] found that conservative Republicans are very slightly more likely to hold anti-vax views than liberal Democrats. You can see the pretty graph here. [prospect.org]
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Explain anti vaxxers
Anti-vaxxers are spread pretty evenly across the political spectrum. In fact a study published in December 2014 [ssrn.com] found that conservative Republicans are very slightly more likely to hold anti-vax views than liberal Democrats.
Uh, yeah, but only one side is yelling "anti-science" at the other. There should be *no* liberal Democrats on the anti-vax side if I were to believe the bullshit coming from that side.
Both sides are anti-science, just in different ways. But it's only the Democrats who try to use this as a political point.
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You're missing anti-GMO, anti-economic-reality, anti-free-markets, and other lunacy of the left. I'm a libertarian - neither right nor left. From my view up here (yes, take that as condescending) it's pretty obvious that they're two sides of the same coin.
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Power crystals, herbal treatments, homeopathy; these are pretty solid in the democrat side.
Re:Yet another Ted Cruz bashing article ! (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with that study is that it focuses on the HPV vaccine, where the conservative based objections revolve around the believe that giving the vaccine is akin to tacit approval of teenage sex (not dissimilar to the conservative objection to safe sex campaigns).
It is not an anti-science view, in that they believe that the vaccine does, in fact, prevent HPV transmission, and they do not believe in totally debunked theories such as the MMR/autism link. It does not appear that the survey attempted to break out the resistance to, say the MMR vaccine, which is clearly based on junk/psuedo science stoked by the Lancet article, versus Guardacil, where the resistance is based on moral objections.
I think one of the biggest problems that our modern democracies face is the confusion between science and morality. These are orthogonal bases but more and more they are being conflated into a single dimension where pro-science == moral and anti-science == immoral. There are lots of people who are anti-evolution, anti-climate change, yet perfectly good and decent people, and there are lots of people who are big supporters of all fields of scientific endeavors who are complete a$$holes. And they both have things to say, and in a democracy, get to have a voice in our joint decisionmaking process called politics. To paraphrase Churchill, it sucks but it's better than the alternative.
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And it's been the same throughout history, it just happens a lot faster n
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While I don't agree with the OP, it does seem to be gratuitous bashing of Cruz. AFAIK what he's pointing out is that NASA was chartered to explore space (the NOAA, not NASA, was chartered to do climate research), and yet in my entire lifetime, apart from the 1970s-era Space Shuttle, the only thing of note they've managed to do in this area is launch a few remote/robot probes. Holy fsck, this is an organisation with an $18 billion/year budget that's done basically nothing to further getting mankind into spa
Re:Yet another Ted Cruz bashing article ! (Score:5, Informative)
AFAIK what he's pointing out is that NASA was chartered to explore space
Oh, yeah? [nasa.gov]
The National Aeronautics and Space Act
SUBCHAPTER I--SHORT TITLE, DECLARATION OF POLICY, AND DEFINITIONS
Sec. 20102. Congressional declaration of policy and purpose
(d) Objectives of Aeronautical and Space Activities.--The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:
(1) The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.
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Democrats are equally vulnerable to beliefs not supported by science, it just isn't pointed out as often on liberal sites and media.
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>The earth being less than 10,000 years old is not anti science.
But it is, and your username fits.
Don't you ever read your own posts?
--
BMO
Re:Yet another Ted Cruz bashing article ! (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, nothing in science proves the earth is older than 10,000 year old. In only proves that it could be older and doesn't need the creation explanation. Or in other words, you cannot disprove that a supernatural being supernaturally created things with the appearance of a natural beginning simply for our understanding.
You fundamentally fail to understand science, "sumdumass". No hypothesis is ever proven right in science. It simply offers testable hypotheses that would falsify it, and then when such discoveries are made, survives the new information unchanged. When a hypothesis survives enough of these attempts, scientists will call it a theory, and start to believe it to be true.
The problem with the "God planted the dinosaur bones (and the light of the universe, and stratification in sediments, radioactive dating, and the tens of thousands of interlocking details that show us how long the earth has been around, etc., etc., etc.)" idea, is that it offers no falsifiable predictions. There is literally no fact that an adherent to one of these belief systems would accept as proof it is incorrect. All of these ideas stem from magical thinking, and so, in the immortal words of Wolfgang Pauli, they're not only not right, they're "not even wrong".
That is not science. And it is absurd to pretend as such.
(Alas, your attitude is quite common among the religious right and a tiny sprinkling of the kook left, which is a big reason why politics is doing such a disservice to science.)
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You must have a very dificult time with reading comprehension. I never said the concept was scientific, i said you cannot use science to disprove it. Therefore saying the earth is 10,000 years old is not anti science, its just unscientific.
But go ahead and froth at the mouth toughting what you wany to have been said instead of what was said.
By the way, i know exactly how science is supposed to work and calling people anti science because of beliefs science cannot falsify is more anti science than the gp en
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You must have a very dificult time with reading comprehension. I never said the concept was scientific, i said you cannot use science to disprove it. Therefore saying the earth is 10,000 years old is not anti science, its just unscientific.
Oh hey look, a semantics argument that is absolutely bereft of logic.
Insisting that the Earth is 10,000 years old /is/ anti-science because it requires one to completely ignore the evidence to the contrary and to embrace a folk tale that is the sole evidence "for" it. It
Re:Yet another Ted Cruz bashing article ! (Score:5, Insightful)
The earth being less than 10,000 years old is not anti science.
It's not even wrong. [wikipedia.org]
Incorrect (Score:2)
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Re:Yet another Ted Cruz bashing article ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you realize that many of those California counties with the lowest vaccination rates are solidly GOP, compare your map with this one [latimes.com].
In reality to settle it we'd need some serious cross tabs on questions that have never seemed to been asked together. However, I still remain confident that 80% is an gross exaggeration and I would win any bet on it.
Re: Yet another Ted Cruz bashing article ! (Score:4, Insightful)
NASA should worry more about space exploration,
the FAA should focus on commercial aviation,
the EPA should worry more about air quality,
and the NWS should worry more about the climate.
Just because something should be studied, doesn't mean every branch of government needs to be involved.
Re: Yet another Ted Cruz bashing article ! (Score:5, Informative)
The first A in NASA stands for Aeronautics. If you're going to do aeronautics you need to know about the medium you are flying through. In the 1958 act that created NASA [wikipedia.org] the first objective is: "Expansion of human knowledge of the Earth, the atmosphere and space". Also artificial satellites are now an integral part of studying the Earth. I think it's kind of hard for NASA to not be involved to some extent in all of the things you list.
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Re: Climate change is politics (Score:5, Informative)
current flagrant uses such as watering for ornamental plants or car-wash businesses.
An insignificant amount of water is used by car washes. 85% of water consumed in California is used for agriculture, where it is heavily subsidized, and the biggest use there is irrigation of pasture for cattle. If you want to conserve water, you don't ban car washes, you ban hamburgers.
Re: Climate change is politics (Score:5, Insightful)
You're absolutely right. Even back in the 1970's when I worked for a carwash, we recycled something around 80% of our grey-water. And that was in Washington state with no water shortages (at that time....anyway). I would imagine it has improved significantly since that time.
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A bunch of people marked this down as Troll. Not certain how this post qualifies, other than it goes against the grain of Slashdot's predominant stance that global warming is real. The main idea of the post is true. Carbon credits is a construct created for taking money from the middle class. Rich people spend a much smaller portion of their income on energy so the carbon taxes have minimal impact. They will just absorb the higher costs of energy and go on with their lives. Middle class workers will b
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They can sell off their jet and get rid of the entourage of SUVs.
The cut off for the top 1% is an income of $34k [dailymail.co.uk].
Or did you mean the top 1% of just the rich people that live in the first world, because that conveniently excludes yourself from the definition?
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If this were about European politics, I would expect a European viewpoint.
If it were about World politics, then I could see this metric applied, maybe.
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If they truly cared about inequality and suffering in the world, they would care about suffering and inequality in the world.
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An opinion laid upon an opinion piece, by an opinionated old dude....but, that's just my opinion.
If you're on my lawn, I hope you brought beer and fired up the bar-b-que!
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I don't care if they're richer than me, but if they've used their wealth to tilt the playing field in their favor? THEN I have a problem.
Would you play poker with someone who changed the rules so they got to make two sets of discards on every turn? Why then should we be expected to meekly play "economy" with capitalists who have stacked the rules in their favor? For just one example - why are capital gains taxed at a much lower rate than wages? The "upper crust" makes the vast majority of their income on
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As to the rich causing it, only to the extent of resisting efforts to clean sources of pollution would I lay a heavier burden on 'the rich,' due to their outsized effect on politics and ownership of the sources of (industrial, not individual) pollution.
It took force to remove lead from gasoline, but if you lived near Los Angeles in the 1960's, you know it help
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Indeed. Going by cumulative CO2 emissions since industrialization, US + EU contributed the bulk of the load (US + EU - 51%, China - 9%, India – 3%). So, by the logic of DigiShaman logic, and I fully agree with it when taken in a nation-state sense, the bulk of the burden must be borne by wealthy elite: Citizens of US and EU.
Re: Climate change is politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if you pretend that the cost of living is the same everywhere.
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The "top 1%" is referring to people who are millionaires. In the US this is roughly 1% of the population.
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First, it is a question of what the right thing to do is for the planet. It's not a question of doing the opposite of what the rich say. Second, all the rich are not for carbon taxes. Like everyone else, some are for it, some are against it.
Fine, bow to no man, I'm with that (and I get the carbon comedy of the recent climate conference). But do you bow to rationality?... given that the current scientific consensus is that we ought to be burning less carbon? Also, the rich will be the last to be effected by
Re:NASA got MORE budget than they asked for. (Score:5, Informative)
Have you tried reading National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which spells out the firs eight objectives of NASA? The first is "The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space".
The atmosphere is not Phenomena (Score:2, Informative)
The opening of that very Act [nasa.gov]:
To provide for research into problems of flight within and outside the earth's atmosphere, and for other purposes.
The organization is supposed to be primarily about flight, to the extent they study the atmosphere it is in relation as to the effect of flight on vehicles...
Climate change and studying the relations of the entire atmosphere is not "phenomena" (like auroras). It is not extra-ordinary; it is ordinary.
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Yep, this. NOAA is supposed to operate all of the earth-observing weather satellites.
My FIL works for climate.gsfc.nasa.gov , and was the PM for the NASA instruments for the recent DSCOVR satellite. My understanding is that it was full of irony... of the major instruments, NASA was responsible for the earth-facing ones - NISTAR (measuring radiation reflected from the Earth) and EPIC (Al Gore's original Earth webcam-in-space concept from back when it was called Triana), and NOAA provided the PlasMag instr