Random Politics & Religion #19

Research requires money and staff. You should take these revelations straight to the Daily Mail.

Research requires money and staff. You should take these revelations straight to the Daily Mail.

Weren't most of the studies that determined that there was a pause in warming peer-reviewed and scientifically sound? So, if one new study shows that the pause never existed is also peer-reviewed and scientifically sound, why should we believe the new one? Why should we believe any of them? Does the one with the most gloom and doom always take top priority because it has the biggest impact on political agendas?

But why do all the research papers come from those who do the research? Isn't that extremely suspicious?!?!?

Let's be honest.

We're posting here.

We're all bitter to some degree. No one spends time here as there preferred activity.

its safe

Weren't most of the studies that determined that there was a pause in warming peer-reviewed and scientifically sound? So, if one new study shows that the pause never existed is also peer-reviewed and scientifically sound, why should we believe the new one? Why should we believe any of them? Does the one with the most gloom and doom always take top priority because it has the biggest impact on political agendas?

That's how science works. Conclusions are made on the best data at the time and when new data is presented or corrections made then new conclusions may be made. It's like saying that science once believed the sun circled the earth but now they think the reverse. So which is it?!

That's how science works. Conclusions are made on the best data at the time and when new data is presented or corrections made then new conclusions may be made. It's like saying that science once believed the sun circled the earth but now they think the reverse. So which is it?!

Right, and in order to keep the free money train rolling, you must show that a problem exists....

But hey, keep defending a bunch of unethical, moneygrubbing "scientists" who have to lie in order to get paid. Makes you look good, right?

I'm not bitter in the least. I come here because its fun, its safe, and sometimes I get to learn something new.

The extraordinary battle over Betsy DeVos’s nomination to be secretary of education is the defining event of the Trump presidency’s early days.

As presented, the DeVos confirmation appeared to be a standard partisan conflict between Democrats and Republicans, or in the conventional update, all that’s good and all that’s Trump.

But something deeper was at stake here, which is why the Democrats raised the nomination for a second-level cabinet post to a political apocalypse.

The person who introduced Mrs. DeVos at her confirmation hearing was former Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman from Connecticut, arguably the last of the unequivocal Democratic moderates. In the confirmation vote, every Democrat opposed Mrs. DeVos, including Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.

The issue presumably at the center of this nomination fight is the future of the education of black children who live in urban neighborhoods.

During a strike in the 1930s, a miner’s wife wrote a song that became a Democratic anthem, “Which Side Are You On?” The question remains: Which side are you on?

A standard answer is that the interests of the Democrats and the teachers unions are conjoined. Still, many of us have wondered at the party’s massive resistance to public-school alternatives and most reforms.

Beneath that resistance sits a grim reality: Many urban school systems are slowly dying. As with the decline of the industrial unions, the Democrats’ urban base of teachers is disappearing by attrition. The party is desperate to hold on to what’s left, and increasingly that includes its bedrock —black parents.

Enrollment in many urban schools has been declining for years. It’s down significantly in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City and elsewhere. Falling alongside have been membership rolls in urban teachers unions, notably in Michigan and Wisconsin, two Trump pickups this election.

Families who could afford it have moved away. Many adult blacks stayed behind and, inexorably, the education of their children fell behind, a fact documented annually year after year. By the way, good public teachers got trapped, too. Some of the best lost heart and left, replaced by less able teachers, some grossly so.

For parents of children in the nation’s suburban public schools, none of this mattered much, so sustained political support for reform of city schools was never very deep. But in the cities, dissent rose.

The charter-school movement emerged first in Minnesota in 1991. Wisconsin passed the first school-choice legislation in 1989, authored by a Democratic black activist named Polly Williams. Some of us thought then that Polly Williams was the start of a new, bipartisan civil-rights movement. How naive we were.


The movement persisted. According to a 2016 study by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, using state databases, these are the percentages of students now enrolled in public charters only:

In now-famous Flint, Mich.: 53%. Kansas City: 40%; Philadelphia: 32%; the District of Columbia: 45%; Detroit: 53%.

In Louisiana, which essentially abandoned its failed central-administration model after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans charters are at 92%.

The steady migration of poor families to these alternatives is a historic saga of social transformation. It happened for two reasons: to escape public-school disorder and to give their kids a shot at learning.

This is one of greatest civil-rights stories since the mid-1960s. And the Democratic Party’s role in it? About zero. Other than, as in the past two weeks, resistance.

In 2002, the Supreme Court, with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s deciding vote, ruled that Cleveland’s (still successful) school voucher program was constitutional.

In 2013, the Obama Justice Department sought an injunction against Louisiana’s voucher system, arguing the alternative schools were . . . too black. By this logic, children are wards of the state first and the free sons and daughters of their parents second.

Let’s be clear. We are talking about the professional Democratic Party and their full-time adjuncts. Many Democrats, some as “wealthy” as Betsy DeVos, abandoned the party’s hard-line resistance and supported charters and choice.

America’s inner cities are the foundation of the Democratic Party. Now, its urban political arm, the teachers unions, is shrinking. And its moral foundation of black parents is drifting away. Hillary Clinton explicitly promised more of the status quo. They didn’t turn out for her.

This relentless erosion of an unreformable party explains the rage over one woman, Betsy DeVos.

Some of the least attractive elements of this opposition reemerged, notably anti-Catholicism and anti-Christian bigotry. Stories cited as reason for opposition to Mrs. DeVos her support for “Christian schools.” It’s true. Those Christian and Catholic schools, supported by vouchers, have sent thousands of black and Hispanic kids on to college, the first in their families to make it that far.

Frederick Douglass, speaking in 1894 in Manassas, Va., said, “To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature.” That in 2016 this reality should be redefined in our politics as it was so clearly by the fight against Betsy DeVos is one for the history books.

That's how science works. Conclusions are made on the best data at the time and when new data is presented or corrections made then new conclusions may be made. It's like saying that science once believed the sun circled the earth but now they think the reverse. So which is it?!

No, beople get grants for basic blue sky research. Example.

You mean the ones working for the energy companies, right?

Everyone.

But you know what the main difference between businesses and scientists are? Regulations & Laws. Regulations & Laws keep businesses straight, scientists aren't set to the same ethical standards as everyone else, which lets them be able to produce nothing and get millions/billions for it.

The fact remains that to accept this new finding is to assume that everything about the pause was wrong

For many years, climate scientists were puzzled by an apparent plateau in global temperature rise from 1998 to 2012 as ocean temperatures stayed consistent. The 2015 research paper addressed the issue when it found there was no pause because the method to collect ocean temperatures was flawed.

That study replicated NOAA's findings by accounting for different methods of temperature collection over time. For instance, data collected in the engine rooms of ships show slightly elevated levels of warming compared with those collected by buoys. When researchers accounted for that discrepancy, the so-called global warming pause disappears, researchers found.

A study earlier this year using data from buoys, satellites and Argo floats backs up a challenge of the so-called global warming pause by NOAA

Yesterday, Bates said he was contacted by the Science Committee for the first time only after the story broke. He said he has not communicated with anyone there before and was not a whistleblower for the committee previously but that he expected to be invited to Washington to testify at a future hearing.

He said he would accept such an invitation, but cautioned scientists against advocating policy.

"You really have to provide the most objective view and let the policymakers decide from their role," Bates said. "I'm getting much more wary of scientists growing into too much advocacy. I think there is certainly a role there, and yet people have to really examine themselves for their own bias and be careful about that."

Oh so we saw a consistency because data was being collected from an engine room in the environment and not from the actual environment itself.

It's actually a good article about how a flaw in data collection can affect perceptions and policies.

(CNN)It's not like marauding hordes of zombies are roaming the streets of Illinois, but state lawmakers think that's no reason not to be prepared.
The legislature has declared October "Zombie Preparedness Month."
Why? Because, as House ResoIution 0030 says, "If the citizens of Illinois are prepared for zombies, than [sic] they are prepared for any natural disaster."
The resolution was approved Thursday and yes, at the heart of it, it speaks to a bigger point: Americans, for the most part, aren't equipped with dealing with natural disasters. Very few have an emergency plan prepared or even supplies of food, water or medicine.

Still, the debate on the House floor as lawmakers considered the measure, made for some interesting moments.
"Rep. Steven Andersson, R-Geneva, questioned which type of zombie should be used as a model for natural disaster preparedness," the Chicago Tribune reported.
He noted "that the undead featured on the show "Z Nation" are quick and smart. Those portrayed on "The Walking Dead," though, are slow but come in droves."

Full text in .pdf in the link.

At the bottom of the articke. Scroll down....

/rolleyes

Ooooops...

Being prepared for zombies is now a real thing in Illinois

Zombies are so 2003 !

On a similar note, The Walking Dead returns Sunday. Woot woot.

The state of Illinois is prepared for it. Are you?