| Tuesday, June
27, 2006
I think I have sent in all the orders for Strategy of Technology in pdf
format. To order yours: Strategy of Technology in pdf format:
========== Mike Morris sends this gem:"Tech Support: The guys who
follow the 'Parade of New Products' with a shovel and a gas mask."-- Jay
Mottern
=============
Climatology and Voodoo From the New York Times
June 27, 2006
The Energy Challenge | Exotic Visions How to Cool a Planet (Maybe)
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
In the past few decades, a handful of
scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global
warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds
to make them reflect more sunlight back into space. Trick oceans into
soaking up more heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
Their proposals were relegated to the
fringes of climate science. Few journals would publish them. Few
government agencies would pay for feasibility studies. Environmentalists
and mainstream scientists said the focus should be on reducing
greenhouse gases and preventing global warming in the first place.
But now, in a major reversal, some of the
world's most prominent scientists say the proposals deserve a serious
look because of growing concerns about global warming.
Worried about a potential planetary crisis,
these leaders are calling on governments and scientific groups to study
exotic ways to reduce global warming, seeing them as possible fallback
positions if the planet eventually needs a dose of emergency cooling.
"We should treat these ideas like any other
research and get into the mind-set of taking them seriously," said Ralph
J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences in
Washington.
Which tells you a lot. Their
proposals were relegated to the fringes of climate science.
What would you expect? Much of climatology is now
Voodoo Science, and for the usual
reasons. It is fashionable, it is easy to get grant money and publicity if
you take the correct party line, and it doesn't take hard work. Note that I
have not said that all climatologists are in the Voodoo category, or are
lazy, or are motivated by the prospect of easy money and publicity; but a
fair number of them are, and they get a lot of publicity, and have become
the de facto spokespersons for the "Consensus theory."
The "Consensus" is actually not an actual consensus. Yes,
most climate scientists will now agree if required to give an opinion that
the Earth is more likely warming than cooling; that human activity very
likely contributes to the warming; and that if there is a warming trend, and
if it is as large as some think it is, the results could be very bad indeed.
That is the actual extent of the consensus. There is no consensus on how
much the Earth is warming; and even less on just how much human activity
contributes. On Kyoto there is no consensus at all, since it is apparent to
even casual observers that adopting Kyoto won't make any great difference in
the warming trend no matter what the contribution of human activity to it
might be. One of the complaints of the Global Warming
Alliance is that those who don't agree are funded by energy companies. What
they don't say is that the Alliance controls grants and gives them only to
those who won't shake up the Global Warming "consensus". Most sciences have
become dominated by grants controlled by "peer review"; and peer review
practically guarantees that all the funding goes to the currently held
"consensus" theory.
A prime example of this is AIDS research, every bit of which
goes to those who agree with currently held theories of the cause of AIDS.
These theories are very probably correct, understand; but there is a
non-zero probability that they are wrong. A small amount of money could be
used to conduct an experimentum crucis to test the current consensus theory
that HIV is the necessary and sufficient cause of AIDS; but no such grants
will be funded, not even to the discoverer of the retro-virus.
Climate research is in much the same condition. The Big Names control who
gets the money; and they saw to it that not much went to what they now call
"exotic" solutions. Interestingly, if even part of the money that went to
promoting Kyoto had been put into "exotic" solutions, and if part of the
NASA budget had gone to continuing the investigations the Citizens Advisory
Council on Space began with the DC/X and other Single Stage to Orbit
technology development, we would (1) have some concrete plans for what to do
about global warming if that be happening; (2) know a lot more about how to
get to space on the cheap, whether that be by Single Stage to Orbit, Single
Stage plus recoverable booster (stage and a half), Two Stage, Single Stage
with Aircraft mother ship, etc.; and, given (1), have a much better argument
for non-military funding for X-programs in the space development area.
But the Big Names weren't interested in "exotic" methods. They saw to it
that the grants went elsewhere and "exotic" studies were unfunded. After
all, if there are solutions to the global warming problem we can hardly
claim the sky is falling. I don't question the use of peer
review as a means of controlling most grants. I do say that simple Bayesian
analysis dictates that some part of the funding be given to contrarian
views. There is no scientific hypothesis that will be harmed by another
confirmation (failure to falsify), and the more money that hangs on a
particular consensus theory the more important it is to have tests of that
theory. ============= I am no great fan of
Constitutional Amendments to begin with, or the Flag Burning amendment in
particular. I do think it ought to be clear that employers, including the
government and civil service, have every right to take flag burning into
account when considering employment applications. Protecting the national
symbols by police power should be needless; if such laws are needed, we have
much greater problems.
===============
SUBJECT: "Hajiinets" in Iraq
Sent to me by a Marine friend. Thought you might get a
kick out of this article, I did... and the photo at the top of the article
makes Chaos Manor look positively organized.
http://www.localistmagazine.com/iraq.htm
Nice to know that necessity is still often the mother
of invention. I included the content of the article in case you wanted to
post it.
Valerie
HACKING IRAQ
Enterprising soldiers take
the internet into their own hands
By Carey Voss
Imagine: You're living in
a previously abandoned compound in the desert with three hundred
other people. You have a few rudimentary amenities—running water,
three meals a day, a bed to sleep in—but your electricity still
depends on a generator and telephone lines are just beginning to be
installed. It's hot, people shoot at you, and from time to time, a
rocket explodes nearby. In dreams of a more comfortable life, you
miss a few simple things: friends and family, junk food, and porn.
<snip>
Hurrah! Ingenuity prevails.
====================== None Dare
Call It Treason I have not written about the New York
Times blowing the financial operations against Al Qaeda, because the
situation is a lot more complicated than most suppose. First:
once the secret was leaked to the New York Times, was it not unlikely that
it would get to Al Qaeda at some point? Reporters and editors are not
trained to keep secrets, and most of them very much like to crow when they
know something secret. Were I Al Qaeda I would long ago have turned some NYT
reporters; you may be certain that the KGB and GRU had targeted them during
the Seventy Years War. People who gather information for a living have long
been primary targets for real espionage agents; there is no reason to
suppose that has changed. In other words, was the publication
the important leak, or was that merely an act of supererogation? I would not
myself assume that the editorial board of the Times was particularly good at
keeping secrets.
The real treason was the leak itself, and the real
activities of the Department of Justice and our counterintelligence
community ought to be directed at whomever in the Foreign Service or the CIA
thought it necessary to betray his country. Of course the leaker will plead
that this was "whistle blowing." Let him contemplate that in Leavenworth. Or
take him to Iraq and turn him loose. Given the resources
poured into finding out who leaked the identity of La Plame, an act that
doesn't appear to have been a crime because her status was no longer that of
a covert agent, surely the betrayal of our financial analysis capability is
at least as important? The Times has no right to protect its
sources when the source has committed treason in time of war.
Printing their story is not a crime and since the Alien and Sedition Laws
has not been one. Leaking the story is another matter. That
is a crime. I have mail saying we are not at war. That is not
true. We are at war. It is not one I would have voted to declare, and it is
not a war I would have advised us to enter, but the Congress in its wisdom
has chosen to place the nation in a state of war. In war time there have
been restrictions on what newspapers can publish; those who revealed state
secrets have been jailed; and this by Democrats, Republicans, and for all I
know Federalists and Whigs. Tuesday TOP
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