Change is coming, whether you like it or not!

Exoticimports writes that he doesn’t trust anything funded by government money. To each his own, but my experience of science funding is very different.

During my career, I was mostly funded by government money (it was a National Lab after all), but also some corporate money, Goodyear, Texas Instruments, Applied Materials etc. I also talked to an immense number of scientists at conferences. Never in all those years did I hear of anyone being pressured to report anything other than their true results of experiments or computations. The only exception is that often if a pharmaceutical or other business funds my work I may sign a non-disclosure agreement that limits what I can publish. For a scientist like me it is almost absurd to hear it suggested that the government would tell me what I must report. The government administrators decide on program directions and the politics of the day affect these directions. During the Reagan years, nuclear power was more emphasized and other energy sources like solar and wind were de-emphasized. Under Clinton, renewables were emphasized and nuclear was less supported. Obama pushed the study of pollinators, honey bees and native pollinators and scientists I was working with got some of that. Mostly the research shifted directions, but nobody handing out the money ever said what I should find out.

The government might fund global warming research more or less, but the people funding the programs never say what results you should get. Hypothetically a scientist with a climate model would write for a grant to study how different models for cloud formation and global cloud dynamics could influence climate. Never would any scientist be pressured to say the new cloud model should make global warming more (or less) scary. The scientist will get whatever the model shows. If the result says forget global warming, it won’t happen because the increased cloud cover will reflect enough heat to neutralize the warming after the first 2 degrees, this would simply get published. All the other modelers would try this cloud method and if it all panned out (was reproducible), the first scientist would get the Nobel Prize, and we’d all breathe a sigh of relief. For decades, this hasn’t happened. Every idea has simply reinforced that we are in big trouble with the climate.

The government is a giant monstrosity with inertia which funds research with a certain level of mild political interference. Don’t trust it if that makes you happy. You are then imagining a level of interference in science which does not really happen. If I had a model that showed climate change is not caused by fossil-fuel burning, I would publish it immediately. Exxon would gladly fund all my future work. As soon as other scientists confirmed that I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I would accept my Nobel Prize.
Rick

Wait a minute! It just popped into my mind. Stop the use of toilet paper. Tree's emit oxygen, right? We cut down trees to make toilet paper. We should grow more trees, harvest the leaves daily. Sell those leaves in the produce section. Once used, bury the leaves in your yard. That completes a cycle.

I just solved a global problem.

Off to the Waffle House. If my idea takes effect, that will be the end of Waffle Houses. I am willing to make a little sacrifice.

I just had one of the great ideas I seem to come up with every now and then. Eliminate the use of Toilet paper altogether. Use your fingers!! You wash your hands after taking a dump? Of course it would be a disaster for the Colonel. It would bring a new meaning to the words of Kentucky Fried Chicken: Finger Licking Good.

Am I bad or what??

Leroy, we all love you.

Europeans tend to see themselves as more cultured. Because they are. No European would enjoy Waffle House. And, I’m sorry, for good reason.

But Culture does not indicate intelligence nor integrity nor anything else.

So you be you. Keep doing what you do.

Chuck

Nov 11, Toronto received 15cm of snow and record cold temperatures are on the way for next couple of days with overnight lows at -14°C and windchill effect around -20°C.
Global warming is not so global. According to scientists melting polar ice is causing polar cold air shift to North American continent and some parts of Russia which will bring colder and longer winters in the future.
Last few summers were colder and with more rainy days.
How long will that last, don’t know but I think is time to migrate some warmer place and enjoy global warming.

Love it your hero is some girl not old enough to drive . My grandchild is 4 and has it all over Greta the aspiring actress. . You call it climate change here in the northeast US we call it the seasons.