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  • Rochester Professor Proposes Jail Time

    Skeptics be warned. A Rochester Institute Of Technology professor is proposing that anyone who questions Climate Change be imprisoned.
    The importance of clearly communicating science to the public should not be underestimated. Accurately understanding our natural environment and sharing that information can be a matter of life or death…

    Fortunately this only applies to Scientists because a recent Gallup Poll found that 76% of the general public don't think Climate Change is a big deal.
    More Americans worry about issues such as the economy and federal spending than about the environment and climate change. Democrats are more concerned than Republicans about environmental issues.

    But its only a matter of time before its applied to all Global Warming skeptics. Since there is not enough prisons to house everyone I predict house arrest. We will only be allowed outside to shovel off our sidewalks.
    Once CO2 is under control scientists will be able to tackle the other Greenhouse gases. The following task will become mandatory.

  • #2
    Yeah, that's never going to happen. In a million years.
    it's not "only a matter of time".
    He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.

    Comment


    • #3
      So much for Freedom of Thought in Academia.

      This guy is about as much a "Professor" as Julius Irving is a "Doctor".

      Comment


      • #4
        Rochester Professor Proposes Jail Time

        AMENDMENT I

        Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

        Comment


        • #5
          Once again we see the "You don't get an opinion" mentality......
          "Let me say it as simply as I can: transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency."

          Comment


          • #6
            Yeah, I love these kinds of a$$**les. They should ship out to N. Korea, where their kind of thinking fits right in.

            And don't think it's just an isolated mad professor; this is catching on. There was a letter to the Glens Falls Post Star just last week that was asking the paper to censor out and not publish any opinions that disagreed with the current "church dogma" about AGW.

            Sadly, academia is rife with this. (Speculation as an amateur shrink - inability to tolerate hearing opposing opinions seems to be a symptom of personal insecurity.)

            Comment


            • #7
              I feel compelled to point out that this man is a philosophy/ethics professor, not a scientist (although I'm willing believe he probably has a fairly good understanding of science).

              As a scientist, I understand the frustration of watching as evidence and science and expertise gets smothered in pseudoscience and well funded propaganda. Scientists, mostly, prefer to let evidence and facts speak for themselves. Although we certainly have beliefs and opinions that are as strong as anyone else, we are also generally very reluctant to step into this kind of politics or policy arena. I would even say we sometimes follow this too far, avoiding confrontations and debates so much that we often do a poor job of communicating science to the public. If anything, the confusion of the public about issues like climate change is largely our own fault.

              Unfortunately I think he's harmed his cause by taking what I see as a fairly extreme stance; and I say that as an environmental biologist who believes climate change is real. Any philosopher that feels the need to silence his opponents, rather than doing the hard but necessary work of persuading people his ideas are better than his opponent's, invites exactly the kind of criticisms expressed above.

              Philosophical debates like this aren't won by outlawing an opinion, and they shouldn't be. This debate in particular is far too important to skip that essential step, of presenting evidence and convincing the public. People need to be on board, if we are to make any lasting change. Obsolete ideas fade away on their own. I may disagree with someone's opinion, but I'll defend their right to have that opinion, and their right to try to convince others of that opinion. That's pretty much the definition of freedom of speech, isn't it?
              He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.

              Comment


              • #8
                Global Warming Bombshell

                Global Warming Bombshell

                A prime piece of evidence linking human activity to climate change turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.
                By Richard Muller on October 15, 2004

                .







                Progress in science is sometimes made by great discoveries. But science also advances when we learn that something we believed to be true isnt. When solving a jigsaw puzzle, the solution can sometimes be stymied by the fact that a wrong piece has been wedged in a key place.

                In the scientific and political debate over global warming, the latest wrong piece may be the hockey stick, the famous plot (shown below), published by University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann and colleagues. This plot purports to show that we are now experiencing the warmest climate in a millennium, and that the earth, after remaining cool for centuries during the medieval era, suddenly began to heat up about 100 years ago–just at the time that the burning of coal and oil led to an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.






                I talked about this at length in my December 2003 column. Unfortunately, discussion of this plot has been so polluted by political and activist frenzy that it is hard to dig into it to reach the science. My earlier column was largely a plea to let science proceed unmolested. Unfortunately, the very importance of the issue has made careful science difficult to pursue.

                But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.

                But it wasnt so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.

                Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

                That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen? What is going on? Let me digress into a short technical discussion of how this incredible error took place.

                In PCA and similar techniques, each of the (in this case, typically 70) different data sets have their averages subtracted (so they have a mean of zero), and then are multiplied by a number to make their average variation around that mean to be equal to one; in technical jargon, we say that each data set is normalized to zero mean and unit variance. In standard PCA, each data set is normalized over its complete data period; for key climate data sets that Mann used to create his hockey stick graph, this was the interval 1400-1980. But the computer program Mann used did not do that. Instead, it forced each data set to have zero mean for the time period 1902-1980, and to match the historical records for this interval. This is the time when the historical temperature is well known, so this procedure does guarantee the most accurate temperature scale. But it completely screws up PCA. PCA is mostly concerned with the data sets that have high variance, and the Mann normalization procedure tends to give very high variance to any data set with a hockey stick shape. (Such data sets have zero mean only over the 1902-1980 period, not over the longer 1400-1980 period.)

                The net result: the principal component will have a hockey stick shape even if most of the data do not.


                And now a short note to the Professor from Rochester.

                Sir, it's no sin to be stupid but don't you think you might be abusing the privilege?
                Never Argue With An Idiot. They Will Drag You Down To Their Level And Beat You With Experience.

                Comment


                • #9
                  you might want to read this article, written several years later by the same author, Richard Muller.
                  The title is a hint: it's called "The conversion of a climate skeptic"

                  The average land temperature on earth has risen 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years — essentially all of it caused by human emission of greenhouses gases.
                  He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Global Warming Theory

                    Professor Hobbitt - Thank you for the referral. I read the follow up article and all it really says is that Dr. Muller has changed his stance. The article says nothing about refuting his first findings:

                    "How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does." R Muller

                    Yes, we see signs of the earth warming but this warming effect may be caused by solar flares. We also have seen shorter periods of cooling too. Do you remember back a few years ago when the scientists all agreed we were entering another ice age? I believe it was back in the 70's.

                    The earth heats up and cools down. So does the argument. The question should be why cannot we become better stewards of our environment? Certainly "greenhouse" gasses trapped cannot be healthy especially in China. Also the incinerators in Ohio cannot be doing our ADK's any good either. So yes let us work toward taking better care of our bountiful natural wonders, but let us also be aware of the greed which produced them and know that it may still be present in those who would profit from our present condition.

                    Just as you don't have to be a dog to be a veterinarian - just because you may have degrees behind your name doesn't necessarily indicate that you have the right to make radical statements such as the Rochester Professor. What it does give you the right to be is wrong by the same standard as anyone else "guessing". It's just that by being somewhat prominent more people are reached by your statement. Remember what they say about opinions?
                    Never Argue With An Idiot. They Will Drag You Down To Their Level And Beat You With Experience.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      It is logical the good professor changed his stance due to refuting his own previous research. The rest of the article posted by Hobbit, goes into some of the questions you pose. The good professor's current research does take into account those other natural variables and still he concludes "I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."

                      Richard Muller's current research is available at his institute: http://berkeleyearth.org/
                      "There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us, And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go." -from "The Call of the Wild" by Robert Service

                      My trail journal: DuctTape's Journal

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Professor Hobbit View Post
                        I feel compelled to point out that this man is a philosophy/ethics professor, not a scientist (although I'm willing believe he probably has a fairly good understanding of science).

                        As a scientist, I understand the frustration of watching as evidence and science and expertise gets smothered in pseudoscience and well funded propaganda. Scientists, mostly, prefer to let evidence and facts speak for themselves. Although we certainly have beliefs and opinions that are as strong as anyone else, we are also generally very reluctant to step into this kind of politics or policy arena. I would even say we sometimes follow this too far, avoiding confrontations and debates so much that we often do a poor job of communicating science to the public. If anything, the confusion of the public about issues like climate change is largely our own fault.

                        Unfortunately I think he's harmed his cause by taking what I see as a fairly extreme stance; and I say that as an environmental biologist who believes climate change is real. Any philosopher that feels the need to silence his opponents, rather than doing the hard but necessary work of persuading people his ideas are better than his opponent's, invites exactly the kind of criticisms expressed above.

                        Philosophical debates like this aren't won by outlawing an opinion, and they shouldn't be. This debate in particular is far too important to skip that essential step, of presenting evidence and convincing the public. People need to be on board, if we are to make any lasting change. Obsolete ideas fade away on their own. I may disagree with someone's opinion, but I'll defend their right to have that opinion, and their right to try to convince others of that opinion. That's pretty much the definition of freedom of speech, isn't it?
                        Good post!
                        "A culture is no better than its woods." W.H. Auden

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          I think regardless of your stance on Climate Change most would agree the RIT professor's suggestion is extreme and also detrimental to the discussion. I suspect we will be seeing an apology soon. I took it as comical but admit its just a logical extension of the argument that the "science is settled" and "debate over".

                          More interesting to me is the Gallup poll. Here are two explanations for the results from both sides of the debate. Professor Hobbit alluded to the confusion of the public about getting the message. These two articles attempt to explain the results.

                          First a proponent:


                          Here is a quote from the concluding argument:
                          "Whatever the reasons, those who argue climate change is the top problem of our age are no doubt aghast that even now, in 2014, Americans are not more worried or concerned than they are. A lot of the efforts to raise concern levels and awareness to date have obviously not worked well. It may be that new tactics are needed. So far, however, even if it is a case of whistling past the graveyard, Americans are clearly more focused on other issues".

                          Next from a skeptic:
                          I wrote an analysis piece last year which was an attempt to categorise and second guess the different types of propaganda the climate alarmists would resort to. In the light of Nils Bohr’s wi…


                          And a quote:
                          "The first one has to be that the message, whatever its form, is nearly always tainted with a certain unmistakable whiff of arrogance which puts people off. There’s never an element of doubt about it, it’s simply do as I say or you’ll all die, and it comes with a none too subtle subtext of if you don’t do what I say, you’ll deserve to die. There’s simply no tolerance of dissent. They carry on like they’re our better informed superiors and that gets right up people’s noses".

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Maybe the good professor at RIT was onto to something. Remember that the analysis of the Pro Climate change analyst where he stated the following "A lot of the efforts to raise concern levels and awareness to date have obviously not worked well. It may be that NEW TACTICS ARE NEEDED".

                            Here is another opinion by Rod Lamberts: Deputy Director, Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science at Australian National University.

                            "The fact is that the time for fact-based arguments is over".

                            "What we need now is to become comfortable with the idea that THE ENDS WILL JUSTIFY THE MEANS. We actually need more opinions, appearing more often and expressed more noisily than ever before".

                            A colleague of mine recently received an invitation to a Climate Council event. The invitation featured this Tim Flannery quote: “An opinion is useless, what we need are more facts.” My first thought was…


                            Is this the start of a new trend in tactics?

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              The man is probably frustrated. If we put people in jail for being stupid we would need way too many jails.

                              There is a large amount of people that don't even believe in evolution, some of them really believe the earth is 6000 years old. They have the facts to prove it too. One guy is building a full scale arc with unicorns (They are in the King James version of the bible).

                              People believe what the want to believe and they also have a strong desire to control what other people believe. People would rather win an argument by arguing than really understand what they are arguing about.

                              People don't like being told that their culture is all wrong. They are proud of who they are.

                              People also don't like authority. I mean everyone in the country is a rebel practically.

                              People are crazy too. My brother in law was going on and on about how bad unions are. The strange thing is that he is a teacher... I did not point out the obvios to him. You can't help people.

                              How are you going to get people to believe that an oderless, colourless gas is going to destroy their way of life? It is never going to happen.

                              But the rich people should wake up and start looking at this. They should never forget that the rich were taxed a 90% during and after world war II. They will pay for climate change because only they have the money to do it. If we start now it will cost less.
                              Leave No Trace! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXO1uY0MvmQ
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