Over the past decade I have made it a point to listen to Hannity and Limbaugh for the simple reason that it is a great way to be prepared when a student or faculty member repeats their anti-environmental and anti-science comments. Despite some of their exceptionally radical and moronic statements in the past, I had never turned the channel in mid- rant until about a week ago. Limbaugh went down a moronic path of anti-science conspiracy that reached so far from any path to reality that I am now convinced that this incident was staged by someone associated with him or his copatriots. So just a few days ago, I was watching an older movie staring Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury, and Janet Ley...The Manturian Candidate. Lansbury plays a senator's wife who is secretly a communist spy/simpathizer. Her character has a reputation for calling out communitists in a true Macarthian character whenever someone does not agree with her/her husband's stance. In one scene she is talking to her son about another senator whom she has accused and wildly declared in public as a communist. I was very shocked as her oratory in this scene was undeniably similar to several rants I have herd on Hannity, Limbaugh, and Beck. This brought me to consider something that I never had before. WHAT IF these folks are not just promoting conservative values (as they contend) or the republican party (as their opponents contend)?. WHAT IF their role is more sinister and more in line with the Lansbury character in The Manchurian Candidate? Consider that our political system is based partly on an idea that neither Republicans nor Democrats are EVIL. These two parties have different philosophies, and few people can state definitively that they completely agree with every single platform or view of either party. No one is 100% conservative or liberal, and most fall into some version of a moderate. However, in listening to these various pundits you find that there is only one thing they despise more than the opposing extreme, and that is a pure moderate...in fact, they have been regularly attacking that stance, and they do regularly present opposing parties as EVIL and their own as GOOD. THIS is completely wrong and destroys the political process, it clearly destroys the fabric that holds the US's political system together. If one party is evil and the other good, regardless of whether you are purely liberal or purely conservative then there is absolutely no reason to listen to the opposing candidate's view or to consider what you actually want or think about an issue, just pull the lever. Furthermore, if voters begin to take this approach, then there is much more opportunity for EVIL people to take control of a country. I suggest that we all need to communicate publically that neither party is EVIL, they are simply different people with different views on important subjects. IF one is evil and the other good, there can be no compromise and therefore the basis on which american politics is built is destroyed.
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 10:07 PM, David Inouye <ino...@umd.edu> wrote: > From: Ben Santer <sant< > http://groups.google.com/groups/unlock?_done=/group/geoengineering/browse_thread/thread/d3aec95a5f27fbb6&msg=8aab47682ab84454 > >....@llnl.gov> > Date: Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 4:58 PM > Subject: Open letter to the climate science community > > Dear colleagues and friends, > > I am sure that by now, all of you are aware of the hacking incident which > recently took place at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research > Unit (CRU). This was a criminal act. Over 3,000 emails and documents were > stolen. The identity of the hacker or hackers is still unknown. > > The emails represented private correspondence between CRU scientists and > scientists at climate research centers around the world. Dozens of the > stolen emails are from over a decade of my own personal correspondence with > Professor Phil Jones, the Director of CRU. > > I obtained my Ph.D. at the Climatic Research Unit. I went to CRU in 1983 > because it was - and remains - one of the world's premier institutions for > studying the nature and causes of climate change. During the course of my > Ph.D., I was privileged to work together with exceptional scientists - with > people like Tom Wigley, Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, and Sarah Raper. > > After completing my Ph.D. at CRU in 1987, I devoted much of my scientific > career to what is now called "climate fingerprinting", which seeks to > understand the causes of recent climate change. At its core, fingerprinting > is a form of what people now call "data mining" - an attempt to extract > information and meaning from very large, complex climate datasets. The > emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit are now being subjected to a > very different form of "data mining". This mining is taking place in the > blogosphere, in the editorial pages of various newspapers, and in radio and > television programs. This form of mining has little to do with extracting > meaning from personal email correspondence on complex scientific issues. > This form of mining seeks to find dirt - to skew true meaning, to distort, > to misrepresent, to take out of context. It seeks to destroy the > reputations > of exceptional scientists - scientists like Professor Phil Jones. > > I have known Phil for over 25 years. He is the antithesis of the secretive, > "data destroying" character being portrayed to the outside world by the > miners of dirt and disinformation. Phil Jones and Tom Wigley (the second > Director of the Climatic Research Unit) devoted significant portions of > their scientific careers to the construction of the land component of the > so-called "HadCRUT" dataset of land and ocean surface temperatures. The > U.K. > Meteorological Office Hadley Centre (MOHC) took the lead in developing the > ocean surface temperature component of HadCRUT. > > The CRU and Hadley Centre efforts to construct the HadCRUT dataset have > been > open and transparent, and are documented in dozens of peer-reviewed > scientific papers. This work has been tremendously influential. In my > personal opinion, it is some of the most important scientific research ever > published. It has provided hard scientific evidence for the warming of our > planet over the past 150 years. > > Phil, Tom, and their CRU and MOHC colleagues conducted this research in a > very open and transparent manner. Like good scientists, they examined the > sensitivity of their results to many different subjective choices made > during the construction of the HadCRUT dataset. These choices relate to > such > issues as how to account for changes over time in the type of thermometer > used to make temperature measurements, the thermometer location, and the > immediate physical surroundings of the thermometer. They found that, no > matter what choices they made in dataset construction, their bottom-line > finding - that the surface of our planet is warming - was rock solid. This > finding was supported by many other independent lines of evidence, such as > the retreat of snow and sea-ice cover, the widespread melting and retreat > of > glaciers, the rise in sea-level, and the increase in the amount of water > vapor in the atmosphere. All of these independent observations are > physically consistent with a warming planet. > > Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. The claim that our Earth > had warmed markedly during the 20th century was extraordinary, and was > subjected to extraordinary scrutiny. Groups at the National Climatic Data > Center in North Carolina (NCDC) and at the Goddard Institute for Space > Studies in New York (GISS) independently attempted to reproduce the results > of the Climatic Research Unit and the U.K. Meteorological Office Hadley > Centre. While the NCDC and GISS groups largely relied on the same primary > temperature measurements that had been used in the development of the > HadCRUT dataset, they made very different choices in the treatment of the > raw measurements. Although there were differences in the details of the > three groups' results, the NCDC and GISS analyses broadly confirmed the > "warming Earth" findings of the CRU and MOHC scientists. > > Other extraordinary claims - such as a claim by scientists at the > University > of Alabama that Earth's lower atmosphere cooled since 1979, and that such > cooling contradicts "warming Earth" findings - have not withstood rigorous > scientific examination. > > In summary, Phil Jones and his colleagues have done a tremendous service to > the scientific community - and to the planet - by making surface > temperature > datasets publicly available for scientific research. These datasets have > facilitated climate research around the world, and have led to the > publication of literally hundreds of important scientific papers. > > Phil Jones is one of the gentlemen of our field. He has given decades of > his > life not only to cutting-edge scientific research on the nature and causes > of climate change, but also to a variety of difficult and time-consuming > community service activities - such as his dedicated (and repeated) service > as a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). > > Since the theft of the CRU emails and their public dissemination, Phil has > been subjected to the vilest personal attacks. These attacks are without > justification. They are deeply disturbing. They should be of concern to all > of you. We are now faced with powerful "forces of unreason" - forces that > (at least to date) have been unsuccessful in challenging scientific > findings > of a warming Earth, and a "discernible human influence" on global climate. > These forces of unreason are now shifting the focus of their attention to > the scientists themselves. They seek to discredit, to skew the truth, to > misrepresent. They seek to destroy scientific careers rather than to > improve > our understanding of the nature and causes of climate change. > > Yesterday, Phil temporarily stepped down as Director of the Climatic > Research Unit. Yesterday was a very sad day for climate science. When the > forces of unreason win, and force exceptional scientists like Professor > Phil > Jones to leave their positions, we all lose. Climate science loses. Our > community loses. The world loses. > > Now, more than at any other time in human history, we need sound scientific > information on the nature and causes of climate change. Phil Jones and his > colleagues at CRU have helped to provide such information. I hope that all > of you will join me in thanking Phil for everything he has done - and will > do in the future - for our scientific community. He and his CRU colleagues > deserve great credit. > > With best regards, > > Ben Santer > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Benjamin D. Santer > Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison > Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory > P.O. Box 808, Mail Stop L-103 > Livermore, CA 94550, U.S.A. > Tel: (925) 422-3840 > FAX: (925) 422-7675 > email: sant< > http://groups.google.com/groups/unlock?_done=/group/geoengineering/browse_thread/thread/d3aec95a5f27fbb6&msg=8aab47682ab84454 > >....@llnl.gov > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- Malcolm L. McCallum Associate Professor of Biology Managing Editor, Herpetological Conservation and Biology Texas A&M University-Texarkana Fall Teaching Schedule: Vertebrate Biology - TR 10-11:40; General Ecology - MW 1-2:40pm; Forensic Science - W 6-9:40pm Office Hourse- TBA 1880's: "There's lots of good fish in the sea" W.S. 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