"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
...

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 05:11:03 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 24, 9:11 pm, Hawke wrote:

Dan, if you actually understood how the scientific community thinks
about global warming you would see why people like Ed make fun of people
with your position. At this point it has gotten to where the only people
who still disbelieve in global warming are conservative republicans.
Everybody else thinks the opposite.

If you understood how much agreement that there is in the scientific
community of the correctness of the climate change theory you would see
why your side is treated with disdain. Among at least 80% of the world's
top scientists this is not a debatable question any more. When you take
the view of the small minority don't expect respect from anyone that
isn't in your group of right wing zealots, because that's all that's in
your group. And they aren't known for their rational thinking prowess.

Hawke

What I object to is Ed making fun of people. He does it in a mean
way. He uses ridicule instead of rational arguments. As one of the
other people in RCM said Ed is not someone that you would enjoy being
with.

As far as my position on global warming. it is that there is still a
lot of research going on. While the amount of CO2 ought to be causing
some warming, there is not agreement on how much is caused by CO2.
And there is not agreement on how much is caused by man and how much
is happening because of whatever has caused climate changes in the
past. I expect there will be a lot learned in the next ten years and
we should wait until the science is more exact before enacting laws
and regulations. And when we do enact regulations, we should look at
unentended results. Look at ethanol. There is considerable doubt as
to whether ethanol made from corn is useful in reducing the amount of
petroleum used for gasoline. But little doubt about the effects on
corn prices and the effect on food prices world wide. Now there are
lots of people with a vested interest in requiring the use of ethanol
in gasoline, but little that says it is a good thing.

Dan


Scientists have shown Repeatedly..that CO2 increases FOLLOW warming, not
proceed them.

So increased temp levels CAUSED increased Co2..but were not Caused by
Co2.

Gunner

This idea has been thoroughly addressed in the research and the models.
Warming forces *more* CO2 production, and CO2 production can lag temperature
increases by something between 200 and 1,000 years. This also was predicted
by even the earliest the IPCC models.

--
Ed Huntress

On 10/25/2011 5:21 AM, wrote:
On Oct 24, 11:36 pm, "Ed wrote:


There's an interesting story about former skeptic Richard Muller in the
Washington Post today. Apparently Muller's report last week in the Wall
Street Journal, in which he reversed himself and said that extensive
checking shows that the IPCC got the warming data exactly right, has some of
the hard core sputtering in their soup:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...inding-that-se...

It's an amazing commentary on how the politicos have abused and distorted
science.

--
Ed Huntress


Ah but Muller's report , at least as descibed in the Washington Post,
is only whether there is global warming. It does not address what the
cause is or whether the warmer climate will have a positive or
negative feedback on global warming. Still a lot of unanswered
questions.



Dan



One thing is for sure. Say we decided that it was us that was causing
global warming and took drastic steps to cut our use of carbon. Say we
were really successful and we reduced how much we used fossil fuels by a
huge amount. If then, we saw the heating start going back down I think
that would be good evidence it was us that was causing the heating.

So what would be the harm if we did that? And what good would come from
it? I'd say the good would so outweigh the harm there's no sense not
doing it anyway.

Hawke

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:03:38 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 3:50*pm, Hawke wrote:



There's also no
reason why we should not be moving in a new direction for energy where
it's all clean and harmless to our environment. We all know that in the
future we won't be using fossil fuels anymore. It's just a question of
when.
Hawke


The when seems to be a long ways out. When I was ten or so, the known
oil reserves was less than twenty years. Now the reserves are
longer. Plus we have even longer supply of natural gas and a huge
amount of coal. But I agree, no since in using more energy than
necessary. Today I bought more insulation for the attic.


Dan
==================

The fundamental problem is the gross increase in global
population, highly exacerbated by rising expectations of an
American or at least Northern European life style.

AFAIK the existing human population is at or beyond the
global carrying capacity, even without the quantum jump in
lifestyle, and desertification, apparently due to global
climate change [IMNSHO it is still open if this is due to
humans or not], is only making things worse.
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2...illion/100176/

You appear to be correct on the critical need for additional
supplies of energy as this would allow intensive methods of
agriculture such as hydroponics/aeroponics and increases in
the use of hothouse methods to allow multiple crops year
around. Desalinization of seawater for both human use and
intensive agriculture will also be very helpful.

While some of the green technologies such as solar,
geothermal, wave and wind power may be helpful, it appears
that nuclear power in the form of molten salt moderated
thorium reactors, built to a standard design in large
numbers, and erection of large numbers of coal liquefaction
plants to turn coal and other organic materials into
synthetic petroleum for the production of liquid fuels such
as gasoline, diesel and JP4 to keep the economy moving will
be required. This would provide domestic liquid fuel and
feedstock using domestic resources and domestic labor under
domestic control. A collateral program to recover rare
earths, thorium and uranium from the huge dumps of fly ash
which have resulted from using coal as fuel for electrical
generation would also be very cost effective.


--
Unka' George

"Gold is the money of kings,
silver is the money of gentlemen,
barter is the money of peasants,
but debt is the money of slaves"

-Norm Franz, "Money and Wealth in the New Millenium"

On 10/25/2011 7:31 AM, John B. wrote:

That's not what I'm saying either. History is littered with the mistaken
statements from "experts". I'm reminded of the famous one from a general
in either the revolutionary war or the civil war, I can't remember
which, where he told his men that nobody could hit them at this range.
And then he was promptly shot. So not just being an expert or scientist
guarantees you are always right about anything. Sometimes the expert is
wrong and the amateur is right.

Civil war.

But I was not referring to mistaken statements I was referring to what
was the last minute, up to date, TRUTH.... as understood to be at the
time.

When Semmelweis was arguing that washing the hands would reduce child
bed fever he was ridiculed by the majority of the medical profession
because they had been taught in medical school that it was
unnecessary. Adam Smith argued that a "free market economies are more
productive and beneficial to their societies" was accepted as though
it was carven on tablets of stone for nearly 300 years however I now
see some cracks in the dike and a great many people seem to be
advocating something different.


But as a general rule I'll go with the recommendations of the expert
over the amateur. I'll listen to a professional golf caddie when he says
what club to use and not you. I'll take the word or the army ordnance
expert when he tells me I'm not our of the range of a blast and not some
bystander. I think you get my drift, and that when it comes to getting
the facts I'm not going with Limbaugh. I will take the expert's advice
over his any day of the week. I'd recommend that to everyone but I
realize no right winger will ever take that advice.

Hawke

But you are now talking about what might be termed "blue collar
wisdom", that gained from doing something and observing the results.
The caddie, for example, doesn't calculate the swing velocity, mass of
the club head and drag coefficient of the ball to know that it isn't a
7 iron shot to the green from here.

On the other hand we have the collage educated whom frequently are of
little use when they leave school. I suggest that a short session with
a fresh, green, engineer graduate will be educational with his
requests to drill a 2 in deep hole with a #60 drill, or produces a
drawing calling out +0, -.001 and 1 " of true angle and class 3
threads and when asked if he can lighten up a bit replies "Aren't
those standard tolerances ?"

This is certainly not a condemnation of a collage education, rather it
is a condemnation of the thought process that insists that a collage
education somehow always produces an intelligent individual.



All of us who have gone to college and gotten a degree know very well
that everyone who has a degree isn't a genius. We all know people we
went to school with who are idiots. So college graduates know well a
degree doesn't guarantee anything.

We also hear the uneducated chiming in on how stupid people they know
with degrees are. But then the uneducated are always telling us how
getting a college degree is not very important. We hear words from them
like, we never got no degree and we done just fine, from them all the time.

But that's not really the point. I'm talking about who one chooses to
listen to or take advice from. My view is that when you want to know the
truth about something or the facts you go to someone who is an expert, a
professional, someone who has a credential, someone who actually knows
what they are talking about. You don't go to a layman, the common man,
or the man in the street. That's my view.

Relating that to Limbaugh is simple. He is the ordinary man, the
uneducated, the layman. I'm not being negative. I'm simply describing
him accurately. There is simply no area in which Limbaugh has any
specific expertise beyond what any ordinary person has.

According to my view of going to professionals, experts, or the
educated, that lets out Limbaugh. But that's my way of doing things.
Clearly, lots of people don't do it my way. Instead they take the word
of someone who has no particular training or expertise on just about any
subject. I'm saying I think that is a stupid way of doing things and
that the people who do that are themselves stupid. That's how it looks
to me.

Hawke

Ed Huntress wrote:

This idea has been thoroughly addressed in the research and the models.
Warming forces *more* CO2 production, and CO2 production can lag temperature
increases by something between 200 and 1,000 years. This also was predicted
by even the earliest the IPCC models.


Even a blind pig finds the occasional acorn.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53*am, John B. wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

That Mars and the moon also exhibit increased temperatures in that same
time frame indicate what? That Man has built Taco Bells and way too many
freeways on those bodies? Too many Air Conditioners on Mars?

Gunner

One could not be a successful Leftwinger without realizing that,
in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers
and mothers of Leftwingers, a goodly number of Leftwingers are
not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
Gunner Asch

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:39:42 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/25/2011 7:31 AM, John B. wrote:

That's not what I'm saying either. History is littered with the mistaken
statements from "experts". I'm reminded of the famous one from a general
in either the revolutionary war or the civil war, I can't remember
which, where he told his men that nobody could hit them at this range.
And then he was promptly shot. So not just being an expert or scientist
guarantees you are always right about anything. Sometimes the expert is
wrong and the amateur is right.

Civil war.

But I was not referring to mistaken statements I was referring to what
was the last minute, up to date, TRUTH.... as understood to be at the
time.

When Semmelweis was arguing that washing the hands would reduce child
bed fever he was ridiculed by the majority of the medical profession
because they had been taught in medical school that it was
unnecessary. Adam Smith argued that a "free market economies are more
productive and beneficial to their societies" was accepted as though
it was carven on tablets of stone for nearly 300 years however I now
see some cracks in the dike and a great many people seem to be
advocating something different.


But as a general rule I'll go with the recommendations of the expert
over the amateur. I'll listen to a professional golf caddie when he says
what club to use and not you. I'll take the word or the army ordnance
expert when he tells me I'm not our of the range of a blast and not some
bystander. I think you get my drift, and that when it comes to getting
the facts I'm not going with Limbaugh. I will take the expert's advice
over his any day of the week. I'd recommend that to everyone but I
realize no right winger will ever take that advice.

Hawke

But you are now talking about what might be termed "blue collar
wisdom", that gained from doing something and observing the results.
The caddie, for example, doesn't calculate the swing velocity, mass of
the club head and drag coefficient of the ball to know that it isn't a
7 iron shot to the green from here.

On the other hand we have the collage educated whom frequently are of
little use when they leave school. I suggest that a short session with
a fresh, green, engineer graduate will be educational with his
requests to drill a 2 in deep hole with a #60 drill, or produces a
drawing calling out +0, -.001 and 1 " of true angle and class 3
threads and when asked if he can lighten up a bit replies "Aren't
those standard tolerances ?"

This is certainly not a condemnation of a collage education, rather it
is a condemnation of the thought process that insists that a collage
education somehow always produces an intelligent individual.



All of us who have gone to college and gotten a degree know very well
that everyone who has a degree isn't a genius. We all know people we
went to school with who are idiots. So college graduates know well a
degree doesn't guarantee anything.

In my experience that is, perhaps not total, but certainly a
significant amount of B.S. From my own prospective I have actually
hear an individual state that "I went to collage and you have only a 4
year education". Later events demonstrated that the implied advantage
was not quite correct as the 4 year guy went on to be a
multi-millionaire while the guy with the collage education now is
supported by his wife.

Or, have you ever been around any consulting projects, say USAID,
W.B., UN? Every one of them demand a collage degree but rarely do they
demand experience in the actual project requirements. I've seen a
bloke with a Doctorate in "Library Sciences" work for years on
various projects such as transmigration, cross cultural training and
work of that type without a clue about the work. We had a project that
initialed certifying how much jungle was cleared in support of a
transmigration project. Towe blokes with Master's degrees were made
Project manager and assistant. When it came time to certify the first
month's clearance they didn't know how, didn't have a clue. And these
people's resumes were submitted and accepted as part of our original
tender.


We also hear the uneducated chiming in on how stupid people they know
with degrees are. But then the uneducated are always telling us how
getting a college degree is not very important. We hear words from them
like, we never got no degree and we done just fine, from them all the time.

Not from me. I haven't said a word about the worth of a degree. After
all I got one myself. But I sometimes shudder to remember how much I
thought I knew as apposed to how little I actually knew when I
graduated.

But that's not really the point. I'm talking about who one chooses to
listen to or take advice from. My view is that when you want to know the
truth about something or the facts you go to someone who is an expert, a
professional, someone who has a credential, someone who actually knows
what they are talking about. You don't go to a layman, the common man,
or the man in the street. That's my view.


You are not saying what you originally said. If I remember correctly
you referenced a collage graduate as an expert and this was what I was
protesting about.

I agree with you with the exception that the degree does not always,
in fact I suspect rather infrequently, means that one is an expert. To
use your own analogy who would you prefer tell you what club you
should use for this shot? The 8th grade caddy or the non-golfer with
the degree in aerodynamics?

In fact I suspect that knowledge depends more on an individual's
desire to learn rather than a diploma. Henry Ford was apprentice
machinist, not a degreed engineer; Walter Chrisler was a machinist,
Neither of the two originators of APPLE had degrees; Bill Gates was a
collage drop-out; Samuel Colt was indentured to a farm.


Relating that to Limbaugh is simple. He is the ordinary man, the
uneducated, the layman. I'm not being negative. I'm simply describing
him accurately. There is simply no area in which Limbaugh has any
specific expertise beyond what any ordinary person has.


I didn't even know who Limbaugh is but looked him up on the Wiki and
apparently he is some sort of talk show MC. Which hardly qualifies him
for anything.

According to my view of going to professionals, experts, or the
educated, that lets out Limbaugh. But that's my way of doing things.
Clearly, lots of people don't do it my way. Instead they take the word
of someone who has no particular training or expertise on just about any
subject. I'm saying I think that is a stupid way of doing things and
that the people who do that are themselves stupid. That's how it looks
to me.

Hawke

I can only agree that people seem to have a penchant for listening to
those who say what they want to hear. Obama's school history is a
perfect example - the "Moslem School" that he attended. The name of
the school, which has been published, translates to "National School
Number 4". In fact the school's name, Sekolah Dasar Negeri 04, is
indicative of a non-religious school as a Moslem religious school
would be refereed to as a "Madressa", not a "Sekolah".

But people hear what they want to hear.


--
John B.

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53*am, John B. wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

The first part of solving a problem is to define whether there is a
problem, which I believe is a discussion point at the moment. At least
I keep reading that so-and-so denies that global warming is a problem,
or even exists.


--
John B.

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:00:25 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/24/2011 5:56 AM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 02:14:31 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/23/2011 7:04 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:45:08 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/22/2011 8:10 PM, wrote:
On Oct 22, 10:48 pm, wrote:

. Yet he's got millions believing everything he says is true
even to the point where, as you said, they disbelieve people with
doctorates and instead believe the word of a man with no education at
all. If someone told you that you wouldn't believe it.

Hawke

You should always believe what makes sense regardless of a person's
credentials. I am willing to believe someone with no education if
what they say makes sense. I am not willing to believe highly
educated people when it is obvious that what they say does not make
sense.

Do you believe everything that William Shockley said?

Dan





Bad analogy, Dan. I'm saying if a nuclear scientist tells you something
about nuclear energy and a housewife with a high school education tells
you that he's wrong which one of them are you going to believe? That is
the situation we have with Limbaugh most of the time. He's got no
training in any field and is an uneducated man. He espouses views that
are consistently opposed to those of highly learned people, and he
argues with these people about what is in their field of expertise.

No person with a lick of sense would take the word of a layman over an
expert. So what about you? Side with the layman, Limbaugh when he tells
scientists they are mistaken about the climate?

Hawke


Your hypothesis sounds quite reasonable until one considers that:

Until the 19th century, it was widely believed that trains could not
travel faster than about 50 miles per hour because of the immense
tornado-like winds that would be created along their paths. Some
British scientists predicted air would be evacuated from railway cars
at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and all the passengers
would be asphyxiated.

Radio waves constructed as low-frequency light travel faster than
light. Ironically, physicists discovered this property of waves in an
ionized gas in the early part of this century, at the same time (1905)
that Albert Einstein was asserting that "velocities exceeding that of
light have no possibility of existence"

Some of the most enlighten philosophers of their times believed that
the earth was flat:
According to Aristotle, pre-Socratic philosophers, including Leucippus
(c. 440 BC) and Democritus (370 BC) believed in a flat Earth.
Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed the Earth to be a short cylinder with
a flat, circular top that remained stable because it is the same
distance from all things. Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the
earth is flat and rides on air; Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 500 BC)
thought that the Earth was flat. Belief in a flat Earth continued into
the 5th-century BC. Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was
flat, and his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was
depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the
Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone.

One could go on but it is apparent that the fact that an individual
has received an education is not necessarily a factor in their amount
of knowledge.


--
John B.

Yet Pythagoras knew the earth was a sphere and Erathostenes had actually
measured its circumference quite accurately using basic geometry. In
every period there is a prevalent scientific belief opposed by a very
small number. It usually turns out that the very small number of
opposing opinion eventually becomes the prevalent paradigm.

cheers
T.Alan


You are correct of course but I was replying to Hawke's apparent
thesis that graduating from collage somehow means that you actually
know what you are talking about. My thesis is that everyone has areas
of expertise and ignorance and while one may well be a demon
basket-weaver ( for example) the fact that one holds a degree in the
subject doesn't qualify him to discuss Quantum mechanics (to use
another example).

.

--
John B.



From your misunderstanding of my point you must have been one of those
people who doesn't know what they are talking about. To clarify for you,
I was talking about listening to someone like Limbaugh, who has no
education, training, or expertise in anything and disregarding people
who are experts in the area of the topic being discussed. That's a far
cry from believing that everyone who graduates from college knows what
they are talking about. Maybe now you can tell the difference.

Hawke

That may be what you intended to say but you actually compared a house
wife to a nuclear scientist. I only pointed that a university degree
did not actually prove or disprove what an individual knows.

Specifically discussing some TV talk show MC, who I've never seen. But
I'd have to ask, as you seem to know quite a bit about him, why do
you bother to watch him?



--
John B.

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:43:51 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53*am, John B. wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

That Mars and the moon also exhibit increased temperatures in that same
time frame indicate what? That Man has built Taco Bells and way too many
freeways on those bodies? Too many Air Conditioners on Mars?

Gunner


I doubt that anyone can definitely say why warming occurs but it is.
And given the politics and (dare I mention it) the amount of money
some people are making out of the Green revolution, it may well be a
question that no one actually wants answered.


--
John B.

On 10/26/2011 4:58 AM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:43:51 -0700, Gunner
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53 am, John wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

That Mars and the moon also exhibit increased temperatures in that same
time frame indicate what? That Man has built Taco Bells and way too many
freeways on those bodies? Too many Air Conditioners on Mars?

Gunner


I doubt that anyone can definitely say why warming occurs but it is.
And given the politics and (dare I mention it) the amount of money
some people are making out of the Green revolution, it may well be a
question that no one actually wants answered.


--
John B.

I don't want to be a smart ass, but apparently both earthquakes and
global climate variations follow the same mathematical formula:
P(E)=m/n

cheers
T.Alan

On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:58:54 +0700, John B.
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:43:51 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53*am, John B. wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

That Mars and the moon also exhibit increased temperatures in that same
time frame indicate what? That Man has built Taco Bells and way too many
freeways on those bodies? Too many Air Conditioners on Mars?

Gunner


I doubt that anyone can definitely say why warming occurs but it is.
And given the politics and (dare I mention it) the amount of money
some people are making out of the Green revolution, it may well be a
question that no one actually wants answered.

Oh a lot of us want the question answered. On the other hand...those
making the money surely do not.

As the lads in East Anglica proved beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Gunner

One could not be a successful Leftwinger without realizing that,
in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers
and mothers of Leftwingers, a goodly number of Leftwingers are
not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
Gunner Asch

On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:58:32 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 4:58 AM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:43:51 -0700, Gunner
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53 am, John wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

That Mars and the moon also exhibit increased temperatures in that same
time frame indicate what? That Man has built Taco Bells and way too many
freeways on those bodies? Too many Air Conditioners on Mars?

Gunner


I doubt that anyone can definitely say why warming occurs but it is.
And given the politics and (dare I mention it) the amount of money
some people are making out of the Green revolution, it may well be a
question that no one actually wants answered.


--
John B.

I don't want to be a smart ass, but apparently both earthquakes and
global climate variations follow the same mathematical formula:
P(E)=m/n

cheers
T.Alan

Do you mean that the probability of a change in temperature is the
same as the probability of an earthquake? Or that the same formula can
be used to calculate the probability of a warmer , or colder year
average temperature?

--
John B.

On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:53:46 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:58:54 +0700, John B.
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:43:51 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53*am, John B. wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

That Mars and the moon also exhibit increased temperatures in that same
time frame indicate what? That Man has built Taco Bells and way too many
freeways on those bodies? Too many Air Conditioners on Mars?

Gunner


I doubt that anyone can definitely say why warming occurs but it is.
And given the politics and (dare I mention it) the amount of money
some people are making out of the Green revolution, it may well be a
question that no one actually wants answered.

Oh a lot of us want the question answered. On the other hand...those
making the money surely do not.

As the lads in East Anglica proved beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Gunner

Do a lot of us want the question answered or do a lot of us want an
answer that we want to hear?


--
John B.

On 10/26/2011 6:51 PM, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:58:32 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 4:58 AM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:43:51 -0700, Gunner
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53 am, John wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

That Mars and the moon also exhibit increased temperatures in that same
time frame indicate what? That Man has built Taco Bells and way too many
freeways on those bodies? Too many Air Conditioners on Mars?

Gunner


I doubt that anyone can definitely say why warming occurs but it is.
And given the politics and (dare I mention it) the amount of money
some people are making out of the Green revolution, it may well be a
question that no one actually wants answered.


--
John B.

I don't want to be a smart ass, but apparently both earthquakes and
global climate variations follow the same mathematical formula:
P(E)=m/n

cheers
T.Alan

Do you mean that the probability of a change in temperature is the
same as the probability of an earthquake? Or that the same formula can
be used to calculate the probability of a warmer , or colder year
average temperature?

--
John B.
The latter, I would think.

On 10/26/2011 3:03 AM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:00:25 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/24/2011 5:56 AM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 02:14:31 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/23/2011 7:04 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:45:08 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/22/2011 8:10 PM, wrote:
On Oct 22, 10:48 pm, wrote:

. Yet he's got millions believing everything he says is true
even to the point where, as you said, they disbelieve people with
doctorates and instead believe the word of a man with no education at
all. If someone told you that you wouldn't believe it.

Hawke

You should always believe what makes sense regardless of a person's
credentials. I am willing to believe someone with no education if
what they say makes sense. I am not willing to believe highly
educated people when it is obvious that what they say does not make
sense.

Do you believe everything that William Shockley said?

Dan





Bad analogy, Dan. I'm saying if a nuclear scientist tells you something
about nuclear energy and a housewife with a high school education tells
you that he's wrong which one of them are you going to believe? That is
the situation we have with Limbaugh most of the time. He's got no
training in any field and is an uneducated man. He espouses views that
are consistently opposed to those of highly learned people, and he
argues with these people about what is in their field of expertise.

No person with a lick of sense would take the word of a layman over an
expert. So what about you? Side with the layman, Limbaugh when he tells
scientists they are mistaken about the climate?

Hawke


Your hypothesis sounds quite reasonable until one considers that:

Until the 19th century, it was widely believed that trains could not
travel faster than about 50 miles per hour because of the immense
tornado-like winds that would be created along their paths. Some
British scientists predicted air would be evacuated from railway cars
at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and all the passengers
would be asphyxiated.

Radio waves constructed as low-frequency light travel faster than
light. Ironically, physicists discovered this property of waves in an
ionized gas in the early part of this century, at the same time (1905)
that Albert Einstein was asserting that "velocities exceeding that of
light have no possibility of existence"

Some of the most enlighten philosophers of their times believed that
the earth was flat:
According to Aristotle, pre-Socratic philosophers, including Leucippus
(c. 440 BC) and Democritus (370 BC) believed in a flat Earth.
Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed the Earth to be a short cylinder with
a flat, circular top that remained stable because it is the same
distance from all things. Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the
earth is flat and rides on air; Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 500 BC)
thought that the Earth was flat. Belief in a flat Earth continued into
the 5th-century BC. Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was
flat, and his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was
depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the
Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone.

One could go on but it is apparent that the fact that an individual
has received an education is not necessarily a factor in their amount
of knowledge.


--
John B.

Yet Pythagoras knew the earth was a sphere and Erathostenes had actually
measured its circumference quite accurately using basic geometry. In
every period there is a prevalent scientific belief opposed by a very
small number. It usually turns out that the very small number of
opposing opinion eventually becomes the prevalent paradigm.

cheers
T.Alan


You are correct of course but I was replying to Hawke's apparent
thesis that graduating from collage somehow means that you actually
know what you are talking about. My thesis is that everyone has areas
of expertise and ignorance and while one may well be a demon
basket-weaver ( for example) the fact that one holds a degree in the
subject doesn't qualify him to discuss Quantum mechanics (to use
another example).

.

--
John B.



From your misunderstanding of my point you must have been one of those
people who doesn't know what they are talking about. To clarify for you,
I was talking about listening to someone like Limbaugh, who has no
education, training, or expertise in anything and disregarding people
who are experts in the area of the topic being discussed. That's a far
cry from believing that everyone who graduates from college knows what
they are talking about. Maybe now you can tell the difference.

Hawke

That may be what you intended to say but you actually compared a house
wife to a nuclear scientist. I only pointed that a university degree
did not actually prove or disprove what an individual knows.

I would agree with that. Like I said, plenty of college grads are no
better than the average. On the other hand, college grads in general do
better when tested than those with less education. So either college
means something or it doesn't. The evidence is pretty cut and dried that
college improves people.



Specifically discussing some TV talk show MC, who I've never seen. But
I'd have to ask, as you seem to know quite a bit about him, why do
you bother to watch him?

Limbaugh is unavoidable for me. He's on the radio where I live and
there's not much else available if you have the radio on at all. I also
see him on other TV shows where they are quoting his idiotic statements.
When I was in college I even had a class where we were assigned to
listen to him as an example of conservative propaganda, which we used
when examining that subject. Not only that, you will hear people in this
group repeating Limbaugh's words verbatim. So I just find the guy hard
to get away from. Kind of like it was with Palin. Now that she's finally
admitted she's no longer interested in running for any office we aren't
seeing or hearing her day and night like we used to.

Hawke

On 10/25/2011 4:20 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:


"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
...

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 05:11:03 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 24, 9:11 pm, Hawke wrote:

Dan, if you actually understood how the scientific community thinks
about global warming you would see why people like Ed make fun of people
with your position. At this point it has gotten to where the only people
who still disbelieve in global warming are conservative republicans.
Everybody else thinks the opposite.

If you understood how much agreement that there is in the scientific
community of the correctness of the climate change theory you would see
why your side is treated with disdain. Among at least 80% of the world's
top scientists this is not a debatable question any more. When you take
the view of the small minority don't expect respect from anyone that
isn't in your group of right wing zealots, because that's all that's in
your group. And they aren't known for their rational thinking prowess.

Hawke

What I object to is Ed making fun of people. He does it in a mean
way. He uses ridicule instead of rational arguments. As one of the
other people in RCM said Ed is not someone that you would enjoy being
with.

As far as my position on global warming. it is that there is still a
lot of research going on. While the amount of CO2 ought to be causing
some warming, there is not agreement on how much is caused by CO2.
And there is not agreement on how much is caused by man and how much
is happening because of whatever has caused climate changes in the
past. I expect there will be a lot learned in the next ten years and
we should wait until the science is more exact before enacting laws
and regulations. And when we do enact regulations, we should look at
unentended results. Look at ethanol. There is considerable doubt as
to whether ethanol made from corn is useful in reducing the amount of
petroleum used for gasoline. But little doubt about the effects on
corn prices and the effect on food prices world wide. Now there are
lots of people with a vested interest in requiring the use of ethanol
in gasoline, but little that says it is a good thing.

Dan


Scientists have shown Repeatedly..that CO2 increases FOLLOW warming, not
proceed them.

So increased temp levels CAUSED increased Co2..but were not Caused by
Co2.

Gunner

This idea has been thoroughly addressed in the research and the models.
Warming forces *more* CO2 production, and CO2 production can lag
temperature increases by something between 200 and 1,000 years. This
also was predicted by even the earliest the IPCC models.



All I can say is you got a lot of nerve going up against Gummer on the
issue of climate change. We all know that he's one of the foremost
experts on the subject and for you to challenge him is crazy. He's got
all the science of the right wing supporting him too. So for you to
challenge that gang takes some nerve. I don't know where you get your
facts but they can't be as reliable as those Gummer uses. He's at the
forefront of scientific inquiry, unlike you, who's just a silly writer.
How dare you!

Hawke

On Oct 27, 1:17*pm, Hawke wrote:



I would agree with that. Like I said, plenty of college grads are no
better than the average. On the other hand, college grads in general do
better when tested than those with less education. So either college
means something or it doesn't. The evidence is pretty cut and dried that
college improves people.

Hawke

The evidence does not prove that college improves people. The fact
that college graduates do better when tested does not mean college
improved them. What it is more likely to mean is that people that do
better when tested are more likely to get into and graduate from
college. In fact there was a study recently that indicated that
people that went to college were more ignorant when they graduated
than when they started college.

Here is a tidbit.

# The average student’s test score improved only 3.8 points from
freshman to senior year;
# Freshmen at Cornell, Yale, Princeton, and Duke scored better than
seniors on the civics knowledge test.

From http://thenewamerican.com/culture/ed...ic-civics-test

But that is not the study I read.

This might be the study that I read.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/1...dents-not.html

From that site.

Forty-five percent of students made no significant improvement in
their critical thinking, reasoning or writing skills during the first
two years of college, according to the study. After four years, 36
percent showed no significant gains in these so-called "higher order"
thinking skills.

Read mo http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/1...#ixzz1c1282Pdt

Dan

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:13:19 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 6:51 PM, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:58:32 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 4:58 AM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:43:51 -0700, Gunner
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53 am, John wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

That Mars and the moon also exhibit increased temperatures in that same
time frame indicate what? That Man has built Taco Bells and way too many
freeways on those bodies? Too many Air Conditioners on Mars?

Gunner


I doubt that anyone can definitely say why warming occurs but it is.
And given the politics and (dare I mention it) the amount of money
some people are making out of the Green revolution, it may well be a
question that no one actually wants answered.


--
John B.

I don't want to be a smart ass, but apparently both earthquakes and
global climate variations follow the same mathematical formula:
P(E)=m/n

cheers
T.Alan

Do you mean that the probability of a change in temperature is the
same as the probability of an earthquake? Or that the same formula can
be used to calculate the probability of a warmer , or colder year
average temperature?

--
John B.
The latter, I would think.

According to what I read there has been a distinct warming during the
last 100 years with approximately 2/3rds of it having occurred during
the past 30 years. Have earthquakes been increasing at the same rate?


--
John B.

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:17:18 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 3:03 AM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:00:25 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/24/2011 5:56 AM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 02:14:31 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/23/2011 7:04 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:45:08 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/22/2011 8:10 PM, wrote:
On Oct 22, 10:48 pm, wrote:

. Yet he's got millions believing everything he says is true
even to the point where, as you said, they disbelieve people with
doctorates and instead believe the word of a man with no education at
all. If someone told you that you wouldn't believe it.

Hawke

You should always believe what makes sense regardless of a person's
credentials. I am willing to believe someone with no education if
what they say makes sense. I am not willing to believe highly
educated people when it is obvious that what they say does not make
sense.

Do you believe everything that William Shockley said?

Dan





Bad analogy, Dan. I'm saying if a nuclear scientist tells you something
about nuclear energy and a housewife with a high school education tells
you that he's wrong which one of them are you going to believe? That is
the situation we have with Limbaugh most of the time. He's got no
training in any field and is an uneducated man. He espouses views that
are consistently opposed to those of highly learned people, and he
argues with these people about what is in their field of expertise.

No person with a lick of sense would take the word of a layman over an
expert. So what about you? Side with the layman, Limbaugh when he tells
scientists they are mistaken about the climate?

Hawke


Your hypothesis sounds quite reasonable until one considers that:

Until the 19th century, it was widely believed that trains could not
travel faster than about 50 miles per hour because of the immense
tornado-like winds that would be created along their paths. Some
British scientists predicted air would be evacuated from railway cars
at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and all the passengers
would be asphyxiated.

Radio waves constructed as low-frequency light travel faster than
light. Ironically, physicists discovered this property of waves in an
ionized gas in the early part of this century, at the same time (1905)
that Albert Einstein was asserting that "velocities exceeding that of
light have no possibility of existence"

Some of the most enlighten philosophers of their times believed that
the earth was flat:
According to Aristotle, pre-Socratic philosophers, including Leucippus
(c. 440 BC) and Democritus (370 BC) believed in a flat Earth.
Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed the Earth to be a short cylinder with
a flat, circular top that remained stable because it is the same
distance from all things. Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the
earth is flat and rides on air; Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 500 BC)
thought that the Earth was flat. Belief in a flat Earth continued into
the 5th-century BC. Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was
flat, and his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was
depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the
Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone.

One could go on but it is apparent that the fact that an individual
has received an education is not necessarily a factor in their amount
of knowledge.


--
John B.

Yet Pythagoras knew the earth was a sphere and Erathostenes had actually
measured its circumference quite accurately using basic geometry. In
every period there is a prevalent scientific belief opposed by a very
small number. It usually turns out that the very small number of
opposing opinion eventually becomes the prevalent paradigm.

cheers
T.Alan


You are correct of course but I was replying to Hawke's apparent
thesis that graduating from collage somehow means that you actually
know what you are talking about. My thesis is that everyone has areas
of expertise and ignorance and while one may well be a demon
basket-weaver ( for example) the fact that one holds a degree in the
subject doesn't qualify him to discuss Quantum mechanics (to use
another example).

.

--
John B.



From your misunderstanding of my point you must have been one of those
people who doesn't know what they are talking about. To clarify for you,
I was talking about listening to someone like Limbaugh, who has no
education, training, or expertise in anything and disregarding people
who are experts in the area of the topic being discussed. That's a far
cry from believing that everyone who graduates from college knows what
they are talking about. Maybe now you can tell the difference.

Hawke

That may be what you intended to say but you actually compared a house
wife to a nuclear scientist. I only pointed that a university degree
did not actually prove or disprove what an individual knows.

I would agree with that. Like I said, plenty of college grads are no
better than the average. On the other hand, college grads in general do
better when tested than those with less education. So either college
means something or it doesn't. The evidence is pretty cut and dried that
college improves people.


True, but is it simply a matter of the diploma?

Is the improvement because of taking Basket Weaving 101 or because
suddenly one discovers (for example) that in order to have clean
clothing one has to take the laundry out; oneself? Sort of force
feeding maturity.

When I was working in Indonesia one branch of the company specialized
in USAID, W.B., U.N, etc., funded consulting projects and while it
wasn't my division still I was called on for advice from time to time.
It was my observation that young collage grads, usually with master's
degrees, were not especially adapt at actually going out and
accomplishing something concrete, although they were adapt at going
out and looking at something and writing a report about what was wrong
but in most cases very limited in finding a workable solution to the
problem. Articulate as hell though.


Specifically discussing some TV talk show MC, who I've never seen. But
I'd have to ask, as you seem to know quite a bit about him, why do
you bother to watch him?

Limbaugh is unavoidable for me. He's on the radio where I live and
there's not much else available if you have the radio on at all. I also
see him on other TV shows where they are quoting his idiotic statements.
When I was in college I even had a class where we were assigned to
listen to him as an example of conservative propaganda, which we used
when examining that subject. Not only that, you will hear people in this
group repeating Limbaugh's words verbatim. So I just find the guy hard
to get away from. Kind of like it was with Palin. Now that she's finally
admitted she's no longer interested in running for any office we aren't
seeing or hearing her day and night like we used to.

Hawke

It is my belief that anyone who listens to a politician is very much
like listening to the guys that sell aluminum siding or encyclopedias
door to door. The salesmen will say anything to make a sale and the
politicians are doing the same thing.

And probably the same percentages are disappointed in the politician
as are with their "life time guaranteed siding".


--
John B.

On 10/27/2011 11:18 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:17:18 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 3:03 AM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:00:25 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/24/2011 5:56 AM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 02:14:31 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/23/2011 7:04 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:45:08 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/22/2011 8:10 PM, wrote:
On Oct 22, 10:48 pm, wrote:

. Yet he's got millions believing everything he says is true
even to the point where, as you said, they disbelieve people with
doctorates and instead believe the word of a man with no education at
all. If someone told you that you wouldn't believe it.

Hawke

You should always believe what makes sense regardless of a person's
credentials. I am willing to believe someone with no education if
what they say makes sense. I am not willing to believe highly
educated people when it is obvious that what they say does not make
sense.

Do you believe everything that William Shockley said?

Dan





Bad analogy, Dan. I'm saying if a nuclear scientist tells you something
about nuclear energy and a housewife with a high school education tells
you that he's wrong which one of them are you going to believe? That is
the situation we have with Limbaugh most of the time. He's got no
training in any field and is an uneducated man. He espouses views that
are consistently opposed to those of highly learned people, and he
argues with these people about what is in their field of expertise.

No person with a lick of sense would take the word of a layman over an
expert. So what about you? Side with the layman, Limbaugh when he tells
scientists they are mistaken about the climate?

Hawke


Your hypothesis sounds quite reasonable until one considers that:

Until the 19th century, it was widely believed that trains could not
travel faster than about 50 miles per hour because of the immense
tornado-like winds that would be created along their paths. Some
British scientists predicted air would be evacuated from railway cars
at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and all the passengers
would be asphyxiated.

Radio waves constructed as low-frequency light travel faster than
light. Ironically, physicists discovered this property of waves in an
ionized gas in the early part of this century, at the same time (1905)
that Albert Einstein was asserting that "velocities exceeding that of
light have no possibility of existence"

Some of the most enlighten philosophers of their times believed that
the earth was flat:
According to Aristotle, pre-Socratic philosophers, including Leucippus
(c. 440 BC) and Democritus (370 BC) believed in a flat Earth.
Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed the Earth to be a short cylinder with
a flat, circular top that remained stable because it is the same
distance from all things. Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the
earth is flat and rides on air; Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 500 BC)
thought that the Earth was flat. Belief in a flat Earth continued into
the 5th-century BC. Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was
flat, and his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was
depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the
Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone.

One could go on but it is apparent that the fact that an individual
has received an education is not necessarily a factor in their amount
of knowledge.


--
John B.

Yet Pythagoras knew the earth was a sphere and Erathostenes had actually
measured its circumference quite accurately using basic geometry. In
every period there is a prevalent scientific belief opposed by a very
small number. It usually turns out that the very small number of
opposing opinion eventually becomes the prevalent paradigm.

cheers
T.Alan


You are correct of course but I was replying to Hawke's apparent
thesis that graduating from collage somehow means that you actually
know what you are talking about. My thesis is that everyone has areas
of expertise and ignorance and while one may well be a demon
basket-weaver ( for example) the fact that one holds a degree in the
subject doesn't qualify him to discuss Quantum mechanics (to use
another example).

.

--
John B.



From your misunderstanding of my point you must have been one of those
people who doesn't know what they are talking about. To clarify for you,
I was talking about listening to someone like Limbaugh, who has no
education, training, or expertise in anything and disregarding people
who are experts in the area of the topic being discussed. That's a far
cry from believing that everyone who graduates from college knows what
they are talking about. Maybe now you can tell the difference.

Hawke

That may be what you intended to say but you actually compared a house
wife to a nuclear scientist. I only pointed that a university degree
did not actually prove or disprove what an individual knows.

I would agree with that. Like I said, plenty of college grads are no
better than the average. On the other hand, college grads in general do
better when tested than those with less education. So either college
means something or it doesn't. The evidence is pretty cut and dried that
college improves people.


True, but is it simply a matter of the diploma?

Is the improvement because of taking Basket Weaving 101 or because
suddenly one discovers (for example) that in order to have clean
clothing one has to take the laundry out; oneself? Sort of force
feeding maturity.

When I was working in Indonesia one branch of the company specialized
in USAID, W.B., U.N, etc., funded consulting projects and while it
wasn't my division still I was called on for advice from time to time.
It was my observation that young collage grads, usually with master's
degrees, were not especially adapt at actually going out and
accomplishing something concrete, although they were adapt at going
out and looking at something and writing a report about what was wrong
but in most cases very limited in finding a workable solution to the
problem. Articulate as hell though.


Specifically discussing some TV talk show MC, who I've never seen. But
I'd have to ask, as you seem to know quite a bit about him, why do
you bother to watch him?

Limbaugh is unavoidable for me. He's on the radio where I live and
there's not much else available if you have the radio on at all. I also
see him on other TV shows where they are quoting his idiotic statements.
When I was in college I even had a class where we were assigned to
listen to him as an example of conservative propaganda, which we used
when examining that subject. Not only that, you will hear people in this
group repeating Limbaugh's words verbatim. So I just find the guy hard
to get away from. Kind of like it was with Palin. Now that she's finally
admitted she's no longer interested in running for any office we aren't
seeing or hearing her day and night like we used to.

Hawke

It is my belief that anyone who listens to a politician is very much
like listening to the guys that sell aluminum siding or encyclopedias
door to door. The salesmen will say anything to make a sale and the
politicians are doing the same thing.

And probably the same percentages are disappointed in the politician
as are with their "life time guaranteed siding".


I went to college and got my degree in political science. That in itself
kind of makes me different from other people. Where most people avoid
politics and politicians I do the opposite. So if you're a political
scientist its different for you.

It's also a lot different when you are talking about politicians who are
in election mode and those who are not. There's a big difference. In
electoral periods it's all about getting elected and just about
everything else goes out the window. Personally, I hate electoral
politics. To me politics is about the government and what its policies
are and how did they come to deciding on them. That is what I'm
interested in. I could care less about what they are saying to get
elected. But other people just love the election part of it. To each his
own, I guess.

One last thing about college educated people. Two things are clear; one
is that college grads make a lot more money than people who don't have
degrees over a lifetime of work, and number two is that when you talk
about young people just graduating from college they are basically
rookies. A young person just graduating may have all the learning done
for his field to earn a degree but he hasn't worked in that field yet.
So why would you expect him to act like someone who has a lot of
experience on the job.

Take a college grad with a decade on the job and compare him to anyone
you want and my guess is that guy is going to be better than anyone else
you want to compare him to. But before you get there you first have to
pass the test of finishing college with that degree in your hand. I know
from experience, it's not that easy. Which is something those without
college do not understand.


Hawke

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:38:11 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/27/2011 11:18 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:17:18 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 3:03 AM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:00:25 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/24/2011 5:56 AM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 02:14:31 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/23/2011 7:04 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:45:08 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/22/2011 8:10 PM, wrote:
On Oct 22, 10:48 pm, wrote:

. Yet he's got millions believing everything he says is true
even to the point where, as you said, they disbelieve people with
doctorates and instead believe the word of a man with no education at
all. If someone told you that you wouldn't believe it.

Hawke

You should always believe what makes sense regardless of a person's
credentials. I am willing to believe someone with no education if
what they say makes sense. I am not willing to believe highly
educated people when it is obvious that what they say does not make
sense.

Do you believe everything that William Shockley said?

Dan





Bad analogy, Dan. I'm saying if a nuclear scientist tells you something
about nuclear energy and a housewife with a high school education tells
you that he's wrong which one of them are you going to believe? That is
the situation we have with Limbaugh most of the time. He's got no
training in any field and is an uneducated man. He espouses views that
are consistently opposed to those of highly learned people, and he
argues with these people about what is in their field of expertise.

No person with a lick of sense would take the word of a layman over an
expert. So what about you? Side with the layman, Limbaugh when he tells
scientists they are mistaken about the climate?

Hawke


Your hypothesis sounds quite reasonable until one considers that:

Until the 19th century, it was widely believed that trains could not
travel faster than about 50 miles per hour because of the immense
tornado-like winds that would be created along their paths. Some
British scientists predicted air would be evacuated from railway cars
at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and all the passengers
would be asphyxiated.

Radio waves constructed as low-frequency light travel faster than
light. Ironically, physicists discovered this property of waves in an
ionized gas in the early part of this century, at the same time (1905)
that Albert Einstein was asserting that "velocities exceeding that of
light have no possibility of existence"

Some of the most enlighten philosophers of their times believed that
the earth was flat:
According to Aristotle, pre-Socratic philosophers, including Leucippus
(c. 440 BC) and Democritus (370 BC) believed in a flat Earth.
Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed the Earth to be a short cylinder with
a flat, circular top that remained stable because it is the same
distance from all things. Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the
earth is flat and rides on air; Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 500 BC)
thought that the Earth was flat. Belief in a flat Earth continued into
the 5th-century BC. Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was
flat, and his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was
depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the
Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone.

One could go on but it is apparent that the fact that an individual
has received an education is not necessarily a factor in their amount
of knowledge.


--
John B.

Yet Pythagoras knew the earth was a sphere and Erathostenes had actually
measured its circumference quite accurately using basic geometry. In
every period there is a prevalent scientific belief opposed by a very
small number. It usually turns out that the very small number of
opposing opinion eventually becomes the prevalent paradigm.

cheers
T.Alan


You are correct of course but I was replying to Hawke's apparent
thesis that graduating from collage somehow means that you actually
know what you are talking about. My thesis is that everyone has areas
of expertise and ignorance and while one may well be a demon
basket-weaver ( for example) the fact that one holds a degree in the
subject doesn't qualify him to discuss Quantum mechanics (to use
another example).

.

--
John B.



From your misunderstanding of my point you must have been one of those
people who doesn't know what they are talking about. To clarify for you,
I was talking about listening to someone like Limbaugh, who has no
education, training, or expertise in anything and disregarding people
who are experts in the area of the topic being discussed. That's a far
cry from believing that everyone who graduates from college knows what
they are talking about. Maybe now you can tell the difference.

Hawke

That may be what you intended to say but you actually compared a house
wife to a nuclear scientist. I only pointed that a university degree
did not actually prove or disprove what an individual knows.

I would agree with that. Like I said, plenty of college grads are no
better than the average. On the other hand, college grads in general do
better when tested than those with less education. So either college
means something or it doesn't. The evidence is pretty cut and dried that
college improves people.


True, but is it simply a matter of the diploma?

Is the improvement because of taking Basket Weaving 101 or because
suddenly one discovers (for example) that in order to have clean
clothing one has to take the laundry out; oneself? Sort of force
feeding maturity.

When I was working in Indonesia one branch of the company specialized
in USAID, W.B., U.N, etc., funded consulting projects and while it
wasn't my division still I was called on for advice from time to time.
It was my observation that young collage grads, usually with master's
degrees, were not especially adapt at actually going out and
accomplishing something concrete, although they were adapt at going
out and looking at something and writing a report about what was wrong
but in most cases very limited in finding a workable solution to the
problem. Articulate as hell though.


Specifically discussing some TV talk show MC, who I've never seen. But
I'd have to ask, as you seem to know quite a bit about him, why do
you bother to watch him?

Limbaugh is unavoidable for me. He's on the radio where I live and
there's not much else available if you have the radio on at all. I also
see him on other TV shows where they are quoting his idiotic statements.
When I was in college I even had a class where we were assigned to
listen to him as an example of conservative propaganda, which we used
when examining that subject. Not only that, you will hear people in this
group repeating Limbaugh's words verbatim. So I just find the guy hard
to get away from. Kind of like it was with Palin. Now that she's finally
admitted she's no longer interested in running for any office we aren't
seeing or hearing her day and night like we used to.

Hawke

It is my belief that anyone who listens to a politician is very much
like listening to the guys that sell aluminum siding or encyclopedias
door to door. The salesmen will say anything to make a sale and the
politicians are doing the same thing.

And probably the same percentages are disappointed in the politician
as are with their "life time guaranteed siding".


I went to college and got my degree in political science. That in itself
kind of makes me different from other people. Where most people avoid
politics and politicians I do the opposite. So if you're a political
scientist its different for you.

It's also a lot different when you are talking about politicians who are
in election mode and those who are not. There's a big difference. In
electoral periods it's all about getting elected and just about
everything else goes out the window. Personally, I hate electoral
politics. To me politics is about the government and what its policies
are and how did they come to deciding on them. That is what I'm
interested in. I could care less about what they are saying to get
elected. But other people just love the election part of it. To each his
own, I guess.

One last thing about college educated people. Two things are clear; one
is that college grads make a lot more money than people who don't have
degrees over a lifetime of work, and number two is that when you talk
about young people just graduating from college they are basically
rookies. A young person just graduating may have all the learning done
for his field to earn a degree but he hasn't worked in that field yet.
So why would you expect him to act like someone who has a lot of
experience on the job.

True that usually collage trained people end up making more money
during their life time..... Unless you are talking about Bill Gates,
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Walt
Disney, Larry Ellison, R. Buckminster Fuller, J. Paul Getty, Barry
Goldwater, and literally a host of others.

I suggest that a collage graduate while better educated in a specialty
is really just another blue collar bloke except that he is in a higher
pay bracket. Example: Lawers, thousands of them and how many are much
more then legal drudges? How many reach the top of their chosen
carrier? Or how many engineers end up like Kelly Johnson?


Take a college grad with a decade on the job and compare him to anyone
you want and my guess is that guy is going to be better than anyone else
you want to compare him to. But before you get there you first have to
pass the test of finishing college with that degree in your hand. I know
from experience, it's not that easy. Which is something those without
college do not understand.

That is true, to become a journeyman machinist you also used to have
to do something to prove your abilities. I have mentioned my old
apprentice master who went in the shop at 12 years. His journeyman's
proof was to make a surface plate, by hand. I had a German kid work
for me one that had a little velvet jewel box in the top of his tool
box. I asked him what it was and he showed me - a (about) 1 inch cube
square and accurate dimensions to less then 1/10,000 of an inch that
he made before receiving his journeyman's papers in Germany.

Graduating tests are not only for the academics.


Hawke

--
John B.

On 10/27/2011 10:29 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:13:19 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 6:51 PM, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:58:32 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 4:58 AM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:43:51 -0700, Gunner
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53 am, John wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

That Mars and the moon also exhibit increased temperatures in that same
time frame indicate what? That Man has built Taco Bells and way too many
freeways on those bodies? Too many Air Conditioners on Mars?

Gunner


I doubt that anyone can definitely say why warming occurs but it is.
And given the politics and (dare I mention it) the amount of money
some people are making out of the Green revolution, it may well be a
question that no one actually wants answered.


--
John B.

I don't want to be a smart ass, but apparently both earthquakes and
global climate variations follow the same mathematical formula:
P(E)=m/n

cheers
T.Alan

Do you mean that the probability of a change in temperature is the
same as the probability of an earthquake? Or that the same formula can
be used to calculate the probability of a warmer , or colder year
average temperature?

--
John B.
The latter, I would think.

According to what I read there has been a distinct warming during the
last 100 years with approximately 2/3rds of it having occurred during
the past 30 years. Have earthquakes been increasing at the same rate?


--
John B.
I read that we are actually entering an ice age with gradual cooling.
So the data can be interpreted in various ways, depending on the
resolution, the span, the scaling and the rate. I think the reality of
the warming/cooling ultimately all depends from the great ruler ( no pun
intended) in the sky, the sun. And since the chaotic internal workings
at the atomic level of that celestial body are beyond our capacity of
calculation, the best formula we can apply is a probabilistic one.

cheers
T.Alan

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 10:19:55 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/27/2011 10:29 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:13:19 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 6:51 PM, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:58:32 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 4:58 AM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:43:51 -0700, Gunner
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53 am, John wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

That Mars and the moon also exhibit increased temperatures in that same
time frame indicate what? That Man has built Taco Bells and way too many
freeways on those bodies? Too many Air Conditioners on Mars?

Gunner


I doubt that anyone can definitely say why warming occurs but it is.
And given the politics and (dare I mention it) the amount of money
some people are making out of the Green revolution, it may well be a
question that no one actually wants answered.


--
John B.

I don't want to be a smart ass, but apparently both earthquakes and
global climate variations follow the same mathematical formula:
P(E)=m/n

cheers
T.Alan

Do you mean that the probability of a change in temperature is the
same as the probability of an earthquake? Or that the same formula can
be used to calculate the probability of a warmer , or colder year
average temperature?

--
John B.
The latter, I would think.

According to what I read there has been a distinct warming during the
last 100 years with approximately 2/3rds of it having occurred during
the past 30 years. Have earthquakes been increasing at the same rate?


--
John B.
I read that we are actually entering an ice age with gradual cooling.
So the data can be interpreted in various ways, depending on the
resolution, the span, the scaling and the rate. I think the reality of
the warming/cooling ultimately all depends from the great ruler ( no pun
intended) in the sky, the sun. And since the chaotic internal workings
at the atomic level of that celestial body are beyond our capacity of
calculation, the best formula we can apply is a probabilistic one.

cheers
T.Alan

To paraphrase Gunner - we know it is getting warmer but WHY.

As for a mini ice age the only graphs of temperature that I've seen
show an over all increase in temperature from 1880 until 2010. The
year by year records show a yearly difference plus or minus the
previous year but a 5 year average shows a fairly smooth and constant
increase with the largest increase from 1980 - 2010.


--
John B.

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:53:14 +0700, John B.
wrote:

On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:53:46 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:58:54 +0700, John B.
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:43:51 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53*am, John B. wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

That Mars and the moon also exhibit increased temperatures in that same
time frame indicate what? That Man has built Taco Bells and way too many
freeways on those bodies? Too many Air Conditioners on Mars?

Gunner


I doubt that anyone can definitely say why warming occurs but it is.
And given the politics and (dare I mention it) the amount of money
some people are making out of the Green revolution, it may well be a
question that no one actually wants answered.

Oh a lot of us want the question answered. On the other hand...those
making the money surely do not.

As the lads in East Anglica proved beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Gunner

Do a lot of us want the question answered or do a lot of us want an
answer that we want to hear?

Id say the People want the question answered so we can either lay in
fuel and warm clothing, or sun screen.

Those on the Gorbal Warming side of the equation..want personal power
over the People.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ja...lobal-warming/

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/...ate-scientist/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm

You WERE aware of this..were you not?

Global warming was and is a fraud perpetrated by Gorbal Warming people
for personal power and dollars from research grants.

Notice the mantra has changed from Global Warming after all the dirty
little secrets were brought to light..and the mindless drones and their
handlers now call it Climate Change?

Gunner

One could not be a successful Leftwinger without realizing that,
in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers
and mothers of Leftwingers, a goodly number of Leftwingers are
not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
Gunner Asch

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:16:41 +0700, John B.
wrote:

--
John B.
I read that we are actually entering an ice age with gradual cooling.
So the data can be interpreted in various ways, depending on the
resolution, the span, the scaling and the rate. I think the reality of
the warming/cooling ultimately all depends from the great ruler ( no pun
intended) in the sky, the sun. And since the chaotic internal workings
at the atomic level of that celestial body are beyond our capacity of
calculation, the best formula we can apply is a probabilistic one.

cheers
T.Alan

To paraphrase Gunner - we know it is getting warmer but WHY.

As for a mini ice age the only graphs of temperature that I've seen
show an over all increase in temperature from 1880 until 2010. The
year by year records show a yearly difference plus or minus the
previous year but a 5 year average shows a fairly smooth and constant
increase with the largest increase from 1980 - 2010.


--
John B.

Actually John..thats not particulary true either.

Id strongly suggest you do a google on "weather instruments bad
locations"

When a temperature gauge is installed in the middle of a blacktopped
parking lot in the middle of an airport....it gives you badly flawed
data

Gunner

One could not be a successful Leftwinger without realizing that,
in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers
and mothers of Leftwingers, a goodly number of Leftwingers are
not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
Gunner Asch

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 15:02:31 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:53:14 +0700, John B.
wrote:

On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:53:46 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:58:54 +0700, John B.
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:43:51 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:05:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 25, 10:53*am, John B. wrote:


The Economist of 22 - 28 Oct 2011, page 89, has an article about a new
group called The Berkeley Earth surface Temperature that has developed
new statistical methods of analyzing the exist earth temperature data.

Apparently available temperature data is not formatted in sufficiently
detailed form to use normal methods of calculation. for example some
data is unevenly spaced, some from sites inside cities that are
subject to warming from the local environment, some from ships at sea,
and so on.

NASA and NOAA already have on line data bases of their raw data and
Berkeley plans on doing the same. In addition the American
Meteorological Socioty is planning a single on line data base
containing all available temperature data as well as all analysis of
the data.

Berkeley's initial four papers have been distributed for peer review
but initially their statistical studies compare very closely with the
work already done by NASA, NOAA and HadCru, the three most definitive
studies. which all, by the way, show a definite increase in earth
temperature.with the largest increase from about 1980 to present.

--
John B.

That is the easy part. Next is WHY? And only after one understands
why, comes what to do ( and what not to do. )


Dan

That Mars and the moon also exhibit increased temperatures in that same
time frame indicate what? That Man has built Taco Bells and way too many
freeways on those bodies? Too many Air Conditioners on Mars?

Gunner


I doubt that anyone can definitely say why warming occurs but it is.
And given the politics and (dare I mention it) the amount of money
some people are making out of the Green revolution, it may well be a
question that no one actually wants answered.

Oh a lot of us want the question answered. On the other hand...those
making the money surely do not.

As the lads in East Anglica proved beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Gunner

Do a lot of us want the question answered or do a lot of us want an
answer that we want to hear?

Id say the People want the question answered so we can either lay in
fuel and warm clothing, or sun screen.


I beg to differ. From reading this and other Usenet groups it appears
to me that what people want is an answer that doesn't force them to
deviate from their set ways, especially if it forces them to get up
off the couch and actually do something. The Japanese in the wake of
their recent nuclear disaster reduced their energy use (in Tokyo) by
15%. Will Americans? Given the recent discussion about "my
dishwasher", which seemingly has become a necessity in America, it
seems unlikely.

Those on the Gorbal Warming side of the equation..want personal power
over the People.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ja...lobal-warming/

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/...ate-scientist/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm

You WERE aware of this..were you not?

The fact remains that the average world temperature is rising and has
been since about 1880 (apparently when the first reliable records were
available) and has accelerated since about 1980. This is not a matter
for conjecture as too many separate studies have all shown essentially
the same figures.

Global warming was and is a fraud perpetrated by Gorbal Warming people
for personal power and dollars from research grants.


Again, too many separate agencies have published the same climb in
average earth temperance.


Notice the mantra has changed from Global Warming after all the dirty
little secrets were brought to light..and the mindless drones and their
handlers now call it Climate Change?

Gunner

Now you come to the crux of the matter - is this warming, and I can't
believe that with the various indications - melting ice, higher ocean
levels, measured average earth temperature increases, anyone of
average intelligence would argue that it is not happening. The real
question is, "is a normal temperature fluctuating" or is it a result
of come external change. And if the latter, what is the cause. And
once the specifics have been determine, "what can we do about it".



--
John B.

"John B." wrote:

I beg to differ. From reading this and other Usenet groups it appears
to me that what people want is an answer that doesn't force them to
deviate from their set ways, especially if it forces them to get up
off the couch and actually do something. The Japanese in the wake of
their recent nuclear disaster reduced their energy use (in Tokyo) by
15%. Will Americans? Given the recent discussion about "my
dishwasher", which seemingly has become a necessity in America, it
seems unlikely.


What's a dishwasher? I've already cut mine as much as I can, without
turning off my well pump.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 08:40:36 +0700, John B.
wrote:


Id say the People want the question answered so we can either lay in
fuel and warm clothing, or sun screen.


I beg to differ. From reading this and other Usenet groups it appears
to me that what people want is an answer that doesn't force them to
deviate from their set ways, especially if it forces them to get up
off the couch and actually do something.

Your opinion is noted.

Not agreed with..but noted none the less.

Gunner

One could not be a successful Leftwinger without realizing that,
in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers
and mothers of Leftwingers, a goodly number of Leftwingers are
not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
Gunner Asch

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 17:05:57 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:16:41 +0700, John B.
wrote:

--
John B.
I read that we are actually entering an ice age with gradual cooling.
So the data can be interpreted in various ways, depending on the
resolution, the span, the scaling and the rate. I think the reality of
the warming/cooling ultimately all depends from the great ruler ( no pun
intended) in the sky, the sun. And since the chaotic internal workings
at the atomic level of that celestial body are beyond our capacity of
calculation, the best formula we can apply is a probabilistic one.

cheers
T.Alan

To paraphrase Gunner - we know it is getting warmer but WHY.

As for a mini ice age the only graphs of temperature that I've seen
show an over all increase in temperature from 1880 until 2010. The
year by year records show a yearly difference plus or minus the
previous year but a 5 year average shows a fairly smooth and constant
increase with the largest increase from 1980 - 2010.


--
John B.

Actually John..thats not particulary true either.

Id strongly suggest you do a google on "weather instruments bad
locations"

When a temperature gauge is installed in the middle of a blacktopped
parking lot in the middle of an airport....it gives you badly flawed
data

Gunner

Yes, that was part of the Berkeley Group's contribution to the field.
Their calculations allow for that phenomena. Another place that
temperature recording is skewed is "downtown" right in the middle of
the city, and for similar reasons, and I suppose that on top of Mt.
Washington would probably skew things the other way :-)

From the Berkeley Team:

The chairman of the research team, Richard A, Muller, wrote in a
letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Again, our statistical methods allowed us to analyze the U.S.
temperature record separately for stations with good or acceptable
rankings, and those with poor rankings (the U.S. is the only place in
the world that ranks its temperature stations). Remarkably, the poorly
ranked stations showed no greater temperature increases than the
better ones. The mostly likely explanation is that while low-quality
stations may give incorrect absolute temperatures, they still
accurately track temperature changes.


--
John B.

On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:33:54 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:


"John B." wrote:

I beg to differ. From reading this and other Usenet groups it appears
to me that what people want is an answer that doesn't force them to
deviate from their set ways, especially if it forces them to get up
off the couch and actually do something. The Japanese in the wake of
their recent nuclear disaster reduced their energy use (in Tokyo) by
15%. Will Americans? Given the recent discussion about "my
dishwasher", which seemingly has become a necessity in America, it
seems unlikely.


What's a dishwasher? I've already cut mine as much as I can, without
turning off my well pump.

I married one. Which, I admit, may not the most cost effective method
of having clean dishes :-)


--
John B.

On 10/28/2011 5:31 AM, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:38:11 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/27/2011 11:18 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:17:18 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 3:03 AM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:00:25 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/24/2011 5:56 AM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 02:14:31 -0700, "T.Alan Kraus"
wrote:

On 10/23/2011 7:04 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:45:08 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/22/2011 8:10 PM, wrote:
On Oct 22, 10:48 pm, wrote:

. Yet he's got millions believing everything he says is true
even to the point where, as you said, they disbelieve people with
doctorates and instead believe the word of a man with no education at
all. If someone told you that you wouldn't believe it.

Hawke

You should always believe what makes sense regardless of a person's
credentials. I am willing to believe someone with no education if
what they say makes sense. I am not willing to believe highly
educated people when it is obvious that what they say does not make
sense.

Do you believe everything that William Shockley said?

Dan





Bad analogy, Dan. I'm saying if a nuclear scientist tells you something
about nuclear energy and a housewife with a high school education tells
you that he's wrong which one of them are you going to believe? That is
the situation we have with Limbaugh most of the time. He's got no
training in any field and is an uneducated man. He espouses views that
are consistently opposed to those of highly learned people, and he
argues with these people about what is in their field of expertise.

No person with a lick of sense would take the word of a layman over an
expert. So what about you? Side with the layman, Limbaugh when he tells
scientists they are mistaken about the climate?

Hawke


Your hypothesis sounds quite reasonable until one considers that:

Until the 19th century, it was widely believed that trains could not
travel faster than about 50 miles per hour because of the immense
tornado-like winds that would be created along their paths. Some
British scientists predicted air would be evacuated from railway cars
at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and all the passengers
would be asphyxiated.

Radio waves constructed as low-frequency light travel faster than
light. Ironically, physicists discovered this property of waves in an
ionized gas in the early part of this century, at the same time (1905)
that Albert Einstein was asserting that "velocities exceeding that of
light have no possibility of existence"

Some of the most enlighten philosophers of their times believed that
the earth was flat:
According to Aristotle, pre-Socratic philosophers, including Leucippus
(c. 440 BC) and Democritus (370 BC) believed in a flat Earth.
Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed the Earth to be a short cylinder with
a flat, circular top that remained stable because it is the same
distance from all things. Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the
earth is flat and rides on air; Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 500 BC)
thought that the Earth was flat. Belief in a flat Earth continued into
the 5th-century BC. Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was
flat, and his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was
depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the
Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone.

One could go on but it is apparent that the fact that an individual
has received an education is not necessarily a factor in their amount
of knowledge.


--
John B.

Yet Pythagoras knew the earth was a sphere and Erathostenes had actually
measured its circumference quite accurately using basic geometry. In
every period there is a prevalent scientific belief opposed by a very
small number. It usually turns out that the very small number of
opposing opinion eventually becomes the prevalent paradigm.

cheers
T.Alan


You are correct of course but I was replying to Hawke's apparent
thesis that graduating from collage somehow means that you actually
know what you are talking about. My thesis is that everyone has areas
of expertise and ignorance and while one may well be a demon
basket-weaver ( for example) the fact that one holds a degree in the
subject doesn't qualify him to discuss Quantum mechanics (to use
another example).

.

--
John B.



From your misunderstanding of my point you must have been one of those
people who doesn't know what they are talking about. To clarify for you,
I was talking about listening to someone like Limbaugh, who has no
education, training, or expertise in anything and disregarding people
who are experts in the area of the topic being discussed. That's a far
cry from believing that everyone who graduates from college knows what
they are talking about. Maybe now you can tell the difference.

Hawke

That may be what you intended to say but you actually compared a house
wife to a nuclear scientist. I only pointed that a university degree
did not actually prove or disprove what an individual knows.

I would agree with that. Like I said, plenty of college grads are no
better than the average. On the other hand, college grads in general do
better when tested than those with less education. So either college
means something or it doesn't. The evidence is pretty cut and dried that
college improves people.


True, but is it simply a matter of the diploma?

Is the improvement because of taking Basket Weaving 101 or because
suddenly one discovers (for example) that in order to have clean
clothing one has to take the laundry out; oneself? Sort of force
feeding maturity.

When I was working in Indonesia one branch of the company specialized
in USAID, W.B., U.N, etc., funded consulting projects and while it
wasn't my division still I was called on for advice from time to time.
It was my observation that young collage grads, usually with master's
degrees, were not especially adapt at actually going out and
accomplishing something concrete, although they were adapt at going
out and looking at something and writing a report about what was wrong
but in most cases very limited in finding a workable solution to the
problem. Articulate as hell though.


Specifically discussing some TV talk show MC, who I've never seen. But
I'd have to ask, as you seem to know quite a bit about him, why do
you bother to watch him?

Limbaugh is unavoidable for me. He's on the radio where I live and
there's not much else available if you have the radio on at all. I also
see him on other TV shows where they are quoting his idiotic statements.
When I was in college I even had a class where we were assigned to
listen to him as an example of conservative propaganda, which we used
when examining that subject. Not only that, you will hear people in this
group repeating Limbaugh's words verbatim. So I just find the guy hard
to get away from. Kind of like it was with Palin. Now that she's finally
admitted she's no longer interested in running for any office we aren't
seeing or hearing her day and night like we used to.

Hawke

It is my belief that anyone who listens to a politician is very much
like listening to the guys that sell aluminum siding or encyclopedias
door to door. The salesmen will say anything to make a sale and the
politicians are doing the same thing.

And probably the same percentages are disappointed in the politician
as are with their "life time guaranteed siding".


I went to college and got my degree in political science. That in itself
kind of makes me different from other people. Where most people avoid
politics and politicians I do the opposite. So if you're a political
scientist its different for you.

It's also a lot different when you are talking about politicians who are
in election mode and those who are not. There's a big difference. In
electoral periods it's all about getting elected and just about
everything else goes out the window. Personally, I hate electoral
politics. To me politics is about the government and what its policies
are and how did they come to deciding on them. That is what I'm
interested in. I could care less about what they are saying to get
elected. But other people just love the election part of it. To each his
own, I guess.

One last thing about college educated people. Two things are clear; one
is that college grads make a lot more money than people who don't have
degrees over a lifetime of work, and number two is that when you talk
about young people just graduating from college they are basically
rookies. A young person just graduating may have all the learning done
for his field to earn a degree but he hasn't worked in that field yet.
So why would you expect him to act like someone who has a lot of
experience on the job.

True that usually collage trained people end up making more money
during their life time..... Unless you are talking about Bill Gates,
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Walt
Disney, Larry Ellison, R. Buckminster Fuller, J. Paul Getty, Barry
Goldwater, and literally a host of others.

I suggest that a collage graduate while better educated in a specialty
is really just another blue collar bloke except that he is in a higher
pay bracket. Example: Lawers, thousands of them and how many are much
more then legal drudges? How many reach the top of their chosen
carrier? Or how many engineers end up like Kelly Johnson?


Take a college grad with a decade on the job and compare him to anyone
you want and my guess is that guy is going to be better than anyone else
you want to compare him to. But before you get there you first have to
pass the test of finishing college with that degree in your hand. I know
from experience, it's not that easy. Which is something those without
college do not understand.

That is true, to become a journeyman machinist you also used to have
to do something to prove your abilities. I have mentioned my old
apprentice master who went in the shop at 12 years. His journeyman's
proof was to make a surface plate, by hand. I had a German kid work
for me one that had a little velvet jewel box in the top of his tool
box. I asked him what it was and he showed me - a (about) 1 inch cube
square and accurate dimensions to less then 1/10,000 of an inch that
he made before receiving his journeyman's papers in Germany.

Graduating tests are not only for the academics.


Yep, at some point no matter what you have been trained in you have to
prove that you have learned something. In the past it was far more often
something like you mentioned, showing what kind of mechanical skills you
have mastered.

As for college there is on other thing that hasn't been mentioned and
that's the difference between earning a college degree and getting a
"college education". They may sound the same but they are not. You earn
a degree in some field where you are trained in the specifics of that
one thing. It can be anything from psychology, business, law, medicine,
computer science, to any number of other specific things.

But those are vocations you learn. Being an educated man is something
different. Someone with a liberal arts degree is a lot different from a
guy with a business degree. With a liberal arts degree you may actually
know nothing as far as being trained for any job after you graduate. But
you are an educated man. At one time that is what employers wanted most.
Someone who was smart and educated. Being trained wasn't that important
because they knew if they had someone with brains and a good education
they could train him to do just about anything they wanted. Now they
want you trained and experienced in a specific job.

This is what they get. Someone trained to do one specific job. But they
aren't really getting educated people anymore. When you meet a man with
a real education you know it. They just have something that others
don't. It's the fact they are masters of no specific trade but they have
a lot of knowledge in many different areas. My point is that there still
is value in simply becoming "educated" instead of just trained for a job.

Hawke

On 10/26/2011 2:40 AM, John B. wrote:

This is certainly not a condemnation of a collage education, rather it
is a condemnation of the thought process that insists that a collage
education somehow always produces an intelligent individual.

College produces people who have passed a course set up to train them to
learn certain things. It doesn't guarantee these people are particularly
bright, just that they passed the assigned course. But then, after four
or five years of taking college courses that alone would impart a level
of knowledge far greater than someone working in a grocery store would
have. At least it should.



All of us who have gone to college and gotten a degree know very well
that everyone who has a degree isn't a genius. We all know people we
went to school with who are idiots. So college graduates know well a
degree doesn't guarantee anything.

In my experience that is, perhaps not total, but certainly a
significant amount of B.S. From my own prospective I have actually
hear an individual state that "I went to collage and you have only a 4
year education". Later events demonstrated that the implied advantage
was not quite correct as the 4 year guy went on to be a
multi-millionaire while the guy with the collage education now is
supported by his wife.

While I'm sure that happens on occasion I'm think what happens the
majority of the time is that the college educated person gets a higher
paying job and earns more over the course of his life than the guy
without one. So if you play the odds you get a degree, if you're capable
of it. That doesn't mean you get ahead it just means your chances are a
lot better.


Or, have you ever been around any consulting projects, say USAID,
W.B., UN? Every one of them demand a collage degree but rarely do they
demand experience in the actual project requirements. I've seen a
bloke with a Doctorate in "Library Sciences" work for years on
various projects such as transmigration, cross cultural training and
work of that type without a clue about the work. We had a project that
initialed certifying how much jungle was cleared in support of a
transmigration project. Towe blokes with Master's degrees were made
Project manager and assistant. When it came time to certify the first
month's clearance they didn't know how, didn't have a clue. And these
people's resumes were submitted and accepted as part of our original
tender.

Sounds to me like you had the wrong people doing the wrong jobs. Maybe
it was cronyism that was the problem. I know I wouldn't expect computer
science graduates to do very well being assigned the job of building a
bridge. But I bet they would be smarter and more knowledgeable people
than the construction workers were.



We also hear the uneducated chiming in on how stupid people they know
with degrees are. But then the uneducated are always telling us how
getting a college degree is not very important. We hear words from them
like, we never got no degree and we done just fine, from them all the time.

Not from me. I haven't said a word about the worth of a degree. After
all I got one myself. But I sometimes shudder to remember how much I
thought I knew as apposed to how little I actually knew when I
graduated.

I think what is more important is how much more did you know coming out
of college than you did when you went in.



But that's not really the point. I'm talking about who one chooses to
listen to or take advice from. My view is that when you want to know the
truth about something or the facts you go to someone who is an expert, a
professional, someone who has a credential, someone who actually knows
what they are talking about. You don't go to a layman, the common man,
or the man in the street. That's my view.


You are not saying what you originally said. If I remember correctly
you referenced a collage graduate as an expert and this was what I was
protesting about.

I don't think I ever said that having a college degree conveyed the
level of expert on someone. What I meant to say was that compared to
someone with no college; someone with a degree would be seen as an
expert. Take someone with a degree in psychology. Compare what he knows
to someone with no college. When it comes to psychology if you compared
the two I'd say in that comparison the guy with the degree in psych
would be an expert. He wouldn't be considered an expert compared to
someone with a Ph.D. in psychology and 20 years of practice. But to a
layman he would be.


I agree with you with the exception that the degree does not always,
in fact I suspect rather infrequently, means that one is an expert. To
use your own analogy who would you prefer tell you what club you
should use for this shot? The 8th grade caddy or the non-golfer with
the degree in aerodynamics?

In fact I suspect that knowledge depends more on an individual's
desire to learn rather than a diploma. Henry Ford was apprentice
machinist, not a degreed engineer; Walter Chrisler was a machinist,
Neither of the two originators of APPLE had degrees; Bill Gates was a
collage drop-out; Samuel Colt was indentured to a farm.

You're bringing up specifics here and some of them from long ago. Back
in Ford's day almost no one had college degrees. Sam Colt didn't live in
the modern era. Bill Gates got rich by selling someone else's operating
system to business and Steve Jobs was in the ground floor of the
computer's invention. I don't think you can learn much from the
experience of people whose life experiences are like no one else's.



Relating that to Limbaugh is simple. He is the ordinary man, the
uneducated, the layman. I'm not being negative. I'm simply describing
him accurately. There is simply no area in which Limbaugh has any
specific expertise beyond what any ordinary person has.


I didn't even know who Limbaugh is but looked him up on the Wiki and
apparently he is some sort of talk show MC. Which hardly qualifies him
for anything.

I know. That's my point. Even though he has no qualifications he has
millions of people who follow his every word. I think that's nuts. Now
if he was an expert in anything that would be different. But he's not.



According to my view of going to professionals, experts, or the
educated, that lets out Limbaugh. But that's my way of doing things.
Clearly, lots of people don't do it my way. Instead they take the word
of someone who has no particular training or expertise on just about any
subject. I'm saying I think that is a stupid way of doing things and
that the people who do that are themselves stupid. That's how it looks
to me.

Hawke

I can only agree that people seem to have a penchant for listening to
those who say what they want to hear. Obama's school history is a
perfect example - the "Moslem School" that he attended. The name of
the school, which has been published, translates to "National School
Number 4". In fact the school's name, Sekolah Dasar Negeri 04, is
indicative of a non-religious school as a Moslem religious school
would be refereed to as a "Madressa", not a "Sekolah".

But people hear what they want to hear.

I'd change that slightly to a lot of people hear what they want to hear.
Because there are plenty of people in the world who are capable of
objectivity. Just because most are not doesn't mean that applies to
everyone. The problem arises when the people who hear what they want to
hear meet the people who hear what really is there. There's going to be
conflict because those who hear what they want to aren't going to like
being told they are not hearing what really is.


Hawke

On Oct 30, 3:02*pm, Hawke wrote:
went to school with who are idiots. So college graduates know well a
degree doesn't guarantee anything.

In my experience that is, perhaps not total, but certainly a
significant amount of B.S. From my own prospective I have actually
hear an individual state that "I went to collage and you have only a 4
year education". Later events demonstrated that the implied advantage
was not quite correct as the 4 year guy went on to be a
multi-millionaire while the guy with the collage education now is
supported by his wife.

While I'm sure that happens on occasion I'm think what happens the
majority of the time is that the college educated person gets a higher
paying job and earns more over the course of his life than the guy
without one. So if you play the odds you get a degree, if you're capable
of it. That doesn't mean you get ahead it just means your chances are a
lot better.

Or, have you ever been around any consulting projects, say USAID,
W.B., UN? Every one of them demand a collage degree but rarely do they
demand experience in the actual project requirements. I've seen a
bloke with a Doctorate in *"Library Sciences" *work for years on
various projects such as transmigration, cross cultural training and
work of that type without a clue about the work. We had a project that
initialed certifying how much jungle was cleared in support of a
transmigration project. Towe blokes with Master's degrees were made
Project manager and assistant. When it came time to certify the first
month's clearance they didn't know how, didn't have a clue. And these
people's resumes were submitted and accepted as part of our original
tender.

Sounds to me like you had the wrong people doing the wrong jobs. Maybe
it was cronyism that was the problem. I know I wouldn't expect computer
science graduates to do very well being assigned the job of building a
bridge. But I bet they would be smarter and more knowledgeable people
than the construction workers were.

We also hear the uneducated chiming in on how stupid people they know
with degrees are. But then the uneducated are always telling us how
getting a college degree is not very important. We hear words from them
like, we never got no degree and we done just fine, from them all the time.

Not from me. I haven't said a word about the worth of a degree. After
all I got one myself. But I sometimes shudder to remember how much I
thought I knew as apposed to how little I actually knew when I
graduated.

I think what is more important is how much more did you know coming out
of college than you did when you went in.

But that's not really the point. I'm talking about who one chooses to
listen to or take advice from. My view is that when you want to know the
truth about something or the facts you go to someone who is an expert, a
professional, someone who has a credential, someone who actually knows
what they are talking about. You don't go to a layman, the common man,
or the man in the street. That's my view.

You are not saying what you originally said. If I remember correctly
you referenced a collage graduate as an expert and this was what I was
protesting about.

I don't think I ever said that having a college degree conveyed the
level of expert on someone. What I meant to say was that compared to
someone with no college; someone with a degree would be seen as an
expert. Take someone with a degree in psychology. Compare what he knows
to someone with no college. When it comes to psychology if you compared
the two I'd say in that comparison the guy with the degree in psych
would be an expert. He wouldn't be considered an expert compared to
someone with a Ph.D. in psychology and 20 years of practice. But to a
layman he would be.

I agree with you with the exception that the degree does not always,
in fact I suspect rather infrequently, means that one is an expert. To
use your own analogy who would you prefer tell you what club you
should use for this shot? The 8th grade caddy or the non-golfer with
the degree in aerodynamics?

In fact I suspect that knowledge depends more on an individual's
desire to learn rather than a diploma. Henry Ford was apprentice
machinist, not a degreed engineer; Walter Chrisler was a machinist,
Neither of the two originators of APPLE had degrees; Bill Gates was a
collage drop-out; Samuel Colt was indentured to a farm.

You're bringing up specifics here and some of them from long ago. Back
in Ford's day almost no one had college degrees. Sam Colt didn't live in
the modern era. Bill Gates got rich by selling someone else's operating
system to business and Steve Jobs was in the ground floor of the
computer's invention. I don't think you can learn much from the
experience of people whose life experiences are like no one else's.

Relating that to Limbaugh is simple. He is the ordinary man, the
uneducated, the layman. I'm not being negative. I'm simply describing
him accurately. There is simply no area in which Limbaugh has any
specific expertise beyond what any ordinary person has.

I didn't even know who Limbaugh is but looked him up on the Wiki and
apparently he is some sort of talk show MC. Which hardly qualifies him
for anything.

I know. That's my point. Even though he has no qualifications he has
millions of people who follow his every word. I think that's nuts. Now
if he was an expert in anything that would be different. But he's not.



According to my view of going to professionals, experts, or the
educated, that lets out Limbaugh. But that's my way of doing things.
Clearly, lots of people don't do it my way. Instead they take the word
of someone who has no particular training or expertise on just about any
subject. I'm saying I think that is a stupid way of doing things and
that the people who do that are themselves stupid. That's how it looks
to me.

Hawke

I can only agree that people seem to have a penchant for listening to
those who say what they want to hear. Obama's school history is a
perfect example - the "Moslem School" that he attended. The name of
the school, which has been published, translates to "National School
Number 4". In fact the school's name, Sekolah Dasar Negeri 04, is
indicative of a non-religious school as a Moslem religious school
would be refereed to as a "Madressa", not a "Sekolah".

But people hear what they want to hear.

I'd change that slightly to a lot of people hear what they want to hear.
Because there are plenty of people in the world who are capable of
objectivity. Just because most are not doesn't mean that applies to
everyone. The problem arises when the people who hear what they want to
hear meet the people who hear what really is there. There's going to be
conflict because those who hear what they want to aren't going to like
being told they are not hearing what really is.

Hawke

On Oct 30, 3:02*pm, Hawke wrote:

While I'm sure that happens on occasion I'm think what happens the
majority of the time is that the college educated person gets a higher
paying job and earns more over the course of his life than the guy
without one. So if you play the odds you get a degree, if you're capable
of it. That doesn't mean you get ahead it just means your chances are a
lot better.

Strange that you should make this argument since you did not go to
college until most of your working life was over. And then you got a
degree in political science and yet you have not mentioned that you
ever worked where that degree would be an advantage.


Steve Jobs was in the ground floor of the
computer's invention.

Actually Steve Jobs was not in on the ground floor of the computers
invention. Read "
Eniac " by Scott McCartney.



Hawke

I'd change that slightly to a lot of people hear what they want to hear.
Because there are plenty of people in the world who are capable of
objectivity. Just because most are not doesn't mean that applies to
everyone. The problem arises when the people who hear what they want to
hear meet the people who hear what really is there. There's going to be
conflict because those who hear what they want to aren't going to like
being told they are not hearing what really is.

Hawke


Indeed. Sounds like Leftwingers. Shame they dont like hearing reality.

But..they, like you..are mentally ill and largely brainless.

Most of them havent faced reality since puberty.

Shrug


Gunner


One could not be a successful Leftwinger without realizing that,
in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers
and mothers of Leftwingers, a goodly number of Leftwingers are
not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
Gunner Asch

On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 19:35:50 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Oct 30, 3:02*pm, Hawke wrote:

While I'm sure that happens on occasion I'm think what happens the
majority of the time is that the college educated person gets a higher
paying job and earns more over the course of his life than the guy
without one. So if you play the odds you get a degree, if you're capable
of it. That doesn't mean you get ahead it just means your chances are a
lot better.

Strange that you should make this argument since you did not go to
college until most of your working life was over. And then you got a
degree in political science and yet you have not mentioned that you
ever worked where that degree would be an advantage.

Hack is a douche bag. It took him 50 years to earn his imaginary
degree only to aspire to the level of paralegal, a job that most have
moved beyond by the age of 25. So it took Hack twice as long to
achieve something that people have his age have moved beyond. Now he
proclaims himself to be educated and an expert on all things
political, but in reality he's a washed up limp wristed doped up
douchebag hack. Hence the name Hack, which he continually misspells.




Steve Jobs was in the ground floor of the
computer's invention.

Actually Steve Jobs was not in on the ground floor of the computers
invention. Read "
Eniac " by Scott McCartney.



Hawke

On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 11:23:09 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/28/2011 5:31 AM, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:38:11 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

------------------- About a foot and a half deleted
-------------------

Take a college grad with a decade on the job and compare him to anyone
you want and my guess is that guy is going to be better than anyone else
you want to compare him to. But before you get there you first have to
pass the test of finishing college with that degree in your hand. I know
from experience, it's not that easy. Which is something those without
college do not understand.

That is true, to become a journeyman machinist you also used to have
to do something to prove your abilities. I have mentioned my old
apprentice master who went in the shop at 12 years. His journeyman's
proof was to make a surface plate, by hand. I had a German kid work
for me one that had a little velvet jewel box in the top of his tool
box. I asked him what it was and he showed me - a (about) 1 inch cube
square and accurate dimensions to less then 1/10,000 of an inch that
he made before receiving his journeyman's papers in Germany.

Graduating tests are not only for the academics.


Yep, at some point no matter what you have been trained in you have to
prove that you have learned something. In the past it was far more often
something like you mentioned, showing what kind of mechanical skills you
have mastered.

As for college there is on other thing that hasn't been mentioned and
that's the difference between earning a college degree and getting a
"college education". They may sound the same but they are not. You earn
a degree in some field where you are trained in the specifics of that
one thing. It can be anything from psychology, business, law, medicine,
computer science, to any number of other specific things.

I don't know whether you remember the whoop-to-do in California
collages some years ago about teaching Sawahili. Some one made a
comment that the protesting masses were nearly all students in non
scientific or professional majors. Very few, if any engineering,
medicine, chemistry, etc. student had the time or inclination to
complain about a lack of Swahili courses :-)

A couple of years I saw a tiny, back page article that they had
dropped the course "because of a lack of interest" so apparently the
professional students had the right of it.

But those are vocations you learn. Being an educated man is something
different. Someone with a liberal arts degree is a lot different from a
guy with a business degree. With a liberal arts degree you may actually
know nothing as far as being trained for any job after you graduate. But
you are an educated man. At one time that is what employers wanted most.
Someone who was smart and educated. Being trained wasn't that important
because they knew if they had someone with brains and a good education
they could train him to do just about anything they wanted. Now they
want you trained and experienced in a specific job.

Many years ago when I was in the A.F. a kid introduced himself to me.
It seems that he was the son of a First Sargeant I had known in Japan
and the kid remembered me. I became (for some reason) some sort of
elder brother to the kid - who was actually a pretty bright. He was
taking collage courses at the time as if he could gain sufficient
credits the A.F. would pay for the rest of his education. In order to
determine what courses would be the most beneficial he had written the
V.P. Personnal in several large companies and asked them to suggest
the best major to make his career in a large company. the V.P.
Personal of Ford, General Motors, G.E. and a couple more had suggested
English as his best choice as, they said, they had plenty of the other
kind but what they lacked were people that could actually write good
English.

I've no idea whether this is still true although, from reading some of
the scientific papers, it may well be.

This is what they get. Someone trained to do one specific job. But they
aren't really getting educated people anymore. When you meet a man with
a real education you know it. They just have something that others
don't. It's the fact they are masters of no specific trade but they have
a lot of knowledge in many different areas. My point is that there still
is value in simply becoming "educated" instead of just trained for a job.

Hawke

You are speaking of a Generalist, someone who knows a little about a
lot but perhaps not a lot about anything.

The problem is that in this day of specialization it isn't the best
preparation to make a lot of money. Medicine, for example. A G.P.
these days is a hanger-on to the fringes of the profession while the
specialists garner all the glory. Lawers specialize to the extent I
say a notice of one chap who was a specialist in "Bicycle injury"..

But in general you are correct. I had a Uncle who held the chair of
chemistry at the university. An absolute demon at discussion of
chemistry or plant genetics (apparently a sort of hobby) but dumb as
dirt about why an automobile ran, state politics (although he was
knowledgeable about university politics), what was the best wood for a
fire place, or anything else that most others talked about.


--
John B.

On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:02:13 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

On 10/26/2011 2:40 AM, John B. wrote:

This is certainly not a condemnation of a collage education, rather it
is a condemnation of the thought process that insists that a collage
education somehow always produces an intelligent individual.

College produces people who have passed a course set up to train them to
learn certain things. It doesn't guarantee these people are particularly
bright, just that they passed the assigned course. But then, after four
or five years of taking college courses that alone would impart a level
of knowledge far greater than someone working in a grocery store would
have. At least it should.

What is worse is that Education is one of the easiest courses to pass.

All of us who have gone to college and gotten a degree know very well
that everyone who has a degree isn't a genius. We all know people we
went to school with who are idiots. So college graduates know well a
degree doesn't guarantee anything.

In my experience that is, perhaps not total, but certainly a
significant amount of B.S. From my own prospective I have actually
hear an individual state that "I went to collage and you have only a 4
year education". Later events demonstrated that the implied advantage
was not quite correct as the 4 year guy went on to be a
multi-millionaire while the guy with the collage education now is
supported by his wife.

While I'm sure that happens on occasion I'm think what happens the
majority of the time is that the college educated person gets a higher
paying job and earns more over the course of his life than the guy
without one. So if you play the odds you get a degree, if you're capable
of it. That doesn't mean you get ahead it just means your chances are a
lot better.

True.

Or, have you ever been around any consulting projects, say USAID,
W.B., UN? Every one of them demand a collage degree but rarely do they
demand experience in the actual project requirements. I've seen a
bloke with a Doctorate in "Library Sciences" work for years on
various projects such as transmigration, cross cultural training and
work of that type without a clue about the work. We had a project that
initialed certifying how much jungle was cleared in support of a
transmigration project. Towe blokes with Master's degrees were made
Project manager and assistant. When it came time to certify the first
month's clearance they didn't know how, didn't have a clue. And these
people's resumes were submitted and accepted as part of our original
tender.

Sounds to me like you had the wrong people doing the wrong jobs. Maybe
it was cronyism that was the problem. I know I wouldn't expect computer
science graduates to do very well being assigned the job of building a
bridge. But I bet they would be smarter and more knowledgeable people
than the construction workers were.

Not at all. We were bidding for project with the idea of getting them
and initially had done a lot of research with local USAID, W.D. U.N.,
etc., regarding exactly what they wanted to see on a tender. I, at
least, was absolutely appalled to discover that the most important
thing was a Master's Degree. A Doctorate was, of course better, and a
Batcheler's was barely acceptable, but the level of the degree was
what was important. In fact, with a couple of exceptions most of the
people, based on experience or training were essentially unqualified.

Example:

The division Manager had a Master's in Manicipal Planning.
Unfortunately we never bid that kind of work.

Another bloke who worked for us for nearly 20 years had a Doctorate in
Library Science (and whom we were bright enough to never attempt to
utilize in more then a window dressing capacity).

Two guys with Masters proposed, and accepted, for a project to certify
the amount of land cleared and prepared for agriculture in support of
a Trans Migration program. Neither had training in any form of science
and literally did not know how one would go about measure a plot of
land

And on and on.

I will give them credit, they were fast on their feet and knew when to
talk and when to keep quiet in order to not be seen as an idiot, but
as far as actually knowing the job they were hired for I can only
comment that if they were applying for a job in my division they
wouldn't get hired.



We also hear the uneducated chiming in on how stupid people they know
with degrees are. But then the uneducated are always telling us how
getting a college degree is not very important. We hear words from them
like, we never got no degree and we done just fine, from them all the time.

Not from me. I haven't said a word about the worth of a degree. After
all I got one myself. But I sometimes shudder to remember how much I
thought I knew as apposed to how little I actually knew when I
graduated.

I think what is more important is how much more did you know coming out
of college than you did when you went in.

True, in a sense, as long as you don't fall into the trap of thinking
that because you went to collage you're somehow anointed with all the
knowledge there is.

In fact I notice that the really slick engineers all are pretty close
with the people who actually does the work and heed what the blue
collar blokes say.

I've mentioned the engineer that wanted to drill a 3 inch deep #80
hole and called out the !- .0001 tolerance. After a while he learned
:-)



But that's not really the point. I'm talking about who one chooses to
listen to or take advice from. My view is that when you want to know the
truth about something or the facts you go to someone who is an expert, a
professional, someone who has a credential, someone who actually knows
what they are talking about. You don't go to a layman, the common man,
or the man in the street. That's my view.


You are not saying what you originally said. If I remember correctly
you referenced a collage graduate as an expert and this was what I was
protesting about.

I don't think I ever said that having a college degree conveyed the
level of expert on someone. What I meant to say was that compared to
someone with no college; someone with a degree would be seen as an
expert. Take someone with a degree in psychology. Compare what he knows
to someone with no college. When it comes to psychology if you compared
the two I'd say in that comparison the guy with the degree in psych
would be an expert. He wouldn't be considered an expert compared to
someone with a Ph.D. in psychology and 20 years of practice. But to a
layman he would be.

You keep using the word "collage" and you are wrong. For example - You
want to learn to make really good wine? Yes, you can approach a
collage that has courses in viniculture (several in California) or you
can talk to the little old Itallian guy who's family has been the wine
making business for 10 generations..



I agree with you with the exception that the degree does not always,
in fact I suspect rather infrequently, means that one is an expert. To
use your own analogy who would you prefer tell you what club you
should use for this shot? The 8th grade caddy or the non-golfer with
the degree in aerodynamics?

In fact I suspect that knowledge depends more on an individual's
desire to learn rather than a diploma. Henry Ford was apprentice
machinist, not a degreed engineer; Walter Chrisler was a machinist,
Neither of the two originators of APPLE had degrees; Bill Gates was a
collage drop-out; Samuel Colt was indentured to a farm.

You're bringing up specifics here and some of them from long ago. Back
in Ford's day almost no one had college degrees. Sam Colt didn't live in
the modern era. Bill Gates got rich by selling someone else's operating
system to business and Steve Jobs was in the ground floor of the
computer's invention. I don't think you can learn much from the
experience of people whose life experiences are like no one else's.

Sure, I took advantage of your terminology "collage" :-)

But, Bill didn't get rich merely marketing someone else's operating
system. The first MS DOS had significant changes from the QDOS system
that MS bought from Seattle Computer Products since QDOS was a nearly
exact copy of the CP/M System which had been developed by Digital
Research..

Jobes wasn't really in on the ground floor of the computer's
invention. He was a buddy of Steve Wozniak, the guy that invented a
micro computer that could be attached to a TV, and got the idea to
market them after the first 300 they made sold like hotcake's to the
S.F. Bay computer Club.. Jobes was really a master marketer.

Your argument that Colt, Ford, etc., didn't have collage degrees as
they were from a different era is a bit overboard as the first collage
degrees in the U.S. were awarded in 1642. Colt was born in 1814, some
170 years later, it was quite possible for him to have had a degree
had it been though important.

But in any event it is somewhat of a fictitious argument as all those
mentioned did not have a collage degree (although they were available)
and became successful in spite of it.


Relating that to Limbaugh is simple. He is the ordinary man, the
uneducated, the layman. I'm not being negative. I'm simply describing
him accurately. There is simply no area in which Limbaugh has any
specific expertise beyond what any ordinary person has.


I didn't even know who Limbaugh is but looked him up on the Wiki and
apparently he is some sort of talk show MC. Which hardly qualifies him
for anything.

I know. That's my point. Even though he has no qualifications he has
millions of people who follow his every word. I think that's nuts. Now
if he was an expert in anything that would be different. But he's not.



According to my view of going to professionals, experts, or the
educated, that lets out Limbaugh. But that's my way of doing things.
Clearly, lots of people don't do it my way. Instead they take the word
of someone who has no particular training or expertise on just about any
subject. I'm saying I think that is a stupid way of doing things and
that the people who do that are themselves stupid. That's how it looks
to me.

Hawke

I can only agree that people seem to have a penchant for listening to
those who say what they want to hear. Obama's school history is a
perfect example - the "Moslem School" that he attended. The name of
the school, which has been published, translates to "National School
Number 4". In fact the school's name, Sekolah Dasar Negeri 04, is
indicative of a non-religious school as a Moslem religious school
would be refereed to as a "Madressa", not a "Sekolah".

But people hear what they want to hear.

I'd change that slightly to a lot of people hear what they want to hear.
Because there are plenty of people in the world who are capable of
objectivity. Just because most are not doesn't mean that applies to
everyone. The problem arises when the people who hear what they want to
hear meet the people who hear what really is there. There's going to be
conflict because those who hear what they want to aren't going to like
being told they are not hearing what really is.


Hawke

All right, "Most" :-)

But add to that fact becomes somewhat less then correct as time goes
by. I had a long discussion, with Gunner, about the Revolutionary War
and nearly all of the "fact" taught about the war are wrong. Including
the Boston Tea Party - which says something for the people who espouse
their antics :-)



--
John B.

On 10/30/2011 7:35 PM, wrote:
On Oct 30, 3:02 pm, wrote:

While I'm sure that happens on occasion I'm think what happens the
majority of the time is that the college educated person gets a higher
paying job and earns more over the course of his life than the guy
without one. So if you play the odds you get a degree, if you're capable
of it. That doesn't mean you get ahead it just means your chances are a
lot better.

Strange that you should make this argument since you did not go to
college until most of your working life was over. And then you got a
degree in political science and yet you have not mentioned that you
ever worked where that degree would be an advantage.

I made that argument because I think the facts prove it's true. When I
was a young man it was even more true. Back in the late 60s and early
1970s if you got a college degree you almost certainly got a better job
and made more in your lifetime than a high school grad did. Now if you
get a degree it's not so cut and dried as that. It is really just
something that adds to your chances of getting a better job.

As for me personally, I never did get any work related to my college
degree. But then I know lots of people who can say the same thing. The
main reason I got a degree in political science is that when I first
started college that is what I majored in. When I went back many years
later it was to get trained specifically to become a paralegal.

After getting that training it turned out that virtually all of the
classes for it fell under the umbrella of political science. So with the
credits I had from my youth, and the credits I got from getting my
paralegal certification, I nearly had enough credits to get a B.A. in
political science. At that point it seemed like finishing up and getting
a degree was the thing to do. That's how I wound up with a degree in
political science.

I can tell you that being a student at 48 and older it's a different
ballgame. I went to learn and to do a good job, unlike when I was a kid.
So I did it the right way and got the most out of it. After completing
my formal education in my fifties I was able to really see the value of
it, and sadly how much it would have been for me had I been mature
enough when I was young to have done it when I was in my 20s. But that's
life and I wasn't ready to do it then. Now that I am educated I see it's
real value. Sure it can lead to a good job but there is a lot more to it
than just that. If you don't get one that is something you never learn
or benefit from.





Steve Jobs was in the ground floor of the
computer's invention.

Actually Steve Jobs was not in on the ground floor of the computers
invention. Read "
Eniac " by Scott McCartney.


Man, you are picky. Okay, if you want to talk about the ground floor it
was in WWII with the way they started using crude computers to figure
out how to accurately fire the guns on battleships. You could say that
was the ground floor. But if you're talking about the ground floor of
the personal computer industry then Jobs and Wosniak were there in its
infancy. The point being Jobs was there at the right time and place
where a new industry and product were just coming into being. I'd say
that made him lucky as well as smart. But then luck plays a big role in
life, period.

Hawke