There actually are independent scientists, and as the CRU emails show, they have been disparaged and shut up at every possible point.

Yes, because as we all know, a single case study always generalizes to the whole. I think it's ridiculous that people who are criticizing science are being so unscientific themselves.

As someone who has worked a great deal on climate change issues, I want to respect skepticism in the scientific process because it *usually* is very healthy. In this case though, so much of the skepticism is fueled by political bias that I believe it's become, for the most part, unhealthy for the science. That said, I understand your criticism of the CRU emails. It made me mad too, but it has been blown out of proportion. If you look at the IPCC reports, many of the studies the CRU scientists were criticizing were actually included. These guys had some power in the discourse, but not as much as people attribute to them.

So, I would like to add something here. I think that a blanket release of the raw data could be problematic, but am for a data release. Even as someone with a degree that covers environmental sciences, economics, and statistics, I am not qualified to make a true analysis of this data and neither are 99% of the people who would attempt it, then claim one thing or the other. However, I am in support of the release of the data. Withholding data understandably engenders mistrust and releasing it would help, but I think that it should be released to a broad group of people who are agreed to have enough expertise to analyze the data.

This isn't to create some elite walled garden, but to give the science and data the respect they need in order to tell us anything. I feel like if the release was made to a broad enough group, and specifically a group of people with no history of weighing in on climate change, it should quell a lot of concerns about who is allowed to interpret the data.

Finally, thanks for making a real post with genuine concerns about the data instead of simply screaming hysteria like so many have on this data release without attempting to understand the context of the release.

Yes, so you allow free internet usage... up to a point, or for certain things. Then you charge. Doesn't that sound like any reasonable plan? Instead...

Solution: Don't buy one. It's not like these are life and death matters here where you can somehow morally justify stealing something.

If you'd read further into the RealClimate article, you'd understand that the "trick" is normalization by instrument to understand each instrument's own bias and factor it in. Trick doesn't mean something to fool you here - it's a solution to an issue they were seeing in their data. The RealClimate post also mentions that the scientists who collected the data from 1961 onward in that case recommended not using that data.

Here, read this: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

Thanks

You bring up a very good point - Lobbyists are one of the primary sources of information, but it is their job to be biased. While Congress (for us US people) has many agencies to give them expert analyses of important legislation, this analysis comes after a bill is written, and the agencies don't generally make recommendations for how to make changes that are good for the country. Additionally, these agencies are frequently limited by their mandates in how broad their analysis can be, so they are often incomplete or one-sided.

GP was saying they should have done this to start with, not that they should go back and do this. But this software should go back anyway - it's broken.

I think you hit it on the nose here. There can't be an expectation of openness and portability on phones right now. It just doesn't exist since it's all about sales and profit and lock-in. But I would like to point out that TFA (or at least TFS :) - this is slashdot, after all) seems to make the point that it shouldn't be this way, and that how we buy affects whether it is or not. I will not buy an iphone for this reason - I want more control than that. But like you said, I have no expectation of any market shift anytime soon or some nice ability to move my apps between devices.

I used Infty Editor in my classes - I think it's based on LaTeX but, it was pretty quick. I didn't use it to take notes in realtime though, so I can't tell you how successful that would be. http://www.inftyproject.org/en/software.html

My thoughts exactly. I know almost nothing about the actual deep physics of these, but my first thought with this was to entangle it with another one and make an ansible. mmmmm.

quoting gp: "At least there's a benefit for shareholders in the scary corporation scenario."

S/he suggested that nothing beneficial comes from government. I listed some benefits of government. I've known plenty of people who've forgotten those. I said nothing about government not screwing anything up.

I totally agree. The government does all sorts of things that I and others disagree with, but I was sticking to government work that most people would define as pure benefits (in responding to the previous comment).

Thanks for taking a shot at my intelligence. It really degraded your argument, which I was already inclined to agree with.

yes, because roads, schools, and police aren't beneficial at all. grow up.

There's a big difference between getting them to a "pristine state" and merely getting them to be non-carcinogenic though. I really wouldn't mind the latter.

Hey, California has enough problems without you giving us Las Vegas!