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from the it's-an-ill-wind-that-blows-no-good dept.
An overwhelming majority of scientists, including numerous UCLA researchers, agree that we have to take action to curb the effects of climate change.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block joined leaders in higher education from more than 35 states today calling on incoming president Donald Trump's administration to protect the Earth's climate.
Chancellors and presidents from more than 170 colleges and universities signed on to the open letter calling for "aggressive climate action."
Trump has at times described climate change as a hoax and proposed withdrawing from the historic Paris climate agreement signed at the annual United Nations climate conference in 2015. An overwhelming majority of scientists, including numerous UCLA researchers, agree that climate change is caused by humans and will result in dramatic, disruptive changes within this century. UCLA research has projected that without drastic action, Los Angeles will heat up an average of 4 to 5 degrees by midcentury.
"As a university," Block said, "we have a deep commitment to research innovative solutions for tomorrow, to serve the greater public good and to educate the leaders of future generations. Strong federal and international climate action is critical to this mission."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @05:08PM
That's a straw man. Clearly, there is cultural inertia, and Global Warming has become a facet of the very culture; people do not give up their religions easily, even when those religions are so crazy as to involve cutting up boys' and girls' sexual organs.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday December 23 2016, @05:27PM
Now that was an off-topic strawman.
Why are you bringing circumcision into this?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @05:31PM
How is possible that you cannot understand the context of those remarks?
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday December 23 2016, @07:16PM
I initially assumed they were talking about sex reassignment surgery.
However, I concluded that must not be right because I am not aware of any jurisdiction that allows the surgery to be performed on minors.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @07:32PM
that allows the surgery to be performed on minors
I met a 14-year-old kid in California that received the surgeries two years prior. The parent had to have a psychologist declare that the child was suffering severe psychological stress, so the surgeries would be a medical necessity.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday December 23 2016, @09:27PM
I was under the impression that they try hormone blockers first (age ~12), then hormones (age ~16), then surgery (age ~18).
Your example must have been an extreme case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @09:53PM
The boy was getting hormone therapy and had the double mastectomy at 11-12 and said the other surgeries followed shortly after (they didn't mention where, but it seemed like everything occurred in California). They did mention that it was very difficult to find doctors that would diagnose the condition (it seemed like they pushed that there was a severe suicide risk and risk of long-term psychological harm) and that it had to fit a specific legal definition to require immediate intervention.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday December 23 2016, @10:04PM
Those are all part of the same process. It's not complete without all three steps.
Using hormone blockers with HRT can cause the endoskeleton chassis to weaken, and estrogen is known to create a subcutaneous layer of fat within the living human tissue. This helps soften the human tissue and mask the endoskeletion beneath while also enabling the tissue to synthesize and perspire pheromones designed to attract human males. Finally, the surgery allows the infiltrator to completely seduce a human male, who may become confused about his allegiances after the infiltrator engages in copulation with the target, even if he discovers the true cybernetic nature of the infiltrator. I believe humans may refer to this as “love.”
The result is an infiltrator sheath that is indistinguishable from a human female without a tissue sample. It also has other effects on the learning computer personality core which enable the infiltrator to merge human female mannerisms even in to the main terminator program. It's the stuff of Sarah Connor's worst nightmares.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday December 23 2016, @11:11PM
Are you trying to take back the 'it' pronoun?
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:22AM
Not in particular.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday December 23 2016, @05:30PM
That's a straw man.
No, it really isn't. It's a direct and completely on-topic response to the point made. Lets' 'go through it step by step shall we?
1 - OP accuses researchers of "clamouring for money".
2 - AC replying picks up on that and says "I love the money claim, like all these scientists are really devoting their time to bad studies just to keep some grant money flowing."
3 - Another AC (you, I guess) then says "Clearly, you're not involved in Academia. That is exactly what the grant process is all about; these days, the Governments do control the purse strings, and you're pretty well fucked if you don't toe the line."
That is very clearly and unambiguously saying that people in academia simply so whatever they need to do (which presumably involves things like faking evidence & producing papers that support a particular view) to get money from the Government. I really don't see any other way that sentence could possibly be interpreted, unless it is written in a foreign language that just happens to have a lot of words that look like English words but actually mean something entirely different. You are the one moving the goalposts, abandoning the sinking "it's all fabricated to secure funding" meme to clutch desperately at the even more ridiculous "it's not science, it's a religion" one. Like I said a few weeks ago in some other thread, it will be interesting to see whether the alt-right survives Trump: So much of their schtick depends on their self image as an oppressed minority, I'm not sure they will survive the move to the mainstream. The exchange above is a prime example. Oh, and finally:
Clearly,
Inigomontoya.jpg.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @05:34PM
Yeah. And right now all of the academic infrastructure has evolved around the selective pressures of Global Warming Fearmongering; now that the selective pressures are perhaps altering, there is significant resistance, because it threatens the very ecosystem that has become so cozy.
Get it yet?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday December 23 2016, @05:47PM
Nope. You said that researchers want government money, and will say whatever they have to say to get it. You said that. [1]
If the government wants research that points to "global warming is all fake" then the researchers will say so. They don't need a few generations of selective breeding to do it, this is not some evolutionary[2] competition, this is (in your stated opinion), a bunch of cynical human beings who are prepared to tell huge fat lies to the entire world in order to secure their income. If a liar wants to change his lie, he will do so (see the "schizophrenia" thread above) without having to wait to evolve into a different species first. But now suddenly you are saying that climate scientists are unwilling to change their lies because there is some kind of "ecosystem" in place. An ecosystem is made up of cynical liars. Your argument makes no sense at all. Why can't the entire ecosystem of liars simply change their minds when the Money-Faucet changes? They'd have the government backing them, they'd have nothing to lose and everything to gain from doing so.
Or are you saying that they aren't liars, that they are in fact honest researchers doing their jobs as best they can, and who actually believe what they say? You do realise that would completely undermine your own argument, don't you?
I realise it's hard applying logic to alt-right talking points, but please do try to at least be consistent.
[1] I'm assuming you are the same AC.
[2] Congrats on accepting evolution BTW, I would have pegged you as one of those deniers as well.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @06:02PM
In Academia and Politics (and now in popular culture), Global Warming has become an industry. Now that this industry is threatened, incumbents are doing all they can to protect their industry. If they fail to protect their industry, then their industry will dissipate, and researchers will begin building new industries around more lucrative subjects.
As with every complex system, this evolution takes time; in no way does anyone make the argument that allegiance to any particular subject changes immediately—clearly, you are arguing against a Straw Man.
Get it yet?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @07:05PM
In Academia and Politics (and now in popular culture), Global Warming has become an industry. Now that this industry is threatened, incumbents are doing all they can to protect their industry. If they fail to protect their industry, then their industry will dissipate, and researchers will begin building new industries around more lucrative subjects.
As with every complex system, this evolution takes time; in no way does anyone make the argument that allegiance to any particular subject changes immediately—clearly, you are arguing against a Straw Man.
Get it yet?
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The above comment was marked "flamebait" [soylentnews.org] by partisans, so I must include this text here to trick the system into thinking that I've made a new comment with new content.
(Score: 3, Touché) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday December 23 2016, @06:01PM
Yeah. And right now all of the academic infrastructure has evolved around the selective pressures of Global Warming Fearmongering; now that the selective pressures are perhaps altering, there is significant resistance, because it threatens the very ecosystem that has become so cozy.
Get it yet?
Oh, I'm pretty sure the poster understands your argument. The question is -- what is your prediction based on what will happen in the FUTURE, based on the claimed theory?
It's time to run an empirical scientific study, since we may now have the opportunity.
Hypothesis: Climate scientists are mostly a bunch of paid shills who don't believe what they're saying. They just run after the money wherever it is and will endorse whatever viewpoint helps their careers along. In the past, many promoters of this hypothesis have accused the federal government with tampering with this research by their method for awarding grants.
Experiment: Change grant-writing environment to reward scientists who actually are AGAINST climate change and decrease incentives to write pro-climate change "propaganda." See what happens.
IF the hypothesis is true, we should see significant defections and a statistically significant decrease in the consensus for AGW. One might argue that it's harder for those with invested careers to "change their tune," so perhaps the shift should be most noticeable among younger scholars. But it SHOULD happen, IF the hypothesis is true.
So, all of you conspiracy theorists who are convinced that the "scientists" aren't doing "real" science -- here's your chance to prove it scientifically. The fact that some are already responding with objections against such an experimental design seems to indicate that you don't want your theory to actually be tested. Are you afraid you may not be proven correct??
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @06:09PM
People spend a lot of resources promoting their ridiculous religions; the battle could be very long-lived indeed. See here. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @08:51PM
>"a statistically significant decrease in the consensus for AGW"
I think you meant this to be some unlikely possibility, but this is just a matter of sample size. I assure you that by throwing money at skeptics there will be a non-zero decrease. Looking for statistically significant deviations from zero effect is a waste of time btw, no one who knows what they are doing does that (unless there is a real theory that predicts exactly zero effect) .
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Saturday December 24 2016, @09:32AM
"You are the one moving the goalposts, abandoning the sinking "it's all fabricated to secure funding" meme to clutch desperately at the even more ridiculous "it's not science, it's a religion" one.
I don't think you realize that the crux of your argument balances entirely on the idea that people as a whole don't find ways to justify their own fabrications and amplify their cognitive bias - something you, in the same breath, accuse half of the US population of doing. The half you disagree with, I mean.
Scientists pumping out papers to keep the cash flowing is not a "fake news" topic that suddenly appeared from Twitter. To think that some of those desperate debt-laden folk won't eventually come to believe some of the drivel they peddle to convince themselves they aren't liars is naive.