March 16, 2007
DOES THE POPE LET PRIESTS PREACH HERESY?:
How one number touched off big climate-change fight at UW (Warren Cornwall, 3/16/07, Seattle Times)
The number is eye-popping, and it was repeated so often it became gospel.The snowpack in the Cascades, it was said, shrank by 50 percent in the last half-century. It's been presented as glaring evidence of the cost exacted by global warming -- the drying up of a vital water source.
That statistic has been repeated in a government report, on environmental-advocacy Web sites and in media coverage. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels recently mentioned it in a guest column in The Seattle Times.
Here's the problem: The number is dead wrong.
The debunking of this statistic, and the question of just how much the state's snowpack shrank, is stirring up a heated debate among the region's climate scientists.
On Monday, it escalated further when University of Washington researcher and State Climatologist Philip Mote stripped a colleague of his title as associate state climatologist, triggering concerns that scientific dissent is being quashed.
Religions need not and ought not tolerate dissent. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 16, 2007 7:32 AM
Without dissent, religions (or any ideology) will stagnate as they wallow in comfortable error forever.
Religions need not and ought not tolerate dissent.
That is what many Sunnis are saying with regard to the Shiites as well.
Posted by: Daran at March 16, 2007 8:11 AMCalling it a religion is so yesterday, don't you know. It's now "post-normal" science!
"Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken. It has been labelled "post-normal" science. ... The danger of a "normal" reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow..."
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2007/03/post-normal-science-as-proof-for-global.html
Posted by: Rick T. at March 16, 2007 8:19 AM--scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and --
What's that quote about academics being so brutal over something so trivial?
Posted by: Sandy P at March 16, 2007 8:55 AMReligions need not and ought not tolerate dissent.
That applies only within the religion, among the believers. Religions should not be permitted to use the power of government to impose their beliefs on non-believers without their consent. And governement should not be in the business of enforcing religions conformity.)Imposing their beliefs and enforced conformity is the stated goal of both Gaian and Muslim triumphalists. The real problem is that far too often, consent is manufactured through the hiding of the religionist's true intentions, through outright deceit or, in the case of Muslims, throgh violent intimidation. (Things will get really ugly when the Gaians adopt the same violent tactics emulating Muslim successes.)
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at March 16, 2007 10:23 AMPre:
To be human is to wallow in error. The only truth we have is God's.
Posted by: oj at March 16, 2007 10:31 AMThen you confuse religion with God.
Posted by: Pre at March 16, 2007 12:00 PMNo, religions are just societies and societies ought not brook dissent. America never has.
Posted by: oj at March 16, 2007 1:24 PMGovernments exist to enforce conformity. The question is: conformity to what? America is notoriously conformist, but to decent values.
Posted by: oj at March 16, 2007 2:20 PMTaxpayers need not and ought not tolerate state climatologists.
Posted by: jsmith at March 17, 2007 5:45 PMTaxpayers need not and ought not tolerate state climatologists.
Posted by: jsmith at March 17, 2007 5:47 PMoj, if America doesn't brook dissent, what do you call our late and unlamented cultural revolution of the 60's-70's in which a coalition of commies, pinks, lefties and other lunatics did their best to completely destroy our traditions and institutions?
Had Reagan not come along at exactly the right moment, they would have succeeded and Orwell would have been proven a prophet.
Posted by: erp at March 18, 2007 7:19 AMAll we had to do was send NYC hardhats, Chicago cops and Ohio guardsmen out to greet them and the coalition collapsed in the face of the middle class's murderous loathing.
Posted by: oj at March 18, 2007 8:44 AM