[geeks] Global warming, was Mr Bill?

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Sep 22, 2008, at 09:08 , Dr. Robert Pasken wrote:

>> I would imagine that the ration of corporate to non-corporate
>> scientists and engineers is probably 5 or 10 to one.
>
>
>> From some one who DOES NOT WORK for a corporation, your observations
> about the ratio appear very out of whack and appears to be biased by  
> you
> proximity to a group that is only weakly scientific (medical doctors  
> and
> medically related professions).

You seem to draw really strange conclusions from what I've written.

I did not base what I said on local medical centers and gave  
absolutely no indication that I did.

I base what I said on employment statistics   The services and  
pharmaceutical sectors are the primary employers of scientists in most  
of the big industrial nations, including the US.  The second largest  
employer of scientists is manufacturing.  Academia and government are  
a distant third place, and a lot of academic and government work is  
done by or heavily influenced by private contractors.

NASA is almost completely private now, for example.

If you want to look it up, the NSF publishes papers about this every N  
years and the IEEE does as well, here and there.

Honestly, I consider this common knowledge, and feel like I'm having  
to prove to you that the Earth has gravity.

The other issue with your reply is continuing to insist that doctors  
cannot be scientists.  It's not relevant to this point, but I still  
can't understand why you keep saying that.

>> For an oil company to sponsor research to refute things like global
>> warming, they would have to use scientists that were thoughtless,  
>> took
>> money, and worked for corporate interests.
>
> Let's pick Roy Spencer, who regularly publishes his research in AMS/ 
> AGU
> journals. In this case he and his team regularly publish results that

[ snip ]

In other words, scientists can be bought and sold, just like I said  
they could.

>> In any case, I've been reading about global temperature and human
>> factors for a long time, and a good part of it was done by oil and
>> energy companies, and most of it had fairly wide opinions and
>> theories, not the one sided view you seem to think they have.
>
> Actually the oil and energy companies funded little or no research  
> into
> global warming,

Non sequitur.

I'm just talking about what they have sponsored, and I didn't find  
what I read to be one sided.

A lot of it, most of it, was related to improvements in our resource  
usage and technology.

Regardless of motivation, that's a good thing.

The private sector has done more good than government ever has.

A good part of the problems in the corporate sector are caused by the  
government.

It's worth noting that energy, auto, and industrial companies have  
delivered vast improvements in things like engine power, efficiency,  
and pollution levels in the last 20-30 years.

They aren't all bad.

> rather they have done a lot to confuse the issue by repeating the  
> "big lie" that the science isn't clear and there is "much more work  
> to be done".

The second one is not a lie, it's true.

Human science has only just begun.




-- 
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."