Dear dfw, Weatheraardvark, and WeatherCat science observers,
As usual the plot is more complex than any one point of view can easily capture.
Here's an eye opening article into why Big Science is broken.
Yes science is broken, but it is broken at a far more fundamental level. It isn't the politics of government that is to blame, but the ugly process by which people are weeded out as the pursue higher education. My example is as good as any. I started out interested in using artificial intelligence to develop tools to help students learn. I had an idea of having these tools on the periphery of learning. The tools didn't have to be really smart in of themselves, but would have procedures that students needed to know and student could learn by watching the tools complete these simple procedures. I could see that AI technology could handle these simple tasks and I could select learning opportunities that students should have been able to easily pick up. How could I go wrong?
My pilot studies utterly failed. Students weren't learning in the way the faculty told me they were supposed to. To be precise, Cognitive Science wasn't capturing the learning process as they believed. Ultimately I had to come up with a new PhD topic and a whole new view of how learning happened. Because of offending the faculty by trying to use their theories and finding out they were wrong - i was basically thrown out.
It is a far more dangerous problem than the one you mention. It is a self-sustaining status quo that makes new ideas very difficult to become established. It is true that most academics are to the political left, but when it comes to their own survival they are extremely conservative and reject change.
We tend to go on road trips , the wife and me. In Vermont area we saw solar farms. Large areas of solar panels gathering free energy.
In Iowa, Mid American Energy is investing in wind farms. For the farmer they get about 10,000 dollars rent on having one on their property,but it is a sure cash crop.
As you go in Iowa to the North and West, you see more and more of the wind turbines and across the country, clean energy.
Well sorry to differ, but this is misguided in its own way. Solar and wind power is anything but free. Both cost considerably more per megawatt than conventional power plants. The infrastructure needs to be maintained and there is a lot of it. More importantly neither is a 24/7 source of power. Green energy hasn't found a balance such that our power grid can provide our energy needs when we want them. The old rule of thumb was that no more than 30% of a power grill could come from intermittent sources like wind and solar. California is already committed to much more than 30% and the power regulators are quietly expressing their concern.
Like so many things green energy is a perfectly valid power source with advantages and disadvantages. Certainly, improvements in solar technology has brought about a wide variety of devices that are very useful. Wind power has a place - no doubt. But the physics and engineering of a power grid are what they are. We have to respect what the experts say these systems can cope with and not ask more than that. At the same time, green technology should see its own kind of "natural balance." If you have looked at the wax and wane of solar power, clearly it isn't constant. The maximum power is, not surprisingly, at noon. Could industrial processes be adapted to produce their products within the limits of the solar power curve? It seems like a problem worth trying to solve.
Science must be pursued with a disinterested discipline. No changes we make to society should be made without a careful consideration of all the factors involved - including the economics of implementation. That should be the path of a society guided by reason and rationality. Is it the path we are taking?
Earth day one day of the year that we pick up trash along the roadside, put it in a plastic sack and bury it in the ground. Earth day needs to be every day. Going to Whole Foods, isn't going to cut it.
Back in the 1970s when I was going up, my family tried to reuse things that we got for free like grocery bags. As a child of the 1970s I knew never to litter - no matter how inconvenient the alternative. Starting last year, cities in California passed laws requiring people to use reusable bags. The reason - people are littering and those bags are getting into the environment. Now can you explain to me why in 2010 anybody still litters, if in 1970 I already knew not to? If in 2010 people still litter, will they stop because they use flimsy reusable bags?
In the meantime, my family has been forced to try to find inexpensive sources for plastic and paper bags that we used to gladly reuse.
Is punishing the responsible person, while having very little effect on the irresponsible litterbug, the best environmentally friendly laws we can come up with?
As I have said, things are rarely what they seem to be.
Edouard
