EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 6787
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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
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ZerOCoolSC2
8982 Posts
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Buckyman
1364 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:37 LegalLord wrote: Hooray for party-line votes on issues like being qualified to run the Department of Education. The hypothesis I heard on this was opposition from teachers' unions. | ||
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Logo
United States7542 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:39 Buckyman wrote: The hypothesis I heard on this was opposition from teachers' unions. That Teacher Unions want DeVos confirmed? | ||
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TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:35 eviltomahawk wrote: Betsy DeVos confirmed as secretary of education after a 51-50 vote in the Senate with Pence voting as a tiebreaker. Hooray for lawmakers now realizing they can just claim everyone calling them and saying something they don't like is a shill or paid by Soros rather than their constituents since it worked out for Trump. The one small reassuring factor is that an incompetent unqualified lobbyist who hires people to answer job interview questions will probably be less effective at dismantling something than a competent qualified lobbyist would be. | ||
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Logo
United States7542 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:41 TheTenthDoc wrote: Hooray for lawmakers now realizing they can just claim everyone calling them and saying something they don't like is a shill or paid by Soros rather than their constituents since it worked out for Trump. That's alright when the next election comes around and all those people run basically unopposed the voters will really show them what's what. | ||
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Buckyman
1364 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:41 Logo wrote: That Teacher Unions want DeVos confirmed? No, that Democrats are party-line against DeVos in solidarity with the unions. | ||
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Logo
United States7542 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:43 Buckyman wrote: No, that Democrats are party-line against DeVos in solidarity with the unions. No... Well maybe that's a bit of it, but they're also party line against DeVos because she's terrible and totally unqualified and their offices have probably been flooded with anti-DeVos callers. Voting no in unison on most of the other picks would be at best symbolic as it's pretty clear the republicans would vote the party for them. DeVos was the one that should have been so unambiguously bad as to have actually gotten rejected. To put it in perspective this is the only nominee where a Republican other than Rand Paul voted No. And if you know Rand Paul it's not surprising he'd vote against the party in some cases. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States44311 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:35 eviltomahawk wrote: Betsy DeVos confirmed as secretary of education after a 51-50 vote in the Senate with Pence voting as a tiebreaker. Yup. Absolutely disappointing. This is a huge blow to American education, as if we needed any more problems with our system. | ||
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:16 Danglars wrote: You haven't understood a single word, or you're asking the wrong questions, or just being a troll trying to be fed. What part of "x y, and z show these troubling factors about the modern climate change debate" do you not understand? If I wanted to take up ChristianS's assertion about how the skeptics are bound together and why that matters, I would've responded on that point. I see no reason to continue expanding the topic if the basis of whistle-blowing is irrationally diminished and no allowance is given to how scientists have been breeding their own distrust. That's fine you want to argue about things other than the alternative explanations, but you're making a policy judgment and that really should include an alternative explanation. But you have asserted that a policy judgment can be based only on the treatment of some whistleblowers and dissenters. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain17983 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:27 Buckyman wrote: A quick search turned up this letter and the response, eventually concluding here. Summary: Amateur climate scientist Steve McIntyre asks tier one journal Science to enforce their rules on data availability by leaning on several authors to provide the raw data that their papers used (among other information). Science enforces it in 2/6 (eventually 3/6) cases. The Science articles involving the withheld data remain widely cited. This is a general problem in science: data sets. Or in my own field: source code (and data sets). I agree that it's not neat at all. I disagree that it is unscrupulous. There are a number of reasons not to publish data sets: 1) They are expensive to curate, and the university (or group) treats it as proprietary. 2) They are messy. Throwing an unintelligible CSV on a server does nobody any good, and it takes a significant amount of effort (time, aka money) to clean them up. This is work that needs to be done, but nobody wants to do it, so it doesn't get done, and the dataset languishes on some PhD student's harddrive until he finishes, his harddrive gets backed up and now it languishes in cold storage somewhere. If asked, the professor has no clue anymore where it is. 3) Technological knowhow is lacking. I work with education scientists. If I were to tell them they need to publish their dataset in a permanent storage online, they would have no clue what I was talking about. I don't know how much Science helps with groups publishing their data, but if it isn't much, then compound this with point (2) and the resistance to publishing the dataset is big. Moreover, a dataset may be (very) large, and Dropbox no longer works as a solution. You now need permanent hosting. Most universities are catching on and creating repositories, but not all, and even if your university does, it may not be well-known, well-documented how to get your data there, etc. 4) Anonymization issues (not a problem with climate data, but included for completeness). It is a PITA to anonymize a data set for full publication, and sometimes it's not even really possible. These are not valid excuses, and the data absolutely should be published. In my opinion, Science (and other journals that have an open data policy) need to be stricter, as do universities and research institutes. On the upside, I believe this climate is gradually improving. In recent project proposals, I have had to include a section on data curation: if data/code is generated as part of the project, what will happen to it, etc. I have not yet seen what happens if you violate that section, but given how projects are audited, eventually someone somewhere will get around to question that, and if you haven't followed your own protocol (and didn't justify your deviation somewhere in the project report), will probably have to return (part of) the project money... just as any other breach of project rules require that. But data is a problematic issue right now... and Science probably is quite relaxed with that rule specifically because data is such a difficult subject to deal with. It's not just climate science. Pharmaceuticals are a lot worse (because data collection is expensive, and treated as proprietary more often than not). And my own field (AI) is far from perfect, despite everybody being a computer scientists (so reasons 2 and 3 above shouldn't really apply). | ||
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Simberto
Germany11507 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:34 Sermokala wrote: Your using a ton of words that don't amount to much. Dark matter and dark energy are not real things. They're just there beacuse it's the only way to make the models work but that's where they end. Adding made up concepts doesn't allow you to backtrack and come up with a new theory now that the model works. I don't see how beliving is non productive unless you apply that there is no need to figure out the how and the search for the how is compatible with both sides. This is the Crux of my argument beacuse there is enough of a leap between faith in a creator and the belief in the opposite. There is an arguable gap in our current science that doesn't exist in global warming. I'm not interested in a faith conversation but that danglars can defend or argue for global warming deniers is worse then creationism debaters. Beacuse it's anti Vax level I guess I should have gone. I am not quite certain what you want to say with the bolded part. We have a pretty good theory of gravity that explains the motions of stellar objects very well. However, in some cases (rotation speeds of galaxies are not what they should be according to the model), it does not. Now, you have to either introduce a concept that allows the working theory to still work under those circumstances, or you have to come up with a new theory that explains both the already known motions AND the weirdness in those cases. The current working theory is that there is massive stuff that we can't observe. This is not an iron-clad thing that we are sure exists, but something that would explain what we observe. Now comes the scientific process. We try to either find that stuff and prove that it exists in some other way, OR we try to find a new theory of gravitation that also explains those effects. Both are things that people try. At some point, we will either have a new theory of gravity, proof that dark matter exists, or proof that it does not exists and that we need a new theory. We are currently in the phase where that is getting investigated. I am not sure how you can be so ironclad about your opinion that dark matter is not a real thing when it is very much a thing that is debated currently. Dark energy is even weirder, but basically the problem is the same. We have a model that explains most of what we observe, but there are some factors that are off. Dark energy is a concept that is proposed to fix that. Once again, we are in the realm of "currently in development" science. The current theory does not have to be correct, but it also does not have to be incorrect, and currently it is the best theory we have. People are trying to come up with better theories, or try to figure out what that dark energy actually is. You seem to fail to realize that there is a difference in science that is currently ongoing, and science that has been settled for a long period of time. | ||
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Buckyman
1364 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:15 ChristianS wrote: Agreed that lumping everyone together under that heading is inelegant, but one can hardly be asked to anticipate and respond to every possible hypothesis the denialists might or might not believe. Denialists usually don't put forward alternate hypotheses, because there aren't really any good ones. Even with the benefit of hindsight they can't offer better explanations of the facts than the scientific consensus. So instead they point to holes at the fringe where scientists can't always predict the evidence perfectly, and use it as an excuse to reject large swaths of scientific fact without considering the merits. If people want us to consider their own explanation of the facts they should put it forward, until then they're just heckling. Is "the data isn't good enough to support any hypothesis for a single cause of warming, therefore we should not accept the CO2 hypothesis and can't prove any alternative hypothesis" an invalid claim on its face? (E): corrected a terminology error | ||
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biology]major
United States2253 Posts
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farvacola
United States18826 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:57 Buckyman wrote: Is "the data isn't good enough to support any hypothesis for a single cause of warming, therefore we should reject the CO2 hypothesis and can't prove any alternative hypothesis" an invalid claim on its face? yes, because data insufficiency does not necessarily precipitate the rejection of a related hypothesis, particularly in areas of science as complex as climate. | ||
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ZerOCoolSC2
8982 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:59 biology]major wrote: Not too sure what Devos is all about, but failing to get all the republican votes is hilarious. I didn't really have any problems with the other cabinet picks, but I wouldn't have minded her not going through. Any source on her agenda? You can find it on most websites. I prefer NPR over most though. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
President Trump on Tuesday offered to go after a Texas state senator who was the target of complaints from a local sheriff. During a White House meeting, Rockwall County, Texas, Sheriff Harold Eavenson told the president about a lawmaker who was offering asset forfeiture legislation he believes would aid Mexican drug cartels. “Who is the state senator? Do you want to give his name? We'll destroy his career," Trump offered. The Hill | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:31 Acrofales wrote: Regarding the whistleblowing, this is the relevant part: I don't know how tech savvy you are, but unless it afterwards turns out that there was actually something wrong with their data, this is entirely irrelevant. They *should* have followed protocol. The protocol is there to ensure data is correct before publication. They rushed it. It's not a great precedent, and should really not happen. But unless rushing a paper leads to false results/conclusions, it is not evidence of anything other than that proper protocol wasn't followed... and posterior follow-up research of the data has not shown any discrepancies in it, so the former seems very unlikely. Given the internal strife over this protocol in the first place (obviously this is all NOAA dirty laundry here, so what exactly Bates' reasons for whistleblowing are, we don't know), it seems completely appropriate to diminish the claim. Science should (and undoubtedly does) follow up on this and there will undoubtedly be an audit in NOAA to doublecheck the data, but there doesn't seem any reason at all so far to doubt its veracity. I hope it's done in the open, if necessary with the Smith investigation compelling it, to verify the data. Not toying with it but showing the bases for instrumental correction (and the like). I'm bringing up stories here not to rehash but to try to see how people respond to allegations of data tampering, the accusation being the author was "insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximized warming and minimized documentation." He claims the NOAA "put a thumb on the scale." If the only takeaway is 'ho hum it doesn't change the consensus and denialists still aren't open to being proved wrong in their skepticism of AGW," then I'll check back in another few months or as current events dictate. | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On February 08 2017 02:39 Buckyman wrote: The hypothesis I heard on this was opposition from teachers' unions. The two Republicans which defected had received thousands of dollars from teachers unions. Under-reported story. I should add that Devos is a school choice advocate, and successful changes on that front would necessarily weaken the power and influence of teaher's unions. | ||
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farvacola
United States18826 Posts
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