Having just seen the St. Louis Cardinals squeak into the postseason and then win it all, it reminds me of some thoughts I've had regarding postseason playoffs, especially with regards to college football. There's probably a majority of fans who want to ditch the BCS one-game "playoff" and go to some sort of a playoff for FBS teams to determine a "true" national champion.
Given that virtually all other NCAA championships are determined by some sort of postseason tournament, there seems to be no reason not to make big-time college football the same as other collegiate sports competitions. But I'm of two minds about this. Yes, it would be nice to wind up with what would become an undisputable national champion, supposedly settled by performance on the playing field rather than something so heavily influenced by opinion polls and computerized ranking schemes. Then FBS college football would become indistinguishable from pro football (except for the salaries!). And that's the rub for me.
As we witness the degrading spectacle of FBS teams engaging in an orgy of "realignment," it becomes quite obvious, even for anyone who has been operating in a vacuum for the past 25 years, that FBS football has become all about the money that football generates. Traditional rivalries? Who cares, when big money is at stake? After all, universities are businesses now - they long ago ceased to be primarily about education, anyway. NCAA football is simply the low-paid minor leagues for pro football now, and all of the fun and tradition of amateur athletics is disposable in pursuit of the almighty dollar! For the best athletes that universities can buy (and offer them a showcase for their talent in pursuit of a roster spot on a pro team), they rake in millions in revenue - which allows them to attract even more top athletes. No one cares much about the majority of college athletes who don't go on to a career in the pros, anyway. They're only along for fun and to support the play of the real playmakers - big-time collegiate sports is about revenue, not fun!
And just what does a playoff produce? It inevitably produces a champion at the end, of course. But the arguments go on about just which team is the "best"! [My definition of "best" is to be offered below.] In the minds of some fans - the fans of the championship team - their team was best because they won the playoff. Period. End of story.
But as we have seen in the World Series of 2011, the outcome of games can be highly dependent on things that may have relatively little to do with onfield performance: injuries, random bounces of the ball (or whatever), just missing or just making a play, the weather, coaching decisions, bad calls by the referees, the playing field conditions etc. Athletic contests are a fine example of nonlinear dynamics and it becomes quite possible for the hypothetical best team to lose a game during the playoffs owing to one or more of these non-performance factors. In fact, the larger the field of teams in the playoff, the more likely it becomes that the hypothetical best team will be beaten. Although playoffs always yield a final, surviving champion, the determination of which team was best that year remains undone. Arguments can continue indefinitely. And that seems rather like the way things are now, using the BCS system: a champion is determined but the arguments go on.
So here's my modest proposal for determining which FBS football team is truly the best. Each team will meet every other team multiple times, under a variety of playing conditions, weather, roster status for all the team's top players, home/away/neutral field, and so on. Just for the sake of a number, let's say each team will play every other team 100 times, and each game will involve different conditions. Since there currently are 120 FBS teams, this will amount to a rather large number of games for each team [(119 x 100) = 11, 900 games, so the entire regular season of FBS football will involve 11, 900 x 120 = 1, 428, 000 FBS games]. I guess this means the end of Saturday afternoon college football - they'll have to play multiple games every day of the week to fit in the required games (see below). But of course, college football has already spread to other days of the week! After all, prime time TV revenue is important.
At the end of this expanded "season" (from 12 games to nearly 12,000 for each team), the 16 teams with the highest winning percentage (ties will be broken by some sort of tiebreaker rules) would then enter the championship playoff. Each team would again play every other team in the playoff 100 times under a variety of conditions [for a total of 16 x 15 x 100 = 24, 000 games], and the team with the highest winning percentage would be declared the national champion (again with a set of tiebreaker rules). Think of the revenue this scheme would generate!! And the old argument that "If X played Y 100 times, they'd win PP percent of the time!" would actually be played out!
This "ensemble" approach to determining a national champion is a logical way to determine which team is actually the best, because the random, non-performance factors that seem to be so important to the outcome of a single game against an opponent would tend to even out over 11, 900 games. I admit, there are some practical issues that would need to be worked out, such as the degradation of the playing fields from playing multiple games every day, or the fact that it would require each team to play 10 games, 7 days per week, for 170 weeks (3.3 years) to just to complete the regular season, or wear and tear on the players. But these are just minor details. What counts is the enormous revenues this would generate and the chance finally to know which team is best! Once every few years ...
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
ENSO and tornadoes?
Today, I had a nice discussion with a colleague who showed me some fascinating preliminary results of some analysis he'd done regarding the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and tornadoes. I don't want to steal his thunder, but what he showed me was that ENSO could explain about 10% of the variability in tornado occurrences. This number struck me as being a reasonable one - my position is not that ENSO is irrelevant to tornado occurrences, but rather that it's only a part of a much more complex set of processes that ultimately control tornado events. Much of that complexity is beyond the pale of existing atmospheric scientific understanding, unfortunately. The notion that only a relatively small portion of the variability can be attributed to ENSO seems both plausible and consistent with what understanding atmospheric science can offer at present.
Imagine my dismay when, later in the day, I read in the prestigious science magazine Nature for 22 September (p. 373) that "El Niño, a quasiperiodic cycling of tropical Pacific water temperatures, causes extreme weather around the globe." This tidbit of journalistic excess really set my teeth on edge after my earlier discussion today! ENSO is just one of many quasiperiodic "cycles" (e.g., the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, etc.) that affect the global weather patterns and no doubt more will be discovered with time. ENSO is a player but far from the dominant one, and the resulting global weather pattern is the result of the interplay between all these processes (and those as yet undiscovered!). Attributing events exclusively to El Niño is outright nonsense!
Although ENSO apparently does modulate global weather patterns, there are many causal linkages between that global pattern and tornadoes, many of which remain unknown to science, at least in detail. To say that El Niño causes extreme weather is a ludicrous exaggeration of its influence. This sort of easy "explanation" often appears in media coverage of extreme weather events as a sort of non-explanatory explanation, similar to the "clash of air masses" nonsense often heard in media coverage after tornado outbreaks.
Once again, I'm reminded of the vast gulf between what's offered to the public and what I know as a severe weather scientist. I expected better of Nature, clearly, and was disappointed to see such an ignorant "explanation" for extreme weather events within this magazine. I've seen many scientists tempted by the siren song of ENSO as a way to explain interannual variability of tornadoes. It appears to be a seductive hypothesis, perhaps because there is just enough of an actual influence to convince many to pursue the topic - I wound up publishing a paper addressing some of the myriad problems in trying to establish a causal connection between El Niño and tornadoes. But the beat goes on, nevertheless - like the "clash of air masses," it's a simple "explanation" that just won't go away.
Imagine my dismay when, later in the day, I read in the prestigious science magazine Nature for 22 September (p. 373) that "El Niño, a quasiperiodic cycling of tropical Pacific water temperatures, causes extreme weather around the globe." This tidbit of journalistic excess really set my teeth on edge after my earlier discussion today! ENSO is just one of many quasiperiodic "cycles" (e.g., the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, etc.) that affect the global weather patterns and no doubt more will be discovered with time. ENSO is a player but far from the dominant one, and the resulting global weather pattern is the result of the interplay between all these processes (and those as yet undiscovered!). Attributing events exclusively to El Niño is outright nonsense!
Although ENSO apparently does modulate global weather patterns, there are many causal linkages between that global pattern and tornadoes, many of which remain unknown to science, at least in detail. To say that El Niño causes extreme weather is a ludicrous exaggeration of its influence. This sort of easy "explanation" often appears in media coverage of extreme weather events as a sort of non-explanatory explanation, similar to the "clash of air masses" nonsense often heard in media coverage after tornado outbreaks.
Once again, I'm reminded of the vast gulf between what's offered to the public and what I know as a severe weather scientist. I expected better of Nature, clearly, and was disappointed to see such an ignorant "explanation" for extreme weather events within this magazine. I've seen many scientists tempted by the siren song of ENSO as a way to explain interannual variability of tornadoes. It appears to be a seductive hypothesis, perhaps because there is just enough of an actual influence to convince many to pursue the topic - I wound up publishing a paper addressing some of the myriad problems in trying to establish a causal connection between El Niño and tornadoes. But the beat goes on, nevertheless - like the "clash of air masses," it's a simple "explanation" that just won't go away.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Is something wrong with tornado warnings?
In the wake of this year's massive April tornado outbreaks and the 22 May Joplin tornado, there's been a lot of talk about changing the National Weather Service (NWS) tornado warning process. I don't know the inside scoop on what is being considered by the NWS, but there certainly has been a lot of media attention on the topic and it's my understanding that NWS is indeed considering changes. I see all of this as an inappropriate reaction to the large fatality toll this year. In some ways it's good to review the system and at least discuss whether change is necessary after a tragedy like this year, when so many lives were lost. But hastily-constructed change is not an appropriate answer to what happened in the spring of 2011.
The public should understand that the NWS system evolved over decades as a series of more or less ad hoc decisions made in a cloud of ignorance. If one were to ask today if the existing system is the best of all possible systems, I believe the answer would be a resounding "NO!" The NWS warning system was not constructed after careful study of what is best to do and how best to do those things. It was built on the fly, as it were. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that it's worked effectively over the years to produce a much-reduced fatality toll from tornadoes compared to those in the 1920s and before. If we change the way NWS warnings work, we should be careful not to to do so in haste under political or media pressure. Otherwise we run the risk of screwing up a system that has worked to save thousands of lives over the years.
This is not the place for a discussion of what's wrong with the NWS warnings - that's a topic far too complex to be dealt with properly in a blog. What I want to do here is to point out something I've been saying for a long time. If people in the tornado-prone areas of the country choose not to take warnings seriously, is this because of failures in the warning system? I find it to be extremely difficult to understand how people could not take a tornado warning seriously!! Nevertheless, it seems that this is not uncommon.
Consider the tale of three tornadoes - two in 1990 and one in 2011 ... the F5 tornado that hit Hesston, Kansas, the F5 tornado that hit Plainfield, Illinois, and the EF5 tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri. In the Hesston event, tornado warnings were issued and people apparently took them seriously - only one life was lost. In the Plainfield event, tornado warnings were not issued before the tornado, with 29 lives lost as a consequence. For the Joplin event, warnings were issued about 20 min ahead of the tornado and the current figure I have for fatalities is 159 - the most from a single tornado since 1947.
Not all NWS offices do an equally good job with tornado warnings. After the Plainfield event, for instance, a disaster survey team found many problems with the performance of the Chicago office. Having an F5 tornado strike with no warning remains possible, but is much less likely today than it was in 1990. The Springfield office that issued the warnings for the Joplin event did a decent job with a challenging situation, although they may have had a history of many false alarm warnings. Some of us have been saying for quite some time that large fatality counts are not necessarily a thing only of the past, and 2011 has shown those dire predictions to be true. We have been lucky for decades and in 2011, our luck simply ran out. It will do so again, in the future.
The sad, and seemingly inescapable conclusion I draw from this trio of major tornado events is that people in the tornado-prone parts of the USA need to understand the true risks from tornadoes. They don't need to live their lives in constant fear - far from it. The NWS offers state-of-the-art information about the threat of tornadoes and all people need to do is take it seriously enough to take actions to protect themselves. Why is this so difficult? Is it a matter of public education? I think that might well be an important factor, but not the only one.
There's been a lot of talk about too many false alarms from the NWS. While I agree the NWS warning performance is not perfect and not even as good as it could be, there inevitably will be uncertainty implied (if not stated explicitly!) in their forecast and warning products. People need to understand and accept that principle. The public must accept their share of responsibility for what happens when tornadoes strike, rather than placing the whole burden onto the NWS to provide some product for which the science of meteorology offers little hope of being an improvement over the existing system. Learning about the simple and inexpensive things anyone can do to protect themselves from natural hazards seems like common sense to me, not something too challenging for "the public" to do.
The public should understand that the NWS system evolved over decades as a series of more or less ad hoc decisions made in a cloud of ignorance. If one were to ask today if the existing system is the best of all possible systems, I believe the answer would be a resounding "NO!" The NWS warning system was not constructed after careful study of what is best to do and how best to do those things. It was built on the fly, as it were. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that it's worked effectively over the years to produce a much-reduced fatality toll from tornadoes compared to those in the 1920s and before. If we change the way NWS warnings work, we should be careful not to to do so in haste under political or media pressure. Otherwise we run the risk of screwing up a system that has worked to save thousands of lives over the years.
This is not the place for a discussion of what's wrong with the NWS warnings - that's a topic far too complex to be dealt with properly in a blog. What I want to do here is to point out something I've been saying for a long time. If people in the tornado-prone areas of the country choose not to take warnings seriously, is this because of failures in the warning system? I find it to be extremely difficult to understand how people could not take a tornado warning seriously!! Nevertheless, it seems that this is not uncommon.
Consider the tale of three tornadoes - two in 1990 and one in 2011 ... the F5 tornado that hit Hesston, Kansas, the F5 tornado that hit Plainfield, Illinois, and the EF5 tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri. In the Hesston event, tornado warnings were issued and people apparently took them seriously - only one life was lost. In the Plainfield event, tornado warnings were not issued before the tornado, with 29 lives lost as a consequence. For the Joplin event, warnings were issued about 20 min ahead of the tornado and the current figure I have for fatalities is 159 - the most from a single tornado since 1947.
Not all NWS offices do an equally good job with tornado warnings. After the Plainfield event, for instance, a disaster survey team found many problems with the performance of the Chicago office. Having an F5 tornado strike with no warning remains possible, but is much less likely today than it was in 1990. The Springfield office that issued the warnings for the Joplin event did a decent job with a challenging situation, although they may have had a history of many false alarm warnings. Some of us have been saying for quite some time that large fatality counts are not necessarily a thing only of the past, and 2011 has shown those dire predictions to be true. We have been lucky for decades and in 2011, our luck simply ran out. It will do so again, in the future.
The sad, and seemingly inescapable conclusion I draw from this trio of major tornado events is that people in the tornado-prone parts of the USA need to understand the true risks from tornadoes. They don't need to live their lives in constant fear - far from it. The NWS offers state-of-the-art information about the threat of tornadoes and all people need to do is take it seriously enough to take actions to protect themselves. Why is this so difficult? Is it a matter of public education? I think that might well be an important factor, but not the only one.
There's been a lot of talk about too many false alarms from the NWS. While I agree the NWS warning performance is not perfect and not even as good as it could be, there inevitably will be uncertainty implied (if not stated explicitly!) in their forecast and warning products. People need to understand and accept that principle. The public must accept their share of responsibility for what happens when tornadoes strike, rather than placing the whole burden onto the NWS to provide some product for which the science of meteorology offers little hope of being an improvement over the existing system. Learning about the simple and inexpensive things anyone can do to protect themselves from natural hazards seems like common sense to me, not something too challenging for "the public" to do.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Making hate speech a crime?
Today, via this blog, I came across this essay, written by an abortion rights activist. It's a thought-provoking essay, no matter what you might believe about the points she makes. It addresses the inevitable dilemma regarding free speech and its consequences. No sane person could rationalize the act of falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater - the hackneyed example of a limitation on free speech. A while back, I wrote my own essay on the subject of free speech.
I'm not going to repeat all Ms. Arthur's arguments or go through them point-by-point here. The problem, as I see it, boils down to words and their consequences. It would be extremely naive to suggest that words are just words and have no impact other than what we choose to allow them to have (although I've made arguments to that effect). My right to free speech ends where it infringes on your rights as a human being. As already noted, after all, there are justifiable limits we've imposed on the right to free speech. Hate speech against someone, especially from a public forum, can inspire violence, even if the words contain no explicit call for violent action. The example Ms. Arthur gives of Bill O'Reilly's comments about Dr. Tiller, the abortion provider, make it clear that even though O'Reilly does a marvelous Pontius Pilate imitation when it comes to accepting any responsibility for Dr. Tiller's murder, it seems pretty obvious to me that he should be called to account in some way for his very public and very provocative comments. Mere words can have fatal consequences, it seems.
But we have a dilemma. If we make "hate speech" a crime, then its implementation would have to be very narrowly prescribed. Who among us has, at one time or another, not made strongly critical or even offensive remarks about someone else? Just where might we be able to draw a line separating such instances from prosecutable, criminal hate speech? How many children (and adults!) engage in verbal bullying of others? Lately, we've seen that such verbal bullying can result in terrible consequences - suicide or violent rampages by the target for such words. Should we prosecute any and all bullies, putting them in prison with thieves, murderers, and rapists?
Moreover, I find it pretty naive to believe that making hate speech a crime is going to eliminate hate speech, and make us a more tolerant society. Prosecution for theft, murder, rape, etc. hasn't caused those crimes to disappear, after all. Tolerance isn't going to become widespread if we make intolerant words a crime - rather, we'll only have made criminals out of people whose only crime is intolerance. The Westboro "Baptist" Church strikes me as a classic target for hate speech prosecution, and I just can't see how putting them behind bars (as detestable as they are) is going to be the key to developing a society willing to embrace all people.
Insofar as I can tell, we humans aren't wired for tolerance. Some of us may have the ability to overcome our tribalism by sheer will power and a commitment to rationality. But the "us vs. them" mentality is so pervasive that "hate speech" is pretty much everywhere. If I accuse a religious fanatic of being an "idiot" for saying that I'm going to hell because I don't accept his/her religion, is that "hate speech" that makes me liable for prosecution under a statute outlawing hate speech?
In some circles, using the word "nigger" (spoken by white person) is considered hate speech. Not only is it seen as being "politically incorrect" - it's seen by some as an incitement, rather than a mere word. If we start to "sanitize" free speech - to restrict it in ways that go far beyond the existing restrictions (many of which are listed in Ms. Arthur's essay) - by criminalizing "hate speech", then we'll have gone too far in restricting free speech.
We need to keep in mind that the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to free speech is not restricted to those words with which we agree or condone! If "hate speech" does wind up producing criminal actions, then we should prosecute those crimes, rather than adding the words that might have inspired them to the list of criminal acts. There's nothing in words that forces people to act in unlawful ways. Our actions are choices we make as individuals. Restricting free speech in this way simply inhibits the discourse among free people that we Americans traditionally have valued so highly.
I'm not going to repeat all Ms. Arthur's arguments or go through them point-by-point here. The problem, as I see it, boils down to words and their consequences. It would be extremely naive to suggest that words are just words and have no impact other than what we choose to allow them to have (although I've made arguments to that effect). My right to free speech ends where it infringes on your rights as a human being. As already noted, after all, there are justifiable limits we've imposed on the right to free speech. Hate speech against someone, especially from a public forum, can inspire violence, even if the words contain no explicit call for violent action. The example Ms. Arthur gives of Bill O'Reilly's comments about Dr. Tiller, the abortion provider, make it clear that even though O'Reilly does a marvelous Pontius Pilate imitation when it comes to accepting any responsibility for Dr. Tiller's murder, it seems pretty obvious to me that he should be called to account in some way for his very public and very provocative comments. Mere words can have fatal consequences, it seems.
But we have a dilemma. If we make "hate speech" a crime, then its implementation would have to be very narrowly prescribed. Who among us has, at one time or another, not made strongly critical or even offensive remarks about someone else? Just where might we be able to draw a line separating such instances from prosecutable, criminal hate speech? How many children (and adults!) engage in verbal bullying of others? Lately, we've seen that such verbal bullying can result in terrible consequences - suicide or violent rampages by the target for such words. Should we prosecute any and all bullies, putting them in prison with thieves, murderers, and rapists?
Moreover, I find it pretty naive to believe that making hate speech a crime is going to eliminate hate speech, and make us a more tolerant society. Prosecution for theft, murder, rape, etc. hasn't caused those crimes to disappear, after all. Tolerance isn't going to become widespread if we make intolerant words a crime - rather, we'll only have made criminals out of people whose only crime is intolerance. The Westboro "Baptist" Church strikes me as a classic target for hate speech prosecution, and I just can't see how putting them behind bars (as detestable as they are) is going to be the key to developing a society willing to embrace all people.
Insofar as I can tell, we humans aren't wired for tolerance. Some of us may have the ability to overcome our tribalism by sheer will power and a commitment to rationality. But the "us vs. them" mentality is so pervasive that "hate speech" is pretty much everywhere. If I accuse a religious fanatic of being an "idiot" for saying that I'm going to hell because I don't accept his/her religion, is that "hate speech" that makes me liable for prosecution under a statute outlawing hate speech?
In some circles, using the word "nigger" (spoken by white person) is considered hate speech. Not only is it seen as being "politically incorrect" - it's seen by some as an incitement, rather than a mere word. If we start to "sanitize" free speech - to restrict it in ways that go far beyond the existing restrictions (many of which are listed in Ms. Arthur's essay) - by criminalizing "hate speech", then we'll have gone too far in restricting free speech.
We need to keep in mind that the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to free speech is not restricted to those words with which we agree or condone! If "hate speech" does wind up producing criminal actions, then we should prosecute those crimes, rather than adding the words that might have inspired them to the list of criminal acts. There's nothing in words that forces people to act in unlawful ways. Our actions are choices we make as individuals. Restricting free speech in this way simply inhibits the discourse among free people that we Americans traditionally have valued so highly.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Funding of the Norman Weather Center - An edifice complex
Quite some time ago now, I wrote an essay regarding the funding of the Norman Weather Center (NWC). Some recent information I received from Ed Kessler (former Director of the National Severe Storms Laboratory) suggests that the fallout continues from the political decision to divert some of the underground oil storage tanks cleanup fund to this purpose. A few of us chose to offer our feeble protests in response to this environmentally unfriendly political decision by OU and the state government, but we were too few and marginalized to be effective, so we were simply ignored.
The growth of meteorological science in Norman was not the result of having a fancy building (with its imported Italian marble staircase and gurgling water feature). Rather, its growth into what it has become was driven by the science and the participating scientists, who generally shared cramped and decidedly unfancy facilities for most of their histories. The connection between the local OKC forecast office of the National Weather Service, the OU Department (before they became a "School") of Meteorology, the National Severe Storms Laboratory, the Oklahoma Climate Survey, and some other facilities represented a pretty loose collaboration of agencies. From my perception of things, they really didn't interact that much or that well. There's a host of reasons for that - but there always was some level of interaction despite being scattered in different physical locations.
Mere proximity doesn't mean interaction will necessarily follow. Interaction among people flows from the needs and interests of the participants. It can't be mandated effectively from above - it must come from a mutual desire to interact by working staff members in the respective agencies. There may have been a few examples of collaboration since the construction and occupation of the NWC building, but it might be difficult to show conclusively that they arose simply as a result of proximity and wouldn't otherwise have developed even if the agencies were still separated physically. The security paranoia that dominates government has led to restricted access to the NOAA components of the NWC. There still is only modest interaction among the elements of the NWC, as I see it. I'm certainly not opposed to proximity, per se, but it was promoted as necessary for the good things that were promised in order to justify the funding decision.
The price we paid for this fancy new building (that now attracts visitors who just want to see the fancy new building!) still seems excessive to me. If we've seen an increase in visitation by meteorological professionals from outside of Norman, that's a good thing, but did we need to have a fancy new edifice to accomplish that? I doubt it.
I wanted to use this blog to remind folks of what was done to allow us to have this building. I imagine that few folks in the NWC know about or remember the environmental price paid by Oklahomans to allow us meteorologists to have this facility. Our little community of professionals is permanently stained by the shame of putting our comfort ahead of the environmental needs of all Oklahomans. The ultimate irony is that we're supposed to be environmental professionals!
The growth of meteorological science in Norman was not the result of having a fancy building (with its imported Italian marble staircase and gurgling water feature). Rather, its growth into what it has become was driven by the science and the participating scientists, who generally shared cramped and decidedly unfancy facilities for most of their histories. The connection between the local OKC forecast office of the National Weather Service, the OU Department (before they became a "School") of Meteorology, the National Severe Storms Laboratory, the Oklahoma Climate Survey, and some other facilities represented a pretty loose collaboration of agencies. From my perception of things, they really didn't interact that much or that well. There's a host of reasons for that - but there always was some level of interaction despite being scattered in different physical locations.
Mere proximity doesn't mean interaction will necessarily follow. Interaction among people flows from the needs and interests of the participants. It can't be mandated effectively from above - it must come from a mutual desire to interact by working staff members in the respective agencies. There may have been a few examples of collaboration since the construction and occupation of the NWC building, but it might be difficult to show conclusively that they arose simply as a result of proximity and wouldn't otherwise have developed even if the agencies were still separated physically. The security paranoia that dominates government has led to restricted access to the NOAA components of the NWC. There still is only modest interaction among the elements of the NWC, as I see it. I'm certainly not opposed to proximity, per se, but it was promoted as necessary for the good things that were promised in order to justify the funding decision.
The price we paid for this fancy new building (that now attracts visitors who just want to see the fancy new building!) still seems excessive to me. If we've seen an increase in visitation by meteorological professionals from outside of Norman, that's a good thing, but did we need to have a fancy new edifice to accomplish that? I doubt it.
I wanted to use this blog to remind folks of what was done to allow us to have this building. I imagine that few folks in the NWC know about or remember the environmental price paid by Oklahomans to allow us meteorologists to have this facility. Our little community of professionals is permanently stained by the shame of putting our comfort ahead of the environmental needs of all Oklahomans. The ultimate irony is that we're supposed to be environmental professionals!
Monday, September 12, 2011
Growing up as a fan of Chicago sports teams
I've often described, to anyone foolish enough to listen, the reasons for why I hate certain sports franchises. Having grown up in Chicago, I especially learned to hate the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Yankees. Chicago sports fans have never gotten spoiled by the success of their teams. It seems that the owners of said franchises have a history of devastatingly stupid moves, guaranteeing years of mediocrity or outright incompetence for their teams in most years. It's no mistake that the Cubs have gone the longest without winning a World Series - despite having had many great stars on their teams over looooooong time since their last World Series win (1909).
Chicago authors, like Jean Shepherd, tell the tale of how much we Chicago fans hate the Yankees. Being permanently the "Second City" isn't bad enough. The Yankees fans, with their proud heritage and swagger about all their World Series championships, epitomize everything we Chicago fans wanted to be, and apparently couldn't have. In all the time I've been a Chicago sports fan, only the Bulls with Michael Jordan came close to being a seriously successful team - and were dismantled when Jordan retired for good. The Bears have mostly wallowed in mediocrity, but they managed to win the NFL championship in 1963, beating the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned New York Giants in the process! Oh happy day!! To be followed by 22 years of mediocrity and failure, despite such stars as Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus. The 1985 Bears seemed destined for a dynasty, which ... never happened.
The Blackhawks unexpectedly won the Stanley Cup in 1961, while I was in high school, with such stars as Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and Pierre Pilote. To be followed by decades of near misses and mediocrity until the miracle of the 2009-10 season. And of course, the next season, the Hawks were outsted from the playoffs in the first round (after a valiant effort that ... surprise! ... fell short.
Basically, if every New York sports franchise were to lose every game infinitely far into the future (a consummation devoutly to be wished!), it would take many, many years for our Chicago franchises ever to catch up. To be a Chicago sports fan is to know disappointment and classic chokes, punctuated with just enough success to keep the franchises packed with the faithful fans. Try to buy a Cubs or Sox or Bears ticket and you'll discover our fan loyalty. It's our fate ...
It helps somehow to have the Blues Brothers roaring down Lower Wacker Drive with the cops in tight pursuit. It helps when Man vs. Food features a show about Chicago's Italian beef sandwiches. It helps when we discover so many fellow Chicago sports fans to be here and there - the faithful scattered like autumn leaves around the nation. But the beat goes on for Chicago sports, and I guess I'll never get out of my mostly unrequited love affair with those teams.
Chicago authors, like Jean Shepherd, tell the tale of how much we Chicago fans hate the Yankees. Being permanently the "Second City" isn't bad enough. The Yankees fans, with their proud heritage and swagger about all their World Series championships, epitomize everything we Chicago fans wanted to be, and apparently couldn't have. In all the time I've been a Chicago sports fan, only the Bulls with Michael Jordan came close to being a seriously successful team - and were dismantled when Jordan retired for good. The Bears have mostly wallowed in mediocrity, but they managed to win the NFL championship in 1963, beating the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned New York Giants in the process! Oh happy day!! To be followed by 22 years of mediocrity and failure, despite such stars as Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus. The 1985 Bears seemed destined for a dynasty, which ... never happened.
The Blackhawks unexpectedly won the Stanley Cup in 1961, while I was in high school, with such stars as Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and Pierre Pilote. To be followed by decades of near misses and mediocrity until the miracle of the 2009-10 season. And of course, the next season, the Hawks were outsted from the playoffs in the first round (after a valiant effort that ... surprise! ... fell short.
Basically, if every New York sports franchise were to lose every game infinitely far into the future (a consummation devoutly to be wished!), it would take many, many years for our Chicago franchises ever to catch up. To be a Chicago sports fan is to know disappointment and classic chokes, punctuated with just enough success to keep the franchises packed with the faithful fans. Try to buy a Cubs or Sox or Bears ticket and you'll discover our fan loyalty. It's our fate ...
It helps somehow to have the Blues Brothers roaring down Lower Wacker Drive with the cops in tight pursuit. It helps when Man vs. Food features a show about Chicago's Italian beef sandwiches. It helps when we discover so many fellow Chicago sports fans to be here and there - the faithful scattered like autumn leaves around the nation. But the beat goes on for Chicago sports, and I guess I'll never get out of my mostly unrequited love affair with those teams.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
New thoughts about 9/11/01
Shortly after the tragedy of the 11 September 2001 attacks, I wrote an essay expressing my feelings. In reviewing that essay, I see no reason to change a word I wrote. I maintain that violence is not the solution to violence committed against us. We gain the dubious satisfaction of vengeance, but it can't bring back the lives of those whose lives were lost. It doesn't fill the hole left in the lives of family and friends of those killed in the attack.
I'm not saying that the efforts to root out and eliminate the perpetrators are wrong or misguided. Far from it, in fact. But if one considers the results of our "war on terrorism" - we now have lost more Americans in the name of that war on terror than were killed in the 11 September 2001 attacks. Politicians sent them to do the dirty work and they've died doing their duty. Add to that the horrible, disfiguring, life-changing injuries. And that number of American casualties is dwarfed by the deaths and injuries visited upon innocent civilians in those very wars. We've been involved in unwinnable wars of occupation in foreign lands, just as we were when fighting an ideological war in Vietnam. Our war on terror is a very effective recruiting campaign for terrorists.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have clear origins in religious conflict. The fanatic muslims responsible for terrorism are using religion as a tool for their political goals. Notice how it's not the leaders who are strapping explosives to themselves, or flying themselves into buildings. No, they inflame young, gullible people to do their dirty work without any risk to themselves. These muslim fanatics are the worst kind of "chicken hawk" - someone who supports combat so long as they themselves are exempt from its horrors.
In America today, there are christian fanatics who are, to me, indistinguishable from their muslim brethren. They seek to divide the world along religious lines and lead a holy war, a jihad, against the enemies they see. If we go down that road, a path that is openly in contradiction to the christian doctrine of leaving vengeance to the lord, and turning the other cheek when attacked, then we have become what we claim to despise. If we sacrifice our freedoms for the illusion of security at the behest of power-hungry politicians seeking to benefit from our irrationally exaggerated fear of terrorism, then we have lost something very precious that long has been the most important achievement of the United States of America. We have been a beacon standing for freedom and human rights, despite some setbacks to those freedoms during times of war. If we vote to make our nation a christian theocracy, we will have repudiated one of the crucial things that made America great. We will have let fear drive us to give up all that has made us into a light of hope for oppressed minorities around the world.
In this time of reflection on the events that occurred ten years ago, it seems to me that we would bring the greatest honor to the lives lost on that terrible day if we renewed our commitment to the system that so many Americans have died to preserve. The most effective way to fight terrorism is to preserve the very things in American society that the terrorists most despise and fear: our freedoms and the preservation of the rights of all Americans - especially those with whom we disagree!
I'm not saying that the efforts to root out and eliminate the perpetrators are wrong or misguided. Far from it, in fact. But if one considers the results of our "war on terrorism" - we now have lost more Americans in the name of that war on terror than were killed in the 11 September 2001 attacks. Politicians sent them to do the dirty work and they've died doing their duty. Add to that the horrible, disfiguring, life-changing injuries. And that number of American casualties is dwarfed by the deaths and injuries visited upon innocent civilians in those very wars. We've been involved in unwinnable wars of occupation in foreign lands, just as we were when fighting an ideological war in Vietnam. Our war on terror is a very effective recruiting campaign for terrorists.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have clear origins in religious conflict. The fanatic muslims responsible for terrorism are using religion as a tool for their political goals. Notice how it's not the leaders who are strapping explosives to themselves, or flying themselves into buildings. No, they inflame young, gullible people to do their dirty work without any risk to themselves. These muslim fanatics are the worst kind of "chicken hawk" - someone who supports combat so long as they themselves are exempt from its horrors.
In America today, there are christian fanatics who are, to me, indistinguishable from their muslim brethren. They seek to divide the world along religious lines and lead a holy war, a jihad, against the enemies they see. If we go down that road, a path that is openly in contradiction to the christian doctrine of leaving vengeance to the lord, and turning the other cheek when attacked, then we have become what we claim to despise. If we sacrifice our freedoms for the illusion of security at the behest of power-hungry politicians seeking to benefit from our irrationally exaggerated fear of terrorism, then we have lost something very precious that long has been the most important achievement of the United States of America. We have been a beacon standing for freedom and human rights, despite some setbacks to those freedoms during times of war. If we vote to make our nation a christian theocracy, we will have repudiated one of the crucial things that made America great. We will have let fear drive us to give up all that has made us into a light of hope for oppressed minorities around the world.
In this time of reflection on the events that occurred ten years ago, it seems to me that we would bring the greatest honor to the lives lost on that terrible day if we renewed our commitment to the system that so many Americans have died to preserve. The most effective way to fight terrorism is to preserve the very things in American society that the terrorists most despise and fear: our freedoms and the preservation of the rights of all Americans - especially those with whom we disagree!
Monday, September 5, 2011
Excuse me ... for living ... ?
Many people spend a lot of time worrying about being polite. If by polite, one means being civil, I have no problem with that. I much prefer civil discourse to a shouting match. If by polite, one means saying "please" and "thank you" I have no problem with that. If by polite, one means saying "pardon me" when bumping into someone accidentally, I have no problem with that, either. Politeness is a set of conventions designed to prevent people from becoming upset with one another unnecessarily, which is all to the good. Being polite is a very human way to signal our good intentions.
Where I have a problem with politeness is the supposed convention of saying "excuse me" after some natural bodily function. There can be a large difference between an exaggerated belch, done for effect, and a simple burp. If someone is attending a solemn ceremony and belches unnecessarily loudly, does saying "excuse me" paper over what they just did? Does it make it O.K. to do such things? Intentionally disrupting a solemn event is usually seen as rude and signals a disrespect for the occasion. Mere words strike me as ineffectual when seeking atonement and irrelevant to the situation.
On the other hand, if someone simply burps in a relatively discrete way, I see no reason for apologizing or begging for forgiveness. Burping and flatulence constitute a natural consequence of the way our bodies work, so allowing those functions to occur isn't being impolite. It's just being human.
When a group of boys get together, it's almost inevitable that the conversation will come around to passing gas from the rear end of the digestive system - farting. In the silly world of boys (and men), belches and farts become something of pride, and the more odorous (and odious) and louder, the better. For some mysterious reasons having to do with our societal conventions, when girls fart, it's supposed to be quiet, discrete, and characterized by a smell akin to a rose garden - all untrue, of course. As most any married man can testify, most wives feel much less inhibited by such conventions with their families and cut 'em off just like a sailor, and then giggle about it. Saying "excuse me" after such an event strikes me as superfluous and even hypocritical. I'm on a hopeless one-man quest to eradicate the necessity to excuse oneself for acts made inevitable by living. And if they're obviously done with no effort made to be discrete, I'm even less inclined to accept "excuse me" as an excuse.
I don't advocate loud, noxious gaseous explosions in solemn situations. I know that the sound of belches and farts can be controlled to a certain extent, and I agree fully that it would be inappropriate to exaggerate such acts in some situations. Sometimes, however, the intensity is unanticipated by the person needing to expel that gas (from either end). It might well burst forth at a bad time. Asking for forgiveness afterward would be a natural consequence of the embarrassment associated with unintentionally calling attention to oneself by such a loud (and/or) malodorous act. Saying "excuse me" under such circumstances makes sense to me. The act amounts to an inadvertent "social mistake" and if one truly feels ashamed or embarrassed by that act, then it seems perfectly logical to ask for forgiveness.
But I think such forgiveness might be more difficult to grant if the deed were done with evident "malice" aforethought. No simple "excuse me" can atone for doing something intentionally disrespectful. If the same acts are done intentionally but in a situation where no real embarrassment is involved (e.g., between spouses), then the "excuse me" is again completely unnecessary. There are times and situations permitting loud belches and farts, and learning when to do them and when not to do them is part of becoming socialized. It seems obvious to me that learning when to say "excuse me" is also part of that socialization - it's just unnecessary in many situations.
I note in conclusion that in some societies, loud belches after a good meal aren't indicators of disrespect at all, but rather signal the host that the guest had a satisfying meal. So what is polite is simply a social convention and can vary from one society to another. So long as everyone understands the intent, then it works.
Where I have a problem with politeness is the supposed convention of saying "excuse me" after some natural bodily function. There can be a large difference between an exaggerated belch, done for effect, and a simple burp. If someone is attending a solemn ceremony and belches unnecessarily loudly, does saying "excuse me" paper over what they just did? Does it make it O.K. to do such things? Intentionally disrupting a solemn event is usually seen as rude and signals a disrespect for the occasion. Mere words strike me as ineffectual when seeking atonement and irrelevant to the situation.
On the other hand, if someone simply burps in a relatively discrete way, I see no reason for apologizing or begging for forgiveness. Burping and flatulence constitute a natural consequence of the way our bodies work, so allowing those functions to occur isn't being impolite. It's just being human.
When a group of boys get together, it's almost inevitable that the conversation will come around to passing gas from the rear end of the digestive system - farting. In the silly world of boys (and men), belches and farts become something of pride, and the more odorous (and odious) and louder, the better. For some mysterious reasons having to do with our societal conventions, when girls fart, it's supposed to be quiet, discrete, and characterized by a smell akin to a rose garden - all untrue, of course. As most any married man can testify, most wives feel much less inhibited by such conventions with their families and cut 'em off just like a sailor, and then giggle about it. Saying "excuse me" after such an event strikes me as superfluous and even hypocritical. I'm on a hopeless one-man quest to eradicate the necessity to excuse oneself for acts made inevitable by living. And if they're obviously done with no effort made to be discrete, I'm even less inclined to accept "excuse me" as an excuse.
I don't advocate loud, noxious gaseous explosions in solemn situations. I know that the sound of belches and farts can be controlled to a certain extent, and I agree fully that it would be inappropriate to exaggerate such acts in some situations. Sometimes, however, the intensity is unanticipated by the person needing to expel that gas (from either end). It might well burst forth at a bad time. Asking for forgiveness afterward would be a natural consequence of the embarrassment associated with unintentionally calling attention to oneself by such a loud (and/or) malodorous act. Saying "excuse me" under such circumstances makes sense to me. The act amounts to an inadvertent "social mistake" and if one truly feels ashamed or embarrassed by that act, then it seems perfectly logical to ask for forgiveness.
But I think such forgiveness might be more difficult to grant if the deed were done with evident "malice" aforethought. No simple "excuse me" can atone for doing something intentionally disrespectful. If the same acts are done intentionally but in a situation where no real embarrassment is involved (e.g., between spouses), then the "excuse me" is again completely unnecessary. There are times and situations permitting loud belches and farts, and learning when to do them and when not to do them is part of becoming socialized. It seems obvious to me that learning when to say "excuse me" is also part of that socialization - it's just unnecessary in many situations.
I note in conclusion that in some societies, loud belches after a good meal aren't indicators of disrespect at all, but rather signal the host that the guest had a satisfying meal. So what is polite is simply a social convention and can vary from one society to another. So long as everyone understands the intent, then it works.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
That's more like it?
Many years ago, I first heard a story, although I no longer recall how I heard it. The story concerns Allen D. (Al) Pearson, who at the time was the Director of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City, MO (which eventually became the Storm Prediction Center and moved to Norman, OK). The story goes that some old woman was known to call the NSSFC and complain about every tornado warning for her location that turned out to be a false alarm. After a tornado outbreak in that area, Al got a call from the woman, whose home (the story goes) was utterly destroyed by a tornado. Her words to Al? "Now that's more like it!" This story may be apocryphal. I don't know for certain, but it illustrates something that has always left me puzzled about how "the public" responds to weather warnings.
This has been a year characterized by some of the worst tornado events in our nation's history. After several decades of relatively low tornado fatality counts, the nation has surpassed 500 fatalities with several months yet to go in the year. We've had a single tornado in Joplin, Missouri, kill more than 150 people for the first time since 1947 (the tornado that hit Woodward, Oklahoma). It's evident that tornadoes remain a deadly threat, which is what many of us have been saying for decades. There's already considerable whining and complaining that Hurricane Irene hasn't lived up to the "hype" generated by the warnings.
It seems that there are many folks who, like the old woman in my story involving Allen Pearson, seemingly would prefer to become storm casualties and have their lives and property devastated! I completely fail to understand the "logic" of this attitude. Of course, no one wants to alarm people needlessly, but the fact is that our ability to predict storms falls well short of perfection. False alarms are an inevitable consequence of meteorological uncertainty, as are occasions where a warning fails to go out and yet the event happens. The only way to never miss an event is to predict the event everywhere, all the time. The only way to never issue a false alarm is to never issue any warnings at all. Reality is such that the science leaves us somewhere between these two unacceptable extremes. An objective evaluation of the tornado warnings show that a considerable majority of them turn out to be false alarms. By the way, for most of its history, the USA's public weather forecasters never issued tornado warnings because they were forbidden to do so! It was feared by many otherwise intelligent folks that such a warning would cause a panic!
Some people have complained that the National Weather Service issues too many needless tornado warnings. There may be some validity to such complaints, especially when considering individual NWS offices, whose office policies regarding warnings can vary from one office to another. The basic idea behind this concern is the so-called "cry wolf" problem, where the working hypothesis is that "the public" is desensitized by too many warnings. Various proposals by various people have been made to remedy the problem, mostly impractical or unjustifiable from the point of view of the science of storms.
I've argued that the overwarning problem (if it is indeed a problem) is the direct consequence of one inescapable fact: no one is ever killed (at the time) by a false alarm! Forecasters are much more likely to be condemned for not issuing a warning, thereby missing a storm event that winds up killing someone, than by issuing a warning that turns out to be a false alarm. This is beyond any doubt the primary cause for the overwarning bias. I've argued that one way to reduce or eliminate this bias is to convert to probabilistic warnings. I hear constantly about how and why that won't work, but that's drifting off-point in this blog.
Consider the "desensitization argument": One comment that I hear quoted in the media from time to time is "Oh, we hear tornado warnings all the time, and nothing ever happens!" All the time? Really? I don't think the objective evidence comes anywhere even close to that clearly hyperbolic declaration. In any given location, even in "Tornado Alley", tornado warnings are relatively infrequent. Are people seriously expecting to hit by a tornado every time a tornado warning is issued? Why would people think that? What shortfall is responsible for such a patently absurd expectation? Surely all the weather broadcasters who are complaining about NWS warnings could have done a better job of explaining the reality of the warning challenge to their audiences! Nor am I attempting to make excuses for the NWS - in fact, I believe the accuracy of their warnings certainly could use some improvement. But someone needs to understand just why "the public" has this attitude and start a public information campaign to eliminate it!
This has been a terrible year for weather tragedies: not just tornadoes, but also high winds, floods, hurricanes, etc. Surely people should be thankful when a warning for potentially dangerous weather turns out to be a false alarm! There are hundreds of dead people from storm hazards so far this year, and likely thousands of their friends and families who, if given the option, would prefer that those events had not happened at all. That they had simply been another false alarm. Any of them happily would change places with some whiner grousing about false alarms.
If you choose to take the attitude that so many warnings are false alarms that you can ignore them indefinitely, there's a chance you may be wrong at some point in the future - dead wrong! Not a high probability, though. So you're most likely going to be able to live a long and productive life, complaining about false alarms to the end of your days. Shouldn't you be grateful?
This has been a year characterized by some of the worst tornado events in our nation's history. After several decades of relatively low tornado fatality counts, the nation has surpassed 500 fatalities with several months yet to go in the year. We've had a single tornado in Joplin, Missouri, kill more than 150 people for the first time since 1947 (the tornado that hit Woodward, Oklahoma). It's evident that tornadoes remain a deadly threat, which is what many of us have been saying for decades. There's already considerable whining and complaining that Hurricane Irene hasn't lived up to the "hype" generated by the warnings.
It seems that there are many folks who, like the old woman in my story involving Allen Pearson, seemingly would prefer to become storm casualties and have their lives and property devastated! I completely fail to understand the "logic" of this attitude. Of course, no one wants to alarm people needlessly, but the fact is that our ability to predict storms falls well short of perfection. False alarms are an inevitable consequence of meteorological uncertainty, as are occasions where a warning fails to go out and yet the event happens. The only way to never miss an event is to predict the event everywhere, all the time. The only way to never issue a false alarm is to never issue any warnings at all. Reality is such that the science leaves us somewhere between these two unacceptable extremes. An objective evaluation of the tornado warnings show that a considerable majority of them turn out to be false alarms. By the way, for most of its history, the USA's public weather forecasters never issued tornado warnings because they were forbidden to do so! It was feared by many otherwise intelligent folks that such a warning would cause a panic!
Some people have complained that the National Weather Service issues too many needless tornado warnings. There may be some validity to such complaints, especially when considering individual NWS offices, whose office policies regarding warnings can vary from one office to another. The basic idea behind this concern is the so-called "cry wolf" problem, where the working hypothesis is that "the public" is desensitized by too many warnings. Various proposals by various people have been made to remedy the problem, mostly impractical or unjustifiable from the point of view of the science of storms.
I've argued that the overwarning problem (if it is indeed a problem) is the direct consequence of one inescapable fact: no one is ever killed (at the time) by a false alarm! Forecasters are much more likely to be condemned for not issuing a warning, thereby missing a storm event that winds up killing someone, than by issuing a warning that turns out to be a false alarm. This is beyond any doubt the primary cause for the overwarning bias. I've argued that one way to reduce or eliminate this bias is to convert to probabilistic warnings. I hear constantly about how and why that won't work, but that's drifting off-point in this blog.
Consider the "desensitization argument": One comment that I hear quoted in the media from time to time is "Oh, we hear tornado warnings all the time, and nothing ever happens!" All the time? Really? I don't think the objective evidence comes anywhere even close to that clearly hyperbolic declaration. In any given location, even in "Tornado Alley", tornado warnings are relatively infrequent. Are people seriously expecting to hit by a tornado every time a tornado warning is issued? Why would people think that? What shortfall is responsible for such a patently absurd expectation? Surely all the weather broadcasters who are complaining about NWS warnings could have done a better job of explaining the reality of the warning challenge to their audiences! Nor am I attempting to make excuses for the NWS - in fact, I believe the accuracy of their warnings certainly could use some improvement. But someone needs to understand just why "the public" has this attitude and start a public information campaign to eliminate it!
This has been a terrible year for weather tragedies: not just tornadoes, but also high winds, floods, hurricanes, etc. Surely people should be thankful when a warning for potentially dangerous weather turns out to be a false alarm! There are hundreds of dead people from storm hazards so far this year, and likely thousands of their friends and families who, if given the option, would prefer that those events had not happened at all. That they had simply been another false alarm. Any of them happily would change places with some whiner grousing about false alarms.
If you choose to take the attitude that so many warnings are false alarms that you can ignore them indefinitely, there's a chance you may be wrong at some point in the future - dead wrong! Not a high probability, though. So you're most likely going to be able to live a long and productive life, complaining about false alarms to the end of your days. Shouldn't you be grateful?
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Stock photography for storm photographers - Part 2
So the landscape for photographers with regard to stock photography agencies has evolved into an exploitative relationship with corporate behemoths. While that might be good for the corporations, it's been bad for the photographers. What's gone on with regard to the niche market associated with storm photography, in particular?
When I began storm chasing, it was a very small "fraternity" (mostly males) that produced an even smaller number of serious photographers with (expensive) high-quality photographic equipment. As late as the late 1990s, there were just a few of us shooting medium-format images of storms. This was the apex of the niche market for storm photography and we all pretty much knew each other - it was a friendly competition, because there were so few involved.
But after the turn of the century, things began to change. Twister flooded the "community of chasers" with hordes of brand-new new chasers who gave little thought to the market for storm images. They were focused on themselves and their notoriety, not the photography market and not even the storms. At about that time, digital cameras were becoming commonplace, including some with relatively high resolution at affordable prices. Within a few years (say, by 2002), there were numerous chasers out there producing relatively high-quality images - often hungry enough for recognition that they would license their images for small licensing fees (even to the point of literally giving away their photographs for nothing!), in exchange for "fame" and personal recognition (worth little or nothing, in reality).
The corporate stock photography giants exploited the mass market of royalty-free and "microstock" images for their corporate "bottom line", where the price of individual images was reduced to very small values, in the interest of generating large corporate sales volumes (but giving back to the photographers only a very small percentage of the sales). Some well-known storm chase photographers participated in this "sell-out" by contributing their "seconds" to these "el cheapo" markets of royalty-free images and microstock. This, combined with the now-numerous chasers, flooded the niche market for storm photographs with inexpensive images of relatively high quality, contributing to a decline of market prices for everyone's photography. A few selfish pricks (I could name names!) among the serious storm photographers contributed their images to this inexpensive market niche, essentially accelerating the overall decline of value associated with storm images, to the point where the originally small niche market now is saturated with relatively inexpensive images. It's become impossible to ask for a reasonable price to license storm images - clients can find inexpensive or even free images with a little searching. You may think it's beneficial for promoting yourself to give images away for little or no value, but you're actually killing off the market value of your photographs, to say nothing of those from other photographers!
Relative newcomers to the storm photography market invariably are willing, more or less, to give away their images for the "credit" offered by image consumers. This "credit" is, of course, worthless! It gives virtually nothing back to photographers for the real costs associated with obtaining their storm images, but that illusion of recognition still seems to be an irresistible offer to the newcomer storm photographer. The result: the bottom has dropped out of the storm stock photography business. Naturally, a small number of self-promoters (again, I could name names!) might still be able to command relatively high prices for their storm images, but the rest of us are shit out of luck! It's become a dog-eat-dog world for storm stock photography. If you're able to make a living at it, you likely have squeezed out those of us who find self-promotion problematic.
Storm photography always was a small market, and it's been saturated by newcomers who evidently haven't thought through the business-related issues in their eagerness to promote themselves and their photographs. The "fame" associated with licensing an image for a low price not only kills off the market for other photographers - it destroys your market, as well as that of others!
UPDATE: I hasten to add that although I sell images at what I believe to be their fair market value, I'm not a pro photographer. Image sales have never accounted for more than a tiny fraction of my income, so I don't depend on image sales to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. Any profits I might have made have gone into supporting my photography habit. Nevertheless, I respect those who are pro photographers enough to refuse to give my images away for peanuts. Since I don't have to sell image licenses at all, I can charge whatever price seems right to me. If buyers don't want to pay that much, they're free to look elsewhere.
When I began storm chasing, it was a very small "fraternity" (mostly males) that produced an even smaller number of serious photographers with (expensive) high-quality photographic equipment. As late as the late 1990s, there were just a few of us shooting medium-format images of storms. This was the apex of the niche market for storm photography and we all pretty much knew each other - it was a friendly competition, because there were so few involved.
But after the turn of the century, things began to change. Twister flooded the "community of chasers" with hordes of brand-new new chasers who gave little thought to the market for storm images. They were focused on themselves and their notoriety, not the photography market and not even the storms. At about that time, digital cameras were becoming commonplace, including some with relatively high resolution at affordable prices. Within a few years (say, by 2002), there were numerous chasers out there producing relatively high-quality images - often hungry enough for recognition that they would license their images for small licensing fees (even to the point of literally giving away their photographs for nothing!), in exchange for "fame" and personal recognition (worth little or nothing, in reality).
The corporate stock photography giants exploited the mass market of royalty-free and "microstock" images for their corporate "bottom line", where the price of individual images was reduced to very small values, in the interest of generating large corporate sales volumes (but giving back to the photographers only a very small percentage of the sales). Some well-known storm chase photographers participated in this "sell-out" by contributing their "seconds" to these "el cheapo" markets of royalty-free images and microstock. This, combined with the now-numerous chasers, flooded the niche market for storm photographs with inexpensive images of relatively high quality, contributing to a decline of market prices for everyone's photography. A few selfish pricks (I could name names!) among the serious storm photographers contributed their images to this inexpensive market niche, essentially accelerating the overall decline of value associated with storm images, to the point where the originally small niche market now is saturated with relatively inexpensive images. It's become impossible to ask for a reasonable price to license storm images - clients can find inexpensive or even free images with a little searching. You may think it's beneficial for promoting yourself to give images away for little or no value, but you're actually killing off the market value of your photographs, to say nothing of those from other photographers!
Relative newcomers to the storm photography market invariably are willing, more or less, to give away their images for the "credit" offered by image consumers. This "credit" is, of course, worthless! It gives virtually nothing back to photographers for the real costs associated with obtaining their storm images, but that illusion of recognition still seems to be an irresistible offer to the newcomer storm photographer. The result: the bottom has dropped out of the storm stock photography business. Naturally, a small number of self-promoters (again, I could name names!) might still be able to command relatively high prices for their storm images, but the rest of us are shit out of luck! It's become a dog-eat-dog world for storm stock photography. If you're able to make a living at it, you likely have squeezed out those of us who find self-promotion problematic.
Storm photography always was a small market, and it's been saturated by newcomers who evidently haven't thought through the business-related issues in their eagerness to promote themselves and their photographs. The "fame" associated with licensing an image for a low price not only kills off the market for other photographers - it destroys your market, as well as that of others!
UPDATE: I hasten to add that although I sell images at what I believe to be their fair market value, I'm not a pro photographer. Image sales have never accounted for more than a tiny fraction of my income, so I don't depend on image sales to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. Any profits I might have made have gone into supporting my photography habit. Nevertheless, I respect those who are pro photographers enough to refuse to give my images away for peanuts. Since I don't have to sell image licenses at all, I can charge whatever price seems right to me. If buyers don't want to pay that much, they're free to look elsewhere.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Stock photography for storm photographers - Part 1
Back in the latter parts of the last century (mid-1990s), after years of occasionally licensing the use of my storm photography on my own, I was invited to join the stock company managed by Tony Stone. This was quite an honor, actually, since Tony Stone Images (TSI) was one of the most prestigious image stock photography agencies in the world. This promised to transform my storm photography into an operation that could help pay off the very real costs incurred by storm chasing, and perhaps even generate a modest profit, with which I could maintain and upgrade my equipment. It was around this time that I formed my own Oklahoma corporation, Chuck Doswell's Outdoor Images, Inc., which has become C. Doswell Enterprises, Inc.
Unfortunately, shortly after I began to submit images to TSI, they were bought out by what was then the start-up corporate giant, Getty Images. Tony Stone himself likely was paid handsomely from the sale, but we photographers who were bought out had no say in the matter. My original contract with TSI rant a scant two pages, as I recall. After TSI's takeover by Getty, all the former Tony Stone photographers were offered a new contract to sign, with a very clear black-and-white decision to make. It was about 27 pages long, mostly in unintelligible legalese (lawyer jargon). That sent a very clear message to me! The particulars of the contract offer by Getty were non-negotiable, which was another unmistakable signal! Anyway, I didn't sign. For five years after that, by the terms of the buy-out (about which I had no say, remember) Getty had exclusive rights to market those images of mine that they paid for when they bought out TSI, so I couldn't sell those particular images on my own. That time has long passed, of course.
It was clear to me from the start that Getty Images wasn't a business partner with its "content providers" (photographers), as TSI had been all along. A business partner negotiates agreements (contracts), rather than dictating terms. Instead, Getty was exploiting the contributed images to gain further market share, with aggressive license fee reductions to drive out competitors (or force them to merge with Getty). When I started with TSI, the photographers received 50% of any sales with TSI - a so-called "50% split". With time, Getty cut the photographer's split down to 30% (last I heard), or even less for some sales. Reducing the pay-out to photographers increased their ability to leverage their market share. Typical sleazy corporate business tactics. Getty sold some of my images for $1, so my take from the "sale" (more like a giveaway) would be 30 cents!! Plus, they bought out other stock companies, such as Visuals Unlimited (VU) Sadly, when VU was bought out by Getty, I had a contract with VU for a 50% split. When they became "partners" with Getty (i.e., they sold out!), then my split from VU became 50% of the 30% from Getty - that is, 15%! Getty had reached out and bit my ass again, even though I had never signed a contract with them!!
I still receive occasional checks from Getty and Visuals Unlimited for image sales from past submissions, but they amount to a mere shadow of what I used to receive. I certainly have no plans to submit more images to VU (or Getty). The stock companies siphon off the profits and give the photographers (now referred to as "content providers") whatever percentage the companies want to, and no photographer can do anything about it. Some ex-Getty photographers tried to resist at first, and formed the Stock Artists Alliance (of which I was a charter member) to try to stand up to the Getty steamroller. They basically failed in that effort, and I finally stopped renewing my SAA membership in 2009. There was no point. SAA got some trivial concessions but all the important matters (the split, for example) were simply non-negotiable and the SAA was powerless to do anything to change that.
The major stock companies, Getty and Corbis, have swallowed up most of the small-time stock photography operations. In the process, the former relationship between photographers and their agents has been transformed into one of exploited "contract workers" for a giant corporation. It might still be possible for photographers in general to make a reasonable living by stock photography - I have no direct knowledge of that - but I seriously doubt if anyone truly making a reasonable income by licensing photographs can only be working for these corporate giants. During recent times, my income from stock image sales has declined to become just a tiny part of the income for my corporation, so I had to branch out into other things, such as scientific consulting. Hence, the name change for my company.
Next time, I'll discuss how the specific market for storm stock photographers has evolved.
Unfortunately, shortly after I began to submit images to TSI, they were bought out by what was then the start-up corporate giant, Getty Images. Tony Stone himself likely was paid handsomely from the sale, but we photographers who were bought out had no say in the matter. My original contract with TSI rant a scant two pages, as I recall. After TSI's takeover by Getty, all the former Tony Stone photographers were offered a new contract to sign, with a very clear black-and-white decision to make. It was about 27 pages long, mostly in unintelligible legalese (lawyer jargon). That sent a very clear message to me! The particulars of the contract offer by Getty were non-negotiable, which was another unmistakable signal! Anyway, I didn't sign. For five years after that, by the terms of the buy-out (about which I had no say, remember) Getty had exclusive rights to market those images of mine that they paid for when they bought out TSI, so I couldn't sell those particular images on my own. That time has long passed, of course.
It was clear to me from the start that Getty Images wasn't a business partner with its "content providers" (photographers), as TSI had been all along. A business partner negotiates agreements (contracts), rather than dictating terms. Instead, Getty was exploiting the contributed images to gain further market share, with aggressive license fee reductions to drive out competitors (or force them to merge with Getty). When I started with TSI, the photographers received 50% of any sales with TSI - a so-called "50% split". With time, Getty cut the photographer's split down to 30% (last I heard), or even less for some sales. Reducing the pay-out to photographers increased their ability to leverage their market share. Typical sleazy corporate business tactics. Getty sold some of my images for $1, so my take from the "sale" (more like a giveaway) would be 30 cents!! Plus, they bought out other stock companies, such as Visuals Unlimited (VU) Sadly, when VU was bought out by Getty, I had a contract with VU for a 50% split. When they became "partners" with Getty (i.e., they sold out!), then my split from VU became 50% of the 30% from Getty - that is, 15%! Getty had reached out and bit my ass again, even though I had never signed a contract with them!!
I still receive occasional checks from Getty and Visuals Unlimited for image sales from past submissions, but they amount to a mere shadow of what I used to receive. I certainly have no plans to submit more images to VU (or Getty). The stock companies siphon off the profits and give the photographers (now referred to as "content providers") whatever percentage the companies want to, and no photographer can do anything about it. Some ex-Getty photographers tried to resist at first, and formed the Stock Artists Alliance (of which I was a charter member) to try to stand up to the Getty steamroller. They basically failed in that effort, and I finally stopped renewing my SAA membership in 2009. There was no point. SAA got some trivial concessions but all the important matters (the split, for example) were simply non-negotiable and the SAA was powerless to do anything to change that.
The major stock companies, Getty and Corbis, have swallowed up most of the small-time stock photography operations. In the process, the former relationship between photographers and their agents has been transformed into one of exploited "contract workers" for a giant corporation. It might still be possible for photographers in general to make a reasonable living by stock photography - I have no direct knowledge of that - but I seriously doubt if anyone truly making a reasonable income by licensing photographs can only be working for these corporate giants. During recent times, my income from stock image sales has declined to become just a tiny part of the income for my corporation, so I had to branch out into other things, such as scientific consulting. Hence, the name change for my company.
Next time, I'll discuss how the specific market for storm stock photographers has evolved.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Magnifying a tragedy
A terrible tragedy caused by a severe storm has occurred at the Indiana State Fair. You can watch a horrifying video of the event here, and read my colleague's commentary. I agree completely with him that these disasters are preventable, and some of us have been predicting these 'large venue' weather-related events for decades. Anyone familiar with the history of severe weather must come to the conclusion that it's inevitable that a really bad storm will intersect with a large venue event and create a truly large, devastating tragedy. This and several other similar recent events associated with concert stage collapses are just the warm-ups, unfortunately. One day, a significant tornado will hit a crowded 'large venue' - it's just a matter of time and the clock continues to tick. There have been some notable near misses and it's simply inevitable, even though no one (besides a handful of us) seems to care.
What magnifies this Indiana State Fair tragedy is that, like recent similar events, no one will learn anything from it! The whole mess will be papered over as an unfortunate "Act of God" - since god can't be sued and apparently won't be testifying in his own defense, there will be no assignment of responsibility for these deaths and injuries. The promoters will collect their insurance money for the damages and won't be called to account for any failures in preparation for a severe storm. Almost certainly, the venue operator had no plan in place to respond to a threatening storm and the people attending the event were not made aware of any actions they could have taken to protect themselves. If the promoters had a plan in place, and people were killed by a storm anyway, then they could be sued for having an inadequate plan! It's actually better and less risky for the promoters in our twisted, litigation-obsessed society to have no plan at all, and write it off as god's mysterious ways than it is to have a plan that may still result in casualties.
The losers, naturally, are the people affected by these tragedies - the people who pay for the tickets to attend the event, who buy the hot dogs and beer at inflated prices, and who suffer the consequences for the absence of preparation by greedy promoters and venue operators. The families and friends of the casualties also have to deal with the loss of their friends and/or loved ones. The economic and human cost of these events is never known fully.
Stage sets have no construction codes (UPDATE: see comments) - they're not designed to resist the wind and so are always vulnerable to collapse even in a relatively modest storm gust - perhaps even less than that 58 mph that qualifies it as "officially" severe. Venue operators are not required to make any preparations to respond in the case of an approaching severe storm. The show must go on - after all, profits are at stake! - no matter what might actually be looming on the weather horizon. These large venues often don't have anywhere for the crowds to go in the event of an approaching severe storm - no shelters. All they can do is cancel the event and evacuate. Just imagine thousands of people rushing to their cars in a panic, and then creating instant gridlock in the parking area as a tornado bears down on them. It's a terrifying thought to entertain but the worst part is that it's a very distinct possibility someday! You just can't evacuate thousands of people in the relatively few minutes warning you may have before a severe storm hits. The time to cancel the event is always well before the storm hits - and no forecaster can guarantee that a storm actually will hit the facility very far in advance, which is what venue operators likely will demand if they're going to risk losing money by canceling the event before the storm is riding up their backsides!
This is a no-win situation for everyone, it seems, except the venue operators. They call it an "Act of God" and walk away with some damage they have to spend their insurance money to repair. Just how much do we in American society value human life? Pious claims about that notwithstanding, it seems to me that all one needs to do is review the budget for the Indiana State Fair concert that wound up with five fatalities (Update: now it is seven!) and you can see pretty clearly how much each life was worth to them!
And we all bear some responsibility for this. Most people will just shake their heads in sadness and vow to pray for the unfortunate victims and their families - apparently to the same god on whom they blamed the disaster in the first place! No grass-roots movement to demand safety standards with real substance for large-event venue operators is likely to arise. Why? Perhaps it's widespread apathy. Perhaps it's an inability to consider that the next tragedy could happen to us, not someone else. Perhaps it's the political clout of large-event venue operators to fight successfully against any mandatory preparations for severe storms.
I'm not a weather forecaster by trade, but I can make a prediction here about which I'm pretty confident: the important lessons from the Indiana State Fair disaster won't be learned, no one will be held accountable for those deaths, and things will roll along to the next severe weather-related disaster at a large venue. Maybe if the next one is a really big disaster, someone might actually be moved to do something substantial to prevent more of them. But I'm not optimistic, even then. After all, there are those profits to be made ...
What magnifies this Indiana State Fair tragedy is that, like recent similar events, no one will learn anything from it! The whole mess will be papered over as an unfortunate "Act of God" - since god can't be sued and apparently won't be testifying in his own defense, there will be no assignment of responsibility for these deaths and injuries. The promoters will collect their insurance money for the damages and won't be called to account for any failures in preparation for a severe storm. Almost certainly, the venue operator had no plan in place to respond to a threatening storm and the people attending the event were not made aware of any actions they could have taken to protect themselves. If the promoters had a plan in place, and people were killed by a storm anyway, then they could be sued for having an inadequate plan! It's actually better and less risky for the promoters in our twisted, litigation-obsessed society to have no plan at all, and write it off as god's mysterious ways than it is to have a plan that may still result in casualties.
The losers, naturally, are the people affected by these tragedies - the people who pay for the tickets to attend the event, who buy the hot dogs and beer at inflated prices, and who suffer the consequences for the absence of preparation by greedy promoters and venue operators. The families and friends of the casualties also have to deal with the loss of their friends and/or loved ones. The economic and human cost of these events is never known fully.
Stage sets have no construction codes (UPDATE: see comments) - they're not designed to resist the wind and so are always vulnerable to collapse even in a relatively modest storm gust - perhaps even less than that 58 mph that qualifies it as "officially" severe. Venue operators are not required to make any preparations to respond in the case of an approaching severe storm. The show must go on - after all, profits are at stake! - no matter what might actually be looming on the weather horizon. These large venues often don't have anywhere for the crowds to go in the event of an approaching severe storm - no shelters. All they can do is cancel the event and evacuate. Just imagine thousands of people rushing to their cars in a panic, and then creating instant gridlock in the parking area as a tornado bears down on them. It's a terrifying thought to entertain but the worst part is that it's a very distinct possibility someday! You just can't evacuate thousands of people in the relatively few minutes warning you may have before a severe storm hits. The time to cancel the event is always well before the storm hits - and no forecaster can guarantee that a storm actually will hit the facility very far in advance, which is what venue operators likely will demand if they're going to risk losing money by canceling the event before the storm is riding up their backsides!
This is a no-win situation for everyone, it seems, except the venue operators. They call it an "Act of God" and walk away with some damage they have to spend their insurance money to repair. Just how much do we in American society value human life? Pious claims about that notwithstanding, it seems to me that all one needs to do is review the budget for the Indiana State Fair concert that wound up with five fatalities (Update: now it is seven!) and you can see pretty clearly how much each life was worth to them!
And we all bear some responsibility for this. Most people will just shake their heads in sadness and vow to pray for the unfortunate victims and their families - apparently to the same god on whom they blamed the disaster in the first place! No grass-roots movement to demand safety standards with real substance for large-event venue operators is likely to arise. Why? Perhaps it's widespread apathy. Perhaps it's an inability to consider that the next tragedy could happen to us, not someone else. Perhaps it's the political clout of large-event venue operators to fight successfully against any mandatory preparations for severe storms.
I'm not a weather forecaster by trade, but I can make a prediction here about which I'm pretty confident: the important lessons from the Indiana State Fair disaster won't be learned, no one will be held accountable for those deaths, and things will roll along to the next severe weather-related disaster at a large venue. Maybe if the next one is a really big disaster, someone might actually be moved to do something substantial to prevent more of them. But I'm not optimistic, even then. After all, there are those profits to be made ...
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Things as they are ...
I was discussing some issues regarding tornado preparedness with my wife, Vickie, this morning. She was describing some problems she knew about where incompetent, power-hungry nitwits had kissed asses to obtain their way, and thereby managed to render hopelessly inadequate certain storm preparedness levels in a place where many lives would be at stake should they ever be hit by a storm. This topic had been brought up in some email correspondence she'd had with a friend of mine, This friend of mine has a resume of qualifications that any sensible person should be eager to add to their staff, but he inexplicably has trouble getting prospective employers even to return his phone calls and emails. He's not my only friend with this sort of problem, and it truly saddens me when qualified, competent people are not given the opportunity to contribute while nitwits and the mediocre sit in their rightful place.
This got me to mulling over something that's bothered me all my life. When I was a boy, I imagined that all the strange, contradictory, and outright stupid things I saw around me might begin to make more sense, once I got older and could learn about the whys and wherefores about things as they are. My imagination was to prove to be totally wrong! As I've grown older, and indeed have learned more about how things really are, for the vast majority of instances, my lack of respect for things as they are has increased well beyond what it was when I was a boy! For the most part, things are worse than I imagined!! This is a pervasive problem that's everywhere - schools, government, the private sector - everywhere!! There's no paradise to be found anywhere, because all organizations are run by fallible, often stupid, and unqualified people!
Call me a cynic, if it makes you feel better. The difference between me and a cynic is that I've never completely given up hope that things as they are could be transformed into things as they should be. In my view of how things should be, incompetent nitwits should be struggling to find work, whereas the most competent, qualified people should be filling all positions of importance. Policies and processes within organizations shouldn't be driven by office politics and petty human jealousies, but rather reflect the realities they're intended to serve. Real accomplishments should be given their due, whereas sham accomplishments with no reality behind them other than someone's ego should never be given any significance. Awards recognizing performance should be going to those who truly have earned them, not to pretenders who didn't do anything to earn them other that to find the right ass to kiss, or learn the gamemanship in their organization.
O.K., call me an idealistic dreamer, if it makes you feel better. It always seemed to me that if I give in to cynicism, then the worst possible outcome results: I become what I've always despised. I become one of those organizational naysayers who resists every possible change because they're convinced it wouldn't work, or it messes with their power trip in the office, or it makes them look bad if policies actually need changing. Cynics are simply disillusioned idealists, who wind up contributing to the very aspects of things as they are that caused them to become cynical in the first place.
I'm not a cynic, but a realist. I know how things are in situations that matter to me - learning "the rules" (the real rules, which don't necessarily match what's down on paper) is an adaptive strategy that has always been helpful. I'm not usually in a position to make the rules, but it always seemed to me that if I wanted to accomplish something, I had to understand the rules well enough to find work-arounds, if possible. By being willing to pull no punches in pointing out things as they are, I've been in trouble of one sort or another many times during my professional career. So be it. As I discussed in a recent blog, I make no apologies for that!
To the extent that you have the energy and the will, you should never give up working for positive change, no matter how many times you're beaten down by the bastards who are responsible for things as they are. If you truly wish someday to see things as they should be, you should never, ever give up that hope. Don't sacrifice your principles for the dross of "job advancement" or the fear of vengeance from the coneheads. I'm over 65 and I don't believe I've ever given up any of my principles for the sake of some prize the system could offer me, or by the threat of some punishment. I certainly haven't succeeded in every battle I fought, but I've never given up the hope that someone smarter than me, with more energy and perhaps a key insight, can finally achieve those things I've failed to accomplish.
This got me to mulling over something that's bothered me all my life. When I was a boy, I imagined that all the strange, contradictory, and outright stupid things I saw around me might begin to make more sense, once I got older and could learn about the whys and wherefores about things as they are. My imagination was to prove to be totally wrong! As I've grown older, and indeed have learned more about how things really are, for the vast majority of instances, my lack of respect for things as they are has increased well beyond what it was when I was a boy! For the most part, things are worse than I imagined!! This is a pervasive problem that's everywhere - schools, government, the private sector - everywhere!! There's no paradise to be found anywhere, because all organizations are run by fallible, often stupid, and unqualified people!
Call me a cynic, if it makes you feel better. The difference between me and a cynic is that I've never completely given up hope that things as they are could be transformed into things as they should be. In my view of how things should be, incompetent nitwits should be struggling to find work, whereas the most competent, qualified people should be filling all positions of importance. Policies and processes within organizations shouldn't be driven by office politics and petty human jealousies, but rather reflect the realities they're intended to serve. Real accomplishments should be given their due, whereas sham accomplishments with no reality behind them other than someone's ego should never be given any significance. Awards recognizing performance should be going to those who truly have earned them, not to pretenders who didn't do anything to earn them other that to find the right ass to kiss, or learn the gamemanship in their organization.
O.K., call me an idealistic dreamer, if it makes you feel better. It always seemed to me that if I give in to cynicism, then the worst possible outcome results: I become what I've always despised. I become one of those organizational naysayers who resists every possible change because they're convinced it wouldn't work, or it messes with their power trip in the office, or it makes them look bad if policies actually need changing. Cynics are simply disillusioned idealists, who wind up contributing to the very aspects of things as they are that caused them to become cynical in the first place.
I'm not a cynic, but a realist. I know how things are in situations that matter to me - learning "the rules" (the real rules, which don't necessarily match what's down on paper) is an adaptive strategy that has always been helpful. I'm not usually in a position to make the rules, but it always seemed to me that if I wanted to accomplish something, I had to understand the rules well enough to find work-arounds, if possible. By being willing to pull no punches in pointing out things as they are, I've been in trouble of one sort or another many times during my professional career. So be it. As I discussed in a recent blog, I make no apologies for that!
To the extent that you have the energy and the will, you should never give up working for positive change, no matter how many times you're beaten down by the bastards who are responsible for things as they are. If you truly wish someday to see things as they should be, you should never, ever give up that hope. Don't sacrifice your principles for the dross of "job advancement" or the fear of vengeance from the coneheads. I'm over 65 and I don't believe I've ever given up any of my principles for the sake of some prize the system could offer me, or by the threat of some punishment. I certainly haven't succeeded in every battle I fought, but I've never given up the hope that someone smarter than me, with more energy and perhaps a key insight, can finally achieve those things I've failed to accomplish.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Death by ignorance
My career in meteorology began with the apparently simple goal of becoming a severe storms meteorologist. Along the way, I began to study not just the meteorology of severe storms but also the statistics of specific severe storm events, including the fatalities associated with each storm. I’ve learned that understanding why fatalities occur isn’t just about the storms and the forecast. We meteorologists could issue pretty much perfect forecasts and yet people still will die as a result of storms when they hit populated areas. Why is that?
It’s fatalities that justify the cost associated with studying severe storms. Society invests its resources in our research with the hope that increasing our understanding of storms will result in improved forecasts, in turn resulting in reductions of fatalities associated with storms. Perhaps there’s even some hope of mitigating the damage such storms produce, as well. In my examination of storms and the fatalities they produce, I’ve discovered that a significant fraction of storm fatalities arise from ignorance! Not all fatalities, to be sure – there are other factors that cause fatalities: poverty, physical handicaps, age, etc. But I believe the majority of deaths are directly or indirectly related to ignorance. People drive into tornadoes. People drive into rising flood waters. People ignore severe weather warnings. Why? In part, the answer seems to be ignorance, in one way or another.
There are two types of ignorance: the first is simply a lack of knowledge. Everyone has gaps in their knowledge for the simple reason that no one knows everything. But there’s another type of ignorance: willful ignorance. This is when someone has a good reason to know something, because that knowledge could save their lives, but they simply choose not to learn. This willful ignorance has a synonym: stupidity.
If you live in a mobile home in central Oklahoma, you surely must also know two things. First, violent tornadoes occur regularly in central Oklahoma. Second, your chances of surviving a violent tornado in a mobile home are about one-twentieth as high as if you live in an ordinary frame home. You may not know point #2, but if you live in a mobile home, this is information you certainly should know. Your mobile home is a death trap in a tornado and your ignorance of the facts could cost you and your loved ones your lives! Should you choose not to learn these facts, you could wind up as a statistic. The mobile home manufacturing industry has been successful in blocking state legislation requiring mobile home park operators to provide shelters – this means they’re putting the lives of mobile homeowners at risk for the sake of their profits!
If you live in Massachusetts, which has a much lower frequency of violent tornadoes than central Oklahoma, you might feel justified in not learning about tornado hazards. Unfortunately, 90 people died on 09 June 1953 when a violent tornado hit Worcester, Massachusetts – likely many of them died as a result of this willful ignorance: low frequency is simply not the same as a zero frequency. Why be prepared to take precautions if the chances of being hit by a violent tornado are so low? Because you still might wind up in the path of a violent tornado! This complacency in the face of reality is another example of ignorance that can be (and has been) fatal!
On 03 May 1999, a violent tornado hit central Oklahoma. In a FEMA study, it was found that many of the homes in the path of the tornado were poorly-constructed, thereby sustaining much more damage than had they been built soundly. Equivalent findings have emerged from similar studies of the 2011 tornadoes - the assessment of homes in the path of the 27 April 2011 tornado that hit Tuscaloosa, AL showed that many of them were flimsy and not much more protection than a mobile home. How many of those homeowners had thought to check the structural integrity of their homes when they bought them? Most homeowners don't know anything (i.e., they're ignorant) of the issues associated with structural integrity of their homes. Chances are they're far more concerned about the bathroom fixtures and the kitchen cabinets than they are about the attachment of the walls to the foundation or the connection between the roof and the walls. But in a tornado, those structural issues can be the difference between life and death in that home. Can you really be uncaring about your home's structural integrity when your life and those of your loved ones are at risk? This recent study is not the first to point out the flimsiness of most frame homes in America. The way to change this is via changes to the building codes in our communities, but the homebuilders have been effective at blocking any changes to the very lax building codes that exist throughout the tornado-prone parts of the US. We learned in 1999 on 03 May that poorly-constructed (but not necessarily low-priced!) homes in central Oklahoma likely resulted in fatalities. This begs the question: are we learning nothing from these studies? Can we not implement policies to do something about this shoddy construction that is so pervasive in the tornado-prone areas of the US? Flimsy homes mean an increased amount of flying debris in a tornado, which increases the degree of damage caused by that tornado. It also magnifies the risk to human life from flying debris (one of the biggest causes of death and injury in tornadoes).
If meteorologists choose to accept the challenge to put their understanding to use in saving lives, it’s not just about putting out an accurate forecast with useful lead time. It’s also about encouraging our society to take advantage of what we’ve learned about how people are killed in severe storms. And our society can’t just ignore what they’re being told. People in our society need to accept their personal responsibility to choose to do something about their ignorance, at the very least in matters where their lives can be at risk!
It’s frustrating to be able to anticipate tragic events in the future and yet be powerless to prevent those tragedies. History is the key to the future, and the history of severe storms makes it clear that there will be an increasing risk from severe weather as a result of urban sprawl and more recreational use of areas prone to such storms. The tornadoes of 2011 have inflicted horrific fatality counts, far beyond those of recent history. Unfortunately, some of us realized well before the events of April and May of 2011 that there was no reason to believe that our good luck would continue forever. Events of 2011 have proven us to be correct in our forecasts, but that's small consolation for the disasters we’ve seen. More of the same is in our future if we choose to continue our ignorance.
It’s fatalities that justify the cost associated with studying severe storms. Society invests its resources in our research with the hope that increasing our understanding of storms will result in improved forecasts, in turn resulting in reductions of fatalities associated with storms. Perhaps there’s even some hope of mitigating the damage such storms produce, as well. In my examination of storms and the fatalities they produce, I’ve discovered that a significant fraction of storm fatalities arise from ignorance! Not all fatalities, to be sure – there are other factors that cause fatalities: poverty, physical handicaps, age, etc. But I believe the majority of deaths are directly or indirectly related to ignorance. People drive into tornadoes. People drive into rising flood waters. People ignore severe weather warnings. Why? In part, the answer seems to be ignorance, in one way or another.
There are two types of ignorance: the first is simply a lack of knowledge. Everyone has gaps in their knowledge for the simple reason that no one knows everything. But there’s another type of ignorance: willful ignorance. This is when someone has a good reason to know something, because that knowledge could save their lives, but they simply choose not to learn. This willful ignorance has a synonym: stupidity.
If you live in a mobile home in central Oklahoma, you surely must also know two things. First, violent tornadoes occur regularly in central Oklahoma. Second, your chances of surviving a violent tornado in a mobile home are about one-twentieth as high as if you live in an ordinary frame home. You may not know point #2, but if you live in a mobile home, this is information you certainly should know. Your mobile home is a death trap in a tornado and your ignorance of the facts could cost you and your loved ones your lives! Should you choose not to learn these facts, you could wind up as a statistic. The mobile home manufacturing industry has been successful in blocking state legislation requiring mobile home park operators to provide shelters – this means they’re putting the lives of mobile homeowners at risk for the sake of their profits!
If you live in Massachusetts, which has a much lower frequency of violent tornadoes than central Oklahoma, you might feel justified in not learning about tornado hazards. Unfortunately, 90 people died on 09 June 1953 when a violent tornado hit Worcester, Massachusetts – likely many of them died as a result of this willful ignorance: low frequency is simply not the same as a zero frequency. Why be prepared to take precautions if the chances of being hit by a violent tornado are so low? Because you still might wind up in the path of a violent tornado! This complacency in the face of reality is another example of ignorance that can be (and has been) fatal!
On 03 May 1999, a violent tornado hit central Oklahoma. In a FEMA study, it was found that many of the homes in the path of the tornado were poorly-constructed, thereby sustaining much more damage than had they been built soundly. Equivalent findings have emerged from similar studies of the 2011 tornadoes - the assessment of homes in the path of the 27 April 2011 tornado that hit Tuscaloosa, AL showed that many of them were flimsy and not much more protection than a mobile home. How many of those homeowners had thought to check the structural integrity of their homes when they bought them? Most homeowners don't know anything (i.e., they're ignorant) of the issues associated with structural integrity of their homes. Chances are they're far more concerned about the bathroom fixtures and the kitchen cabinets than they are about the attachment of the walls to the foundation or the connection between the roof and the walls. But in a tornado, those structural issues can be the difference between life and death in that home. Can you really be uncaring about your home's structural integrity when your life and those of your loved ones are at risk? This recent study is not the first to point out the flimsiness of most frame homes in America. The way to change this is via changes to the building codes in our communities, but the homebuilders have been effective at blocking any changes to the very lax building codes that exist throughout the tornado-prone parts of the US. We learned in 1999 on 03 May that poorly-constructed (but not necessarily low-priced!) homes in central Oklahoma likely resulted in fatalities. This begs the question: are we learning nothing from these studies? Can we not implement policies to do something about this shoddy construction that is so pervasive in the tornado-prone areas of the US? Flimsy homes mean an increased amount of flying debris in a tornado, which increases the degree of damage caused by that tornado. It also magnifies the risk to human life from flying debris (one of the biggest causes of death and injury in tornadoes).
If meteorologists choose to accept the challenge to put their understanding to use in saving lives, it’s not just about putting out an accurate forecast with useful lead time. It’s also about encouraging our society to take advantage of what we’ve learned about how people are killed in severe storms. And our society can’t just ignore what they’re being told. People in our society need to accept their personal responsibility to choose to do something about their ignorance, at the very least in matters where their lives can be at risk!
It’s frustrating to be able to anticipate tragic events in the future and yet be powerless to prevent those tragedies. History is the key to the future, and the history of severe storms makes it clear that there will be an increasing risk from severe weather as a result of urban sprawl and more recreational use of areas prone to such storms. The tornadoes of 2011 have inflicted horrific fatality counts, far beyond those of recent history. Unfortunately, some of us realized well before the events of April and May of 2011 that there was no reason to believe that our good luck would continue forever. Events of 2011 have proven us to be correct in our forecasts, but that's small consolation for the disasters we’ve seen. More of the same is in our future if we choose to continue our ignorance.
Another atmospheric tease ...
In case you're unaware, Oklahoma and Texas are experiencing record-breaking heat and drought in this summer of 2011. The lack of precipitation goes back to last year. The rain mostly keeps on missing us here in central Oklahoma. It's been worse to our southwest, if that's any consolation (not! - their misery doesn't make ours any easier to take!).
Tonight, I was preoccupied in the evening and missed the development of storms to our west. They were charging at us and we actually had a chance for meaningful rainfall - but the storms headed our way fizzled, only to re-develop to our east after the line had passed through here with only light sprinkles to show for it. A similar scenario occurred last night: storms all around but none of substance here! As a meteorologist, I know that the processes that result in weather are highly nonlinear and essentially random. Eventually, I know, we'll get some significant rain. But the feelings of frustration over being teased with nearby rainfall remind me of the 4 years I spent in Longmont, CO.
In Longmont, it almost never rains in the warm season. Storms that develop over the mountains typically dissipate by the time they get close to Longmont, only to re-develop to the east. And Longmont is between the Cheyenne Ridge and the Palmer Divide, so storms might fire north or south of us on those topographic features, but rarely near enough to Longmont to help us. In the neighborhood where we lived in Longmont, every yard (including ours) had Kentucky bluegrass! The only way to maintain such a lawn is to water it most every day - it almost never rains there in the warm season, after all. I spent many an hour maintaining that damned sprinkler system some previous owner had installed and never felt good about it. What a stupid thing - to grow a water-thirsty type of grass in the semi-arid rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains! Almost as stupid as a golf course in Nevada or Arizona!! Buffalo grass (a drought-resistant native grass) would make more sense.
Here in Oklahoma, our Bermuda grass simply goes dormant when in a drought. It only takes rain to bring it back to life. But the drought has other impacts - the dry soil cracks and pulls away from concrete foundations (and our pool sides), which undermines those structures and invites damage. So even here, the drought has more consequences than a brown lawn! And I'm struggling to keep flowers, shrubs, and the vegetable garden hanging on by a thread with waterings every other day.
Life in the interior of a continent inevitably involves weather extremes. That's what continental climates are like. When there are few severe storms in Oklahoma, there's likely to be a drought. Most people don't realize that most severe storms actually are a positive thing owing to the mostly beneficial rainfall they bring. Some areas to our east have experienced flooding, as storms have frequently developed near us only to move eastward away from us, without much rain here. Interstate-35 seems to be coincidentally located on a climatological dividing line!
As I await the eventual relief (which may be "sooner" - pun intended - or later!), I have to acknowledge this alternation between feast and famine is characteristic of these plains. The weather here is almost never "normal" - normal is just the average of extremes, here (and in most places). The range of extremes on the plains make their climate a harsh one in which to live. Our lifestyles often fail to recognize that reality. Everything has a price, it seems, and when the natural balance swings toward hostility to those lifestyle elements that depend on having a benign climate, that brings home how tough it can be to live here. In a strange way, it's a big part of what appeals to me about living on the US plains. Even if you want to, it's tough to ignore the weather here for long! It'll flat reach out and remind you - in a way you just can't ignore!!
Tonight, I was preoccupied in the evening and missed the development of storms to our west. They were charging at us and we actually had a chance for meaningful rainfall - but the storms headed our way fizzled, only to re-develop to our east after the line had passed through here with only light sprinkles to show for it. A similar scenario occurred last night: storms all around but none of substance here! As a meteorologist, I know that the processes that result in weather are highly nonlinear and essentially random. Eventually, I know, we'll get some significant rain. But the feelings of frustration over being teased with nearby rainfall remind me of the 4 years I spent in Longmont, CO.
In Longmont, it almost never rains in the warm season. Storms that develop over the mountains typically dissipate by the time they get close to Longmont, only to re-develop to the east. And Longmont is between the Cheyenne Ridge and the Palmer Divide, so storms might fire north or south of us on those topographic features, but rarely near enough to Longmont to help us. In the neighborhood where we lived in Longmont, every yard (including ours) had Kentucky bluegrass! The only way to maintain such a lawn is to water it most every day - it almost never rains there in the warm season, after all. I spent many an hour maintaining that damned sprinkler system some previous owner had installed and never felt good about it. What a stupid thing - to grow a water-thirsty type of grass in the semi-arid rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains! Almost as stupid as a golf course in Nevada or Arizona!! Buffalo grass (a drought-resistant native grass) would make more sense.
Here in Oklahoma, our Bermuda grass simply goes dormant when in a drought. It only takes rain to bring it back to life. But the drought has other impacts - the dry soil cracks and pulls away from concrete foundations (and our pool sides), which undermines those structures and invites damage. So even here, the drought has more consequences than a brown lawn! And I'm struggling to keep flowers, shrubs, and the vegetable garden hanging on by a thread with waterings every other day.
Life in the interior of a continent inevitably involves weather extremes. That's what continental climates are like. When there are few severe storms in Oklahoma, there's likely to be a drought. Most people don't realize that most severe storms actually are a positive thing owing to the mostly beneficial rainfall they bring. Some areas to our east have experienced flooding, as storms have frequently developed near us only to move eastward away from us, without much rain here. Interstate-35 seems to be coincidentally located on a climatological dividing line!
As I await the eventual relief (which may be "sooner" - pun intended - or later!), I have to acknowledge this alternation between feast and famine is characteristic of these plains. The weather here is almost never "normal" - normal is just the average of extremes, here (and in most places). The range of extremes on the plains make their climate a harsh one in which to live. Our lifestyles often fail to recognize that reality. Everything has a price, it seems, and when the natural balance swings toward hostility to those lifestyle elements that depend on having a benign climate, that brings home how tough it can be to live here. In a strange way, it's a big part of what appeals to me about living on the US plains. Even if you want to, it's tough to ignore the weather here for long! It'll flat reach out and remind you - in a way you just can't ignore!!
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The truth can hurt!
Recently, the consequences of telling the truth as one sees it were made evident in a personnel decision of which I've become aware. A person whose name I'll not give here has had a reputation of being outspoken, including being critical of decisions made by the organization for which s/he works. This has never been a formula for rapid advancement, as I've seen several times during the course of my professional life. My colleague was passed over for a position for which s/he truly was most qualified - of course, the real reason for that decision is prejudice against her/him for being outspoken. This is not the first time this has happened to a colleague!
To put this in perspective, let me tell something of my own story. When I was in high school, I ran afoul of "management" for being a critic of the school in a public medium. For this "sin" I was called in to the office, dressed down, and tasked with writing a public apology. I wrote my apology in such a way that it was a non-apologetic apology, something no one in the school administration apparently noticed (or if they did, they decided it was sufficient, anyway). I never have had any respect for arbitrary authority figures (those in a position they believe should command respect simply because of the authority of the position itself), although I find it easy to respect those who have earned respect!
From that point on, I made a decision about my future: I wanted to get to a position where I could say freely what I thought without regard for recriminations. I realized that having a doctorate was something that, once earned, couldn't be rescinded. Being a contributing scientist put me in a position where my obligations and commitment could be directed primarily to the science, and not to any organization for which I worked. Once I graduated with my doctorate, I embarked on a career in which I believed (and still believe) that it's my duty to speak the truth as I see it. From the start, I was outspoken, even before I achieved any status on the basis of my scientific publications. My policy has been simple - if I have to choose between saying what I think and sticking to my organization's "party line" then that's a no-brainer.
During much of my professional career, I've had people who supported me precisely because I was speaking the truth as I saw it. This has included folks who believed as I did but who were fearful of the consequences if they said what I was saying. I became something of a spokesman for those in "the system" who were unable to speak for themselves without fear of negative consequences. My version of John Paul Jones' famous saying, "Damn the consequences! Full speed ahead!" had consequences, of course. But those consequences were minor, and I think the reason for the modesty of those consequences was the support of my scientific colleagues (including some of my organizational managers), who valued my work and my honest opinion.
Many of the things I believe to be true could be wrong, of course. If I'm wrong, I expect someone to challenge what I say and to show me the error of my thinking in a convincing way. What I get, for the most part, is people thinking I'm a know-it-all, or people who fail to challenge me because they lack the courage to say what they think to my face. I dispute the accusation that I think I know it all, so I challenge anyone who thinks I'm wrong to confront me directly and explain why they think I'm wrong. Then we can both gain something from the confrontation, even if neither of us change our minds about the issue in dispute. And my mind can be changed by a sufficiently convincing argument, although I'm not going to roll over and concede just because you think I'm wrong!
As for people who lack the courage to challenge me - let me simply say that I don't respect such people for taking that position. And I similarly have no respect for those who punish people I know simply for being outspoken. In fact, seeing this happen to friends of mine is more infuriating than when it happens to me! Do they think that no one will notice what's going on? Do they think that someone actually believes the lies they use to justify their actions? That's insulting!
I made up my mind long ago to live with the consequences of my outspokenness. It's the only consolation I can offer to my friends when their outspokenness comes back to haunt them in their careers. I made it one level higher on the career ladder than I ever expected to reach, so for me, the consequences were not meaningful. I'm pleased about having a reputation for being able to call things as I see them - I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. When I look into the mirror, I'm not at all sorry for having stood up for what I thought was the truth! It's the only solace I need, and I commend it to my friends for their unhappiness over the consequences for their willingness to speak the truth.
To put this in perspective, let me tell something of my own story. When I was in high school, I ran afoul of "management" for being a critic of the school in a public medium. For this "sin" I was called in to the office, dressed down, and tasked with writing a public apology. I wrote my apology in such a way that it was a non-apologetic apology, something no one in the school administration apparently noticed (or if they did, they decided it was sufficient, anyway). I never have had any respect for arbitrary authority figures (those in a position they believe should command respect simply because of the authority of the position itself), although I find it easy to respect those who have earned respect!
From that point on, I made a decision about my future: I wanted to get to a position where I could say freely what I thought without regard for recriminations. I realized that having a doctorate was something that, once earned, couldn't be rescinded. Being a contributing scientist put me in a position where my obligations and commitment could be directed primarily to the science, and not to any organization for which I worked. Once I graduated with my doctorate, I embarked on a career in which I believed (and still believe) that it's my duty to speak the truth as I see it. From the start, I was outspoken, even before I achieved any status on the basis of my scientific publications. My policy has been simple - if I have to choose between saying what I think and sticking to my organization's "party line" then that's a no-brainer.
During much of my professional career, I've had people who supported me precisely because I was speaking the truth as I saw it. This has included folks who believed as I did but who were fearful of the consequences if they said what I was saying. I became something of a spokesman for those in "the system" who were unable to speak for themselves without fear of negative consequences. My version of John Paul Jones' famous saying, "Damn the consequences! Full speed ahead!" had consequences, of course. But those consequences were minor, and I think the reason for the modesty of those consequences was the support of my scientific colleagues (including some of my organizational managers), who valued my work and my honest opinion.
Many of the things I believe to be true could be wrong, of course. If I'm wrong, I expect someone to challenge what I say and to show me the error of my thinking in a convincing way. What I get, for the most part, is people thinking I'm a know-it-all, or people who fail to challenge me because they lack the courage to say what they think to my face. I dispute the accusation that I think I know it all, so I challenge anyone who thinks I'm wrong to confront me directly and explain why they think I'm wrong. Then we can both gain something from the confrontation, even if neither of us change our minds about the issue in dispute. And my mind can be changed by a sufficiently convincing argument, although I'm not going to roll over and concede just because you think I'm wrong!
As for people who lack the courage to challenge me - let me simply say that I don't respect such people for taking that position. And I similarly have no respect for those who punish people I know simply for being outspoken. In fact, seeing this happen to friends of mine is more infuriating than when it happens to me! Do they think that no one will notice what's going on? Do they think that someone actually believes the lies they use to justify their actions? That's insulting!
I made up my mind long ago to live with the consequences of my outspokenness. It's the only consolation I can offer to my friends when their outspokenness comes back to haunt them in their careers. I made it one level higher on the career ladder than I ever expected to reach, so for me, the consequences were not meaningful. I'm pleased about having a reputation for being able to call things as I see them - I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. When I look into the mirror, I'm not at all sorry for having stood up for what I thought was the truth! It's the only solace I need, and I commend it to my friends for their unhappiness over the consequences for their willingness to speak the truth.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Extremism - doing God's work?
As the story trickles in, the mass murderer in Norway apparently is a right-wing, christian fundamentalist extremist. It's ironic that this comes soon after my friend R.J. Evans posted here about the distinction between being a militant and being an extremist. Of course, my christian friends and followers of this blog will complain that not all christians are extremists. This is quite true, just as it's true that not all muslims are extremists. I suppose not all nazis or soviet communists were extremists, either - some were forced to join when those extremist political regimes took over whole nations.
Nevertheless, when barbaric acts occur, such as the murders committed by this home-grown Norwegian terrorist or any of his terrorist brethren on behalf of any cause, you can be sure that some form of extremism is behind it. The demagogues who spew forth the hatred and incitement to violence that motivate these terrorists are usually quick to say "I didn't order him to do that!" These "leaders" frequently back-pedal away from accepting any responsibility for the deeds committed by what are probably insane people that happen to believe in the demagogue's cause. Some of these leaders say that we deserved the violence we got, of course. They believe they are carrying out acts of justifiable violence on us, no matter how innocent of wrongdoing the victims might be!
Religion and politics are commonly associated with extremism because the extremists among the religious or political followers take their cause so very seriously. When "holy scriptures" (of any sort) enjoin followers to slay unbelievers and sinners, the extremists are the ones who accept this as a literal commandment to action. They see it as doing "god's work". The moderates amongst the believers deny that these people are "true believers," preferring to presume that their more peaceful interpretation of those scriptures is the correct one - that those scriptures shouldn't be taken literally word-for-word. This is, of course, a convenient way to rationalize the contradictions within those documents, and to avoid the need to take certain actions despite the clear commands within the literal words of these scriptures that, after all, form the foundation for those belief systems.
Radical political groups grow out of the frustration over the inability of moderates to accomplish certain political ends. Barry Goldwater once said "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!" I disagree with him. The end never justifies the means!!
Political extremists want political action without having to wait for a consensus in the electorate, and without regard to the possibility of harmful consequences created by that action. In the U.S., where two-party dominance has deeply polarized the electorate, various extremist positions are being encouraged by the rhetoric of the parties. Some of the followers, notably these days on the right wing (but historically also on the left wing), are ready to commit acts of violence. All they await is their moment of rage-triggered insanity. We have seen this already here in the U.S., in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. The right-wing extremists capable of such violence are still out there - like the Norwegian mass murderer, so consumed by anger and hatred that murder and destruction seem to them to be the only acceptable alternative. In the U.S. of today, left-wing extremists may exist, but are pretty impotent and generally quiet. These days, it seems that to be a liberal is to be a left-wing extremist! That sort of polarizing rhetoric is exactly what concerns me.
We only need to look to the islamic theocracies of the Middle East today to see what happens to "moderates" when extremists (be they religious or political) manage to take control: moderates are given the simple choice of "With us? Or against us?" They either go along or suffer the consequences. This is a familiar pattern in history, borrowed by the muslim extremists (and others) from the ruthless ideology-based dictatorships of the past. I don't need to enumerate the violent, extremist examples from the past. We all know them by heart, but ... have we truly learned the lessons that such extremism has inflicted on us all? Will we recognize it for what it is and not allow it to carry the day? Apparently not everyone has learned those lessons, so the boundary between being a militant for some cause and being an extremist is being crossed, and potential terrorists emerge, ready to commit violent acts when the situation arises. No matter how crazy some fringe group of fanatics may seem to be, the lesson of history is clear: ignore them at your peril!
Tribalism is an evolutionary strategy for the success of tribes. We all carry that instinct for tribalism in our genes. Religion and politics tap into that tribalism to benefit their cause - to seek power and control over their members. The members who commit violent acts to further their causes are being manipulated by leaders who stand to gain power from this sort of terrorism. The best way to avoid becoming ensnared in this is to think for oneself and not let mere rhetoric sway your thinking toward extremism. The Mahatma Ghandis and Martin Luther Kings of history have shown that violence is not the only alternative in the face of perceived injustice and persecution. Peaceful change is possible. But it's up to us to decide the path to follow in order to produce change. Militant or extremist? Which do you choose to be?
Nevertheless, when barbaric acts occur, such as the murders committed by this home-grown Norwegian terrorist or any of his terrorist brethren on behalf of any cause, you can be sure that some form of extremism is behind it. The demagogues who spew forth the hatred and incitement to violence that motivate these terrorists are usually quick to say "I didn't order him to do that!" These "leaders" frequently back-pedal away from accepting any responsibility for the deeds committed by what are probably insane people that happen to believe in the demagogue's cause. Some of these leaders say that we deserved the violence we got, of course. They believe they are carrying out acts of justifiable violence on us, no matter how innocent of wrongdoing the victims might be!
Religion and politics are commonly associated with extremism because the extremists among the religious or political followers take their cause so very seriously. When "holy scriptures" (of any sort) enjoin followers to slay unbelievers and sinners, the extremists are the ones who accept this as a literal commandment to action. They see it as doing "god's work". The moderates amongst the believers deny that these people are "true believers," preferring to presume that their more peaceful interpretation of those scriptures is the correct one - that those scriptures shouldn't be taken literally word-for-word. This is, of course, a convenient way to rationalize the contradictions within those documents, and to avoid the need to take certain actions despite the clear commands within the literal words of these scriptures that, after all, form the foundation for those belief systems.
Radical political groups grow out of the frustration over the inability of moderates to accomplish certain political ends. Barry Goldwater once said "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!" I disagree with him. The end never justifies the means!!
Political extremists want political action without having to wait for a consensus in the electorate, and without regard to the possibility of harmful consequences created by that action. In the U.S., where two-party dominance has deeply polarized the electorate, various extremist positions are being encouraged by the rhetoric of the parties. Some of the followers, notably these days on the right wing (but historically also on the left wing), are ready to commit acts of violence. All they await is their moment of rage-triggered insanity. We have seen this already here in the U.S., in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. The right-wing extremists capable of such violence are still out there - like the Norwegian mass murderer, so consumed by anger and hatred that murder and destruction seem to them to be the only acceptable alternative. In the U.S. of today, left-wing extremists may exist, but are pretty impotent and generally quiet. These days, it seems that to be a liberal is to be a left-wing extremist! That sort of polarizing rhetoric is exactly what concerns me.
We only need to look to the islamic theocracies of the Middle East today to see what happens to "moderates" when extremists (be they religious or political) manage to take control: moderates are given the simple choice of "With us? Or against us?" They either go along or suffer the consequences. This is a familiar pattern in history, borrowed by the muslim extremists (and others) from the ruthless ideology-based dictatorships of the past. I don't need to enumerate the violent, extremist examples from the past. We all know them by heart, but ... have we truly learned the lessons that such extremism has inflicted on us all? Will we recognize it for what it is and not allow it to carry the day? Apparently not everyone has learned those lessons, so the boundary between being a militant for some cause and being an extremist is being crossed, and potential terrorists emerge, ready to commit violent acts when the situation arises. No matter how crazy some fringe group of fanatics may seem to be, the lesson of history is clear: ignore them at your peril!
Tribalism is an evolutionary strategy for the success of tribes. We all carry that instinct for tribalism in our genes. Religion and politics tap into that tribalism to benefit their cause - to seek power and control over their members. The members who commit violent acts to further their causes are being manipulated by leaders who stand to gain power from this sort of terrorism. The best way to avoid becoming ensnared in this is to think for oneself and not let mere rhetoric sway your thinking toward extremism. The Mahatma Ghandis and Martin Luther Kings of history have shown that violence is not the only alternative in the face of perceived injustice and persecution. Peaceful change is possible. But it's up to us to decide the path to follow in order to produce change. Militant or extremist? Which do you choose to be?
Sunday, July 17, 2011
An announcement ... and one more thing about AGW
First of all, henceforth, I will not publish any anonymous comments. If there is to be discourse here, it must be known who is making the comment.
Now ... back to anthropogenic global warming (AGW). I've become very irritated by the constant harping from AGW deniers that the scientists involved in climate research are advocating the AGW position for reasons of personal gain. This is both absurd and insulting.
Right away, naturally, I have to say that scientists are human, and occasionally a tiny minority of scientists engage in various forms of unethical behavior. Hence, the odd example of someone in science who forfeits their integrity for some perceived personal gain can be found. But this is nothing more than a reflection of the fact that science is a human endeavor, not some sort of broad-brush that can be used to tar and feather the majority of scientists. It says nothing that can be applied to the whole collection of scientists who participated in creating the IPCC reports. At most, it might apply to a handful of individuals, but I have little doubt that the vast majority of those scientists are supporting the notion of AGW because that's what the research shows, not for personal gain. When an individual scientist is shown to have engaged in unethical activities, their career in science is, for all intents and purposes, over. They will pay a huge price for their misdeeds within the scientific community, because honesty is a paramount virtue in science -- without it, the whole endeavor collapses. Losing the opportunity to be a practicing scientist would be very harsh punishment for the typical scientist, very passionate about the subject of their research, to say nothing of civil punishments for criminal forms of ethical transgressions.
Misrepresenting climate science for personal gain? It's simply nonsense to believe that such a conspiracy could exist among so many scientists. The risks are far too high for any imaginable rewards and only a very rare person or two would ever take such risks, and such rare instances likely would be very much "disturbed" persons.
Of course, any scientist worth his/her salt is a forceful advocate for their research. Is this an indication of moral turpitude? No way!! Anyone not believing in the value of what research they do shouldn't be funded -- if you don't believe in it, why do it? When scientists seek support for their research, it's so that they can do the work, not to become wealthy. In some very twisted minds, of course, this could be interpreting as seeking personal gain (i.e., doing something you want to do, as opposed to, say, something you're forced to do). If anyone wants to do anything, it has this "selfish" aspect, but the IPCC consensus is light years from some vast conspiracy among climate scientists for personal gain.
Of course, public funds are being used to support climate research (as well as most other forms of scientific research). The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a primary supporter of climate and weather research, mostly through universities.
How do NSF research grants work? I can't speak for other disciplines, but in weather and climate science, the contract is not between the scientist and NSF but rather between the university and NSF. The money isn't a check written into a researcher's bank account to dispense as they see fit! Rather, the funding must be used to accomplish the research as developed in the grant's proposed budget, an effort done jointly by the researcher and the university staff. Among the budget items, a university scientist usually seeks salary support for a few months out of each year of the grant. The salary support from NSF is dispensed over the life of the grant by the university (not NSF) to the researcher, at a rate determined by the researcher's status within the university, and fixed by the budget proposal.
The rest of the money in the budget mostly goes to support student research assistants, pay for travel to conferences, pay the page charges for publications coming out of the research, pay for field data collection, pay for office computers and supercomputer services, and pay the university to support the university's infrastructure within which the research operates (buildings, offices, lights, phones, power, etc.). This latter item is called "overhead" and it adds about 50% of the research cost to the grant, such that a $100,000 research project must be funded for $150,000. The overhead rate varies among institutions - 50% is just a representative value.
The only truly personal gain by the researcher is that few months of salary support. Note that most research universities only pay their faculty for 9 months of salary, so the faculty have to obtain grant support for the other 3 months. This is not a formula for the enrichment of the researchers! No Rolls-Royce limousines, no condos in the Mediterranean, no exclusive country club memberships, no Lear jets for personal travel, unless those scientists are independently wealthy to begin with. No university-based climate researcher is getting rich from NSF grants. Publicly-funded money from NSF to the universities is by a large margin supporting the research, not the research scientist!
Government scientists are not allowed to obtain salary support from the NSF grants -- if government researchers participate in an NSF grant, they can receive the benefits associated with the research (data collection, student research assistants, travel support, page charges, etc.) and nothing else. They are paid a regular government full salary according to their status in the agency for which they work. Although government salaries for research scientists are reasonably good (comparable to intermediate-level university faculty), it's not going to make them wealthy unless they can invest some of their income in some high-yield investment opportunity on their own. Government climate researchers also are not getting rich as a result of these grants, or this research.
These researchers are doing this work because, for the most part, they believe passionately in the science to which they are contributing. To question their motives in supporting the AGW consensus is monumentally astounding rubbish!! I know a few of the people involved in this work, and I find it really aggravating to hear ignorant people casting very negative aspersions on the motives of my friends.
Anyone has a right to an opinion, and when it comes to the use of public funds, it's anyone's right to question the merit of that expenditure. NSF was founded after WWII because it was realized by far-seeing people that federal support of research would pay huge dividends to this nation in terms of new technology for the good of everyone, and jobs for those who worked to make those new technologies available to the public. This is the way it has turned out, although it seems that we as a nation are having trouble deciding where to put our priorities and research of all sorts is being questioned.
Now a cruel spotlight has been directed at the climate scientists not because of their misdeeds, but because their findings are not pleasing to certain wealthy, politically-powerful segments of our society. In an effort to negate those research findings for reasons having nothing to do with the science, an absurd conspiracy theory has been hatched to dispute the science by discrediting the scientists! Their collective integrity has been questioned because of political and politically-inspired media pressure, not because of any widespread, validated wrongdoing in their actual research activities. Media accusations, innuendo, personal attacks on blogs, and so forth are fomenting discontent in the public regarding the climate research funded by their taxes. If you want to look for a conspiracy, look to the AGW deniers, not to the scientists doing the climate research. These AGW-denying narcissists are using a familiar tactic -- accuse your opponents of the very misdeeds you yourself are committing.
I, for one, stand ready to defend my climate science colleagues from this unwarranted attack on their personal integrity. Of course, any actual, proven wrongdoing by individuals is unacceptable, but does not automatically validate any conspiracy hypothesis.
Now ... back to anthropogenic global warming (AGW). I've become very irritated by the constant harping from AGW deniers that the scientists involved in climate research are advocating the AGW position for reasons of personal gain. This is both absurd and insulting.
Right away, naturally, I have to say that scientists are human, and occasionally a tiny minority of scientists engage in various forms of unethical behavior. Hence, the odd example of someone in science who forfeits their integrity for some perceived personal gain can be found. But this is nothing more than a reflection of the fact that science is a human endeavor, not some sort of broad-brush that can be used to tar and feather the majority of scientists. It says nothing that can be applied to the whole collection of scientists who participated in creating the IPCC reports. At most, it might apply to a handful of individuals, but I have little doubt that the vast majority of those scientists are supporting the notion of AGW because that's what the research shows, not for personal gain. When an individual scientist is shown to have engaged in unethical activities, their career in science is, for all intents and purposes, over. They will pay a huge price for their misdeeds within the scientific community, because honesty is a paramount virtue in science -- without it, the whole endeavor collapses. Losing the opportunity to be a practicing scientist would be very harsh punishment for the typical scientist, very passionate about the subject of their research, to say nothing of civil punishments for criminal forms of ethical transgressions.
Misrepresenting climate science for personal gain? It's simply nonsense to believe that such a conspiracy could exist among so many scientists. The risks are far too high for any imaginable rewards and only a very rare person or two would ever take such risks, and such rare instances likely would be very much "disturbed" persons.
Of course, any scientist worth his/her salt is a forceful advocate for their research. Is this an indication of moral turpitude? No way!! Anyone not believing in the value of what research they do shouldn't be funded -- if you don't believe in it, why do it? When scientists seek support for their research, it's so that they can do the work, not to become wealthy. In some very twisted minds, of course, this could be interpreting as seeking personal gain (i.e., doing something you want to do, as opposed to, say, something you're forced to do). If anyone wants to do anything, it has this "selfish" aspect, but the IPCC consensus is light years from some vast conspiracy among climate scientists for personal gain.
Of course, public funds are being used to support climate research (as well as most other forms of scientific research). The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a primary supporter of climate and weather research, mostly through universities.
How do NSF research grants work? I can't speak for other disciplines, but in weather and climate science, the contract is not between the scientist and NSF but rather between the university and NSF. The money isn't a check written into a researcher's bank account to dispense as they see fit! Rather, the funding must be used to accomplish the research as developed in the grant's proposed budget, an effort done jointly by the researcher and the university staff. Among the budget items, a university scientist usually seeks salary support for a few months out of each year of the grant. The salary support from NSF is dispensed over the life of the grant by the university (not NSF) to the researcher, at a rate determined by the researcher's status within the university, and fixed by the budget proposal.
The rest of the money in the budget mostly goes to support student research assistants, pay for travel to conferences, pay the page charges for publications coming out of the research, pay for field data collection, pay for office computers and supercomputer services, and pay the university to support the university's infrastructure within which the research operates (buildings, offices, lights, phones, power, etc.). This latter item is called "overhead" and it adds about 50% of the research cost to the grant, such that a $100,000 research project must be funded for $150,000. The overhead rate varies among institutions - 50% is just a representative value.
The only truly personal gain by the researcher is that few months of salary support. Note that most research universities only pay their faculty for 9 months of salary, so the faculty have to obtain grant support for the other 3 months. This is not a formula for the enrichment of the researchers! No Rolls-Royce limousines, no condos in the Mediterranean, no exclusive country club memberships, no Lear jets for personal travel, unless those scientists are independently wealthy to begin with. No university-based climate researcher is getting rich from NSF grants. Publicly-funded money from NSF to the universities is by a large margin supporting the research, not the research scientist!
Government scientists are not allowed to obtain salary support from the NSF grants -- if government researchers participate in an NSF grant, they can receive the benefits associated with the research (data collection, student research assistants, travel support, page charges, etc.) and nothing else. They are paid a regular government full salary according to their status in the agency for which they work. Although government salaries for research scientists are reasonably good (comparable to intermediate-level university faculty), it's not going to make them wealthy unless they can invest some of their income in some high-yield investment opportunity on their own. Government climate researchers also are not getting rich as a result of these grants, or this research.
These researchers are doing this work because, for the most part, they believe passionately in the science to which they are contributing. To question their motives in supporting the AGW consensus is monumentally astounding rubbish!! I know a few of the people involved in this work, and I find it really aggravating to hear ignorant people casting very negative aspersions on the motives of my friends.
Anyone has a right to an opinion, and when it comes to the use of public funds, it's anyone's right to question the merit of that expenditure. NSF was founded after WWII because it was realized by far-seeing people that federal support of research would pay huge dividends to this nation in terms of new technology for the good of everyone, and jobs for those who worked to make those new technologies available to the public. This is the way it has turned out, although it seems that we as a nation are having trouble deciding where to put our priorities and research of all sorts is being questioned.
Now a cruel spotlight has been directed at the climate scientists not because of their misdeeds, but because their findings are not pleasing to certain wealthy, politically-powerful segments of our society. In an effort to negate those research findings for reasons having nothing to do with the science, an absurd conspiracy theory has been hatched to dispute the science by discrediting the scientists! Their collective integrity has been questioned because of political and politically-inspired media pressure, not because of any widespread, validated wrongdoing in their actual research activities. Media accusations, innuendo, personal attacks on blogs, and so forth are fomenting discontent in the public regarding the climate research funded by their taxes. If you want to look for a conspiracy, look to the AGW deniers, not to the scientists doing the climate research. These AGW-denying narcissists are using a familiar tactic -- accuse your opponents of the very misdeeds you yourself are committing.
I, for one, stand ready to defend my climate science colleagues from this unwarranted attack on their personal integrity. Of course, any actual, proven wrongdoing by individuals is unacceptable, but does not automatically validate any conspiracy hypothesis.
The attack on "consensus" science
I've just concluded an "argument" with an enormously ignorant non-scientist who has cited various blogs about science in support of his conclusion that "faith in global warming consensus isn't science, it is anti-science." This person, like a surprising number of others (including those who should know better), has no comprehension of what scientific consensus really means.
Anthropogenic global warming deniers cite such notions as the "consensus in science (and religion) [was once] that the earth was the center of the universe" as "proof" that consensus science is just an argument by authority. That isn't the meaning of consensus science at all! It's not an argument by authority but rather is the core of the ideas that are currently accepted by the majority of those who are actually participating in that science. If we have no core of agreement, we can have no discussion at all!
By the way, these folks also talk glibly about "proof" in science. I've already discussed that here, and it's a clear indicator of ignorance about how science really works to hear someone talk about "scientific proof". Even more pathetic is their understanding of the so-called "scientific method" - as if some simple formulaic approach can constitute the "scientific method". Pitiful, indeed!
For people laboring under these ignorant delusions, I recommend they read my essay about how science works. In that essay, I state:
... it may come as something of a revelation to many that scientific consensus is the sole basis for scientific arguments. Most scientists accept certain principles and consequences of those basic principles as the starting point for their work. This large and pervasive consensus is the core of a science education curriculum - it takes years to be taught the fundamentals for a particular discipline and to know the acceptable rules for drawing deductions using those fundamentals. The "state of the art" in science is always on the margins of this dominant background consensus. Is the consensus always right? No. It's axiomatic that nothing in science is sacred, even elements that are widely accepted as fundamental and basic to all that scientists do. Most scientists understand this principle, but they don't act as if everything needs to be repeatedly validated. They simply accept the consensus - what T.S. Kuhn called the dominant paradigm. There are various levels of consensus on different topics - many scientists bristle at some of the consensus even as they accept the majority of its canons. Hence, on the whole, there's always an undercurrent of attack on the paradigms. Virtually all scientists accept another principle: if you take on something fundamental, you have to be prepared for a spirited response to your claims to have overthrown a paradigm. The saying goes (I know Carl Sagan said it in "Cosmos"), "If you make extraordinary claims, you have to be able to provide extraordinarily convincing evidence!" As already noted herein, someone with a talent for designing revealing experiments can go far in science. Some parts of the consensus understanding are always vulnerable, perhaps owing to their never having been tested sufficiently rigorously. Others may have seemed so obvious that they have hardly been tested at all, so there are always many targets for a young scientist seeking to make a contribution.
The basic notion here is that a consensus emerges when the majority of scientists active in some area of research accept "something", and this "something" is the consensus. No one is making any argument to the effect that the consensus is invariably and inevitably correct. This is simply what most scientists active in some field believe at any given moment. It's a provisional understanding that can be changed, but changing it will require evidence more substantive than just an opinion!
When it comes to the host of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) deniers, they're dominated by those who are not actively engaged in global climate research, including my recent "opponent" in an argument. They have opinions about this topic but those opinions simply can't carry the same weight as those whose work has been consistently in the field of global climate. Anyone is allowed to have any opinion they want, for whatever reasons, but in science, opinions are nothing particularly noteworthy unless they're backed up by serious research that is published in scientific journals. Not everything in journals is "true" in some absolute sense, but it has met some important standards (associated with peer review).
Yes, it's an elitist argument. But whose opinion should mean the most? Those who have been engaged in the field for many years, publishing articles in refereed journals on their scholarly research, or those who have no data of their own to present, no track record of publishing articles in scientific journals, nothing at all that is the result of their own research? Surely the answer to that is obvious.
As I've stated elsewhere, I know a thing or two about how the atmosphere works, and I know several of those whose work is represented in the IPCC "consensus". Although I'm not a climate scientist myself, I trust those people and I trust the consensus simply because I'm not qualified to gainsay their findings. But I understand enough of their arguments to be reasonably convinced about the consensus in which their work is represented. In any case , I daresay I'm a hell of a lot more qualified than those deniers whose background in science is nonexistent. A few of the deniers are, like me, atmospheric scientists but not participants in climate science. They should understand, as I do, that their credentials as a scientist in another subfield don't necessarily qualify them to contravene the work of specialists in another discipline. By far the majority of the deniers have essentially no credentials that would support their ability to dispute the consensus, notably including the person with whom I recently had an "argument" - sort of like debating with a moron, that. His contributions to science are essentially negligible and his credentials as a meteorologist are not such that he can argue credibly against the climate scientists.
Sure, the deniers might be right. That is a logical possibility, of course. Science is not determined by majority vote and the consensus understanding is not inevitably correct, as history has shown repeatedly. Science works because it fits the evidence - there is no other standard. But do I trust these amateurs to be able to marshal a convincing argument by scientific standards for their extraordinary claims to overthrow the IPCC consensus? No. A thousand times NO!
The whole debate is a slur on the integrity of those whom I know to have impeccable integrity. I resent the very notion that the IPCC consensus represents some sort of cabal to defraud the public for the personal gain of those framing that consensus. The very idea of such a conspiracy is ludicrous in the extreme for anyone who knows anything about how science really works, and who knows the people involved in developing that consensus.
Anthropogenic global warming deniers cite such notions as the "consensus in science (and religion) [was once] that the earth was the center of the universe" as "proof" that consensus science is just an argument by authority. That isn't the meaning of consensus science at all! It's not an argument by authority but rather is the core of the ideas that are currently accepted by the majority of those who are actually participating in that science. If we have no core of agreement, we can have no discussion at all!
By the way, these folks also talk glibly about "proof" in science. I've already discussed that here, and it's a clear indicator of ignorance about how science really works to hear someone talk about "scientific proof". Even more pathetic is their understanding of the so-called "scientific method" - as if some simple formulaic approach can constitute the "scientific method". Pitiful, indeed!
For people laboring under these ignorant delusions, I recommend they read my essay about how science works. In that essay, I state:
... it may come as something of a revelation to many that scientific consensus is the sole basis for scientific arguments. Most scientists accept certain principles and consequences of those basic principles as the starting point for their work. This large and pervasive consensus is the core of a science education curriculum - it takes years to be taught the fundamentals for a particular discipline and to know the acceptable rules for drawing deductions using those fundamentals. The "state of the art" in science is always on the margins of this dominant background consensus. Is the consensus always right? No. It's axiomatic that nothing in science is sacred, even elements that are widely accepted as fundamental and basic to all that scientists do. Most scientists understand this principle, but they don't act as if everything needs to be repeatedly validated. They simply accept the consensus - what T.S. Kuhn called the dominant paradigm. There are various levels of consensus on different topics - many scientists bristle at some of the consensus even as they accept the majority of its canons. Hence, on the whole, there's always an undercurrent of attack on the paradigms. Virtually all scientists accept another principle: if you take on something fundamental, you have to be prepared for a spirited response to your claims to have overthrown a paradigm. The saying goes (I know Carl Sagan said it in "Cosmos"), "If you make extraordinary claims, you have to be able to provide extraordinarily convincing evidence!" As already noted herein, someone with a talent for designing revealing experiments can go far in science. Some parts of the consensus understanding are always vulnerable, perhaps owing to their never having been tested sufficiently rigorously. Others may have seemed so obvious that they have hardly been tested at all, so there are always many targets for a young scientist seeking to make a contribution.
The basic notion here is that a consensus emerges when the majority of scientists active in some area of research accept "something", and this "something" is the consensus. No one is making any argument to the effect that the consensus is invariably and inevitably correct. This is simply what most scientists active in some field believe at any given moment. It's a provisional understanding that can be changed, but changing it will require evidence more substantive than just an opinion!
When it comes to the host of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) deniers, they're dominated by those who are not actively engaged in global climate research, including my recent "opponent" in an argument. They have opinions about this topic but those opinions simply can't carry the same weight as those whose work has been consistently in the field of global climate. Anyone is allowed to have any opinion they want, for whatever reasons, but in science, opinions are nothing particularly noteworthy unless they're backed up by serious research that is published in scientific journals. Not everything in journals is "true" in some absolute sense, but it has met some important standards (associated with peer review).
Yes, it's an elitist argument. But whose opinion should mean the most? Those who have been engaged in the field for many years, publishing articles in refereed journals on their scholarly research, or those who have no data of their own to present, no track record of publishing articles in scientific journals, nothing at all that is the result of their own research? Surely the answer to that is obvious.
As I've stated elsewhere, I know a thing or two about how the atmosphere works, and I know several of those whose work is represented in the IPCC "consensus". Although I'm not a climate scientist myself, I trust those people and I trust the consensus simply because I'm not qualified to gainsay their findings. But I understand enough of their arguments to be reasonably convinced about the consensus in which their work is represented. In any case , I daresay I'm a hell of a lot more qualified than those deniers whose background in science is nonexistent. A few of the deniers are, like me, atmospheric scientists but not participants in climate science. They should understand, as I do, that their credentials as a scientist in another subfield don't necessarily qualify them to contravene the work of specialists in another discipline. By far the majority of the deniers have essentially no credentials that would support their ability to dispute the consensus, notably including the person with whom I recently had an "argument" - sort of like debating with a moron, that. His contributions to science are essentially negligible and his credentials as a meteorologist are not such that he can argue credibly against the climate scientists.
Sure, the deniers might be right. That is a logical possibility, of course. Science is not determined by majority vote and the consensus understanding is not inevitably correct, as history has shown repeatedly. Science works because it fits the evidence - there is no other standard. But do I trust these amateurs to be able to marshal a convincing argument by scientific standards for their extraordinary claims to overthrow the IPCC consensus? No. A thousand times NO!
The whole debate is a slur on the integrity of those whom I know to have impeccable integrity. I resent the very notion that the IPCC consensus represents some sort of cabal to defraud the public for the personal gain of those framing that consensus. The very idea of such a conspiracy is ludicrous in the extreme for anyone who knows anything about how science really works, and who knows the people involved in developing that consensus.
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