A big thank you to the new Blogs Lucianne Loves!
This is in reply to AJ Strata of The Strata-Sphere re the developing story of Climategate:
RBT
I think there is a real smoking gun here that is clear in some emails, CRU
data and CRU code that tries to cover up the fact today’s temps are not
much different from the 1930’s and 1940’s
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11685
Cheers, AJStrata
I’ve linked to some of AJ’s excellent pieces and there seems to be a lot of interest in these posts coming from the new Lucianne site which I’ve joined and I’m now posting at. I’ve been using AJ’s posts in a discussion thread re Climategate in our local paper’s, The Spokesman-Review (S-R), blog thread that’s been going on since last week. I’m really fascinated on how the new/alternative/social media has driven the Climategate story. This is straight out of Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody that discusses how the dirty little secret of the Catholic Church was finally broken by the new media in 2002. This is a refinement of Hugh Hewitt’s book Blog and Glenn Reynolds book, An Army of David’s. Climategate is following the same path and is taking on a life of its own.
From a comment of mine in the S-R blog thread:
I haven’t really delved into the inner workings of the climate debate. I’m not advocating one position or another. I’m just watching how the new/alternative/social media has facilitated an open debate on this topic that was not possible in the past. The MSM has not facilitated this debate and largely has concluded this is a settled debate e.g., our resident blogmeister Gary Crooks. Many people can now communicate inexpensively and instantaneously with many other people and share their views/opinions in a free and open debate. These debates can easily go viral if they strike a social chord. This is what happened and eventually broke the Catholic Church’s longstanding secrecy of sexual abuse by priests in Boston in 2002. See Clay Shirky’s book, “Here Comes Everybody-the power of organizing without organizations.”
I’m waging my own little war with our local paper whose owners ran a little bond fraud in our little berg that will ultimately costs the taxpayers $100M. The operation of this criminal enterprise as defined in RICO cost the life of a lady in the infamous River Park Square Parking Garage. Her death in my professional opinion was a First Degree Manslaughter in the State of WA that has been successfully covered up by this criminal enterprise led by the Cowles media dynasty that owns the parking garage and owns or controls most of the regional media. I made the analogy that the actions of the S-R when it comes to these stories is much like what we are witnessing in the CRU story. I’m trying to hit critical mass in the local region to report a story that the S-R hasn’t. This S-R assistant editor who hosts this blog has been selectively deleting my posts and hence my post below, “‘Out Damn’d spot!’ – the bloodstains of Jo Savage on the S-R newsroom floor won’t go away.”
You can read more in my posts:
In a normal political environment an inquisitive free press would serve as a check by educating and informing its readers on this abuse of power and lack of action by their governmental entities. These intertwined stories have great news value – The RPS Bond Fraud, the manslaughter death of Jo Savage, the underlying causes and their subsequent cover-ups. This story would be Page One Above the Fold in the paper of record. The press as a governmental watchdog by its reporting would drive public opinion that in turn would hold those elected/appointed officials accountable for their actions. Unfortunately in Spokane such information is squelched because the perpetrators own the local newspaper of record, The Spokesman-Review. The S-R functions as an instrumentality of this ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy to conceal its criminal acts by its self-censorship and under reporting of stories that involve the business/real estate interests of its owners – the Cowles Co.
Mr. Camden and Mr. Brunt as well as your city editors have had these explosive letters for many months and yet no story by the S-R. Why no S-R story? This is the point others are trying to make re the current Climategate debate re diminishing/marginalizing critics whether there is any casual effect or not of CO2 in global warming models.
I’ve used the analogy that in both of these cases we are witnessing a failure of critical thinking skills. A colleague of mine a retired ER doctor has written an essay on this called “Shuttle Thinking” after the flawed decision making process that led to the two shuttle disasters. He’s reworked this essay into a piece that will appear in a special feature in the January issue of The Futurist Magazine – “Deciding Our Futures.” His article is titled, “Decision Making Under Pressure.” This is a very good read. I’m attaching a PDF of this article. This is only for your noncommercial use unless you purchased it from the Futurist site below.
As I’ve written using my friend’s piece as an analogy for a frame of reference:
Decision makers . . . have a lot of responsibility and must quickly sort through complex data and information. The RPS Bond Fraud et al and the Savage manslaughter cases are not as complex as they may first appear. These cases are about the failure of critical thinking skills and ignoring of relative risk by our governmental decision makers. Let me remind you of a similar story that will give a familiar frame of reference from which to review the information I’m about to present.
A colleague of mine wrote an essay, “Shuttle Thinking,” that will appear soon as a feature article in an upcoming national business journal. The key point of the article is that even high-level management teams like NASA can succumb to fatally flawed decision-making when it comes to evaluating risk. The Columbia shuttle disaster involved pieces of foam breaking off from the external fuel tank – striking a very critical area of the shuttle’s left wing that eventually caused the catastrophic shuttle failure and the death of seven astronauts upon re-entry. Similar foam failures had occurred on numerous shuttle missions prior to Columbia, to the point that it became an accepted normal event. NASA engineers failed to recognize this structural failure as a risk. Because each prior foam event seemed to be minor, with no consequences, the engineers were emboldened ⎯ to continue to roll the dice. With each subsequent flight, the risk went unappreciated until that rare event occurred when, in the case of the Space Shuttle Columbia; the foam broke off and struck a vital area of the shuttle’s left wing. Keep rolling the dice and it will eventually come up craps. NASA management gambled and lost.
The Savage manslaughter case is an almost identical situation to the Space Shuttle cases. These parking structure barriers were failing with regularity, the RPS Parking Garage owners knew the barriers were failing, and RPS management chose to gamble our community’s safety by doing nothing. Similar to the NASA management — doing nothing worked— but only for a while. Because of the continued negligence of the garage owners, eventually another parking structure barrier failed — only this time, it resulted in the tragic death of Ms. Savage. The owners gambled—only this time, it was Jo Savage and her family that lost.
Link to the Futurist site:
Deciding Our Futures
As the world becomes more complex, the likelihood of making poor decisions about our future increases, as does the cost of bad outcomes. This special section offers insights from futurists on ways that we can come to grips with the flaws in our decision-making processes and improve our strategies for making critical decisions about the future. PDF Available.
1. Decision Making Under Pressure by Stan Shapiro
2. Decision Modeling by The Futures Group International
3. Robust Decision Making: Coping with Uncertainty by Robert J. Lempert, Steven W. Popper, and Steven C. Bankes
4. Managing Your Mind by Michael J. Mauboussin
Link to Dr. Stan Shapiro’s personal website on critical thinking skills, ER Think:
http://www.stanshapiro.com/
Be seeing you –
Ron the Cop
