On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:52:55 +0000, Martin Brown
wrote:

jmfbahciv wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:
jmfbahciv wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:

There has been a failure to communicate the real science to the
general public though. The Exxon funded denialist think tanks have
been allowed to muddy the water for far too long without being
properly challenged.

It wouldn't matter iff scam artists such as Al Gore didn't get into the
mix. Using a presidential party platform is one of the tactics to make
big huge messes.

I am no fan of Al Gore or his Hollywood film.
He is very much of the "do as I say not as I do" school of politics.

You've missed the whole point. This mess has been caused by
politicians using "science" as the proof for their political
platforms to further their hidden agendas. This tactic is

Hardly. In the UK there is nothing like the same extent of of wilful
ignorance of the science. It is the righttards of America and their
incredibly powerful lobby groups that have been active in suppressing
the science. In a country where a third of the population is seriously
obese and takes no excercise caring for the planet is never going to be
a priority. Sad but true.

But Exxon and its propaganda has had plenty of time to spread
disinformation without being adequately challenged.

not unique to this problem but it is unique in that the
monies, economies, trade, and all other aspects of Western
civilization were affected on a world-wide level. I can't
think of any other scam that was allowed to go this
far without the bubble burst.

It isn't a scam. The science is real enough. What we *do* about it is
another matter altogether. Building nuclear power plants and increasing
vehicle fuel efficiency are pretty obvious first steps.

The former UK Chief Science Advisor David King last night on BBC
Newsnight said that the hack against CRU was an extraordinary
sophisticated piece of work typical of a government agency. I didn't
think he was all that good in the interview and communicationg
science research to the public is a serious problem. People simply
do not trust scientists now

But the general public trusts the politicians. That makes no sense
to me.

Not in the UK they don't.

Yes, they do. Even the UK voters keep reelecting them. Parliament
puts the same old staff in power.

Actually no. Only the fairly good ones get elected here. It isn't all
that well paid either. There have been several famous stalking horse
incidents where independents have targeted a dodgy MP up for re-election
with great effect. UK elections are much more finely balanced than in
America. There are nothing like as many rotten boroughs and a lot more
swing states.

The only people more reviled than politicians at the moment are
merchant w^dbankers who are all taking home their 7 figure bonuses for
not having quite totally destroyed the worlds economy. Killing 1 in 10
would more accurately match the UK public mood (true of both bankers
and national politicians).

Wonderful. That's not fixing the source of the mess.

I was amused to find the Bank of England bailing out the cretins in 1848
in much the same way with roughly the equivalent stern open letter of
condemnation and lots of taxpayers cash. It was yet another clever paper
derivatives money trick that went pear shaped. They have been at it
forever. Vast unemployment occurred as manufacturers had nothing to pay
the wages with - it was the first outing of the anti-gold standard league.

and several guests made completely dishonest claims about AGW based
on what they have read online. These went unchallenged since the
scientists were not present for the audience discussion.

Which makes me smell the bias scent of the BBC.

Newsnight is generally pretty good in terms of investigating. They
have one or two really excellent interviewers who will not stand any
nonsense. Famously once putting the same question to a former home
secretary 9 times demanding an answer (and so ending his career). It
wasn't quite as hostile as it looked a technical fault meant that the
front man had to stall for time. He did it by asking the same question
and as the interviewee became more annoyed it worked brilliantly.

Sounds like a Katie Couric technique. Ask the dumbest questions
which nobody but the so-called intelligensia cares about.

It wasn't a particularly dumb question.

The Newsnight piece is online at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ht/8418356.stm

Unsure if you can watch it online outside of the UK.

It isn't very long. Take a look and see what you think.

I probably won't get to it.

Don't tell me you are not on broadband?

Democracy is the least bad alternative

Democracy is not 100% freedom; it is a mixture of freedom and equality.
The one rein checks the other.

although it helps if you have at least three political parties. The
US style bipolar disorder in politics makes it impossible to avoid a
situation where if the Democrats are for something the Republicans
are automatically against it and vice-versa. A recipe for deadlock.

Which is a feature.

Although not a benefit.

Sure it is. We (the US) could have used a deadlock this week.

No. You are terrified of change, but the US medical system is vastly
overpriced, corrupt and exists mainly to line the pockets of insurance
salesmen and senators via the various lobbyists. How come we never hear
about the guy they caught red handed and his list of "contacts".

If you have a broadly credible third party in
waiting that can hold some of the middle ground and tell the truth (a
bit like Jeremy cricket for Pinnocchio).

That's a big IF and doesn't exist.

It does in the UK. They are called the "Liberal Democrats". Not a name I
would expect to go down well in the USA where "Liberal" is used as a
term of abuse.

Then there tends to be less of a wild "them" and "us" oscillation.
Instead the US has two different colours of Pinnocchios one Red and
one Blue both with very long noses.

The IPCC collates the science and distills it into a summary form
where policy makers can understand it without having to read all the
primary literature. It is actually a well balanced piece of work and
highlights the uncertainties and areas still needing more research
as well as the conclusions that can be drawn from the existing data.
Online at:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html

Have a look and see what you think. There are references into the
primary literature if you want to take it further.

So the demand made within this thread was smoke. I'll try to get
to the library and take a look at it.

You can download most of it for free online.

I have to go to the library to view it.

Use the book then it is much easier to work with!

Doesn't matter how secure the OS is if you leave well known default
passwords set on accounts that have full system supervisor privileges
and/or the ability to create new accounts with any settings you like.

Honey, part of the design of an OS, whose primary goal statement is
security, will not have that kind of access implemented at all.

I don't recall any OS's in the 1980's that would stop you putting in a
weak password on any major mainframes. Our 3081 was at one time being
used to create accounts that were predictably of the form Pnnn pw=Pnnn.

They stopped that practice, but users continued to set incredibly weak
passwords that would fail to any basic dictionary attack.

It isn't rocket science to scan user account lists for weak passwords
these days. Defaults on one of the systems I used at university were
equal to the userid initially. An astonishing number of large value
account holders did not change this default. One day the system log
printer was found to be printing a list of all such accounts.

That's been the case since the 60s. This is not a "new" security
issue :-).

ISTR VAX and DEC-10 also had weak spots. VAX/VMS was stronger than IBMs
junk but by no means bullet proof eg.

http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1990-09.html

The point is that you should not be able to leave powerful privileged
supervisor state accounts with default or obviously weak passwords on a
military computer and particularly not on one connected to the internet!

Like I said originally the hacker may have broken the law but he isn't
the one that needs locking up!

Regards,
Martin Brown

I agree, isn't there a bailiwick close by
where you can turn yourself in? :-)

But there won't be many liberal democrats
in the US congress a year from now.

At least the president made the right
decision when he saw the deep snow in D.C.,
a week or so in Hawaii and the white AGW mess
will all be melted.