Re: Global Warming -- Follow the Money!!

On Apr 6, 8:25 am, "Jerry Kraus" <jkraus_1...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Mr. Pramer, I've noticed you consistently ignore the possibility that
the professional scientific community may, as a whole, be totally
incompetent.

I find the assertion ridiculous, and I can provide facts to back me
up.

Obviously, this is a possibility that you find difficult
to accept, psychologically.

It is not a matter of psychology... it is one of experience.

Doing well in school need not make one
effective at practical tasks like inventing fundamentally new
techologies. There's a quote from George Orwell I rather like:

"You have to be an intellectual to believe something like that. No
ordinary man could be such a fool."

Orwell was a clever man, and the quote is cute, but it is not a law of
nature.

The point I'm making is that the Wright Brothers, with very limited
funds, but with practical expertise, tremendous determination and
great creativity, in a few years totally outclassed the efforts of the
entire planet of professional scientists over a period of centuries,
in this particular domain of invention.

The Wright brothers were incredibly intelligent, industrious and
creative, and deserve credit for the first extended, powered flight of
an aircraft carrying a human. Unfortunately, you exaggerate in your
description, and leave out many important facts. You don't seem stupid
or ignorant, so I must assume you are deliberately exaggerating and
distorting to make your point.

1. The entire scientific community was *not* working on this problem.
2. The Wrights benefitted from the work of many others, including
Lilienthal, Caley, Langley, all the way back to da Vinci.
3. The Wrights researched aerodynamics and lifting bodies, reading
papers on physics and mathematics, written by... gasp! physicists and
mathematicians. The Wrights did what good scientists do, they
researched the problem, tested their conclusions and intuitions
against experiment, and repeated the process over and over until they
got it right.

The skills and training of
professional academics may have nothing whatsoever to do with what is
needed to develop controlled nuclear fusion.

That statement is totally absurd. Without the ability to calculate
magnetic fields, light fluxes, current output, atomic cross sections,
lasing thresholds, and all the other vital components of a fusion
reactor, how can anyone expect to be successful in this endeavor? No
one who does not know physics or mathematics has a chance to build a
successful fusion reactor. You don't just rub two sticks together in a
clever way.

Jerry, the only reason you know the words to use to describe what you
think might be a successful approach is because of the work of the
professional academics who developed nano technology, lasers, and the
idea of fusion itself.

These people you disparagingly call "professional academics" are not,
for the most part, ivory tower intellectuals. What do you think goes
on in a physics, mathematics or engineering department at a major
university? Besides the expected teaching, it is *RESEARCH* -- and in
large part that research is directed towards practical matters.
Engineers in engineering departments design and build functioning
machines such as the space station, GPS satellites, integrated
circuits, lasers and the like as a matter of course.

Yes, there are always the talented and driven amateurs, and I would
never denigrate their efforts like you denigrate scientists.

Training is certainly
standardized at the undergraduate level,

Yes, for the most part there are standard things that a young
scientist has to know to do his work. He needs to know calculus and
differential equations, physics and chemistry to begin with, but after
that, what?

and also somewhat
standardized at the graduate level. The academic system is certainly
a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies are conservative and self-sustaining
by their very natures.

Damn! Finally some truth out of you.

Some additional focus on this particular
problem, and some fundamental changes in approach are clearly required.

I agree again... now I'm getting nervous.

Baldin Lee Pramer

.

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