It goes beyond the problem of having different groups of friends. The problem is that in real life most people have many different personae. You would say and do things with your friends from college that you would never say or do in front of your boss, as the most obvious example.

IRL we put a lot of work into constructing and maintaining these different personae, and we do a lot of work to keep them separate.

With social networking as it is, that's all over. Even if you never participate in Facebook, you are probably tagged in dozens or even hundreds of photos, and the odds are pretty good that some of them show you doing things you wouldn't do in front of your boss.

So the question is, will we adapt the technology to allow the creation and maintenance of a variety of different personae, or will we adapt our own behavior so as to present one consistent, universally acceptable persona to the world?

I think many of us, particuarly the younger generation, are already doing the latter. In order to adapt to this, we have to adjust our expectations of people. Maybe as an employer, you just have to get used to being able to see pictures of your employees smoking weed at parties and so forth, and not let it bother you. However, until we adapt, it creates the problem that suddenly everything you say and do is potentially public (whether you participate in social media or not).

Actually, solar thermal can maintain baseload by using molten salt to store heat energey during the night. Besides being incredibly useful, the idea of a huge tower of molten salt is just dang cool.

This is a rediculously over-simplified misunderstanding of how society works. How do you propose "making" a job doing basic research? Research has to be funded, that's how it's done in our society. I'm afraid you're living in a fantasy world. This has nothing to do with anyone being "owed" a job. It has to do with setting priorities as a society. We've set up a system in which the priority is short term quarterly gains, and that's what we get. If you want a viable society in the long term, you have to invest in basic research.

Exactly. That's why I left. I didn't care so much about the pay, doing science is in itself worth it as long as you're being paid enough to survive. Yeah, for some people it's that much fun.

But my advisor in grad school worked for ten hours a day in the lab, and then he went home and worked another six on his computer from home. His wife made jokes about being a "physics widow." He had a daughter, but he obviously wasn't participating in raising her.

That's no kind of life for a reasonable person. You have to have a monomaniacal disorder to want to live like that. So I left.

The problem is that there is way too much work to do and way too little funding to hire enough people to do it. The result is an attitude that if you're not willing to work 80-100 hours per week, we'll find someone else who is. There are plenty of smart people in the world.

This problem will persist until we make basic research the financial priority that it should be in order to advance as a society.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. Nuclear power won't meet the world's energy needs either, not in any realistic scenario.

To replace enough fossil fuel use to resolve the climate change problem, we would have to build 3 nuclear plants per week for 50 years. The expense involved would be incomprehensible.

http://climateprogress.org/2007/06/18/nuclear-power-no-climate-cure-all/

http://keystone.org/files/file/SPP/energy/NJFF-Exec-Summ-6_2007.pdf

Even under extremely agressive but realistic growth scenarios, nuclear could only cover about a tenth of our projected requirements.

Wind, by comparison, does surprisingly well, as does solar thermal, but they won't be able to cover it all either.

http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/26/full-global-warming-solution-350-450-ppm-technologies-efficiency-renewables/

In fact, not only is there no silver bullet, there are no silver b-bs either. Any realistic scenario requires significan efficiency gains -- in other words, we're going to have to consume less!

That's the bit that people really have trouble coming to grips with, at which point they tend to retreat into a fantasy world of some kind.

Well... I wouldn't exactly call it "asking."

Awesome timing on that Richie! Should be modded funny as well as informative. Everyone go and donate -- the Pirate Party is uber-cool for many other reasons in addition to this latest move.

Well, one thing wrong with your statements is that you think climate scientists in general are hiding their models and data. Here, have some climate models and data.

Another error in your statements: the last decade is the hottest on record, in any of the records. You can easily look this up for yourself, so there's no excuse for being wrong about it. The rest of what you said is similarly flawed and uninformed, as can easily be verified with minimal research.

I'm coming late to this discussion, but I have to comment on this. It is simply not true that climate scientists in general don't want to reveal their models. In fact, many of them are publicly available, as is much of the actual data. Here have a look at this collection of climate model code and data.

Incidentally, you are also incorrect about climate science not being esoteric. You think global average temperature is a simple quantity to calculate? Yeah, the result is just a number, but a vast amount of data and calculation goes into getting that number. I think a lot of critics of climate science don't appreciate the degree to which climate scientists have bent over backward to try to make their results accessible to laypeople, although the details are actually quite complicated.

I would recommend you check the evidence carefully before committing to that position. Stay tuned for Episode II, the Revenge of the Science.

How exactly does any of this call into question the credibilty of NAS? I agree with looking at the evidence, but most people are not qualified to do that, frankly, and need to trust somebody who understands the science to do it for them. Who would you trust to review the evidence and reach a conclusion? Have you reviewed the evidence yourself? I suspect that if you do, you'll find that it is quite sound.

Your point appears to be that there is a consensus that global warming is happening, but there is no consensus that it is a serious problem that we need to do something about.

I think the most respected sicientific organizations in the world, the NAS and AAAS, would disagree on that. I don't know if you consider their view to represent a "consensus," but given their reputation, I think it can fairly be said to represent a thorough reading of the best scientific evidence.

The NAS statement on climate change says, "climate change is happening even faster than previously estimated... Feedbacks in the climate system might lead to much more rapid climate changes. The need for urgent action to address climate change is now indisputable."

The AAAS just sent a letter to the senate which says, "Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Moreover, there is strong evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on society, including the global economy and on the environment."

And if you think this CRU hack incident changes any of that, the American Meterological Society disagrees, saying "For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true — which is not yet clearly the case — the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited."

You are quite right: this is pure politics, and has no impact on the actual science. People are making a big deal of this who do not understand that scientific theory rests on multiple, independent, reproducable lines of evidence and does not depend on the credibility of one particular institution. The laws of physics don't change because someone hacked someone's email.

This "scandal" is a tempest in a teapot, with much political but little scientific significance.

Meanwhile, back in reality, the ice caps are melting, the oceans are warming, the last decade was the hottest on record, and the current warming is unprecedented for at least 1300 years. I am a big fan of The Hitchhiker's Guide, so I don't think panic is ever an appropriate reaction, but there is plenty of cause for strong action to reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change.

I agree that the data and code should be made public. Fortunately, NASA has been doing this for some time, as have many other researchers. Gavin Schmidt at NASA has put together a list of links to global warming data and code that is available online.

If you are interested in the scientific context of this story and the emails, I would recommend reading Gavin's posts on context at Real Climate as well.

There have also been interviews with Gerald North who led the NAS investigation into the hockey stick controversy a few years ago, and Peter Kelemen, prof at Columbia, explaining why this hack will not affect the science. Basically, global warming theory is supported by many lines of evidence from many different sources, and does not depend on the credibility of any one source. Furthermore, there is nothing in these emails or data that actually disproves any of the published research.

If this is the best skeptics can do, I think they're in for a rough time. The skeptical argument has little scientific support, so they resort to a silly PR stunt like this hoping to get a draw in the public debate. It has been great to see prominent deniers like Inhofe in the senate going way out on a limb, claiming this proves global warming is a hoax and so forth. There will hopefully be full investigations, at which point they'll probably end up looking pretty foolish when the science is vindicated.

What you are not mentioning is the other factor revealed in these emails -- these scientists were under sustained, concerted attack by opponents with no scruples and no intellectual integrity. The reluctance to release source data is bad, I agree, but you have to consider what they are up against. They knew that any information released would be twisted by their opponents to discredit the science, just as these emails are.