Monday, January 06, 2014

It's Not a Bug

A couple of hours ago, Eli pointed out that the Richard Trolls of the world should be pumping up the Spirit of Mawson expedition as a return to the old time way of privately funding exploration.  After all every bunny knows that goverment funding is the distorting devil, put into words by Richard Lindzen

it mostly comes down to the money—to the incentive structure of academic research funded by government grants. Almost all funding for climate research comes from the government, which, he says, makes scientists essentially vassals of the state. And generating fear, Lindzen contends, is now the best way to ensure that policymakers keep the spigot open."
However Dear Richard is mighty displeased by the science of the Spirit of Mawson, and you know, he might even be right, but, OTOH, while in the world of his dreams money talks, it is not very good at expert peer review, something that is easy to lose in the world of private funding.

5 comments:

Albatross said...

Troll is trying his hand (or is that thumbs) at Roger Jnr's schtick. Good God, surely Troll's employer does not pay him to Tweet day after day about nothing of great importance nor anything related to his work in this instance.

Troll is very desperately looking for attention, any kind of attention. Maybe there is method in the madness of giving a narcissist like Troll more attention (I suspect Eli is enjoying the silliness), but IMHO Troll ought to be left to Tweet to his little heart's content into a void of stunning silence...

Anonymous said...

William Connolley has the last word in a sublime show of irony, and the blog title follows as a fitting epitaph... a prelude to humanity's own?

Anyway it was probably time for the thread to be tied in a knot, as Tol's continued demonstration that he just doesn't get science was becoming plain embarrassing. I hope he doesn't conduct his economic work in the same fashion that he criticises scientific disciplines in which he has no experience.


Bernard J.

Anonymous said...

I hope you don't mind me sharing this link here since I can't put it on the AndPhysics blog now that comments are closed. It's an FAQ written by Chris Turney about their trip - http://science.unsw.edu.au/news/faq-australasian-antarctic-expedition-2013-2014

Anonymous said...

That last comment was written by me, Rachel. I meant to sign my name and forgot.

EWI said...

I appear to have missed the onset of the 'Troll' meme, but I do like it.

I suspect Richard is finding being an even littler (though just as shrill) fish in the UK pool where he now swims to be unrewarding of getting media attention.

Diddums.