The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science

olasek said:
And I would bet my 401K that those poverty-stricken in the US still lead a much better life than an average Chinese worker in some depleted shop in China turning some low-cost widgets.
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Sure they will, but that's not going to make it feel better for them. Get enough of them, they'll start rioting too... even if they're eating better than 2/3's of the world.
 
Jay Honeck said:
Whew. Try telling that to the millions of shiftless, under-educated young men who once had a clear career path into the factories, and now face lives of frustration and poverty-stricken idleness. Never forget that we cleaned the air and water on THEIR backs, not ours.
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Maybe they ought not to be so shiftless and think about what they might learn to do now that their world has changed.

Note that I'm not the one who called them "shiftless" first. :rofl:

I honestly don't know anyone like the people you are describing.
 
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Everskyward said:
I honestly don't know anyone like the people you are describing.
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There was a time when I could say that, too. In my corporate newspaper days, I rarely had to interact with the unwashed masses.

Now, with 9 years of hotel ownership behind me, and an endless string of low-paying, low-quality hires behind us (housekeepers don't come from the upper strata of society, you know), I can tell you from personal experience that there is a HUGE group of people in America who have been cut out of the Middle Class since I was a boy.

These aren't college-bound kids. These aren't the best and the brightest. They are that enormous middle-to-lower-half group of Americans that will never invent a semi-conductor, build a skyscraper, or own their own business. They are the meat and potatoes of America -- the folks who change your oil, and (in South Texas) trim our palm trees.

In years past, these folks would have found employment on an assembly line, loading widgets into boxes, or running a strapping machine. Those jobs are gone, now, leaving few options for them.

We always talk as if anyone can be or do anything in America, and -- for a certain subset that tends to includes pilots and aircraft owners -- that's true, to a point. But it ain't true for many millions of people, never has been, never will be -- but it USED to be true that even these folks could work hard and support a family at an honest, decent-paying job.

No more. Those jobs are gone.

We in the "upper 25%" forget these folks at our peril. This is the group that the French and Russian aristocracies forgot -- and it didn't work out too well for them.

Which brings us back to the question: Do we want to continue to draw down our industrial capacity, largely at this group's expense, in the hope that we will somehow "save the planet" from "climate change"?
 
Jay Honeck said:
In years past, these folks would have found employment on an assembly line, loading widgets into boxes, or running a strapping machine. Those jobs are gone, now, leaving few options for them.
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If you are talking about Texas, here's the monthly review of the Texas economy.

http://recenter.tamu.edu/pdf/1862.pdf

All Texas industries except the information industry and the state’s federal government sector had more jobs in May 2011 than in May 2010 (Table 2).

The state’s mining and logging industry ranked first in job creation and posted an annual employment growth rate of 15.6 percent for the period May 2010 to May 2011 (Table 2 and Figure 2). The average number of active rotary rigs increased from 689.9 in June 2010 to 874 in June 2011 according to Hughes Tool Co.

The state’s construction industry ranked second in job creation, adding 26,400 jobs from May 2010 to May 2011, a 4.7 percent rate increase (Table 2 and Figure 3). Job gains consisted of 3,300 in construction of buildings, 12,000 in heavy and civil engineering construction, and 11,100 in specialty trade contractors.
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I'm guessing that some of these jobs would fit the group you are talking about.

Jay Honeck said:
Which brings us back to the question: Do we want to continue to draw down our industrial capacity, largely at this group's expense, in the hope that we will somehow "save the planet" from "climate change"?
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Maybe I would have had more sympathy had you not described them as "shiftless". Did they think that high-paying factory jobs were a birthright? Besides, although I'm sure that environmental regulation has an effect, I don't think it's as big an effect as you are making it out to be. There are plenty of other reasons for manufacturing to move overseas. Other jobs which have little environmental impact have moved overseas as well.
 
If you are talking about Texas, here's the monthly review of the Texas economy.
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No, I wasn't. As a whole, Texas has done stunningly well. In fact, from 2000 until 2010, the Texas economy created more jobs than the other 49 states COMBINED.

That's one of the reasons we relocated here. This place is booming. I just ran our numbers for June (yes, I'm working, at 11:40 PM, CST -- welcome to the life of a small business owner), and our sales have skyrocketed over 35% since June 2010. :thumbsup:

Maybe I would have had more sympathy had you not described them as "shiftless". Did they think that high-paying factory jobs were a birthright? Besides, although I'm sure that environmental regulation has an effect, I don't think it's as big an effect as you are making it out to be. There are plenty of other reasons for manufacturing to move overseas. Other jobs which have little environmental impact have moved overseas as well.
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Of course, you are right, there are many factors involved -- but we're talking about the "science" of climate change in this thread, and my contention is that the proposed cure is potentially far worse than the proclaimed disease.

We've already made it darned-near impossible to grow industry in America -- just TRY to build a new oil refinery, I dare you! -- so the thought of tightening the regulatory screws on the environmental Iron Maiden is hardly going to help that situation.
 
Jay Honeck said:
We've already made it darned-near impossible to grow industry in America
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Then why are mining (which I think also means drilling) and logging the top growing industries in the link I posted? Those are two industries subject to a lot of environmental regulation.
 
Jay Honeck said:
In 1965, industry accounted for 53% of employment in America. By 2004, that had dropped to just 9%. (That's NOT a typo.) Read more here: http://www.thetrumpet.com/?page=article&id=1955
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How many computers did we have in 1965? Very few. Hell, the integrated circuit was in its infancy and the microprocessor was still five years away. We live in a new world now, and manufacturing will never be back at 53%.

What was the situation worldwide then, and what is it now? Even though many manufacturing jobs have moved to China, many industries have died and others have been born to take their place. It's called progress, and the EPA did not cause it.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
How many computers did we have in 1965? Very few. Hell, the integrated circuit was in its infancy and the microprocessor was still five years away. We live in a new world now, and manufacturing will never be back at 53%.

What was the situation worldwide then, and what is it now? Even though many manufacturing jobs have moved to China, many industries have died and others have been born to take their place. It's called progress, and the EPA did not cause it.
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What percentage of U.S. Workers are government workers now compared to then? How many are Unionized?

Where are those microprocessors and ICs made? Designed?

What percentage of U.S. Workers are in computer or so-called "high-tech" fields? How many are Unionized?

How many government workers today will be laid off in the next 20 years?

How many have so-called "guaranteed benefit" retirement plans? (Read: Pensions)

How many high-tech people will be laid off in the next 20 years?

How many have guaranteed-benefit plans waiting in retirement?

Just the initial questions that run through my head if we're going to claim that high-tech is somehow "progress".

EPA will be along shortly to slap out some laws about data center power consumption, just wait. The bureaucracy will cause lots of dark/empty data centers which will move off-shore into "the cloud", to use the industry's latest buzzword for "a whole lot of Internet-connected server farms" run by pro teams, somewhere else.

The co-location facilities where my company's servers are housed are required to ask me for photo ID and whether or not I'm a U.S. Citizen, and I'm required to affirm that statement every time I walk to our racks. I've always wondered what they'd do if I said I wasn't.

It just might be one of the only reasons I still have a job, people are paranoid about where their servers and data are stored. Certainly some engineer in India is cheaper than I am.

Wonder how long until the greed of the Boomer generation moves my job to "the cloud"?

Undersea fiber is getting cheaper all the time, too.
 
Instead of the Science of why we don't believe in Science how about how Science has become a Religion? Michael Crichton wrote an incredible essay Environmentalism as a Religion but it was apparently removed from his website after his death. I will see if I can find the essay but until then there is a video of him explaining this to some college students and a few other essays on the same subject.
http://www.crichton-official.com/video-studentsandleaders-question1.html
http://www.globalwarminghysteria.com/environmentalism-as-religion-/
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/religion.htm
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/01/20/the-global-warming-religion/
 
Cap'n Jack said:
based on my current knowledge, I agree. Do you have any idea how many of the algae (or whatever we choose to use) facilities we will need, and how big they need to be? I haven't heard estimates about this.

I like the algal biodiesel because we can use it for feedstock for our refineries for other things besides fuel.
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Since photosynthetic microbes can be grown in constant flow culture in 3 dimensions (instead of two, like crop plants) I would imagine they can be grown quite efficiently. I don't have the engineering background to provide specifics.
 
Jay Honeck said:
Ah, I get it.

You're looking at the horse from the ass-end, while I was looking down its throat. You're probably right -- the only way to fix the Chinese problem now is to stop buying their products. The time to fix it PROactively has now long-since passed us by.
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:rofl::rofl:
Thought it was more of a side view!

Jay Honeck said:
However, what you are asking millions of people to do is act against their personal best interests, and that's a tough row to hoe.
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Maybe, but the "right" long term choices aren't always the easiest.

Jay Honeck said:
The real question we should be asking is: WHY can't we make cheap hand tools in America? What are the impediments to building a factory here, and putting some of our 17% unemployed back to work?

My contention is that we cannot do so because our own government has stacked the deck against us -- and then had the nerve to complain about it! I know politics is the art of blaming everyone else, but that's just too two-faced to go unpunished.
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Good for you on the cheap tools, China provided a product that met your needs at a price you were willing to pay.
American manufacturing isn't always the best, the US auto industry certainly had it's issues with "cheap", Ford Pinto, Chevy Vega?

The world is a far different place than it was in 1960. Our own population was maybe 1/2 of today and Europe, Japan, Russia and China were just recovered from the utter devastation of WWII. Back then we were the true 900 pound gorilla of the world. Perhaps it isn't that we have fallen behind as much as everyone else has caught up. As to life being more complicated, sure it is.

When China has an illegal immigration problem, then I'll believe that they have surpassed us.

Gary
 
Gary F said:
To replace the Chinese workers that commit suicide?
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/2527...-assembler-contractor-technology-electron.htm
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Having spent a year working an assembly line in high school, I can relate.

In those pre-Walkman days, we resorted to whistling (the only music that could be heard over the din of the roller conveyors), smoking (yes, we could smoke on the line) and drinking (yep, a lot of us came to work after the bars -- in HIGH SCHOOL!). It was hellacious. If I had to do it for a living, I'd probably off myself, too.

Which isn't to say that there aren't MILLIONS of Americans who need those kinds of mindless-but-well-paying jobs.
 
denverpilot said:
What percentage of U.S. Workers are government workers now compared to then? How many are Unionized?

Where are those microprocessors and ICs made? Designed?

Speaking for where I work (public record information) -

Made? Fabs in several countries, packaging facilities in several other countries.

Designed? All over the world.

What percentage of U.S. Workers are in computer or so-called "high-tech" fields? How many are Unionized?

Don't know about percentages overall - but where I work? No unions.

How many government workers today will be laid off in the next 20 years?

Don't hold your breath.

How many have so-called "guaranteed benefit" retirement plans? (Read: Pensions)

Not where I work.

How many high-tech people will be laid off in the next 20 years?

How many? Don't know, but it will happen.

How many have guaranteed-benefit plans waiting in retirement?

Two guarantees in life - death and taxes.

Just the initial questions that run through my head if we're going to claim that high-tech is somehow "progress".

EPA will be along shortly to slap out some laws about data center power consumption, just wait. The bureaucracy will cause lots of dark/empty data centers which will move off-shore into "the cloud", to use the industry's latest buzzword for "a whole lot of Internet-connected server farms" run by pro teams, somewhere else.

The co-location facilities where my company's servers are housed are required to ask me for photo ID and whether or not I'm a U.S. Citizen, and I'm required to affirm that statement every time I walk to our racks. I've always wondered what they'd do if I said I wasn't.

It just might be one of the only reasons I still have a job, people are paranoid about where their servers and data are stored. Certainly some engineer in India is cheaper than I am.

Wonder how long until the greed of the Boomer generation moves my job to "the cloud"?

Undersea fiber is getting cheaper all the time, too.
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Comments embedded in the quoted text...
 
Gary said:
Quite the rant against the EPA! No doubt a business looks at the regulatory requirements when siting a factory. That being said, it's fairly low down on the priority list. Things like availiblity and cost of raw material, availiblity and cost of labor and cost of transportation to market overwhelm the environmental concerns.



Why has Wal-Mart been so successful? They sell stuff cheaper! Much of that stuff is made abroad. Price is what sells, how many successful advertisements are there that says "buy from us - our quality is higher, but you will pay more".
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People pick name brand over price all the time. Premium gas. Luxury cars. Harley cycles.
 
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