Heartland Institute facing uncertain future as staff depart and cash dries up

fungussa · 2012-05-21T13:45:10.926088+00:00

Yeah, but this article has a ring of truth in it. Those billboard messages may have had factual roots, but they amount to giving away a punch-line without telling the story. When we all said "bad move" over the billboards it seems we were on the money.

scpg02 · 2012-05-21T13:19:36.368082+00:00

This may be off-topic but...

Regular reades who put up with reading my comments (thank you all for your indulgence) may recall that I've said many times that people whom we don't generally agree with can have a point. Moreover, we can find ourselves in shifting alliances depending on the topic. There are people who shape their opinions to fit the group but we all know what happens to those people - shunted off to be used as cheerleaders while the opinion-makers take the bows. The point is that few people who rise up as "name" opinion makes are monolithic thinkers. Most think outside the box and find themselves in shifting alliances.

Case in point from this article is the relationship between Hansen, Sagan, and Velikovsky. Hansen (apparently) is sympathetic to Velikovsky while Sagan's antipathy was legendary. Yet Hansen relies on Sagan for inspiration for his own work. I'm sympathetic to Velekovsky, find Sagan to be wanting, and find Hansen's AGW work to be faulty. Yet hansen and I agree (apparently) on Velekovsky. Such is the mix of ideas that make up anyone's intellectual position. Some doors open, some slammed and bolted.

Even if we find that on the issue of AGW Hansen got it wrong or made mistakes we need to give him credit at least for getting his ideas out there. He seems to be guilty of something common to most of us - overstepping the limits of our own knowledge and making fundemental errors as a result. That in itself is not fatal to any movement, nor is it fatal to the scientific process. The big failure re AGW comes from the institutions that direct scientific research that demand results over inquiry. In the case of Hansen and others I think it's more a matter of being swept up in a movement where the distinction between science and politics is nonexistant. I'm sure that if I sat down with Hansen and agreed not to talk AGW we would find many areas of common ground, likes and dislikes. We would also find many areas of disagreement. It would be unfortunate if we based our opinions of one another solely on the disagreements.

ItsJustAConspiracy · 1 day

Then clue me in. Locate and report on any information in that article that is unique. The problem is not that I don't read these articles, the problem is that you claim to yet don't recall the content from one to another. It's like you've gone senile and read the same birthday card over and over getting excited every time.

publius_lxxii · 2 days

The author Michael's story and lesson can be applied to climate or to almost any other discipline and research area. It's easy to jump all over climate science as that's the one most in the news and garnering the most debate. Let's not forget that it's the whole of the establishment that's at fault for the plethora of bad results that plague most fields.

meowmicks666 · 2 days

Nice way to avoid a discussion you want desperately not to have.

meowmicks666 · 2 days

So the 9/11 commision report does not count as evidence. I see. You people live in a very strange world.

ItsJustAConspiracy · 2 days

Bullshit those are his own views. All of the views expressed are the same as the views of all of the other good little campers in the warmist tent. In your world of Big-Box religion every word must seem like a revelation from on high.

meowmicks666 · 2 days

When Have I made a prediction after the fact? Now you're just making stuff up because, as you said, I win.

ItsJustAConspiracy · 2 days

You actually believe that this article says anything that hasn't been said, in countless articles posted here, before? This article was written to the same script, including all main talking points, as most of the articles posted by warmists. Using the propaganda technique of repeating the same thing over and over only works when the victim wants to change.

ItsJustAConspiracy · 3 days

Same tired response that we hear ad infinitum. "His own view on the subject" is the same "own view" that warmists post here several times a week. Do any of you people think for yourselves?

meowmicks666 · 3 days

For a source there is of course the 9/11 Commision Report but that "report" is little more than a summary. The 9/11 commision investigation requested and received call logs from cell phone providers in order to establish that calls were made. I have no doubt that 9/11 sites don't mention the call logs because those logs would indicate that the aircraft were at sufficient altitude to negate any calls.

There is this page that is no interest to us other than the first (Background) section and mention of the times that the calls were placed. Combining the times of the calls with the flight path of the aircraft we have planes that were far too high to allow connection of cell calls.

meowmicks666 · 3 days

As I said, the story makes no sense. If the conflagration was so great then there were no firefighters in the building to make an assessment of immenent collapse. But that's beside the point. The point is that there could not have been any informed judgement as to immenence of collapse because no one had any experience with collapsing buildings. None had collapsed before or since.

Towers 1&2 had already collapsed so there was fear it would happen again to 7. Making the claim of prediction after the fact is a common occurance for people who want to appear more knowledgable than they are. That accounts for all of your quotes.

Typical believer attitude, that they cannot conceive that someone could have heard thier story and rejected it. See how easy that is?

meowmicks666 · 3 days

Over on the R/climateskeptic sub three AGW supporters played their trump card by linking to this page and then went "See? See?". I replied then as I'm replying to you now. I'm not about to write a rebuttle to every point that's likely to go on for 20+ pages when I know you're never going to read it. So I said to them what I said to you, pick one, even two items from the list. Their responses (you're the one making the claim) were nearly the same as your's, word for word. Those people were cowards and so are you.

ItsJustAConspiracy · 3 days

Same tired article that's been submitted ad infinitum. This is what AGW science has been reduced to? Pathetic.

meowmicks666 · 4 days

No, I joined this sub because it was recommended, as I'm generally skeptical. As in other subs I comment when the subject matter of posted articles is ludicrous, or in this case where a person throws out a question that begs for an answer. Since the OP received no other answers it's a good thing I'm here. The rest of you seem to be engaged in back-slapping each other for not thinking.

Since you have a comment history you must be a troll as well.

meowmicks666 · 4 days

What huge fires? By your own sources there were firefighters in the building, on the upper floors, seeing evidence that the building would collapse. Firefighters do not enter buildings where huge fires are blazing. And, they don't enter buildings where huge fires have just been extinguished. You're confusing firefighters with Spiderman. If the lower floors were so badly damaged that a collapse was immenent then no one would have been allowed into the building. If there was fire of sufficient intensity on the first floors then there was no means of access to the upper floors.

I've conceded from the beginning that 7 experienced fires. All of the debate can't erase the fact that not one, not two, but three buildings collapsed, on the same day and from dissimilar damage. At no other time has any other building collapsed. You really haven't thought about this at all.

As I said, there are many quotes. Within hours word was out that it was all due to a terrorist attack and nearly everyone bought that. People tend to go along with the herd. How many of those firefighters had ever, in their careers, fought a fire in a building where the fire was not localized? Modern buildings have fire suppression technology so the vast majority of calls in high-rise buildings are for small fires. There is very little similarity between a fire that fully engulfs a 3-story apartment vs a 47 story building. Most of the quotes came from people who really did not know what was going on. And besides all that, why do you place any confidence at all in subjective analysis? You're supposed to be a skeptic right? If the facts fly in the face of witness accounts we stick to the facts.

meowmicks666 · 4 days

I have to disagree. I opted for this sub because I thought it inhabited by people ready to disect issues. What I find instead is that it's ruled by people ready to be led.

meowmicks666 · 4 days

Pick any item of the report and I'll tell you what's wrong with it. You will find that what I have to say is based entirely on accepted principles.

ItsJustAConspiracy · 4 days

Sure, but you'd better be prepared to prove that fact. If it is a fact that should be easy. If you're having trouble making your case then it's not a fact.

meowmicks666 · 4 days

The video shows what we already know; there were minor fires in the building. The motion is the motion of the camera. Fire does not cause steel-frame buildings to collapse. Heat can cause the frame to weaken which is why steel is insulated. Weakened steel only means that the building deteriorates faster than it normally would. Fire does not cause collapse annd that's easy to prove from other buildings that have suffered complete immolation without collapsing. But, if we assume circumstances where fire might bring down a building that fire would have to have been intense on the lower flloors since the collpase would have to be confined to all those floors above the fire. But we know that the lower floors were unaffected.

The quotes you offer are unconvincing and are after-the-fact rational. You're supposed to be a skeptic. Since no building had ever collapsed in the past there was no way for anyone to be "pretty sure" of collapse. There are many quotes from people saying that the fires were intense. There are also quotes saying that the fires were ordinary. Besides, firefighters are not structural engineers. The building was designed by a structural engineer and one of the principles of design is to make sure that buildings survive fire. Tower 7 was built to at least minimum standards so, once again, it was built to survive a fire.

Take a look at how steel frame buildings are put together. The weight is distributed over the entire base so the loss of any section could lead only to local collapse. Yes, there was damage to one side and the roof. The rest of the structure was intact. It can't be stressed enough - no other steel frame buildings have ever collapsed due to any circumstances right up to major fire following a major earthquake.

That last sentance of your's really shows just how little you've looked into the whole of the 9/11 affair. Towers 1&2 were not steel frame buildings. Get back to me once you've looked that up.

None of the fires were of any great intensity anyway

meowmicks666 · 4 days

But cell phone calls are logged. In 2001 those logs showed that calls were placed from the phones of passengers who were supposed to be at high altitude at the time. There were calls placed from the on-board phone systems of the planes as well. The on-board calls are not problematic but the cell calls are.

meowmicks666 · 4 days

You don't follow the controversy at all. The NIST report is one of the major objections to the whole 9/11 affair. The entire report is rushed, scientifically unsound, and fallacious.

It's amazing to me how many people frequenting this sub are not skeptical at all but instead are willing to buy into every claim.

meowmicks666 · 4 days

As I said, there are many reports of successful connections from aircraft at altitude. Those instances were rare and the connection was always dropped at station hand-off. We're told that on 9/11 several connections were made and maintained during hand-off, and from multiple aircraft. Couldn't happen, didn't happen.

That picture shows dust being raised by the collapse of Tower 2.

Interviews with firefighters record that they were ordered out of the building by people on the outside warning of collapse. No firefighter saw any evidence inside the building that a collapse was immenent. In fact, there would have been no way to gauge that the building would collapse because no steel frame building had ever collapsed so none of the firefighters could have known what to loook for.

meowmicks666 · 4 days

It's almost as if you had never checked your link before posting.

meowmicks666 · 5 days

No, it was not possible to reliably connect calls from aircraft at altitude in 2001. The technology to do so was not in place until 2003.

Tower 7 was not hit by any aircraft. It did sustain damage from falling debris. But, several other buildings were also hit by falling debris, suffered far worse damage, and remained standing. In WW2 many buildings of simple brick recieved multiple bomb hits and remained standing. Tower 7 was built to far higher standards than any of those buildings.

Since the advent of steel structure buildings none had collapsed due to either fire or impact damage. Yet we're asked to believe that 3 of the best built towers in the world would all collapse on the same day. The fire in Tower 7 was not extensive so there can be no case made that the collapse could have been fire related.

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