Discussion > Split from Science is a tell : To Answer Raff's points
Raff: I did look and I didn't find. I was assuming you could help. Thiel's main point was about the lack of debate, indeed the suppression of debate. So show me five times Al Gore has engaged in major debates with top sceptics and we'll be done. Otherwise I'll consider you another useless nym.
Richard Drake
Useless nym? Nearly everyone is a nym here - is that a problem for you?
You first asked "So when was the next debate between key figures after the one organised by Intelligence Squared on 14th March 2007?". I suggested Lindzen debating Kerry Emmanuel, which I saw a year or two ago. Why is that not good enough for you as a start? Gore might have been a key figure last century but he isn't now - another case of you people being stuck in the past. Why not join McI picking holes in MBH98 - another irrelevance now and probably a suitable task for you.
You want to maintain that debate is suppressed but you have no evidence for that. Suppressed by whom? The right wing media and think tanks could easily hold debates in the UK, the USA or elsewhere. Do they really not and if not, why? Fox news or the Daily Mail surely can't be suppressing the debate. Or could it be that it would become too obvious to the audience that Fox/Mail had been lying to them. They wouldn't want that.
Raff
There are those I consider useless nyms and you could easily become one of them. That doesn't imply I think all nyms are useless but it is typical of a useless nym to cast that slur. I admit I'm interested in the whole history of the global warming scare since 1988. Richard Lindzen first got involved when he received a letter from an economist about Al Gore seeking to shut down debate at a Washington dinner about the need for radical decarbonisation. In 1988! He was being told the science was solid enough then - and yesterday morning, as Roger Harrabin outlined, we know as little as we did then. The primary figures in the political push don't do debate. That remains true. When Ed Davey accepted the challenge of an interview by Andrew Neil here he was mauled - but they only scratched the surface of the issues. We need full and open debate. Thiel's judgment is totally accurate on this in my view.
Richard Drake
3. My definition of climate change is irrelevant. If you feel that you need to have one out in the open to discuss, give us yours.
Oct 31, 2014 at 7:06 PM | Raff
Sandy, that you typed your list of 23 of your own accord shows that you need no help from me wasting time, you manage fine on your own. What did you think you would achieve with such a context free set of questions?
Nov 1, 2014 at 11:14 PM | Raff
QED
Raff=Troll
SandyS
" Thiel or the electrician to check your wiring" "would you choose Thiel or Betts for climate science advice?"
An example of the common AGW Believer fallacy: "would you get a car mechanic to diagnose a heart condition" when sneering, for example,at Steve McIntyre when he exposes errors in the statistical methods used in temperature reconstructions.
Thiel was not advising on details of 'climate science'. He was pointing out that the emphasis of Believers on the phrase is a give-away.
PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, often considered one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley, said Tuesday that he is skeptical of man-made global warming because many refuse to allow debate the subject.
“Whenever you can’t have a debate, I often think that’s evidence that there’s a problem,” Thiel said on The Glenn Beck Program. “When people use the word ‘science,’ it’s often a tell, like in poker, that you’re bluffing. It’s like we have ‘social science’ and we have ‘political science,’ [but] we don’t call it ‘physical science’ or ‘chemical science.’ We just call them physics and chemistry because we know they’re right.”
Thiel said no one will be upset if you ask questions about the periodic table, because it is actually science. But referring to man-made climate change as “science” tells you “that people are exaggerating and they’re bluffing a little bit,” Thiel said.
“The weather has not been getting warmer for the last 15 years. The hockey stick that Al Gore predicted in the early 2000s on the climate has not happened,” he remarked. “And I think as this monolithic culture breaks down, you can have more debates.”
Martin A
Martin A
But as Raff tells us on geoffchambers' "Message ..." thread, non-believers are not allowed an opinion. It is forbidden to hold a view different from the consensus. If you do you are on a par with "chiropractors, homeopaths, natural cure enthusiasts or alien abductees" and you have no right to be heard. Presumably this includes the founder of PayPal as well.
How this links into the well-established (for centuries) process of driving knowledge forward I'm not quite sure. Perhaps it's not intended to.
Apparently the only way you can find fault with an opinion is by doing your own research (assuming you can get the funding for it, of course) and then submitting a paper for peer review (which means the supporters of the consensus) and inclusion in a journal (whose gatekeepers will also be supporters of the consensus and which, I assume, will have to meet some standard approved by Raff).
I reckon I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the scientific discoveries, technological advances, and inventions that have come about by that process. I doubt we'd even have fire or the wheel, and as for tools made of iron ... well, no chance!
It's all smoke and mirrors, of course. As Richard Drake keeps trying to tell him all Thiel was saying was what many of us have said from the very beginning, namely that there is something fishy about a branch of science that refuses to debate its findings and, worse, refuses even to explain to laymen what they believe and why.
And, while I don't pretend to qualifications I don't have, I know that there are many people on this site and other sceptic sites at least as well qualified in the relevant disciplines who have examined the same evidence and come to different conclusions.
Presumably they aren't entitled to their opinions either and yet people who have no qualifications in any branch of any of the physical sciences have complete freedom to spout all sorts of unproved and unprovable clichés and factoids that they have gleaned from the Global Warming Playbook without any criticism from Raff or any other member of his cult as long as they are Supporters of the Consensus, including politicians with PPE degrees, assorted Hollywood B-listers, ageing dress designers, BBC churnalists (because true journalists they certainly are not), and the usual rent-a-gobs from the pseudenviro community.
Mike Jackson
Raff said @stewgreen threw his toys on the floor because I wouldn't define "climate change". "
- I object to that..I almost never get angry ..last time I remember was in a bus station in Yugoslavia in 1991
@Raff you still don't understand the fallacy of argument of authority, but you can go and look it up
but I can see where you are coming from in a way,( I'll outline an example of a legitimate concern when non-experts cause damage, below *), I am guessing you want to be say "It' expert opinion that counts"
Warmist arguers like to see the world as black and white simple rather than the full complex that it is.. so they look for reasoning shortcuts.
So saying "An authority said that so it must be true"
or "that was said by a none authority" so I can discount it.. is a too tempting shortcut for them
It's a normal warmist tactic which allows them to dismiss thousands of people. However their reasoning is quickly contradicted by the way that they do not dismiss and do not seek to ban non-experts like Al Gore, Di Caprio etc who supply them with confirmation bias ..indeed a quick look at warmist's twitter feeds shows them quoting these non-experts.
*THE DANGER OF NON EXPERTS
back to to an example of a legitimate concern when a non-expert does damage one recent example was Sally Uren, the CEO of Forum for the Future as mentioned in the Bishop's post ..clearly a non-expert and out of her depth she started misleading the radio audience
stating "we have these things called 'storage units' and so we have this grid that allows us to store energy and deal with peaks and troughs in demand"
- another example of the importance of experts is that we could really do with an expert to explain the new complicated structure of prices paid to UK electricity producers
The answer is not to ban people like Sally Uren, she has a perfect right to put forward her arguments on a public platform ..but the thing is there was then someone to challenge those opinions
Well, all can say is I don’t know what planet Sally’s on but it’s certainly not the same one that our members in industry or indeed anyone else I know. I wish it was possible to store electricity, these “storage units” it’s the first time I’ve heard about them.- Likewise with our pricing expert ..we shouldn't take his opinon as gospel but rather also test his arguments.
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Yes you don't still understand what "proper validated science" means
how did you all validate Lewis' low sensitivity results - or do you think they are not validated and that sensitivity could actually be high?Of course they are not validated, they are just professional opinions based on evidence.. and yes 'climate' sensitivity could possibly be proved to be high
-----------------------------
Warmists refuse to debate : In any other important controversial argument there is often a big public fair debate between the experts of both sides on a the major public broadcaster..can you name one on the big public broadcasters like the BBC ?
Richard, I saw Lindzen debating Kerry Emmanuel and others some time back, but I have no link and am not about to look for one. Do you really think that because you or I cannot link to other debates from across the world that this proves there have been none? I don't have such conceit.An an example of warmist experts coming to a fair public debate with climate sceptic experts ??
Except : It wasn't actually a debate & it wasn't about climate
It wasn't about the main issues of climate, rather it was about Climategate
here's the link to the debate you talked about
I looked for evidence that the warmists had won.
Not a debate"It was more of a forum than a debate" say commenters in good discussion
- "During the Great Climategate Debate recently at MIT, Ronald G. Prinn said that while the CRU email shennanigans have left the handle of the hockey stick broken, the blade, he argued, remains intact. He based this on, basically, an appeal to consensus. His point was that there are many independent studies all showing the same thing."
however they refuse to release the raw data .. "Without access to the raw data unfortunately, all we can do is speculate."
- It was discussed here on Bishop Hill ..one of the commenters said he was present at the non"debate"
---------------------------------
here I have done you a favour I found a BBC VIDEO of your famous "Pop bottle proves CO2 GHE, there the debate is over" experiment.. they tried to convince 30 members of the public . No skeptical scientists were allowed to be present to put any counter points, the BBC won some converts , but certainly didn't convert them all . Commenters point out flaws in that experiment.
Newsnight has never had a proper debate but even when they tried little segments they failed miserably ..when they put up against sceptical-activist journalist a Climate activist scientist got angry and shouted "asshole!" ..video
stewgreen
* If you guys think that we should impose $10trillion solutions, then it's upto you to prove that we have an $11trillion problem *
stewgreen
stewgreen
Thank you for reminding me of Justin Rowlatt, the BBC's 'Ethical Man' (Do you think he was the only one in the BBC at the time?). His attempts to live "ethically" struck me at the time as so artificial and the conclusions he came to so much a combination of non sequiturs and leaps of faith (much the same thing, I suppose) that I couldn't be bothered with him.
But he wasn't totally bigoted and your link threw up this quote relevant to what we are talking about here:
A couple of days after my blog on cars was published,[the suggestion that sometimes using a car was more environmentally friendly than using public transport] I was shocked to find an e-mail from an environmentalist who said it should never have been posted. He made no effort whatsoever to refute my claims, his argument was simply that it undermined the debate to publish such heresy.So, never mind the facts. Never mind the occasional conclusion that goes against what we would like the answer to be. All that matters — to that environmentalist at least — is the message. Because he "just knows" he's right and you'd all better get with the message because ..... well, because.
Which in essence is where Raff is coming from. We don't know what his qualifications are because he won't tell us. But he "just knows" he's right because his High Priests have spoken and that's all that matters. It's not that he can't see the other side of this argument; there is no other side as far as he is concerned.
And since he's not listening and not communicating why are we wasting our time with him?
Mike Jackson
@ Mike Jackson
Apparently the only way you can find fault with an opinion is by doing your own research (assuming you can get the funding for it, of course) and then submitting a paper for peer review (which means the supporters of the consensus) and inclusion in a journal
It's another of the True Believer debating fallacies - which exposes the whole thing as a giant bluff. According to the True Believers, your pointing out basic flaws in the 'science' is not admissible - you have to do your own research on the subject and have published your results before your views can have any validity.
It's not much different from the "would you ask a car mechanic to diagnose a heart condition" fallacy - gving a spurious reason why somebody's contrary views should be disregarded.
Martin A
And since he's not listening and not communicating why are we wasting our time with him?
Well it's not to help Raff see reality.
It's probably more to clarify our own reasoning and views of how the whole bluff is sustained.
Martin A
That's exactly right Martin (12:57 PM). And one never knows - this page is open to everyone who has a web browser. But the main thing is "to clarify our own reasoning and views of how the whole bluff is sustained." That matters.
Richard Drake
Martin, there are various silly sceptic memes that try to redefine words. Thiel's and your attack on the word science is one of the most idiotic, though competition is stiff. Thiel says, "we don’t call it ‘physical science’ or ‘chemical science.’". Presumably you concur.
Look for "Natural Science" on Google - you'll get more than a million hits. Look for "Physical Science" - over 2 million hits. Look for "Chemical Science" - again over 1 million hits including the names of journals like "Chemical Science", "American Chemical Science Journal", "Chemical Science Transactions" and "Chemical Science Review and Letters" and courses like "Principles of Chemical Science" from MIT. You can find others like Biological Science, Earth Science, etc and in each case, like Climate Science, they are container terms for a collection of related sciences.
Thiel may not know it but Physical Science is a branch of Natural Science and neither is somehow weaker or less valid as a science because of their name containing "science". You may know all this of course. Or maybe not, it is hard to tell. But you will want to pretend not to know in order to be able to fool those who really don't (like Thiel, if he was being honest in what he said) into believing "Climate Science" (or is that climatology) is not robust. If you had any confidence in your arguments about climate you would not need to employ to such stupid tricks to fool others.
stewgreen, I know about the fallacy of argument of authority. The problem you have is twofold. Firstly you misunderstand it to mean that an argument from an authority can, as a consequence of its source, be ignored. Rather, the meaning is that such an argument is not automatically correct because of its source, but nevertheless has a much greater chance of being correct than any randomly selected argument. Secondly, you are forced to reject anyone with authority in the subject exactly because there are so few people with any scientific authority who agree with you.
"Yes you don't still understand what "proper validated science" means"
You are right, I have no idea of the difference between "validated" and "properly validated". If you really think there is a difference, please explain.
On TV debates, I don't watch the BBC, or any TV much, so I would not have seen one if it happened. I've seen discussion of debates here on BH, and I think Andrew Montford has even taken part in some, although I might be mistaken. I've heard of Lawson or Ridley appearing on news programs to discuss climate science topics. Climate science was presumably not "properly debated" in these debates. If you maintain that debate is suppressed (properly, I guess), explain how and by whom? The right wing media and think tanks could easily hold debates in the UK, the USA or elsewhere. Do they really not and if not, why? Fox news or the Daily Mail surely can't be suppressing the debate. Or could it be that it would become too obvious to the audience that Fox/Mail had been lying to them. If they and other media outlets don't hold debates my assumption is that they think the public is not interested in hearing such debate. I think they are probably right in that, but you of course smell a conspiracy (a proper one).
As far as doing your own research, it is not that this is the only way to be heard. If you think you are not heard, why do I keep hearing of sceptics popping up on news programs or of the Wall St Journal publishing disinformation pieces by well known "sceptics". The thing about original research is that if done (properly) and if it is good, you are guaranteed to be heard. If it is not good and nobody will publish it, you can always fall back on the conspiracy that the publishers are all against you.
Raff
@Raff seeks tricks to quickly dismiss everyone else's arguments.. I'll list some examples
1. misrepresentation,
2. "I won't answer your questions, here's some more of mine",
3. shouting conspiracy theorists
4. "I could check, but I prefer to be ignorant"
and other excuses ... but sorry that won't wash in proper debate
He's been given a fair crack of the whip but still comes back with things like
"you misunderstand it to mean that an argument from an authority can, as a consequence of its source, be ignored.No it means what it means; anyone can look it up and compare it against your initial arguments recorded here. So you have misreprented it as a whole
..Secondly, you are forced to reject anyone with authority in the subject exactly because there are so few people with any scientific authority who agree with you."
*".. nevertheless has a much greater chance of being correct than any randomly selected argument."
..and in specifics e.g. " reject anyone with authority " It doesn't surprise me that Raff says something outrageous like that cos anyone can check and see he's is projecting and it's him that simply rejects authorities he disagrees with ..(see how he said' I've listened to Prof Judith Curry ONCE and I'm not going to listen/read anything by her again')
* and after checking people can laugh you misrepresenting FAfA by adding that extra bit in.
Then he does more misrepresentation via the strawman fallacy
"You are right, I have no idea of the difference between "validated" and "properly validated". If you really think there is a difference, please explain.
look back when have we ever been talking about those two options (which are essentially the same). We were talking about "scientists say" vs "validated science" (properly was added for clarification ie seems validated vs properly validated)
"The right wing media and think tanks could easily hold debates" ..They try but activist-scients won't accept ..anyone can check on google
"If you think you are not heard, why do I keep hearing of sceptics popping up" ..popping up! in most countries 50% odd of the public are skeptical of the main alarmist arguments ..yet they are expected to pay 100% of the cost ..does the media time fairly represent their viewpoint ?
"why do I keep hearing of sceptics popping up on news programs or of the Wall St Journal publishing disinformation pieces by well known sceptics"
disinformation ? Please name these you say are disinformation so we can check that is true
"The thing about original research is that if done (properly) and if it is good, you are guaranteed to be heard. "
that is a strong assertion ..so there are no well known papers from years gone by that had difficulty getting published ?
- Nature publishing is so wedded to hyping climate scare that it will publish any confirmation stuff ..but when the inventor of graphene came to them they rejected his paper
Raff how do you think outsiders rate the quality and credibility of your arguments here ?
stewgreen
stewgreen, you listen to Thiel because he is a Silicon Valley bigwig. No other reason. If he said climate change is a serious problem he would get zero coverage here.
You only have to listen to Curry once to tell she is an experienced player of Climateball. She is an authority on "stadium waves" (or some such) in the climate, but nobody else believes her theories.
Scientists don't want to appear on Fox news to debate climate. Hey what a surprise - Fox is one of the main outlets of climate science lies. So where is the "suppression" of debate? Or do sceptics define "suppression" differently from everyone else?
Disinformation in the WSJ? Curry and Ridley spring to mind.
Nature rejected a paper that was then published in Science shortly afterwards. Is that "proof" of your theory that good science cannot be published? You should try "properly validating" your theory.
Raff
stewgreen, do us a favour, next time you want to argue with troll Raff, do it on your own bandwidth.
TheBigYinJames
TBYJ
Have to agree with you on this. I really think we have gone as far as we can reasonably go with this guy. Nobody can say we haven't tried.
Though you must give him some credit. He has successfully derailed every thread he's stuck his fingers into.
Meanwhile .... DNFTT applies again, I think.
Mike Jackson
There's no point in discussing anything with someone who has already made their mind up. This is merely a supercilious amusement to him or to satisfy some sort of moral urge to do his bit for the cause by disruption. We've had his type before, wouldn't be surprised if they come out of a guerrilla course or something, they are so interchangeable with their bland put-downs and logical avoidance techniques.
Part of it is anger - we're winning.
DNFTT
TheBigYinJames
Raff:
stewgreen, you listen to Thiel because he is a Silicon Valley bigwig.
As the person who first suggested Thiel might be worth listening to allow me to cut in one more time. I take what I consider to be a middle-of-the-road approach to the so-called logical fallacy argumentum ad verecundiam or argument from authority. There are plenty of areas where I know don't have expertise so I have to rely on the view of experts. But this needs to be qualified by two things:
1. Experts sometimes disagree. One then needs to exercise judgment in choosing which ones to believe and follow.
2. Self-confessed experts are sometimes bullshitting. One needs to discern this and adjust one's views accordingly.
One of my big interests in the original thread was the multiplicity of views among Silicon Valley experts of the climate situation. So we were in situation 1 - the experts disagreeing. I don't deny for a moment that the fact they were experts in various innovations of hardware and software that are still changing the world in which we live was a major reason for raising the question.
I also agree with stewgreen and others that it's the quality of the arguments that matters. But this relates closely to whether someone's expertise is relevant to the point under scrutiny. Here I see a win-win with Thiel and his primary argument, about the lack of open debate in the climate area. Because, if a successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist is good at one thing, it has to be in detecting bullshit. Do we have any idea how many unsolicited pitches these guys receive? If they end up successful it's because of a better-than-average bullshit detector.
Even so, Thiel had to put forward his argument. The 'Science is a tell' part I found illuminating but not conclusive. The lack of debate part I find completely convincing. This is reinforced by the knowledge that Thiel must have a decent bullshit-detector in other areas. It also stands on its own merits, the more so once one considers the key role, and aversion to debate, of another Silicon Valley bigwig, Al Gore.
Raff has added precious little to this developing thought-process but not nothing, in my own puny estimation. Thanks all, therefore :)
Richard Drake
Alright guys I also could do without the big timewasting diversion style of debate , instead of the normal straight forward debate that progresses forward.
- Actually I also think I had only one more simple point to make ..I wrote it at 8.30am, before you so I'll put that up . it's below **
(Secondly I am conscious of alarmist visitors here often want us to get angry, and ban them and/or sow division between skeptics.
"see they just told me to shut up" .." I went to that skeptic website , they wouldn't listen, they banned me."
Since alarmist websites have used "shunning" ie ignoring posters once they have revealed they are from the skeptic side, I wanted to show that this a place a true free debate that we empathise at cut them a lot of slack
..although like anything there is a limit where we get to the point of saying "OK you have proven yourself . mischievous I think you are a bad faith debater so I am not going to invest time reading your posts anymore" )
**
: I'm going to go hypothetical cos it's not about specific people like Raff, me or other BHers We don't need to talk about specific people cos we are all pretty much the same; most of the BHer's here started off as Green CC True believers we were like them
..it's about making decisions in the best possible way ..ie it's about truth.
"Oh my god there is thing called Climate Change it's really serious, it's rally bad and we have to do something right now ..at almost whatever cost"
OK let's apply the best tool we have "The scientific method"
1. Define your terms "what do we really mean by climate change ?", "when is it a problem ?
2. So what is our hypothesis ?
3. What do we scientists do next ? Do we set out to prove our hypothesis true ?
No, good science doesn't work that way.
We set out to prove it false, as per Karl Poppers rules.
"We can't prove something works under every circumstance. We can, however, disprove things. We do this by looking for observations that are inconsistent with our hypothesis. "
4. So We state the terms under which our hypothesis is falsified
Conclusion : What are the terms under which "Climate Change hypothesis" is falsified ?
stewgreen
"Part of it is anger"
Yes, Raff comes over as seething with anger. It makes reading his stuff about as comfortable (as someone said here once) as watching an injured dog in the road.
Martin A
Stewgreen - Didn't Phil Jones quantify it - something like 'another X years of no temperature increase' ?
Martin A
So if I may summarise:
Peter Thiel says some uninteresting things about climate science: a) that because it has "science" in its name, like its better known cousins "natural science" and "physical science" (of which he Thiel is unaware) it can't be real science; and b) that because climate is not "debated" (apart from endless debate on the internet - of which he is unaware) there is a problem.
Richard Drake thinks this is profound. It is in fact a) ignorant (see above) and b) untrue. It is also clear that it is only of interest to Richard because of who Thiel is.
It's pretty simple really. I was interested in how Peter Thiel attacked the problem, both in itself and as an example of the views of one Silicon Valley pioneer.
stewgreen got all upset because I questioned the relevance of Richard's source, seeing as Thiel apparently knows nothing of science (he doesn't know physical science exists, ffs) and is unaware of the existence of heated debate. stew played the "argument from authority" card, when that was exactly what Richard was playing. That was all very tedious, but we did glean one nugget along the way - that stew considers Nic Lewis work as just as non-validated as all other sensitivity studies and that climate sensitivity could possibly be high. Wow!
As a distraction perhaps, stew demanded my definition of climate change and wouldn't sit still until I quoted Wikipedia at him. And that didn't go down well (well it wouldn't, would it).
Meanwhile Sandy gave me his best double barrel interrogation with a list of 23 loaded questions. When I refused to play his game he got cross.
And Richard insisted on being given a list of five Al Gore debates as if anyone cares what Al Gore thinks any more.
And dfhunter expressed his surprise that I could consider the climat change debate to be political and claimed that this site is interested in "politics + real world waste by halfwits/scamsters". I suggested that there might be other scams the site could take an interest in, like that which led to the Gulf oil disaster and that shut him up. That might be a line for a new discussion thread though...
Richard came back claiming that debate is "suppressed" but it later turned out that he meant that climate scientists viewed debating on Fox or any other favourite sceptic media outlets with about the same enthusiasm as they would having a foot amputated. And so a new, sceptic, definition of "suppression" arose.
Martin brought us back to Thiel's preoccupation with the word "science", but after I pointed out the prevalence of sciences like natural, physical, chemical, biological and so on all having "science" after them, that the emphasis on the word "science" was just a mechanism to fool the ignorant and that anyone with any good arguments would not have to rely on such nonsense, he had nothing else to say.
Mike Jackson said a few things that I didn't read and the big yin James popped in to call me a liar but strangely forgot.
So that's about it really. I might have got the order a bit mixed up here and there and I'm sure I must have missed someone out, but please don't feel bad about that.
Raff
stewgreen, would you choose Thiel or the electrician to check your wiring; would you choose Thiel or Betts for climate science advice? If you chose Thiel for the latter, why not for the former? And how did you all validate Lewis' low sensitivity results - or do you think they are not validated and that sensitivity could actually be high?
Sandy, that you typed your list of 23 of your own accord shows that you need no help from me wasting time, you manage fine on your own. What did you think you would achieve with such a context free set of questions?
Richard, I thought you were clever enough to think of a better approach to debate than demanding from others what you can't be bothered to look for yourself. Maybe I was wrong.
dfhunter, surprise! Climate change is political. That is why I say that you reject those parts of science that don't fit your political bias. But what do you infer about my bias?
"politics + real world waste by halfwits/scamsters is a topic on this site"
Ah but selectively. I doubt you'll see many articles on the sort of scam that skimps on safety spending and covers the Gulf of Mexico in oil. That is an acceptable scam for this site, no doubt about it.