Wednesday 8 June 2016

and that the NSA lied about this

Long Article on Snowden's Attempts to Raise His Concerns Inside the NSA says Bruce Schneier. I didn't find it convincing and said so:

> and that the NSA lied about this
That seems very strong, and not justified by the article. I confess I haven't read through all 800 pages of the PDFs, but there was nothing significant in the first 10-20 pages. To save us all trawling through the 800 pages, perhaps you could post some pointers to the bits you consider justify you claim of lies?

Socially constructed silence?

ATTP has an article on what I would call a really rather silly article called Socially constructed silence? Protecting policymakers from the unthinkable by PAUL HOGGETT and ROSEMARY RANDALL 6 June 2016. I commented there, and will record here for posterity since I'm pretty sure at least part of it will be redacted, the following:
The article seems to be wank to me. For example “after the fiasco of COP 15 at Copenhagen… climate change became a taboo subject among most politicians” is clearly drivel, as the most recent Paris summit showed. As to the poor dahling little scientist who was “attacked” by her colleagues – from what is quoted, you can’t tell if that was an “attack” or, as rather more likely, constructive criticism.
I think the article falls into the trap that many denialists do – that most “climate scientists” are working directly on the “big picture” of human-caused GW. But they aren’t; that’s a commonplace illusion, but its wrong. Most “climate scientists” are working on small pieces of the puzzle and would have nothing in particular to say to the meeja anyway. FWIW, when I was at BAS, mgt and the PR dept were desperately happy whenever anyone got their research into the press, or indeed any work-related activity, as long as it wasn’t buggering penguins.