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Shocker: NY Sanitation workers targeted specific neighborhoods for non-service: "If union bosses spent this much time figuring out how to better serve the taxpayers, there would be no issue with union compensation. Alas, that's not the case. From the New York Post via Instapundit, the ultimate snowjob:

There was a method to their madness.

The selfish Sanitation bosses who sabotaged the blizzard cleanup to fire a salvo at City Hall targeted politically connected and well-heeled neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn to get their twisted message across loud and clear, The Post has learned.

Their motives emerged yesterday as the city's Department of Investigation admitted it began a probe earlier this week after hearing rumblings of a coordinated job action.

Sources told The Post several neighborhoods were on the workers' hit list -- including Borough Park and Dyker Heights in Brooklyn and Middle Village in Queens -- because residents there have more money and their politicians carry big sticks.

'It was more targeted than people actually think,' said a labor source. 'Borough Park was specifically targeted [because of] . . . its ability to sort of gin up the p.r. machine.'

The plan worked. Residents of those neighborhoods -- who, after three days, were still trying to dig out their cars -- are apoplectic.

'It's hurting people for greed,' seethed Barry Coogan, 60, who lives on 64th Road in Middle Village. 'Whoever made those decisions should lose their jobs.

Yeah - good luck with getting a union boss in New York City fired. More from the New York Post on this:

Via another Insty thread: THE NEW YORK SNOW DEBACLE: Time To Rethink Public Employee Unions. If by “rethink” you mean “outlaw.”

...the union may be responsible for at least one death. Mayor Bloomberg has vowed to investigate.

It remains to be seen what will come of this particular controversy, but the broader point is coming into ever-clearer focus: it is time to ban public employee unions.

For the large majority of our history, public employee unions have been illegal. It is only since the 1960s and 1970s that they have been allowed. Currently, they are legal in roughly half the states. The United States has carried on a four-decade experiment in legalization, and the results are in: public employee unions are a cancer on our country.

Public employee unions flourish because government is, by its nature, a monopoly. Thus, there is no need for unionized government units to compete against non-unionized units. Moreover, public officials who negotiate with public employee unions generally lack the same incentives that private employers have to keep costs down. The result has been a fiscal disaster, with numerous states and municipalities now going over the waterfall of bankruptcy.

Unions were developed to stick it to 'the man.' But who are public sector unions sticking it to? Is 'the man' not the taxpayer that is supposed to be served by them? In that case, how do these public sector workers get benefits far more generous than the taxpayers they are supposed to be serving? And it's not just the cost, but the political graft:

Political graft such as this:

Van Smith of Baltimore's City Paper should have known better than to write a piece documenting the criminal background of Local 333 of the International Longshoremen's Association. The union responded by picketing his paper — even demanding his resonation:

The taxpayers' money at work - printing signs that aren't even spelled correctly.

Control of climate research funding was a critical part of the machinations of Maurice Strong and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Dr. Tim Ball

There are two sides to every story. The Chinese express it as Yin and Yang represented by a symbol.

Yin is black and Yang white, but the dots indicate nothing is purely one or the other. Many react with cultural bias by assuming white is good and black is bad.

The idea of balance is possibly one of the greatest victims of political correctness. It has distorted climate science, because they only considered one side and refused to follow the scientific method.

This requires you to have a theory, which you try to disprove. If it's disproved you must then consider the null hypothesis. In the case of the anthropogenic warming hypothesis (AGW) they set out to prove that human CO2 was causing warming and climate change. They claim they proved it, but did so by restricting focus and manipulating data and computer programs. The null hypothesis was not allowed. Normally, they would find that human CO2 was not the cause and then ask the question, if not CO2 then what? It was a question aggressively asked of skeptics and the obvious simple answer was the sun. It's why there was an active campaign to discredit the sun as the explanation. A major confusion is that the null hypothesis is considered a negative, possibly because the word null can mean zero. In the scientific context it means if it isn't this, then it is something else.

Political correctness and the blind drift toward equalization or elimination of differences have prevented identifying successes or failures

Political correctness and the blind drift toward equalization or elimination of differences have prevented identifying successes or failures. It appeared in the schools when children were no longer allowed to fail. What was overlooked in all this was the function of identifying and promoting differing skills and abilities. I explained to a student who thought because he failed my course, he was a failure. All it meant was that he was not a climatologist. He might be the best in the world in some other area and that is what he should pursue. The concept of testing, passing and failing has become so distorted that reasonable discussion is almost impossible.

Several years ago, I participated in a debate at a Canadian High School on the motion that "School leaving exams are unnecessary." I argued against the motion. Supporting the motion was a declared socialist and faculty member of an education department. Prevailing wisdom, at least in academia and left wing political groups, was that failure was not allowed. Students were passed on to the next grade and eventually graduated from school without ever achieving any measured standard. Teacher's unions argued against them because they were a measure of the teacher's ability. My closing remarks included the comment that everyone in the room should hope the next time they fly that the pilot has achieved a certain level of competence.

Before the Internet existed, exchange of information was slow and difficult. A former colleague was working on his doctoral thesis at a British university while teaching in Canada. It was a math doctorate and required a new theorem defined as a general proposition not self-evident, but proved by a chain of reasoning. After two years working on two lines of reasoning with no success, he met with his supervisor in England. He was advised both lines were explored by former colleagues of the supervisor and abandoned. When he asked where this was in the literature he learned that negative results are not published. Why not? Surely such results are valuable and only deemed without value by the negative label.

The concept of classifying results as negative is part of the practice of not allowing failure. Students are imbued with the idea that a negative result is a failure. For example, in universities they write research papers or carry out lab experiments. They only pursue positive results. For example, if they research a topic they will only consider evidence that supports their original hypothesis. Some will abandon a topic rather than consider the null hypothesis.

We now have people who went through a system that did not consider negative results or failure. This is adversely encouraged by the increasing role of funding in research, and promotion in academia. Funding agencies seek researchers who are disposed to produce results deemed positive and they will only select information and perform experiments to satisfy that predisposition. This practice is why promoters of AGW successfully accused skeptics of being funded by energy companies. They conveniently ignored the fact that government funding is more directed because it always has a political agenda. Control of climate research funding was a critical part of the machinations of Maurice Strong and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Research about acid rain from US coal plants destroying Quebec's maple syrup industry

A few years ago as chair of a national climate research group, a bureaucrat asked for a private meeting. His dilemma involved research about acid rain from US coal plants destroying Quebec's maple syrup industry. The Canadian Prime Minister was publicly pointing the finger. His research showed decreases in yields were due to droughts and a pattern of very early warming followed by hard frost. Both conditions caused dieback, a situation in which the tree will go through its growth cycle to produce seed but with reduced activity – hence less sap. This contradicted what he was told to prove. What to do? It's obvious, but very difficult. He must retain his scientific integrity, but the dilemma is political. He isn't paid to make those decisions so he simply submits his report and it will move up the bureaucracy until someone shelves it, usually protected with an unnecessary high security classification. Within ten years the syrup yields reached record levels and a bilateral panel (3 US and 3 Canadians as required by the International Boundary Commission) confirmed what he found.

Climate science deception by the IPCC and all involved worked because integrity in science and research failed

Climate science deception by the IPCC and all involved worked because integrity in science and research failed. They ignored scientific protocols that require you disprove a theory. They ignored the procedure that if the theory is disproved you must consider the null hypothesis. Only positive results are acceptable and seen as successful, even if they're totally wrong. Too many will do whatever it takes to achieve an objective without a thought to balance or integrity because failure doesn't exist and even if it occurs, you are not accountable; they simply move you to the next grade. Ultimately, you only fail because society fails.

Dr. Tim Ball is a renowned environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. Dr. Ball employs his extensive background in climatology and other fields as an advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition, Friends of Science and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. This article used by permission originally appeared on Canada Free Press

Dr. Ball can be reached at: Letters@canadafreepress.com

Older articles by Dr. Tim Ball

Has the Obama administration gone insane? Napolitano Says DHS to Begin Battling Climate Change as Homeland Security Issue

Al Gore presidential aspirations cost US $16 billion in worthless ethanol subsidies and caused world's poor to pay more for food

The Great Global Warming Swindle – video documentary on CO2

Obama administration hides truth on 'green' jobs with help of big wind businesses which stand to make big money with government subsidies

The Great Global Warming Swindle – video documentary on CO2

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Saturday, January 1, 2011

Friday, December 31, 2010

Control of climate research funding was a critical part of the machinations of Maurice Strong and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Dr. Tim Ball

Political correctness and the blind drift toward equalization or elimination of differences have prevented identifying successes or failures

Research about acid rain from US coal plants destroying Quebec's maple syrup industry

Climate science deception by the IPCC and all involved worked because integrity in science and research failed

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The Great Global Warming Swindle – video documentary on CO2