On Apr 13, 2008, at 3:01 PM, Al Shinn wrote:

> am I wrong about science belonging to OT? should i be EE?

Well, therein is the problem, IMO.  Much of many sciences ties pretty  
closely to Engineering, either directly or by common interests.  But  
GW seems awfully "out there" in the realm of pure science (or what  
OUGHT to be pure science.)  Worse, there is nothing in my EE  
education that helps me interpret much of the data; I know nothing of  
planetary climatology to evaluate claims made in the field, so I'm  
forced (if I pay attention at all) to evaluate GW articles based on  
peripheral observations about how "scientific" or unbiased the  
article appears to be.  (on top of that, I'm not convinced that  
ANYONE understands planetary climatology well enough to draw  
conclusions about future trends from ANY set of present or historical  
data.)  So I find it very frustrating to (try to) follow even the  
most reasonably done GW studies.  The added impetus to form "useful"  
CONCLUSIONS based on such studies makes things worse, and the  
implication to engineers that they really need to start DOING  
something about it makes it impossible.  (Here in the Ca Bay Area,  
the local energy company has a set of commercials that really piss me  
off; essentially "turn the thermostat of your air conditioner up or  
you'll leave your children a parched desert of a California."  As if  
we actually KNEW ... everything!  Grr.)

In a sense, it's like psychic phenomena.  No doubt there are people  
studying such things in a scientific way, but I wouldn't find even  
the best of the papers to be reasonable fodder for the [EE] topic  
thread...

BillW

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