Cancun COP16 attendees fall for the “dihydrogen monoxide” petition
wattsupwiththat.com
wattsupwiththat.com
I can't decide whether this is naive or deliberately misleading. First of all, UN delegates were not duped by college students into banning water. They were duped into signing a petition to ban water. It might have been irresponsible of them to leave their signature on a piece of paper without thinking it through, but it's a far cry from being "duped into banning water".
That leads me to my second point: they are UN delegates. They're not geeks, they're more like managers. They'll have experts whom they'll consult. They won't stop to try and puzzle out "dihydrogen monoxide" when approached by obviously unofficial and (within the context) unimportant people. As a matter of fact, given their job, they're probably used to being approached by people ranging from genuine, serious activists to plain loonies.
Like I said, if you're an official decision maker, it's not very responsible to appear to endorse someone else's idea without researching it properly, but that's as far as this whole issue goes.
If someone has basic scientific literacy, they won't need to stop to puzzle it out, it'll be immediately obvious.
If someone doesn't have basic scientific literacy, they shouldn't be in a management position in an organisation dealing with scientific matters.
Yet we see that happen on a regular basis and not only when it comes to science. We have corporations with managers who lack basic technical understanding of what their reports are telling them. We have politicians who lack the basic capacity to express themselves properly and coherently. Is it really that surprising at this point?
The world has somehow become convinced that management is something that need not rely on the specific problem domain. It might irk us or mystify us to no end, but it works. I suspect that it works because it really is possible to be a good manager even if you don't have the basic understanding of your problem domain; you just have to be able to surround yourself with trustworthy people who do know the stuff and organize them properly. Sadly, most of managers who lack the basic understanding of the technical stuff also happen to be bad at management.
That's because the managers' managers also lack that understanding.
> We have politicians who lack the basic capacity to express themselves properly and coherently.
That's because a lot of their bosses -- the voters -- are stupid.
> I suspect that it works because it really is possible to be a good manager even if you don't have the basic understanding of your problem domain
I agree; but you do need to be wise enough to surround yourself with people who do.
Someone else thought this would make a great point and put their effort up on youtube; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uPcthZL2RE
Now a UN delegate should know better than to sign something that they don't fully understand. I'm actually shocked that they'd be so lax about signing something. Although, I must admit I don't really know who this UN delegates are or what kind of qualifications they have.
"radical left-wing environmentalists from around the world scrambled eagerly to sign...almost every delegate that collegian students approached signed their petition"
OK. Who? How many people were approached and how many signed? Why not just publish the petitions?
It goes without saying that this was a PR stunt, but the story doesn't really make any solid claims about what happened, despite the overwrought language about radical left-wing environmentalist climate kooks.
If you take enough AP tests and pass, you can pretty much start 1/2 year ahead of your peers or more. That can save you money and/or time, or let you get on with advanced studies.
That must prove global warming doesn't exist. Good job!