Rebuttal of "The Great Global Warming Swindle"

To help even out the links on Global Warming, here's a rebuttal of the "The Great Global Warming Swindle".

Global Warming Swindle

I hate posting these things about Global Warming. If no one posts them so that others can see, who will know that there are dissenting opinions that deserve to be heard. This is a documentary that can be downloaded from Google if the Google Video button is clicked. It is ~500MB in size.

Intellectual Property Quote

You see the quote at the bottom of the post in many different places on the net. It's on the signatures and websites of those who understand what current intellectual property laws are doing to basic research and innovation. The atmosphere is being stifling and will only get worse. It may never get better. You never see this quote being bandied about by those that wish to increase the duration and strength of the current patent/trademark/copyright regime.

The quote is from Thomas Jefferson. It sums up balancing act of intellectual property and how silly it really is to consider thoughts and ideas as property to be owned and horded. Algorithms, business processes, DNA, and other such things cannot be owned. Once there out there everyone knows them. Media (music, films,etc) is just as bad. Musicians and filmmakers don't create in a vacuum. Look at the number of re-makes.

Here's the quote as I got it from SlimDevices:

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.
—Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson, 1813

More Global Warming stories

More information about scientists that dissent and are being threatened.

Mars ice caps shrinking.

Pay-for-Performance

Bob Sutton has a post about Evidence-Based Practices. He links to the recent congressional testimony of his colleague Jeff Pfeffer on Evidence Based Managment. One of the primary focus areas is the Pay-for-Performance systems that the private sector uses.

Here's a quote:
Numerous surveys, including surveys conducted by the same compensation consulting firms that frequently advise on and advocate pay-for-performance systems, provide evidence of widespread dissatisfaction. For instance, a 2004 Watson Wyatt study of employee attitudes and opinions found that only 30% of U.S. workers believed that their company's performance management program did what it was intended to do -- improve performance. That's because fewer than 40% of people felt that the systems generated clear goals or provided honest feedback, while almost 40% believed their performance was inaccurately evaluated and about the same number said they did not understand the measures used to assess their performance. A 2004 Hewitt survey of some 350 companies reported that more than 80 percent of the organizations believed their pay-for-performance programs were at best partly successful or were not successful at all at accomplishing their goals.