Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

And they are subject to the failings that the rest of the human race is prone to

Last week Steve McIntyre of the Climate Audit website cracked the walls of the fortress at Britain’s Climatic Research Unit. A “mole” sent him a sample of global temperature data that CRU Director Dr. Phil Jones had refused to share with the climate audit community. By Sunday Christopher Booker had reported the news in the Daily Telegraph.

For some reason government scientists like Dr. Jones that get millions in government research grants are considered to be disinterested experts. Yet anyone who has ever taken a dime from an oil company is bought and paid for.

Of course that is nonsense. To politicians, scientists are just another interest group competing for favors. It’s pay to play. To get their grant money scientists need to deliver science that helps argue for bigger government. And they do, especially in the climate sciences.

I still believe that scientists, as someone who has taken an oath to trust in the data and believe in the experimental verification (or falsification) of theories (not literally, of course, but anyone who hasn’t taken such oath in his heart is not a scientist—maybe a mathematician, because they don’t believe the “real world”, where experiments reside in, exist anyway), can ultimately be held to be accountable.

Climate scientists, for all their excesses, eventually have to show result by either successfully predicting the impending doom, or successfully predicting the results of the policies enacted to prevent the doom on the quantitative basis. Either they do that, or in time, they will be ostracized and ridiculed by the rest of the scientific community, as string theorists are.

But I don’t know if this will take place in my lifetime, or during my career in science. It can take a long time for a scientific theory to be properly recognized (just look at things like discovery of prion; there is no political agenda or money involved here, but it took decades for the community to recognize the correct hypothesis). And given that, today, practically all academic scientists have their livelihood held hostage by the government (through NSF or other agencies which fund basic science), some more willingly than others (overwhelming percentage of scientists are tax-and-spend Democrats), I don’t know how long it will take for this change to come. I certainly don’t hold out any hope better than 50-50 that this change will come within my lifetime.

Scientists are people too. They can be influenced by money, and they have been influenced. We need to recognize that. Now the only question is, if this dominance of science by the government and political agenda will continue, leading us to death of science (or rather, hibernation—the truth never dies out, only the people who believe in them) and another dark age, or if we can reverse the trend.

On BankDeals:

With all the talk of Ally Bank being pressured by the ABA to cut deposit rates, I was hoping that Ally Bank would hold steady on its rates for a while. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Ally Bank made some sizable rate cuts today. The savings account rate fell from 2.25% to 2.05% APY, the 12-month CD rate fell from 2.80% to 2.49% APY and the 9-month no-penalty CD rate fell from 2.50% to 2.30% APY. The largest rate cut was on the regular 9-month CD. That rate fell from 2.60% to 1.90% APY. Now there’s no reason to choose this classic 9-month CD when the no-penalty version has a higher rate.

And if an anonymous commenter who couldn’t provide specifics is to be believed, the pressure to cut interest rates on savings account and CDs is coming from Mr. Bernanke, the wise regulator who couldn’t see the housing bubble that everyone with half a brain was screaming was coming for years.

Do you need any more evidence that regulations are bad? Some regulations might be necessary, but they are necessary evil—it’s like bandages and scabs on your wound. You need those things at the moment to stop the bleeding, but if you always have bandages on your arm and have scabs here and there, well, something’s wrong with you, buddy. If we actually need regulation anywhere, then regulation is at best a treatment for symptoms and will only get more and more expensive with time. The problem has to be dealt with at the fundamental level.

An example people keep bringing up is the environmental issues. Sure, factories dumping wastes into the local air and water are terrible. Sure, regulation could help with these issues. But it doesn’t fix the underlying problem—that there are people who stand to benefit by being a little less careful with their surroundings and they have no incentive to be careful. But if you look more deeply into the issues, the government created these underlying problems. All that a government is empowered to do and is necessary to do is protect the sanctity of property (and by extension, lawful contracts). When it failed to do that, for whatever reasons, it created the problems that it is now somehow entrusted (by statists and leftists, anyway) to solve it. Talk about leaving the fox with the chicken!

Well. In any case, it looks like if Obama and his minions have their way, the middle class families with a little bit of income to save (but not willing to risk it in stock or even bonds) will be left with no option other than to watch their savings diminished by inflation, which is only bound to grow with the reckless spending that Obama administration has shown to be far too willing and able to do. As it is, even at the historical inflation rate of 1%, the current rate of about 2% at Ally Bank is barely enough to keep your money’s value at the exact some worth. If every bank was offering rates like 0.2% (that offered by many banks and even credit unions), you would be better off buying gold and burying it in the ground, rather than keeping the money in a bank and in circulation.

What would regulators do then? Outlaw buying of gold? Punish those trying to sell gold? Apparently your imagination is the limit.

It’s published more than 5 years ago, but still every bit true.

Some materials cost so much to recycle, that if it weren’t for forced, tax-supported (think CRV) recycling programs, no one would bother recycling.

Some programs, especially ones that recycle metal resources like aluminum cans, are highly successful, but even for those there’s no need to support such programs with CRV. If there’s demand for such recycled material, someone will step up and fill the niche. It doesn’t have to be the government.