Climate Progress reports:
Google’s climate scientists are not happy with the company’s political support for climate science denying Senator James Inhofe (R-OK).
In 2011, the search giant launched the Google Science Communication Fellows effort, “to help foster a more open, transparent and accessible scientific dialogue.” 21 scientists were part of group that included climate scientists such as Julia Cole, Frank Davis, Andrew Dessler, and Eugene Cordero.
The dialogue took an unexpected turn on Thursday, when 17 of those fellows wrote a letter to Chairman Eric Schmidt and CEO Larry Page, saying that though Google is a business and has to work with both parties to serve its interests, “there are times where companies like Google must display moral leadership and carefully evaluate their political bedfellows.”
They conclude: “Google’s support of Senator James Inhofe’s re-election campaign is one of those moments.”
Well, thanks to Google, we know how to exclude fairly large categories of trash from our searches. For example, this pattern is helpful:
[search expression] -“scientists say”
I did an article on those Google scientists back in 2011, Dessler in particular: “Google to fight global warming ‘ignorance’ ” http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/03/google_to_fight_global_warming.html
Ironic for him to advocate for people to NOT go looking for things while being associated with a business that ‘goes looking for things’. But I’m still dazzled by the way Google screens out skeptic material in basic searches, a person really has to force it to come up by knowing what to look for.
““to help foster a more open, transparent and accessible scientific dialogue” is the stated goal of Google’s effort here. I’d suggest that since these 17 are explicitly rejecting this goal, they be replaced with 17 actual, real, ya know SCIENTISTS.
Exactly. That’s what “moral leadership” would mean to me, if I interpreted it literally. I personally know of no scientist (and I know plenty) who would be even remotely interested in politics, let alone be willing to participate in it. I suspect none of the 17 has been noted for having done anything useful or having found anything interesting. Politics and science can’t occur in the same brain.
Perhaps they should be re-evaluating their scientists.