Andrew Scott as meteorologist James Stagg As a meteorologist, I never thought a movie about a weather forecast could be so good. I rate it A+.  A quick scan of my movie reviews back to the start of the blog (2009) do not reveal any other movie rated that highly. Others evidently agree 86% of critics and 95% of the audience recommend it.  Pressure   is the story about the weather forecasts (yes, plural) leading up to D-Day -- perhaps the most important forecast in the history of the world. The title is a play on the word referring to both high and low pressure systems on a weather map and the pressure on the meteorologists.  Meteorologist Dr. James Stagg (well portrayed by Andrew Scott) used synoptic meteorology forecast techniques much like we use today; versus Dr. Irving Krick who used a technique called analogs. I wrote about  this controversy early  in the history of the blog (caution spoilers!). This controversy continues today. I explain in the "spoile...

Today is Kansas Day, the anniversary of Kansas being admitted to the Union as a free state. I thought, given events in the world, this story of a Kansan and anti-semitism was appropriate.  At the U.S. Capitol, each state has two statues representing their citizens.  Kansas' statues are Eisenhower and Amelia Earhart.  General Dwight Eisenhower, who grew up in Abilene, Kansas, was utterly shocked by the death camps Hitler created during World War II. As commander-in-chief of the allied forces, he gave these orders after touring Buchenwald: ...Eisenhower was shocked after seeing one in person and realizing what that system actually was. He recognized that this was what his men were fighting against, that liberation was more than just freeing territory – it was about the very survival of civilization itself against a barbarism few had thought existed in the heart of modern Europe. Eisenhower issued a series of orders. The camps were to be documented, photographed, and filmed...

An important article on the deplorable state of scientific research in the United States is here . A brief excerpt: My experiences at four research universities and as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research fellow taught me that the relentless pursuit of taxpayer funding has eliminated curiosity, basic competence, and scientific integrity in many fields. Yet, more importantly, training in “science” is now tantamount to grant-writing and learning how to obtain funding. Organized skepticism, critical thinking, and methodological rigor, if present at all, are afterthoughts. Thus, our nation’s institutions no longer perform their role as Eisenhower’s fountainhead of free ideas and discovery. Instead, American universities often produce corrupt, incompetent, or scientifically meaningless research that endangers the public, confounds public policy, and diminishes our nation’s preparedness to meet future challenges. This is especially true in global warming research. Climategate...

Ike and Mamie Eisenhower at the White House Via Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas  In his farewell address , President Eisenhower gave our nation two warnings. Although we usually only hear about one of them, both have proven prescient: The caution about the "military-industrial complex" becomes more dire all of the time. We are far overextended in the Middle East. From what I can tell, many in the military like it that way (people in combat tend to get promoted more than during times of peace) and the weapons suppliers grow their already-large businesses (even though some of those weapons are extraordinarily expensive and are of dubious value). The media periodically mentions this warning from Eisenhower, so at least the citizenry is aware.  The far less well known warning is the one about what I call " Big Science ." We almost never hear of it.  As a technology  publication put it last yea r : President Eisenhower surrounded himself with brilliant...

UPDATE AND BUMP: From Instapundit.com, MORE  CLIMATEGATE COMPLICATIONS:  “The ClimateGate plot thickens. Lord Oxburgh, a member of the House of Lords who was appointed ‘to chair a scientific assessment panel that will examine the published science of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia,’ has links to businesses that would benefit financially from low-carbon technology: he is chairman of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and the wind energy company Falck Renewables.” Original Posting... I was on vacation when Tom Fuller wrote about  the whitewash going on in the Climategate investigations. Please read his column. In the words of Dwight Eisenhower, The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and ...

In 1960, President Eisenhower delivered his Farewell Address to the Nation just before the inauguration of John F. Kennedy.  In that address, he warned of the undue influence of the "military-industrial complex," a phrase that almost immediately entered the lexicon. But, there was a second warning that seems especially prescient: The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. I was thinking of Eisenhower's words (which I use in my global warming speeches via a clip of the Address I licensed from CBS/BBC) when I read this column  from The Wall Street Journal. Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and th...